No

she took the risk of myocarditis with one shot

It's a legitimate question. Since the vaccine is not giving anywhere near full immunity and we're seeing so many breakthrough cases, would one shot provide the goal of keeping you out of the hospital when you contract Covid?

At this point I'm not expecting a vaccine to prevent me from getting Covid. I'm hoping that it prevents me from getting really sick. So would one shot provide that protection?

And yes getting a second shot would seem to have some risk of side effects the OP's friend is concerned about. Not to mention I've seen many on this board say that the second dose made them feel pretty bad.

I think it falls to reason that if initially when the vaccine first came out one shot would have provided lasting benefits they would have called for a single dose so more people had access and more quickly slow the spread. They didn't because it wasn't effective.

There are not enough circulating antibodies after one dose. Confirmed by multiple studies that one dose is not enough. Someone can find the link, but it's something like 20% or less protection.

Two doses does provide fairly significant protection against both contraction and prevention of severe disease. Study released the other day out of the UK showed breakthrough cases are typically less symptomatic.

And Moderna has been shown to be more effective against the Delta than the others.

bay fan said:

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I think it falls to reason that if initially when the vaccine first came out one shot would have provided lasting benefits they would have called for a single dose so more people had access and more quickly slow the spread. They didn't because it wasn't effective.

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That's not reason, it's revisionist history. No one ever tested only one shot. It was discussed, but 2 shots were chosen because it would assume a booster would lead to stronger protection than a single shot. Not because a single shot was insufficient. No one knows that because no one tested it.

A booster is probably better than a single shot. A single shot is almost certainly better than no vaccine at all. Either way, you are going to be infected at some point, which will most likely make any subsequent immunity improved.

Let's be honest here, the chances of someone 23 years old and healthy going to the hospital are statistically low it's not worth even being concerned about.

Just be safe. Wear a mask at all times as well as get all vaccines at once.

Salute The Marines said:

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Let's be honest here, the chances of someone 23 years old and healthy going to the hospital are statistically low it's not worth even being concerned about.

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Admitted to the hospital, very unlikely. However plenty go to the hospital due to how miserable they are, wanting something to be done. Also, having medium to long term side effects from infection is decently high.

bigtruckguy3500 said:

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Salute The Marines said:

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Let's be honest here, the chances of someone 23 years old and healthy going to the hospital are statistically low it's not worth even being concerned about.

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Admitted to the hospital, very unlikely. However plenty go to the hospital due to how miserable they are, wanting something to be done. Also, having medium to long term side effects from infection is decently high.

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How high? Give me concrete verifiable numbers for medium to long term effects for people in their early 20's.

Stringfellow Hawke said:

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Just be safe. Wear a mask at all times as well as get all vaccines at once.

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Many years ago in basic training I literally got "all the vaccines at once".


Ouch.

West Point Aggie said:

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On the TV channel on the plane ride I took today, the news channel kept talking about the "MU" variant. Is that the new Greek letter to be used after "delta" abates some?!!

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Mu is actually several steps after Delta-- but many variants are not significant so you don't hear about them. Kinda like a hurricane that just fizzles out in the ocean.

Greek alphabet - Wikipedia

Salute The Marines said:

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bigtruckguy3500 said:

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Salute The Marines said:

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Let's be honest here, the chances of someone 23 years old and healthy going to the hospital are statistically low it's not worth even being concerned about.

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Admitted to the hospital, very unlikely. However plenty go to the hospital due to how miserable they are, wanting something to be done. Also, having medium to long term side effects from infection is decently high.

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How high? Give me concrete verifiable numbers for medium to long term effects for people in their early 20's.

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Good question. I haven't actually seen the data broken down by type of side effect and by age group. Actually the Navy is doing the CHARM 2.0 study that should answer this question quite well. I've seen some of the data, but not everything tabulated. One of the peculiar cases I saw was a Marine that had post covid changes on his EKG. Last I heard he was getting evaluated be cardiology, I'll have to see if I can follow up with that. Could be a clinically silent conductive change in his heart, or could manifest into something later in life. Data is still being gathered.

I don't otherwise have a breakdown by age, specific to the 20 year age group. I think I might have seen myocarditis as high as 4-5 out of 10,000. Do you have data to suggest that his age group doesn't have medium to long term effects? All anecdotes here, but the local children's hospital has a 17 year old on ECMO right now. They're getting several teenagers a day with low blood oxygen. Most are in the low 90's, but they're getting some in the 80's here and there. Decent number of those are due to secondary pneumonias. Unclear how those affected in this way will fare long term. Will they be at higher lifetime risk for COPD/emphysema? Kinda early to tell as they still have a lot of functional lung reserve.

We know older adults, are getting kidney injuries after COVID. Often these are found incidentally after they present to the hospital for other issues. Younger folks might not present to the hospital, so they may have a clinically silent kidney injury, or compensate from it well. We know in adults that kidney injuries put them at risk for dialysis later in life. No evidence yet if kids get COVID nephropathy, and if they do, at what point in life will it affect them, if ever.

I guess the question is, do we know enough about it to dismiss the effects on older adults as something younger folks can't have? A year and a half ago people were desperately trying to dismiss this as just a flu. Then it became only deadly to the elderly. Then only to the elderly + middle aged people with comorbidities. Then the only thing that mattered was the death rate, hospitalizations or long term effects shouldn't be a consideration. So on and so forth. Now we're seeing younger and younger folks affected.

Not sure what the solution is, but I don't think it should be to dismiss potential risk simply because we haven't collected the data yet.

That's an awful lot of words to say "I don't have verifiable concrete numbers for those in their early 20's suffering long term damage".

What we do know is that a healthy 23 year old dying of covid is statistical noise at this point. And it probably stands to reason that long covid issues with this age group follows that trend.

I am a huge proponent of the vaccines because their effectiveness cannot be denied by the data. And that's what we need to go on. For some reason, people on all sides of this pandemic have simply refused to go on data and numbers alone and toss emotion and anecdotes aside when determining a personal or community risk analysis.

True, but a year ago only old people were even ending up in the hospital and everyone said we were approaching herd immunity, half of los angeles already had antibodies, etc. Almost all the assumptions we made a year+ ago have been wrong. I'm not saying your assumption that long covid issues are less likely in the 20's is wrong, but I don't understand why you'd be so quick to make such an assumption.

As he said before, just because the data isn't there doesn't mean it's not happening. I just heard on the radio that 9/11 first responders are dropping like flies because of cancer and health issues. I'd be willing to bet in the first year or two after 9/11 there wasn't any data to suggest they'd have the health issues they have now. At one point in time there wasn't any data to suggest that vaping was bad for you, only warnings from doctors that the ingredients are concerning.

Certainly gives me pause when someone says "there's no evidence that ___ is harmful." Does that mean there's data that suggests there's no harm, or there's a lack of data?

But at this point we have 18 months and millions of data points to show us 23 year olds have very little to fear from covid. The trends just aren't there.