Very cool! Local ER personnel began getting the Covid-19 vaccine today! They say the Moderna vaccine will be delivered next week with shipments arriving each week. Good news indeed! There has been some talk of restaurant staff getting bumped up the list, and I would like to see grocery store cashiers added to 'high priority' list since they interact with so many people in the course of a day/week/month.

Not sure when the general public will be able to get it. I am definitely planning to get it as soon as it's available. Since I work for as the Chef of a nonprofit, the sooner I can get it the better it will be for our operation. That really applies to everyone in the organization. With luck the general population can be mostly immunized by the end of the 1st Q 2021 or 2nd Q at the latest. But of course, we'll see how it goes.

My wife is in the 1st tier (hospital providers working with covid patients). She will be getting her vaccine this week or next. They are staggering groups. e.g., She has been recruited into Internal Medicine now (she is normally Ortho/Hospital). They had to recruit from other specialties because they ran out of physicians to treat all the covid patients. They are only doing 25% of any given specialty or similar-function group at the same time, since the vaccine can cause you to get sick. They don't want to wipe out an entire department/group at the same time.

I am in the 2nd tier group - so about 2, maybe 3, months out until I can get into line.

That makes sense, don't want everyone down at once. Hopefully she'll have a mild reaction to the vaccine.

I am in awe of your wife. If you would, please, thank her from me.

Many of us, I'm sure, would be interested in a first-hand account of her experience with the vaccine.

Second that...Bravo!!

Seems our (UK) Army has been busy too.

Army's 99.99pc effective disinfectant spray kills coronavirus in less than a minute
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/army-develops-spray-to-kill-coronavirus

Soon to go on sale to the general public.

My wife got the vaccine yesterday (almost exactly 24 hours ago). No ill effects. Nothing at all. All her coworkers who got it also report zero adverse affects. Not even pain at the injection site.

A big fat zero in the "reaction" and "side effect" arena. This is exactly as we expected, despite the news media trying their hardest to drum up a hysterical reaction from the general population.

We are probably watching different media platforms, but I woul describe our coverage as restrained and matter of fact. They quote the affected vaccine recipients as saying it was worth it and that they would do it again, which they have to do in order to complete the immunization.

Adverse reactions to medication are not rare. I reacted adversely to aspirin when a teenager....

Same here. The media ooverage I've seen has been positive. There do seem to be a couple of allergic reactions but that's the case with every vaccine.

Another vaccine was approved a couple days ago! So we'll have even more doses entering the pipeline soon.

There was breathless coverage about the one person who fainted. Fainting is almost always psychological, rarely physical. And the two or three people who reported "tingling"? That sounds psychological too. And the reports of the one or two that had Bell's Palsy weeks/months after the vaccine? Except the incidence of Bell's Palsy for vaccine recipients was actually LOWER than the incidence of Bell's Palsy expected in the general population. And people who have such severe allergic reactions normally (they have to carry EpiPens with them) having an allergic reaction. That is surprising?

These are the news media sensationalism's that I am talking about.

Man, you need to switch news networks, Haertig!

I'd love to. What do you recommend? I currently look at The Denver Post, Fox News, CNN, and 9News (NBC local TV news).

Oh, and The Babylon Bee - for when I want to get a more honest perspective on things.

Maybe less news then? I dunno, I don't read any of those. I guess ultimately just don't let it get to you?

Field medic (going on 34 years) (23 where I am now). Got mine 2 days ago.... ONLY 'side effect" has been a sore arm.

I'm on the list! Looks like early-mid February, maybe earlier!

I have such a huge smile, and maybe a few tears reading this.

"In the US, 3 to 7% of all hospitalizations are due to adverse drug reactions." SOURCE

Importantly side effects are not adverse reactions. I was on a medicine that had a sticker on the bottle that warned MAY CAUSE DIZZINESS - and it did for me, but it does not for everyone.

The vaccines have side effects for some people, this is a known, and expected result. In any population there will be people who will have an unexpected reaction to any medication whatsoever. But if people started spontaneously speaking Dutch or their skin started to develop a rash two weeks after the vaccine - and that was not a known and expected side effect - then we'd be into "adverse effects" territory, and even then, it's not a dangerous adverse effect.

The link below is worth a read - in short, an "adverse reaction" is anything that was unintended from a headache to death and the overwhelming majority of people do not have them because of the clinical trials and testing that go into the development of medicine.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6297296/

BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio France Internationale, South China Morning Post (from Hong Kong), Asahi Shimbun. They all have an English edition. I recommend you balance your diet of US-based journalism (which can be very similar in some significant ways even if they come from different perspectives) with reporting from abroad. You learn completely different things.

Also, TV news tends to be at a lower level than print journalism. If you transcribe what TV news anchors or talking heads say, you'll discover what sounds good live is actually really poorly thought out stuff.

That's actually a very good suggestion. Foreign correspondents don't have the pressure to be biased towards one side of the American debate or the other, simply because they probably don't have many Americans as their customers (relatively speaking, compared to customers from their own country). However, some foreign countries are going to have a heavy anti-American bias. I wouldn't trust news reports on America from The Iranian Daily Post for example.

My wife and I both had COVID19 early Nov.; courtesy of visiting a family member who probably brought it home from the hospital.
My wife was hospitalized for two days due to low oxygen levels, then had a fairly quick recovery.
I've had a longer course, amazing fatigue, and still have very slowly fading fatigue over two months later.
We have both now had the first dose of the Moderma vaccine.
I took Tylenol 1000 mg po beforehand and had no side-effects.
My wife didn't take Tylenol and woke up with 10/10 headache pain, severe skin burning/creepy crawly sensation, low grade fever and slept 12 hr today. She's feeling some better tonight. Naproxen helped.
YMMV.

FWIW, my wife had her second shot of the vaccine (Pfizer) six days ago.
She had no reactions or side effects from this second shot either.

Thanks for the firsthand report Famdoc. Best wishes for a speedy and complete recovery.

Thank you, haertig, for sharing that information. Where I live, vaccination is proceeding and the first-hand accounts I’ve seen are largely similar to your wife’s. We did have some people with side-effects reported as well, but I didn’t see any hysteria about it in the local press.

I received my first shot last Tuesday. 3 days of no energy, general overall mild pain and runny nose. Not a big deal, but lost 3 days.

Day 1 not much effect. Day 2 mild general pain like flu, very tired, sinus drainage. Day 3, Started very tired, some general pain all reducing by evening. Day 4, no lasting effect. Back to normal.

Which vaccine?

Moderna.