Few, No Vaccine Side Effects, Am I Still Protected? Don't Feel Bad, If You Don't Feel Bad: Experts

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- NPR, 'You Don't Have To Suffer To Benefit From Covid Vaccination- But Some Prefer It,' April 27, 2021. - Excerpts, Ed.

.. Roughly half of those vaccinated with the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, and in particular women, experience unpleasantness- from hot, sore arms to chills, headache, fever and exhaustion. Some boast about it and often welcome it. Suspicion grew in the mind of Patricia Mandatori, an immigrant in LA when she hardly felt the needle going in after her first dose of the Moderna vaccine.. A day later, though, with satisfaction she says it "felt like a truck hit me. When I started to feel rotten I says, 'Yay, I got the vaccination.' I was happy. I felt relieved."

While the symptoms show your immune system is responding to the vaccine in a way that will protect against disease, evidence from clinical trials showed that people with few or no symptoms were also protected. Don't feel bad if you don't feel bad, the experts say.. To be sure, there is some evidence of stronger immune response in younger people — and in those who get sick when vaccinated. A small study at the University of Penn. showed that people who reported systemic side effects such as fever, chills and headache may have had somewhat higher levels of antibodies. The large trial for Pfizer's vaccine showed the same trend in younger patients.

But that doesn't mean people who don't react to the vaccine severely are less protected, says Dr. Joanna Schaenman at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. While the symptoms of illness are undoubtedly part of the immune response, the immune response that counts is protection, she says. "That is preserved across age groups and likely to be independent of whether you had local or systemic side effects or not." The immune system responses that produce post-vaccination symptoms are thought to be triggered by proteins called toll-like receptors, which reside on certain immune cells.

These receptors are less functional in older people, who are also likely to have chronic, low-grade activation of their immune systems that paradoxically mutes the more rapid response to a vaccine. But other parts of their immune systems are responding more gradually to the vaccine by creating the specific types of cells needed to protect against the coronavirus. These are the so-called memory B cells, which make antibodies to attack the virus, and "killer T cells" that track and destroy virus-infected cells.. Whether you have a strong reaction to the vaccine "is an interesting but, in a sense, not vital question," says Dr. William Schaffner at Vanderbilt Univ. Center. The bottom line, he says: "Don't worry about it."...

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https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/04/27/990992425/you-dont-have-to-suffer-to-benefit-from-covid-vaccination-but-some-prefer-it
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- Scientific American, 'If You Don’t Have COVID Vaccine Side Effects, Are You Still Protected? Reactions reflect unique features of an individual’s immune system, not the strength of a response,' April 1, 2021.

Last month Robert Duehmig and Bill Griesar—a married couple in their 50s who live in Astoria, Ore., and Portland, Ore.—were each relieved to get their second shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19. After the jab, Griesar felt nothing more than a sore arm. But for Duehmig, the effects were more pronounced.

“I woke up during that first night ... with the chills and some body aches and just not feeling well by the morning,” Duehmig says. “I really didn’t want to do anything but sleep that day, which is about all I did.” The unpleasant reaction was reassuring. “I do like to think that it means it’s working, that it’s kicking my system into gear,” Duehmig says. So was Griesar’s vaccine any less effective at protecting him from severe COVID-19?

Absolutely not, according to experts and data from clinical trials of the Pfizer vaccine. The latter indicated that the vaccine was generally 90 to 100% effective against COVID-19 in people regardless of their sex, age, race, ethnicity or preexisting conditions. Yet only about half of trial subjects experienced the sort of systemic reactions that Duehmig did...

- Read The Full Article,
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/if-you-dont-have-covid-vaccine-side-effects-are-you-still-protected/