My vaccine side effect experience
Real shots after placebo weren’t much worse
In hopes of not getting COVID-19, I have been poked in the arm four times. The only one that hurt was the last one.
My first two shots were at UW Hospital and Clinics in Madison as part of a national clinical trial of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine. Eventually I learned that I had been in the placebo group of the trial and that those two shots were saline injections.
Because I am over 65, I was able to sign up for a real vaccine at the Sage Specialty Pharmacy in Shorewood. Since early January pharmacy owner Jon Phillips and his staff have administered more than 1,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
I got my second Pfizer shot from Phillips last Tuesday. Unlike the first one, I actually felt some mild side effects. My arm was sore for a couple days.
And for about a day or two, I had a low-grade malaise — which is different from the everyday malaise most people have endured since this godawful plague descended on us a year ago.
Phillips, 61, says that is pretty common. He said he felt nothing after his first shot and only a little fatigue for about a day after the second. The same with his customers, including about 200 who have gotten their second dose.
“For the most part, people are tolerating it really, really well,” he said.
With millions of doses already being administered, several things are being learned about how people are reacting to the vaccines.
Side effects mostly are mild and are more likely to occur after the second dose. Older people are less likely to have a reaction than younger people. And reactions to Pfizer vaccine seem to be milder than to the Moderna vaccine.
Data from the Pfizer vaccine trial shows that among trial participants aged 16 to 55, 83% had pain at the site of injection after the first dose vs. 78% after the second dose. Among those aged 55 and older those numbers were 71% and 66%, respectively.
The most common systemic side effects after the second dose were fatigue, 59%, and headache, 52%, among those aged 16 to 55. For those aged 55 and older, the numbers were 51% and 39%.
A similar story is unfolding in Madison among the 370 people in the AstraZeneca trial.
AstraZeneca hopes to finalize its data, which is part of a nationwide trial of 30,000 people, by early March with the goal of presenting it to the FDA for approval later that month.
Older people generally have had less reaction to the AstraZeneca shot than younger people, said William Hartman, principal investigator for the UW arm of the trial.
“The older people don’t complain as much,” he said.
My arm was sore for a couple days. And for about a day or two, I had a low-grade malaise — which is different from the everyday malaise most people have endured since this godawful plague descended on us a year ago.
Hartman, 48, got the Pfizer vaccine in early January. He felt nothing after the first shot, but after the second he had some minor chills and was a little foggy.
“I just felt like I was in a daze for part of the day,” he said.
Of course, the other reaction that I am sure many people feel is the reassurance of knowing they are as protected as they can be against COVID.
For me, that has not translated into a big change in behavior. I still wear a mask whenever I go out. I’m not going into restaurants or movie theaters, or getting my hair cut professionally — though I would love to do all three.
After months of using curbside pickup, I made my first trip into our local grocery store on Saturday. I did not feel the anxiousness I likely would have felt had I gone there as an unvaccinated shopper.
However, I was annoyed by a guy who walked right by me with his mask pulled down below his nose and his mouth. I quietly complained to a store
employee who told him to put his mask on properly.
It’s funny because one of my last daring acts prior to being vaccinated was back in May when I went into a Costco to stock up on what I thought would be enough frozen and packaged food to last the rest of the pandemic. Of course, those supplies ran out a long time ago.
One reason I have not returned is because I ran into a couple mask-belowthe-nose shoppers at the store.
But the protective antibodies from my two shots should be at peak levels any day now. I think it might be time to go back to Costco this week. It won’t be a return to normal, but it will be a step in that direction.