The Loneliest of Covid Times

When a pro-vaxxer suffers severe adverse vaccine effects and the world tells her to shut the fuck up.

There are a lot of progressive-minded people on social media focused on discounting the VAERS reporting system for adverse Covid-19 vaccine reactions and deaths. The mainstream media and Centers for Disease Control are also at work stating that VAERS reporting system can’t be trusted. You see there have been reported deaths and countless reported illnesses and that’s scary.

I get it. People who are in favor of vaccination don’t want to scare people about unusual risks.

Well, I reported to VAERS. There are only two places to report, and neither of them involves doctors or nurses checking to make sure you are telling the truth. I was telling the truth. Neither system even asked for evidence. Where can I go to report that mainstream media will believe? Please let me know, CDC.

My first Moderna shot left me incapacitated for more than 20 days, but not just that. It wasn’t just the fever, chills, vomiting, body shaking, total weakness (couldn’t lift the trash), palpitations, and migraines. That stuff came in waves. It was that my blood pressure kept dropping to dangerously low levels and sometimes dropping drastically when I got out of bed or moved the littlest bit. The reactions to my second shot were even worse, though shorter, and I finally went to the hospital for medication to stabilize my blood pressure. I have never experienced blood pressure dropping that much before. The nurse told me I should always come in when it drops that much because I could have a stroke or organ damage. Oh.

It’s lonely having a severely adverse reaction to a new technology while the media and social media accuse you of promoting a hoax or a right-wing talking point. I live alone and rely a lot on social media for social contact. Speaking up about my vaccine response on social media provoked a lot of responses that you wouldn’t want to hear when you’re shivering in bed and scared of dying. One guy suggested, in all seriousness, that I consider therapy, because my reaction was not likely from the vaccine. Many people insisted I must have caught Covid again. (I didn’t; I tested twice during that time.)

I was often accused of being an anti-vaxxer or a Covid denier. I’m not an anti-vaxxer! I got vaccinated, you braindead fools. And I hate Covid more than most of you! I experienced Covid long-haul illness for about eight months. I lost half my hair and developed a new heart problem and gum disease and might lose a tooth. I want everyone that is able to be vaccinated to save disabled lives. I just don’t want to go through this again. Aren’t those normal thoughts?

There have always been people who can’t be vaccinated due to real risks. The point of vaccination was always a large majority. Accusing those people of being right wingers or conspiracy theorists is really cruel, weirdos! The same happened with masks. Some people with trigeminal neuralgia and other conditions have legitimate medical exemption, but since right wingers benefited from their experience to claim fake exemption, liberals didn’t want to hear it. Want to know the best way to turn someone into a right winger? Deny their own experience. I’m not a right winger, but I see as much ableism in my far leftist circles as everywhere. (Look up the plastic straw debate.)

My favorite responses to my vaccine woes were the handful of people (white guys) who told me that some of us would have to die or suffer from the vaccine, and I should shut up about it. Deaths or injuries from the vaccine were still way less significant than people dying of Covid, they said. White abled men really love comparatively counting the deaths of other people. One guy said I should be more like that doctor or researcher whose wife died of the vaccine but he still didn’t regret her getting it, because he cared about the population at large. There is something about the opportunity to be a eugenicist that really excites people, even liberals.

(I don’t feel up to digging up these triggering conversations.)

Some people will have to die or be injured for the greater good. These people sounded exactly to me like Covid deniers. I’ve seen some of them claim that people who died shortly after getting the vaccine must have actually died from a pre-existing condition, which is the exact same conversation that Covid minimizers had for months about people dying of Covid. The media has also gone to some lengths to insist that deaths or serious complications following vaccines are probably the result of “natural causes,” etc., which is not actually journalism.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t vaccinate everyone who is able; I’m saying we shouldn’t lie about serious adverse effects and we don’t discount people who die or suffer with “Oh well! At least it wasn’t most of us.” You should especially be transparent if you want people to get booster shots soon.

Some people will have to die for the greater good. Or, what about if we collect evidence of adverse effects, actually study the vaccine response on key subpopulations, and improve the technology in order to prevent these outcomes? Some of you don’t even want to count the data!!

Around the time I was being repeatedly told that my reaction was a hoax, mental illness, etc., my job offered me ten whole days off through new emergency funding from the Biden administration for vaccination response. Somehow, the federal government realized that the new MRNA vaccines could put a lot of people out of commission for ten whole days, a number that probably came from somewhere, like real data.

Around the time my job offered me ten whole days off, I saw someone on Twitter say that he was fine after two days from the vaccine, therefore reports of longer responses are probably just media sensationalism.

Around the time my own actual real-life doctors were recommending that I consider not getting the second Moderna shot, my friends on social media were calling people “idiots” who didn’t get their second shots. This followed news that a million or so people had stopped at one shot. (I got my second shot for personal reasons, but it wasn’t a simple choice!)

People who got the first vaccine shot but not the second are not anti-vaxxers, you dolts! They got vaccinated! There could be tons of reasons why they didn’t go for the second shot, including barriers to access or fear of losing up to a week of their lives. Not everyone has a week to spare.

Do the math: Let’s say your reaction to the first shot was terrible but only for two days, and it protects you at 80% or more, according to the scientists. But you have an autoimmune condition and your sister lost more than one week to the second shot, which promises protection to 90%. You’re a single mother with a baby and no help. You can’t afford the risk now, and you are able to mostly isolate.

Or, let’s say you scheduled your second shot and something came up and you couldn’t attend. And nobody gave you information on rescheduling.

I mean, who knows? But who is really asking or collecting data on why so many first shots didn’t lead to a second shot? Why bother investigating when it’s so fun to call people stupid?

There were very few places where I felt safe talking about my vaccine responses. Most doctors suck, but I have been lucky with two of them. My two doctors never suggested that my vaccine response was weird or false because both of them were treating people like me. My immunologist is a mast cell disease expert; my primary care doctor is a Covid long-haul specialist.

I also found a lot of people like me in my Covid long-haul community. You see, they didn’t really test the vaccines on us. In my long-haul groups, there have been some people who got better from the vaccine, and that became a big media story. But a ton of people in those groups are reporting reactions like mine, and the media didn’t cover our responses. Many recovering Covid patients describe being thrown back into their worst symptoms, or relapsing long-term back into long-haul. This is not a tiny population, but the people with a political agenda now would not be happy if the media covered it.

If you don’t believe patients, join their communities and tell them directly they are lying. Don’t be a coward.

People do get really upset when your illness doesn’t fit their political agenda. It happened recently to a prominent disabled writer who shared, during an Amazon strike, that we need to understand how many disabled people depend on Amazon. She got the worst hell from people who really believe themselves to be compassionate progressives. She wasn’t saying Amazon is great! She was saying it’s unfortunate that people have to rely on it. And the conversation became, “Well what did disabled people do before food, supplements, and basic household goods were available quickly and affordably by delivery?” Yeah, disabled people suffered and died before there were accommodations. That is the point. And yes, people told her to shut up about it.

I have my own history of medical disbelief. I suffer extreme physical reactions to “safe” chemicals, medications, many foods, allergens, and the like. I become disabled by constant exposure. I’ve had to move a lot. People mostly don’t believe me, yet there is actually a known mast cell disease that causes my reactions. My condition shows up in blood and pee and bone marrow and was probably triggered or worsened by my long-term exposure to the World Trade Center’s air after 9/11. There are medical specialists who confirm my illness, and there is an entire World Trade Center Health Registry that has been tracking me and others like me for decades.

But who knows better than Bob in accounting or Phil on Facebook? I hear it all the time!

‘I promise you, you do not actually react to MSG. That is just racist propaganda,” I was told by someone who identifies himself as a leftist. It’s nice that he promised me, that really helps. MSG sensitivity denial is a whole genre on reddit. Tomatoes also affect me like MSG, yet somehow I’ve not been accused of racism towards tomatoes.

Someone please explain the brain to me that gets so excited to deny what people go through. Along those lines, please be nice to people who say they can’t live near cell towers or around 5G. I know it’s more fun to make fun of them, but maybe look up how mast cells are affected by radiation on Google scholar.

To be clear, my vaccine response was not to the chemicals. And vaccines don’t have microchips. I did get nauseous and dizzy from the preservatives in the vaccine, which happens with most injections, but it was mild and only lasted briefly. Vaccines don’t cause autism either, which is genetic. My response was immunological and probably a result of long-haul Covid and possibly mast cell disease. They really need to test more on long-haulers.

Anyway, it’s been really lonely having the liberal majority line up behind erasing my VAERS experience. I think some of you could be more honest about what is really driving you. Maybe you do believe people like me about our vaccine responses; it’s that you find out that we have a pre-existing condition or two and decide that you can count us out and need us to shut up or Trump wins. Some deaths and illnesses aren’t your problem.