It had gotten silly that now that I work for a cloud network services company that the blog was sitting on my home DSL. I’m probably going to cancel the DSL and rely solely on Starlink for home internet. Starlink does not come with a public-facing IPV4 address, and its IPV6 implementation only appears to work for 10 minutes at a time. This means that even though I have Starlink, the blog is still being served by the same 768kbit/s DSL uplink that it’s been on for the last decade. A decade ago, your own internet was slow enough you only sort of noticed, but it’s gotten silly.
So, now the blog (and the N45HX blog) are hosted on AWS’s Lightsail behind Cloudflare’s free service. It should be noticeably better.
Maybe I’ll even start posting here more often.
The gallery has not yet been migrated. I’m going to try, even though gallery3 is mostly abandonware at this point, so keeping it chugging along continues to prove to be work.
The husband is also a trial participant in the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine trial, and he got his booster after I got mine. The night he said, “I don’t feel good.”
The next day he woke up and declared his whole body hurt. “Even my toes hurt!” His head was pounding. “I think,” he decided, “that my body has had a good enough reaction to this,” and took some Aleve. He spent the whole day horizontal except for the three work meetings that he dragged himself to his computer to attend. He wrapped himself in a blanket in front of the wood pellet stove and while his teeth chattered.
The next morning he was feeling a little better, and by the time we left home to drive to Denver for a concert, he felt pretty much back to normal.
We saw Samia, and it was a great concert!
Samia with opener Charlie Hickey
This is the third concert we’ve been to in the last few months. At each one, the venue has required proof of vaccination to get in the door. At the one in November, the person checking the husband’s card scrutinized it carefully; did she notice that it said “Vaccine Trial Participant”? The first two concerts, I got a notification on my Colorado Exposure app later saying I had been potentially exposed to someone who had tested positive. This time the husband did. It’s interesting that only one of us has gotten the notification. Was it in the bathrooms?
I hurried out of the Woodland Park City Market and jumped into the car. “Nobody,” I exclaimed in exasperation, “is in a hurry up here! It took me forever to check out!”
Fast forward nearly 10 years. I think I’m getting accustomed to the slower pace of mountain living.
Berck asked if I had errands to run in town because he needed some Rust-Oleum for the rally car. I had just gotten my monthly envelope of Kroger coupons, and they were proverbially burning a proverbial hole in my proverbial pocket. So off went on the 15 minute drive to City Market.
We were about out of onions, so I found the special big plastic bags in the produce department for corn on the cob, except there’s no corn, but the roll of bags is still there, and I filled up one with sweet onions. Pretty much anything we cook starts with slicing an onion, and we go through a lot of them. I got a bunch of other things on my mental list, as well as forgetting a bunch of things, and tore apart the relevant coupons (40 cents off eggs, 2 dollars off dishwasher detergent, a free o.j.). I also got some chicken because it was on sale. I even managed to get some Horizon whole milk, which has been out of stock the last several times I’ve been shopping, supply-line issues, you know. As I was trying to decide what other kind of milk to buy, I saw a hand behind the cooler door insert a Horizon carton onto the shelf, and then another one! They stock the store on Saturdays, so that’s when you’ve got to go if you want to get what you want.
By the time I got to the check-out, my little buggy was overflowing. I wasn’t in a hurry, so I decided I’d wait in line for a cashier instead of using the self-check-out. And miraculously, there was one manned with no customers. The cashier and I exchanged greetings, and I began loading up the conveyor belt. “What are you going to do with all of those onions?” asked the cashier. “Oh, cook stuff,” I answered.
The bagger chimed in. “I’ve got a place in my house where I keep things like onions. It’s not as cold as the refrigeratah but it’s colder than the rest of the house. It’s like a root cellah. My aunt used to have a root cellah, a real root cellah! She had a real garden, you know, even on her tiny lot on Long Island. And she’d cook this delicious dish. She’d take a chicken and put it in a Dutch oven. You remember Dutch ovens? And she’d cover it with onions and cook it for hours. And the meat would just fall off the chicken.”
And instead of rushing off with my groceries, I said, “That sounds delicious!”
“It was! It was so good. I wish I had the recipe! Well, it was nice talkin’ to ya!”
I thanked the cashier and I thanked the bagger and pushed the buggy out to my car.
I received my third Novavax injection two days ago. The last couple times I’ve been at the Lynn Institute, the staff has had a hard time coaxing blood out of my arm for testing. The last time I was there, Angel tried and gave up, then Max tried, and then they went and got Bobbie, and Bobbie had success. So this time I was chugging fluids all day. I kept my coat on in the clinic too, to try to keep my arm warm. And Angel got lots of blood from me first try!
Then the doctor (one I hadn’t seen before) gave me a physical and said my blood pressure was too high. But not too high to get boosted.
Bobbie excitedly showed me the syringe, with no tape around it this time. “Look! It’s not blinded! You can actually see it! It looks like water, but it’s in there.” She gave me a quick injection, which I hardly felt.
I entered my current symptoms into the app on my phone that night after taking my temperature, which was completely normal. I said my arm didn’t hurt at all, which it didn’t. Then I lay down in bed, and my arm immediately started hurting.
The next day my arm hurt pretty good but not as much as my flu shot in November. I developed what looked like a bug bite at the injection site. Here’s a blurry picture I took.
blurry injection site
Other than the sore arm, which only really hurt if if I moved it, I felt fine all day. That is, until around 8pm in the evening. My whole torso felt sore, from my neck, shoulders, down to my lower back, and suddenly I felt really fatigued. That’s why I didn’t bother trying to take another photo of my arm. Here I am very mopey with a cat atop me.
feeling awfully mopey
Today, two days later after the injection, I feel perfectly fine. My arm feels a little bit of soreness. My upper arm is a little swollen, but the bump is going down. I have to measure it for the app. The bump is 2 millimetres wide, I think.
A vaccine is a drug that is administered to get the body to activate its immune system against a certain disease. There are many different kinds of vaccines. Some are made by killing the virus and then injecting it into you. Others may be a weaker form of the virus. Some may just be pieces of the virus, not the whole thing. Once these are injected into you, your body is fooled into thinking that you are infected and your immune system attacks and destroys it. Your immune system now remembers that, and should you get infected with the real thing, your immune system is primed and ready to react much faster than before.
One of the most amazing vaccines ever created was the one to fight polio. However, there was a terrible accident soon after the polio vaccine was invented. One of the manufacturers didn’t weaken the polio virus they were using and actually infected people with polio instead of giving them a weakened virus. Many people were then terrified to receive the vaccine. Fortunately, that problem got fixed. Polio is such a terrible disease that people eventually overcame the fear of receiving a botched vaccine and got vaccinated. Polio has been eradicated in the US and only exists in a couple of places in the world now. Elvis getting photographed getting vaccinated helped convince people to receive the vaccine.
Novavax, the vaccine trial in which I’m enrolled, is a vaccine that injects a protein that is the same as the one the virus that causes COVID-19 uses to attach to the cells in the body. The protein all by itself (and not attached to a virus) is harmless to us, as far as scientists can tell. The protein is grown in moths, which have been infected with another virus that scientists have genetically modified to infect the moths and trick them into making the same protein that is on the COVID-19 virus. The Novavax vaccine also includes an extract from Chilean soap tree bark (a substance which is also used to make root beer foamy) that when injected acts to attract the immune system cells to the injection site, so they can see the foreign proteins and attack the proteins and remember them for the next time the proteins enter the body. Novavax works very, very well, but it probably won’t receive emergency authorization from the FDA because there are already plenty of other vaccines available that already work very well. Also Novavax is having a hard time getting enough supplies to make their vaccines. But hopefully, they’ll be able to make a lot that will be available for the rest of the world. The US government under Operation Warp Speed has given lots of money to Novavax to develop the vaccine. The normal process for a vaccine to be approved by the FDA is quite lengthy, so it will probably be a long time before it is available in the U.S.
So far Novavax has only performed limited trials of their vaccine, but the results have shown it to be very safe among the thousands of people who have received it. But it may take millions of doses for rare health effects to show up. However, the protein injection approach used by Novavax was first implemented for the hepatitis B vaccine, which has been used in the U.S. since 1986. The pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine, which is required for almost all children in U.S. public schools, is also made this way. Some people who have been wary of getting the mRNA vaccines may find Novavax more appealing.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses a common cold virus that has been genetically modified to infect cells in the human body and tell the cells to create proteins like the one on the surface of the COVID-19 virus, which then the body’s immune system sees as a threat and attacks and remembers that particular protein. This type of vaccine is called a vector vaccine. After millions of people were injected with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, a few developed a strange reaction. Nearly all reports of this serious condition, which involves blood clots with low platelets, have been in adult women younger than 50 years old. Some doctors have hypothesized that it may especially affect women who are are on hormonal birth control. The problem can be treated effectively with an anticoagulant drug, as long as someone who starts suffering symptoms (which usually start around a week after the vaccination) seeks medical attention. Unfortunately, the anticoagulant drug heparin, which is typically used for blood clots, actually makes the situation worse. But now medical professionals are aware of the problem with heparin and now use other drugs. This blood clotting reaction appears to be extremely rare, around one or two in a million, so it only appeared after millions of doses had been administered. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has also been linked to an even rarer condition called Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological disorder in which the body’s immune system damages nerve cells which can result in pain, numbness and muscle weakness, progressing to paralysis in the most severe cases. Most people fully recover from the disorder.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca is also made from a genetically modified common cold virus, but this one is a virus that chimpanzees catch. It also has the very rare blood clotting problem, and the risk of death has been approximately one or two in a million. AstraZeneca has not been approved by the FDA and is not available in the US. It has been used widely in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. Australia has recommended that people under age 50 receive Pfizer instead. Scientists don’t know what causes the blood clotting issue. Yet.
The Russian made Sputnik V is also a vector vaccine and works by using a genetically modified common cold virus in its first injection, and a second different common cold virus in the second injection three weeks later. It is very effective and seems to be very safe. There haven’t been any reports of any blood clotting issues. It is not available in the U.S.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are a brand new type of vaccine that has never been used before. Instead of modifying a virus that already exists like the vector vaccines, it is a string of genetic code that is manufactured in a laboratory, wrapped in fat particles, and then injected into human muscle cells. The genetic code is accepted into human cells, that recognize it as instructions to produce proteins that the immune system gets excited about and attacks. This sort of vaccine is call a messenger RNA or mRNA vaccine. It is an astonishing marvel of modern science. Scientists are working on mRNA vaccines for all manner diseases, and the possibilities are quite promising. Because the genetic code is produced in a lab, scientists can change the recipe at any time and create a brand new vaccine that’s ready to go as soon as it can be produced in a factory; this will come in handy with a mutating disease like COVID-19. Some people have received the mRNA vaccines have had rare instances of myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle, mostly in male adolescents and young adults age 16 years or older. Symptoms include chest pain, shortness of breath, and feelings of having a fast-beating, fluttering, or pounding heart. People who have suffered myocarditis after receiving an mRNA vaccine who have received medical treatment have had their symptoms resolve. Scientists don’t know why the mRNDA vaccines apparently cause myocarditis in a very small percentage of people. Yet.
There are other vaccines as well that are in research and other vaccines that are being produced in other countries. One of the biggest ones is Sinovac, which is a Chinese inactivated vaccine, which means it’s the COVID-19 virus that has been killed and then injected. Unfortunately, it’s only about 50% effective (as opposed to Novavax, Sputnik V, Pfizer, and Moderna, which all have effectiveness in the 90% range), though it does seem to be very effective against death.
All of the vaccines have some side effects that might make you feel sick after you get them. That’s your body’s immune response trying to fight the invasion of foreign stuff being injected to it. This response is a good thing because it means your body immune system is working like it should.
The bodies of people who have previously been infected with COVID-19 have developed a response to the virus that help keep people from being infected again. There have been very few documented cases of people catching COVID-19 twice, but it has happened. There are also people who have caught COVID-19 even after being vaccinated, though their chances of being hospitalized or dying are far, far lower than otherwise. Scientists who have measured the immune response in people who have had COVID-19 verses people who have been vaccinated have found more antibodies—proteins made by the immune system in response to an infection or vaccination—in people who have been vaccinated. That’s why scientists and medical professionals are urging everyone to get vaccinated, even those who have had COVID-19. But there is also an argument that people who already have had naturally produced antibodies should foregoing getting vaccinated until those who are completely unprotected have the opportunity to receive a vaccine, and there are a lot of people in the world who haven’t been vaccinated who would really like to be. I think at this point everyone who really wants to get vaccinated in the U.S. has had the opportunity to get vaccinated. But I don’t think the U.S. government is going to be sharing all our vaccines anytime soon. There’s evidence to suggest that the antibodies our bodies produce decline after around six months. So people who have had COVID-19 should go probably just go ahead and receive a vaccine.
All viruses mutate (change), and the mutations that stick usually end up making vaccines more transmissible. The COVID-19 virus is no exception. At some point, we’re all probably going to need either a booster shot (a vaccine for the original COVID-19 virus further in the future to remind our immune system) or a new vaccine for a mutated COVID-19 virus.
The only way the human body defeats COVID-19 is by its own immune system finding and killing all the viruses. We can help the body by giving it a cheat code to recognize the virus as soon as it shows up before it has a chance to attach to our cells and take over, reprogramming our cells to do its bidding and create many more viruses, eventually either making us spread the virus to other people, making us sick, or even killing us.
Of course, all of these vaccines are new, and there could be long term health effects we aren’t aware of now. But COVID-19 is also really new, and we’re only beginning to discover just how devastating the damage it causes can be. We don’t know yet if the human body can recover from the damage COVID-19 can cause to the lungs, joints, heart, and even brain, and that’s if COVID-19 doesn’t kill you first. So far it looks to me that the dangers of COVID-19 far outweigh what appears to be the extremely rare side effects of any of the vaccines.
I find the human body amazing, and I find science amazing too. The very idea that we can genetically modify viruses that can fight other virus is super cool. The promise of mRNA vaccines I find especially exciting. Scientists are even working on mRNA treatment for cancer! Human might be able to treat all sorts of diseases like we never have before because of the research that has been going on recently.
I am not a scientist or a medical professional. I am just a person who is interested in science and medicine. I have tried to write this to be as easy to understand as possible. I have not included any citations because I find citations distracting and/or intimidating. If you would like a citation to anything above, let me know, and I will provide it. If I have made any errors or you think I should add any clarifications, please let me know along with your evidence, and I will try to edit this as quickly as I am able to.
