COVID vaccination today: Flu shot in a week so no ambiguity of the side effects from either. Bob Wilson
mrs b got rsv, flu and covid. covid was the only one with side effects, sore arm and woke up with the sweats
Way out here in the middle of the Pacific in the States... but have never 1) tested positive for covid, or 2) had any symptoms post-vax. Deep-tissue bodyworker, so already militant re: being up-to-date on all shots since taking up this gig 15+ yrs ago... and then 2020 happened. Wash hands / sanitise touchpoints often and to standard, to prevent fomite transmission (+ use 70% isopropanol on hands as needed). Mask at all times clients in office (both of us + and any family they bring). During pandemic enforced the same standards hospitals used... and lost a chunk of 2019-era client pool. Which was fine, didn't want to expose the sensible ones to their perfidious ignorance. Still require masking for clients to this day (covid infection rate in this County remains non-zero, according to colleagues at the hospital -- which reflects the truth-resistant cells of petulance my country's now infamous for harbouring... apologies ) Flu shots've been far worse, symptom-wise. Usually block off a day or two after the really-nasty strains' vaxes. Covid ones have all been Pfizer but one Moderna in 2024 -- the only covid vax I'd felt any reaction to.
getting my annual physical yesterday, and the doc asked if i wanted a flu shot. sure! i didn't even know they had them, saved a trip to the pharmacy. no side effects at all, which is weird
My doc asked in the office if I wanted the pneumococcal pneumonia shot, gave it right there in the office, no extra trip. I then spent two or three months dodging their dunning letters for the couple hundred dollars my insurance company declined to pay them for it, while trying to get anybody to help me figure out why. Turns out doc's office had put in one claim for the office visit and another one for the shot, and that triggered some "we already paid that" rule for the insurer. It eventually had to be me, of course, figuring out what had gone wrong (me, of course, the only player privy to none of the communications going between the other two parties), and telling doc's office how to solve it. If I had made the extra trip and gotten the shot at, say, CVS, it probably would have gone through without a hitch.
My HMO usually has annual walk-in mass vaccinations at its various clinic locations. I've received a flu and covid vaxx choice during a regular medical visit once before the mass operation began, and went to a pharmacy a couple times during the Pandemic when the HMO wasn't running the mass operations and put out a list of approved pharmacies as alternate choices. But the mass events have the least bureaucratic overhead, so are preferred.
Same... now trust my local Longs (CVS) for any routine shots, including covid vaxes. Never again, unless it's updating something like the overseas travel combo*, as have relatives overseas. Not sure how clinics bill vs. CVS, but it's not working and I refuse to explain myself yet another time, for some data input clerk's flub * Hep A/B, Japanese encephalitis (mosquito-borne, yeesh), rabies (for rural visits or hiking thru nature -- relatives live in rural Hokkaido, land of boreal forest and the brown bears and other predators in them), MMR.
