The Omicron variant is creating another round of headlines and government actions to slow its expected spread.

We already know it’s much more infectious than Delta. It seems to be milder, however.

So — does Omicron really change anything? More to the point: should Omicron change your behavior or your mindset about Covid?

The answers may surprise you — and also help you make the best choices for yourself, your family and loved ones.

Does Omicron really change anything?

The short answer is – no and yes. (Do you find that answer frustrating? Welcome to Covid!)

On the no side…

Media coverage of the Omicron variant feels more like a weather forecast trying to predict the severity of an impending winter storm. However, as Dr. James Hamblin, Yale School of Public Health lecturer explained in a recent op-ed, those waiting to find out “just how dangerous” this new mutated virus is, are missing the point.

“Covid is a leading cause of death in the United States. Every day, more than 1,000 Americans are dying of it, as are countless thousands more globally. We do not need to wait to learn more about Omicron to know that an extremely transmissible, deadly respiratory virus is spreading widely around the world.”

With renewed mandates from our government leaders appearing to be political suicide these days, protection from Covid must come from decisions we make ourselves at an individual level. Omicron changes none of the steps each person can take to protect themselves and others around them.

• Wearing a mask in crowded spaces
• Wash your hands frequently
• Ask friends and family to do a rapid test before any gathering
• Hold gatherings outdoors whenever possible
• Gather indoors in well-ventilated areas
• Maintain social distancing
• Get vaccinated
• Get your booster
• Continue with immune support supplements
• Those at higher risk for severe Covid should limit their activities to safe zones

Consider the Swiss Cheese effect– the best protection is several layers of protection. It takes multiple layers to fill the holes.

Should Omicron change your behavior or mindset?

On the “yes” side, consider these undeniable facts.

The measures you took before to protect yourself, your family and your loved ones won’t protect you as well against Omicron.

Omicron does not change the recommendations for protection against Covid, however it does bolster the argument for full immunization with booster.

Omicron highlights the consequences of waning immunity among the vaccinated and previously infected individuals. The vaccine becomes less effective over time against Omicron compared to the Delta variant. This means that a booster injection to fortify the vaccine is imperative.

Thoughts about the booster shots

If you were vaccinated earlier this year, get your booster shot sooner rather than later. The CDC currently recommends that everyone ages 18 and older should get a booster shot six months after their initial Pfizer or Moderna series or two months after an initial J&J vaccine.

However, with the latest research showing that waning immunity begins at about five months, please consult with your doctor if you are at high risk (we estimate half of the population has partially impaired immune function) to discuss whether getting a booster shot 4-5 months after your vaccination is a better idea.

Thoughts about immunization for the unvaccinated

Vaccination leads to antibody count against Covid, which is especially needed to fight against Omicron. Those people who feared the unknown about the “new” vaccine should rethink their position. The vaccine is no longer a new entity or experimental. The sum-total adverse reactions to the vaccine do not compare to the sum-total of serious side effects related to Covid infections. Vaccines have prevented countless deaths. The emergence of Omicron has greatly increased the odds of becoming infected. Re-infection in unvaccinated individuals is much more common in those who have recovered from Covid-19.

For all these reasons, vaccinations have become increasingly important for our personal health. At the same time, the value of vaccination also has undeniable importance on for the well-being of our health care systems.

• Hospitals, Urgent Care clinics and medical offices can no longer accommodate impact of Covid infected patients — either physically or financially. Health care workers have left their position in unprecedented numbers. The understaffed medical employees are overwhelmed and stressed. Watching so many die unnecessarily has led to PTSD and burnout in many workers.
• Many hospitals have discontinued all elective surgical cases. A surgeon may have to delay a total knee or spine surgery procedures for 6 – 9 months. Treatment for non-covid medical issues have been postponed around the country.

Should Omicron alleviate your anxiety?

If anxiety and dread about Covid has caused you great distress, there might be some optimism for you. The solution to Covid is still herd immunity, and Omicron brings that herd immunity threshold a lot nearer. The risk of infection for unvaccinated people has skyrocketed, accelerating the path to reach herd immunity — and with a variant that appears less likely to cause serious illness or death.

Please don’t misunderstand. Omicron will cause a lot of unnecessary suffering and death. This is tragic. I don’t wish that on anyone. As these waves of variants continue, our resistance will improve.

Until we attain herd immunity, we must persist with protective measures despite our growing weariness around restrictions. A debate remains as to whether such measures are worthwhile. I predict that some form of protection such as frequent hand washing, wearing a mask in crowded space and social distancing with unvaccinated people will endure beyond herd immunity. Each individual will have to find a balance between safety and sanity. Social interactions produce a strong positive impact on mental and physical health, so we need to find ways to make these possible.

What about the holidays?

You may have planned your Christmas and New Year gatherings long before Omicron became a household name. Should these family festivities still happen?

The CDC has not made any changes to its initial recommendations from October, so you will need to use your judgment. Are all your family members vaccinated (and boosted, preferably)? Do you have lots of elderly guests planning to come?

Remember, the Covid-19 virus spreads via airborne particles and droplets released by infected people during exhalation. Speaking, singing, exercise, coughing, sneezing and even the simple act of breathing quietly can all propel viral spread. Should you avoid singing Christmas carols?

To reduce the risk of transmission at your holiday gathering, the CDC recommends opening windows and doors during indoor gatherings and placing a fan in the window to blow air out and encourage fresh air circulation. Are the temperatures still mild where you live? Think about moving the festivities outside.

Caution is not the same as panic

There is no need to panic about Omicron or any other new variant this winter. However, we do need to be cautious.

We also need to be prepared. As the pandemic eventually eases, it’s expected that Covid will live on in the population similar to other circulating cold and flu viruses. When this happens the virus will be considered endemic. At that point, it will be much easier to manage.

Are you weary of the pandemic? We all are. But let’s be resilient. As the winter solstice arrives, remember: the darkness is about to weaken, and the light is about to get stronger.

The post Is Omicron the end of the pandemic? appeared first on Women's Health Network.

Ready for normal life again?

After last year’s socially distanced holiday season, 2021 is all about the return of in-person gatherings. Are you hosting a crowd for the holidays — or visiting family for the first time in a long time?

The CDC’s Covid-19 guidance for planning safe holiday get-togethers is cut and dry. Get vaccinated. Keep indoor gatherings ventilated. Wear a mask if needed. Obvious — but not really helpful.

Let’s talk frankly about the difficult choices you have to make. For example:

• Will your gathering put unvaccinated younger children beside older family members?
• Is a distant relative with unknown vaccine status coming over?
• When’s the last time your college student got a Covid test?
• Is your family polarized about the calculation of Covid safety and risk?

With so many possible variables to juggle, figuring out how to keep holiday gatherings safe requires a little more nuance. So, here are a few practical Covid guidelines you can fit to your family’s health needs.

Rule #1: Transparency

In WHN’s view, most people have actually done a decent job assessing their personal risks and what to do about it. Not everyone, of course, but most. The core controversy is about the risks their choices create for other people.

The implication is clear: to let your guests make their own risk assessments, be transparent about everyone else’s status and choices.

And that goes for you too!

Rule #2: The host can set ground rules

In poker the dealer gets to call the game. The same is true when you’re hosting.

If you want to set minimum requirements, go right ahead. Is it important to you that everyone who can be vaccinated is? Are you comfortable welcoming guests who have recovered from Covid, but have not had their shots? (You should be!) Would you feel better if unvaccinated guests sent you a recent negative PCR test before coming over? Do you want people to prove their status?

Keep in mind the nightmare scenario — your holiday gathering turns out to be regrettable, because someone gets Covid and suffers the consequences — or, heaven forbid, dies.

This doesn’t mean any gathering can be 100% risk-free. Life isn’t risk-free. But risks should be managed and everyone’s choices should be based on transparent knowledge of the risks.

Rule #3: Think outside the box

Here’s a crazy idea: do something different this year. If one faction in your family is unvaxxed and another faction feels afraid of Covid risks…try separating them. If you don’t have room in your house to do that, can the family manage two venues near one another? Remember, contact is not actually risky…Covid is spread through the air. So the key risk is being in a confined space, and the risk increases with time together.

Let’s do an example — we’ll call it the Rockwell Family.

The Rockwell Family Scenario

Normally all 15 Rockwells gather around the dining room table at the oldest daughter’s house. There are 4 households altogether. One is the grandparents, both of whom are fully vaccinated but high-risk due to age and chronic conditions. Second is the oldest’s: he and his wife are unvaccinated but have had Covid; their kids live away from home, are older, unvaccinated and probably uninfected too; one of them will bring his new girlfriend, whose status is unknown. Third is Ruthie’s, the host. Everyone in her family is vaccinated, but her youngest child is immunocompromised. Fourth is the younger daughter’s. She and her husband and older child are vaccinated, but not their younger one, who only recently became eligible.

Ruthie feels strongly about protecting the three immunocompromised family members, even though they are all vaccinated. After a little negotiation, here are the rules that she communicates to everyone:

• Those who are unvaxxed and without prior (documented) Covid infection have to take a PCR test within 48 hours of visiting.
• Everyone, even those who are vaccinated, will have to take a “rapid test” on arrival, which Ruthie will provide.
• No masks are required for the event, but hugging is optional and the windows will be opened in the TV room because of all the shouting during football games.

Ruthie’s big worry is that the unvaxxed will be infectious though asymptomatic, so she wants to be doubly sure they don’t infect the three family members who are immunocompromised. This is a cautious approach but not unrealistic given recent evidence about asymptomatic community spread. And she would rather do the extra testing than require people to wear masks around the house. She lets the immunocompromised make that decision for themselves, not for others. She tells everyone the rules and they all agree to attend.

PCR and “rapid” Covid tests

We all know about PCR tests for Covid — they are considered the gold standard, and for good reason. They’re expensive but very accurate, with low incidence of false negatives or positives. Those who are unvaccinated have become used to being forced to pay for them — a kind of penalty for their vaccine hesitancy. There’s no reason not to use them in the context of a holiday gathering. The one drawback of PCR tests is that you must wait 1-3 days (and longer, in some areas) for results. There’s a small risk that someone who didn’t technically have Covid three days before the holidays will actually be infectious during the gathering itself.

That’s where “rapid” tests come in. They’re inexpensive and quick: you can self-administer the test and see the results in 15 minutes. The downside is that they often yield false positives and negatives. That’s why in a “mixed risk” gathering it’s safer to have the riskiest “vectors” (the people most likely to be infectious) take a PCR test 2-3 days before the event, plus a rapid test on-site. When administered to a person who is vaccinated, the odds that that person is a vector due to a breakthrough but symptomless infection become nearly zero.

Create a healthy microenvironment

Good hygienic practices are smart with every gathering, but especially when some of your guests are immunocompromised (about half of Americans are, by our estimate) and you are hosting a “mixed vector” gathering. (“Mixed vector” means that some of your guests are higher-risk than others as a source of infection.)

SARS-CoV-2 spreads via airborne particles and droplets released by infected people during exhalation. Speaking, singing, exercise, coughing, sneezing and even the simple act of breathing quietly can all propel viral spread.

To reduce the risk of transmission, the CDC recommends opening windows and doors during indoor gatherings and placing a fan in the window to blow air out and encourage fresh air circulation. Many of us have purchased room air cleaners with HEPA filters, which remove viral particles. This is all good advice.

As an added tip, be careful about who has access to rooms in your home that are closed off without much air circulation, e.g., bathrooms, your basement family room, and walk-in closets and pantries. If you have a mix of some immunocompromised adults and unvaxxed kids coming over, consider designating one bathroom for kids and another for adults to reduce transmission risks (airborne particles can linger in the air for several minutes). If after dinner everyone usually heads to the basement den to watch football on the big screen, consider hauling the TV upstairs into more well-ventilated space for the day.

If your space just doesn’t provide for much air flow, spread out a little more to distance or ask everyone to wear masks before and after sitting down to eat. At-risk adults may wish to consider wearing a mask in any indoor or outdoor setting. Place a box of masks in an obvious spot so anyone who would like to wear one has access.

Serve a side dish of Swiss cheese

Almost two years into Covid we know there are five basic layers to lowering risk: vaccination or prior infection, testing, masking, ventilation and distancing. You can kind of toggle them back and forth, depending on your risk tolerance and the situation. We’ve compared this before to layers of Swiss cheese. Each slice has some holes in it, but when you start to layer them together, there’s no way through for the virus.

So, how about Swiss cheese for your next holiday party this year? Decide how many layers you need given your family and friends’ health needs. Do it with transparency so everyone feels comfortable with their own risks.

Then relax and enjoy the holidays! Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks and this year we can all be extra grateful that we’re alive and can gather once again.

Learn more: 5 vitamins and nutrients that support balanced immune function.

The post The CDC punted on Covid tips for the holidays. But we don’t! appeared first on Women's Health Network.

The Omicron variant is highly contagious, hospitals are overwhelmed, and for now your doctor wants you to ride out your case of Covid at home. Are you prepared for what comes next? 

The good news: If you’re being told to stay put rather than head to the hospital, you might be on track to have a mild or moderate case of the virus. The not-so-good news: Dealing with Covid at any level is stressful and tricky, especially if you have added health concerns or need to shield others in your household from getting very sick. 

Your goal right now is to get to the other side of Omicron. Here are seven things that can help along the way. 

1. Get tested to confirm Covid-19

Don’t just guess that you have Covid — or assume that you don’t! Getting tested to confirm or rule out Covid is important for several reasons: 

• Classic symptoms of Covid-19 often mimic and overlap with cold and flu virus symptoms. New! Symptoms of Omicron are slightly different than Delta. Prominent signs that you have Omicron include cough, fatigue or tiredness, congestion and runny nose. Unlike in previous variants, the loss of taste and smell seems to be uncommon
• Without a test, you don’t know if you’re so much a danger to others — or in so much danger yourself.
• A positive Covid test tells you how long you must isolate. A Covid test starts the clock ticking. According to CDC guidelines, asymptomatic people still need to isolate for 10 days after a positive test to avoid spreading the virus to others.  
• Getting tested helps your community. Decisions about masks and other Covid measures are largely made based on level of community spread. Having accurate data is critical. Getting tested also helps contact tracing of your close contacts.  

2. Stay in touch with your body

Covid may begin as a respiratory infection, but getting sick with the virus can affect the entire body. To monitor your health, check in every day with how you’re feeling and note any symptoms or changes that seem new or different. It’s helpful to record these in a journal. Signs to watch for include: 

Temperature. A moderate fever spike is a sign your immune system is doing its job. A high temperature that’s accompanied by chills, fatigue and uncontrolled shaking, however, could be a sign of a cytokine storm. Ask your doctor to give you a high temperature threshold for seeking help. Generally, this is 103 degrees or higher for most people, but it can differ depending on age and other underlying health conditions.

Changes in blood oxygen levels. As Covid attacks the lungs, it can decrease the amount of oxygen that ends up in the bloodstream. One simple way to keep track of blood oxygenation is to use a pulse oximeter. This simple and relatively inexpensive device can be a helpful tool for catching low oxygen levels early, especially since oxygenation levels can dip into dangerous territory with Covid-19 without the usual obvious signs. The Chicago Tribune has a good article comparing different models. New! There is evidence that Omicron may damage the lungs less than Delta and other variants. However, with so much still unknown about Omicron, it’s remains a good idea to monitor oxygen levels.

Changes in your breathing. Spend a few minutes each day listening to your breathing. Gasping breaths or longer inhales and shorter exhales should get you curious about checking your blood oxygen levels. To breathe easier, you may want to try proning, which entails laying on your stomach in bed. Proning is a medically accepted position to improve breathing comfort and oxygenation for people with Covid. If your oxygenation is poor, try proning for an hour or more several times a day. You can use pillows and rolled towels to make this position more comfortable. If breathing ever becomes difficult, get prompt medical attention.

Color of your urine. If your urine is darker than usual, it’s a sign that you are dehydrated and should increase fluid intake. Staying hydrated when you are sick thins mucus secretions and helps organs function better.  

Swelling and redness in your legs. Risk for blood clots can increase when you’re sick and spending a lot of time in bed so check your legs every day for swelling, redness and hot spots that could indicate blood clots. You can help your circulation with simple exercises like flexing and pointing your toes.  

Monitor your alkalinity and take steps to alkalize. There’s plenty of evidence that alkalinity helps your immune system fight viruses. You can monitor yours with simple pH strips. For tips on increasing your alkalinity, read more here.

3. If you think you need help, seek it 

Covid symptoms can become more severe, sometimes with little warning. Call your doctor when you need help or notice a troubling change. One good rule of thumb to follow? If anything has you debating whether or not to go to the hospital, you probably should go. If you don’t already have a primary care physician — many American’s don’t — line one up now so you aren’t making this decision under too much stress.

4. Tweak your diet and your supplements to support healthy immune function 

Chicken soup should definitely be on the menu as should other anti-inflammatory foods that promote respiratory health. 

Supplements can also help support healthy immune function. Useful supplements include: 
Vitamin C and zinc — to help repair immune function. 
Vitamin D and melatonin — for healthy immune function and immune regulation. 
Omega-3 fatty acids — for anti-inflammatory support.
Magnesium — for support related to muscle relaxation, which can help reduce pain.
B vitamins — for energy support.

We also recommend a high quality multivitamin or targeted immune support supplements. Nourishing your body during Covid also helps your activated immune response to return to normal after your body defeats the virus. 

5. Give yourself recovery time

When you’re sick and exhausted, it sets the stage for opportunistic infections like pneumonia. Pneumococcal bacteria is everywhere, including around the home (it’s not just in hospitals). Taking good care of yourself when you are sick makes it easier to bounce back post-Covid. So, for now, do your best to be a good patient and prioritize rest.  

6. Don’t catastrophize your situation

Catastrophic thinking is a learned cognitive bias in which our brains start to select and highlight facts that confirm a certain fear, and ignore those that contradict it. After living in fear of Covid for over 20 months, all that bottled up worry and anxiety can make you forget the fact that the vast majority of people who get sick with Covid recover from it. 

Stress dampens immune function and catastrophic thinking just adds to your stress burden. Your immune system is already being overworked, so if you have a severe stress reaction to your situation, it can suppress your immune function, making it harder for your body to extinguish the viral infection. If you have a pre-existing condition, you are already stressed; more stress just puts immune function at even greater risk.  

How do you keep Covid in perspective? When your mind starts racing with scary Covid statistics, consciously challenge these stress-inducing thoughts. When they come up, literally say out loud, “Stop!” or “No more!” Follow up with a stress relief technique like deep breathing to help you let go of fears and refocus your thoughts. Keep doing this until it becomes habit.

7. Stay physically isolated — but emotionally connected

If you live with others but one of you is riding out Covid at home, isolate the infected person to reduce the chances for spreading illness. Use a separate bedroom or establish a “sick room” in a different part of the house. Use a separate bathroom too, if possible. If you do need to use a shared space, like the kitchen, make sure the room has good air circulation. You can text your family that you need to use the kitchen or bathroom to give them a heads up to clear out (and open the window). Remember, virtually all Covid is spread via airborne infection, not by contact. You can take turns using a space if it’s well-ventilated and you take normal precautions.

Technology also helps with avoiding the emotional isolation of being sick. Staying in touch with friends and family through texts, emails and funny memes shared on social media can lift your spirits and let you know that you are not alone in this. Your friends and family may not know the level of engagement you’re up for, so make it clear to loved ones that staying connected virtually is something you want. 

Don’t have Omicron…yet? Take our new Immune Health Quiz to find out how to support your immune system health, so it can protect you!

The post Riding out Covid at home: 7 things you need to know appeared first on Women's Health Network.

New cases of Covid-19 in the US have fallen by more than a third in the past month. Could this finally be a sign that we’re pulling out of the Covid woods?

Unfortunately, not so fast.

According to a recent New York Times analysis, since Covid began spreading in late 2019, cases have followed a pattern, typically surging for about two months and then declining for about two months. We appear to be in the latest two month downswing. If this pattern holds, the virus could be ready to make another move as early as November. Whether this is a further downturn or — following the pattern — another upswing remains to be determined.

So, how do we anticipate what’s to come? The only real way to prepare is to be ready for both a best case Covid scenario and a worst case Covid scenario too.

Best case Covid scenario — reasonable precautions are enough

At this time last year we were grappling with the grim forecast of a large and deadly spike in cases throughout the fall and winter months. This year is different. While the model is still taking shape, key factors — higher vaccination numbers, booster shots, continued ease of testing, and more people with immunity from having had the virus — may be enough to head off a repeat of last winter’s surge. 

In a perfect world, everyone in your immediate social circles (including you!) has been vaccinated or has immunity from already having had the virus — or both. If you are in this situation, getting through the months ahead could be as simple as taking the basic precautions of wearing a mask, continuing to social distance, taking care of your immune system, and practicing good hand washing and other hygiene habits. 

Of course, even in a best case Covid scenario, there will be those who grumble about what could go wrong. Doom-mongering complaints usually focus on lower than hoped for vaccination rates in many parts of the country. What this outlook gets wrong is not factoring in people who have recovered from the virus. While the research is still controversial, natural immunity conferred from contracting and recovering from the virus may provide as much protection as the vaccine.

It’s best for everyone — whether or not they’ve ever been infected — to get the vaccine. However, there is growing acceptance of natural immunity’s benefits. For example, much of Europe and Israel have already adopted policies that for entry to concerts, restaurants and other public indoor gathering places, people are required to provide one of three proofs: a vaccine passport, negative PCR test, or proof that the person has recovered from Covid. In Germany, this policy has even been given the catchy nickname of the 3Gs. In German: “Geimpft, Genesen oder Getestet”, meaning “vaccinated, recovered or tested.” Got one of the 3Gs? Then you are good to go. In the US, could adopting similar guidelines be the solution to the controversy of how to make public indoor spaces safer for all this winter? It’s a conversation worth having.

Worst case scenario — protecting yourself should cases spike

Let’s stay focused on these groups of vaccinated and natural immunity populations in setting up our worst case scenario.

States such as Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York and Maine have some of the highest vaccination rates in the country — hovering somewhere near 70%. If you add up people who have received the vaccine and people who have contracted and recovered from the virus, it totals approximately 80-85% of the population in many of these states.

So what does that leave us with? About 15-20% of people who are not vaccinated and have not had Covid. It’s this group that can make all the difference in what unfolds this fall and winter.

Here’s why. There are almost 70,000 ICU beds in the US. As of the end of August, approximately 3/4 of these beds were full; only about 18,000 beds are empty right now. It won’t take a very big surge to fill those remaining beds — and the risk factors are there for a surge: people in northern states are starting to spend more time indoors where Sars-CoV-2 is highly efficient at spreading. Delta is still here, as contagious as chicken pox. There may be a new variant in the offing that comes with its own complications. A bad flu season this year could add tremendously to the burden on hospitals.

Any and all of these factors coming together to even slightly raise the number of serious infections could lead to calamity. Think about it. Nationwide, you have about 50 million people, including children, who are not vaccinated. If significant Covid cases break out, or we have a really bad flu season and only moderate Covid cases, either of these scenarios could be enough to overwhelm the medical system.

What’s the state of your immunity?

We’ve compared Covid infections in the past to a race between your immune system and the virus. If your immune system wins, the virus loses and your symptoms will be mild. If the virus wins, you might not be so lucky.

The problem for many of us is that we’re unknowingly part of a silent epidemic of suppressed immune function. Immunity is a tricky thing to pin down and we don’t really know how well our bodies will respond — until they need to.

If you’re still hesitant about the vaccine, you owe it to yourself to see if you have one of the many health conditions and habits that lower immunity. Just to give you a quick summary, this includes obesity, diabetes, heart disease, many prescription medications, prior cancer treatment, having an autoimmune disease, plus age. All of these things impair immune function and affect literally millions of people.

Another question is — what kind of Covid risks do you have in your daily life? Are you a frontline worker? Do you have unvaxxed kids? Do you want to go to concerts and indoor restaurants? Do you not like wearing masks?

It’s not too late to get vaccinated. If you are already vaccinated, knowing your immunity risk factors can help you make a decision about getting a booster shot. More people winning the race against the virus means fewer people ending up in the hospital.

Riding out the virus at home

If we do end up in a worst case scenario and our hospitals jam up, should you contract Covid, you may need to be prepared to ride out a mild to moderate case of virus at home — and you’ll want to know what steps to take.

Before you do anything else, you need to be in contact with a doctor who can give you clear guidelines on when it’s a good idea to stay home and when it’s important to go to the hospital. Other steps to take:

• Isolate yourself away from other family members.
• Use a pulse oximeter to measure oxygen levels (oxygen saturation) in your blood. An oximeter can be a helpful tool for catching low oxygen levels early. The Chicago Tribune has a good article comparing different models.
• Drink ample fluids to help thin mucus secretions and support functioning of all organs.
• Rest. This is a big one. When you’re sick and exhausted, it sets the stage for opportunistic bacteria like pneumonia to invade. Pneumococcal bacteria is everywhere, including around the home (it’s not just in hospitals). Being stressed out and tired dampens immunity, letting your guard down. Do your best to be a good patient and prioritize rest.  

Why a good bet this fall is still Swiss cheese

We’ve written before about the “Swiss cheese” model as a good way to think about how to stay safe from Covid. Each slice of Swiss cheese is a method of protection — from wearing a mask to social distancing to getting vaccinated to getting a booster. The slices all have holes in them, just like no method offers 100% certainty that you won’t contract Covid. However, when layered together, these holes start to close up. Layered protection gives us the best chance for turning a worst case scenario into a best case outcome.

Are you willing to do your part in steering the months ahead in the direction we all so desperately want? It starts with understanding the current state of your immune health and then being part of the solution.

The post Covid-19 — what to expect this fall appeared first on Women's Health Network.

The headlines about the Covid Delta variant may seem terrifying. Delta is causing spikes in new infections. Delta is infecting young people. Delta is making people who were already vaccinated sick. Delta is ripping through areas with low rates of vaccination. Delta causes a higher rate of serious cases, hospitalizations and death. Beware Delta!

The bold and scary headlines invite the reader to click, but mislead the facts. To protect ourselves, our families and loved ones, a better understanding of true risk based on FACTS is needed. Let’s review.

Delta was never a surprise

The news may make it sound like Covid was on its way out and then suddenly, like the end of a horror movie, it sprang back to life in the mutated form of the Delta variant. 

The truth is, it’s in the nature of viruses to mutate. Most mutations offer an advantage to the virus, such as being more contagious. Eventually, successful mutations come to dominate, so the emergence of Delta was always to be expected. For example, all that time when scientists were first creating the vaccine? They knew the vaccines would eventually need to stand up to variants of Covid in addition to the original strain. This went into their decision-making process as they formulated the vaccines. 

And so far, Covid vaccines are clearly doing their job. The evidence is still overwhelming that Delta is not threatening to healthy people who’ve been vaccinated or previously infected. What’s more, since about 60% of Americans age 12 and older have been vaccinated, and probably 25-30% have already had Covid, we are nearly at herd immunity. 

This is all good news. 

Rising infection numbers aren’t a shocker 

Spikes in local infection rates are so bad in some places that mask mandates are being reintroduced. What’s driving these numbers are infections among a very specific group of people: those who’ve neither been vaccinated nor previously infected. 

Let’s call this group the “naïve”. If the naïve are 15% of the population over the age of 12, that’s about 45 million people who have no antibody protection from Covid. Add to this about 20 million kids under the age of 12 who are unvaccinated and never had Covid. The spike we see in numbers reflects Delta’s more contagious nature. Some estimates say it could be twice as contagious as the original strains. So if we have approximately 65 million naïve, and a more contagious strain, guess what? Infections go up. That’s not shocking. It’s expected. 

Over time we should anticipate that everyone will either be vaccinated or infected – it’s really their choice. (The vaccination is less dangerous, to be clear!) But for now, the number of the naïve will gradually decline as more people get vaccinated and more people get infected.

Delta is a problem for the vulnerable 

We don’t yet know that Delta is more deadly. Yes, deaths may be increasing (though still down 90% from their peak), but that could be because the people contracting the virus now are more vulnerable. It may also be that what makes Delta more contagious is a factor like higher replication rates — so the infected may be shedding higher amounts of the virus — which is a formula for higher infection and more severe cases.

During the first waves of Covid, vulnerable people generally knew they were vulnerable and developed routines to protect themselves. Fortunately, many of the most vulnerable people — the elderly and those who are immunocompromised — have been vaccinated. 

However, there is some indication that Delta is infecting more “non-naïve” people (meaning the already-vaccinated or those who had the virus). Is this a startling turn of events? Not at all. We’ve always known that immunity isn’t black or white – on or off. It’s a spectrum. The vaccine, promoted to be 95% effective, helps to build antibodies against the virus, thus significantly reducing symptoms if exposed to the virus. It does not mean that 95% of vaccinated people will not get the virus. For example, in immune-impaired people, it makes sense that the vaccines or prior infection offer immune protection that is less complete or of shorter duration. So Delta will “re-infect” them despite being non-naïve. Given this, it makes sense that vaccinated people with medical issues should take extra precautions to mask up and avoid crowds.

It’s also common sense that young people will be more vulnerable to Delta than earlier strains, especially since young people seem to be relaxing their social distancing behavior very quickly – even eagerly. Vaccine rates among the young (teens and young adults) are lower and infection rates have been low in this group on the whole. Children under 12 years old have not yet been recommended to receive the vaccine. That’s a lot of naïve who are now ripe for catching this more contagious virus. We’re not accustomed to thinking of the young as vulnerable. But in this case, it appears to be true. 

Sensationalist headlines don’t change the facts 

In the midst of an endless doom and gloom news cycle, it can feel like we’re never going to be on the right track with Covid. However, here’s what is vital to remember: the evidence is overwhelming that vaccination protects virtually everyone from severe cases of Covid, even Delta. 

The fact that hospitals are seeing more severe cases of Covid Delta variant doesn’t contradict that. Those increases may be because of the higher rate of contagion reaching more vulnerable people.

The bottom line — none of the facts listed above are an argument for being afraid. But they are an argument for getting vaccinated. Not necessarily for yourself – but to protect the most vulnerable among us. 

As more is known, we’ll update this piece. 

Read more: Covid vaccines are good for our country. But are they good for you?

The post Covid Delta – Nothing to worry about. For most of us appeared first on Women's Health Network.

We’ve all heard stories about people having flu-like symptoms after getting their Covid vaccine.  And those stories are clearly true — lots of people have to take a couple of days off, especially after their second shot.

That’s given rise to lots of worries — even your worst fears. Those worries have kept many people from getting the vaccine.  

Should you be worried? Let’s have a look at the facts.

Reactions and who’s having them

About 80-90% of people report a reaction to the Covid vaccine.  The vast majority are harmless and mild. For many, the reactions are inconvenient or uncomfortable. The most serious reactions are so rare it’s hard to attribute them to the virus.  

Here’s an infographic that explains:

What’s most interesting about the data is who is having these reactions: the victims are overwhelmingly women:

Should you be worried about these side effects?  Are side effects a bad sign or a good sign? Are your worst fears possible? Let’s take each question in turn, starting with the basic science: why do some people have side effects and others don’t?

What explains the data?

A little science will make everything clear.

Your immune system consists of two basic parts — the innate and the adaptive. The innate part is a kind of standing army guarding the borders. The adaptive part is called up with a response that is targeted to the specific threat.  

Vaccines work by training the adaptive part to recognize a pathogen and respond to it.  That “memory” is what conveys long-term immunity.    

But the innate system may also recognize the vaccine as a pathogen and fight back.  So you may have two reactions to the vaccine as your body fights the pseudo-pathogen.

Now, if you’re exposed to the real pathogen later, your body’s counterattack is much faster and more effective — which means you win and the pathogen loses.

One more point.  The innate immune system is stronger in women than in men.  Much stronger.  

Now the data on Covid vaccine reactions becomes clear.  The reactions we see are both the innate and adaptive responses. Women are more likely to have these reactions than men because women’s innate immune response is generally much stronger. (This may also help to explain why so many women experience “long Covid” symptoms.)  

This still leaves several questions, however — all about our worries.  Let’s take them one by one.

Is a strong reaction a good or bad thing?

Having a mild reaction is a good thing — it means your body has recognized the pseudo-pathogen of the vaccine, and that makes it more likely that your adaptive immune system is making a “memory” to improve your future response to the real pathogen.

But the converse is not true — not having a reaction is not necessarily a bad thing.  It may only mean your innate immune system isn’t over-reacting.

Is it worrisome that women have such reactions?

Not really.  Women have always had stronger reactions than men to vaccines — not just Covid vaccines.

It’s long been known that women tend to have stronger reactions to immunization shots than men do — no matter which vaccine is administered! 

In a 2013 study, for example, researchers with the CDC and other institutions found that, while rare, four times as many women as men between the ages of 20 and 59 reported allergic reactions after receiving the flu vaccine. Another study found that between 1990 and 2016, women accounted for 80 percent of the small percentage of people who experienced severe allergic reactions to vaccines.

Even among shots given in infancy and early childhood, females are more likely to experience reactions to hepatitis B and measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines compared to males. 

So this is no reason to scare women away from having the Covid vaccine — that’s just bad science.

Why is immune response so different in women?  

We don’t really know why the innate immune response in so much stronger in women than in men.  Several biological and genetic factors appear to be in play. 

One factor could be related to reproductive hormone levels. Sex hormones including estrogen, progesterone and testosterone can bind to the surface of immune cells, influencing how they work. According to researchers, exposure to the female sex hormone estrogen may cause immune cells to produce more antibodies in response to the flu vaccine. On the flip side, the main male sex hormone testosterone is more immunosuppressive, meaning it dampens the immune response. 

This could help to partially explain why the flu vaccine tends to be less protective in men with higher testosterone levels compared with men with less of the sex hormone. 

Genetics is also a factor in influencing immunity in women vs. men. Many immune-related genes are on the X chromosome, of which females have two copies (XX) and males have only one (XY). Geneticists once believed that only one X chromosome was “turned on” for immunity in women, with the other X chromosome left inactive. However, new research shows that 15 percent of genes escape this inactivation — essentially giving women a 15 percent more powerful immune system than men! 

What does this all mean?  Perhaps only that that humans have simply evolved so that women have a stronger immune response — and therefore it is somehow favorable.  

Your worst fear: the Covid vaccine cause death

The data say that this is not a realistic fear.  Most of the vaccines in the USA are so safe that the risks of death are almost too small to measure.  The Astra Zeneca vaccine, which has not been licensed in the USA, has the most questions about its safety.  Even there, the few deaths among those who’ve taken it can’t be attributed to the vaccine.  

It’s possible all of those fatalities were normal — while it’s rare, young people do die of stroke and blood clots without having a vaccine cause it.  Even if all such deaths were caused by the vaccine — which is implausible — it would only be a risk of about 1 in 500,000.  Your odds of dying of Covid are much higher than that.

The risks of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are even lower than for the Astra Zeneca vaccine.  The restrictions on use in young women have been made simply out of an abundance of caution.

Please remember that when our thinking is driven by our emotions we lose perspective. Your odds of dying in a car crash are about 1 in 103.  If your odds of dying from a Covid vaccine are 1 in 500,000, that’s 5,000 times safer than driving a car.  By contrast, your odds of dying of Covid are more like 1 in 200.  So the rational thing to do is get the vaccine!  

Your next worst fear: getting Covid from the vaccine

Actually, this is not possible.  None of the Covid vaccines available in the USA use the real CoV-2 virus.  The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use mRNA technology, which does not utilize the virus itself. The J&J vaccine uses viral vector technology, which also does not contain the virus itself.

The fears about getting Covid from a vaccine are based on two misunderstandings.  First, older vaccines, such as the one for polio, used attenuated or deactivated live virus. The attenuated method weakened the live virus so it was less likely to cause infection, but there was a slight risk of it doing so. The deactivated method destroyed the viral DNA so it could not replicate, but quality control problems were possible, yielding a theoretical risk of infection.  But neither of these methods is used in current Covid vaccines.

The second misunderstanding is that the reactions people experience to Covid vaccines are a sign of a “live” infection.  They are not. The body’s reaction is real enough — but the trigger is not a live virus.  That’s part of the genius of modern vaccine technology.

We hope this helps you keep perspective on getting a Covid vaccination.  In our view, these are vaccines at their best: a safe protection against a very real risk. There have never been vaccines so effective and so well-studied.  And on the other side of this vaccination campaign we should be able to get back to normal life. Won’t that be wonderful?  

Learn more: 5 vitamins and nutrients that support balanced immune function.

The post Covid vaccine reactions: should you be worried? appeared first on Women's Health Network.

According to a new large-scale study on vitamins and Covid-19 published in the journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention and Health, the answer appears to be yes — especially for women who’ve taken at least one of the four supplements identified in the study as most important. 

The study was enormous, with data from 445,000 people from the United States, United Kingdom and Sweden, and well-structured too. Participants  tracked their health for a three-month period during the pandemic via an app that asked certain questions about their lifestyle and health habits. 

The app asked users if they had taken any of the following supplements at least three times a week for more than three months: Omega-3 fatty acids, probiotics, garlic, multivitamins, Vitamin D, Vitamin C and zinc.

The results? Americans who reported taking probiotics, Omega-3 fatty acids, multivitamins, or a Vitamin D supplement respectively had an 18%, 21%, 12%, and 24% reduced risk of testing positive for Covid-19 during the three months of the study.

No protective effect was observed for those taking Vitamin C, zinc or garlic supplements. And interestingly, this correlation between supplement use and lowered Covid risk was not seen to any significant extent in men who took part in the study, only women. UK and Swedish data showed similar patterns.

Now, researchers have been quick to point out that their findings are preliminary and observational, given that data was self-reported. In other words, this was not a double blind randomized clinical trial. Participants were simply recording their own choices and outcomes. 

When I read this new study, I could see the limitations — it’s correlation not causation being described here. For example, it’s possible that women taking these supplements also practiced better social distancing.  Still, my mind immediately began connecting the dots with other immune health research that’s come out in the past year on some of these same vitamins and nutrients. What’s clear is that we have growing evidence that optimal nutrient levels make a difference for how our bodies respond to viral attacks.  

Consider, for example, new research from the Chinese University of Hong Kong that the microbiome (the name for the variety of bacteria in the gut) may influence patients’ immune system response to Covid-19 and, in turn, the severity of disease. The study, published in the April 2021 edition of the journal Gut, is just one in a series of research efforts to better understand if supplements — in this case, probiotics — can help in reducing Covid-19 infection or duration of illness. Other research on probiotics shows that those with higher intake of fermented foods (which are naturally rich in probiotics) also have lower Covid-19 infection rates and that those who do get infected have a shorter illness. 

Other studies over the past year have also made similar connections, including one that found having optimal Vitamin D status helps to reduce severity of symptoms. Another study suggests high Vitamin D levels may protect against Covid-19, especially for Black people.

As for Omega-3s, in a pilot study published in the journal Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids, investigators turned up evidence that individuals with higher levels of Omega-3 in their blood may potentially be at a reduced risk of dying from Covid-19. Omega-3s have long been known to be part of healthy immune support. The same goes for multivitamins. These include the raw materials your body needs daily to repair and replenish all its systems, including immune function. 

Researchers involved in the BMJ Nutrition study can’t make strong recommendations based on their one observational study. Still, it’s exciting to have some of the first large-scale data connecting  supplement use with reduced Covi-19 risk. 

Are you taking any of these same supplements: Omega-3s, Vitamin D, probiotics and multivitamins? We’d love to collect some data of our own. Please email us at support@womenshealthnetwork with your experience taking supplements during the pandemic. 

References

The post Did taking vitamins during the pandemic really make a difference? appeared first on Women's Health Network.

Are you still suffering from fatigue, body aches, brain fog and other debilitating symptoms weeks or even months after “officially” recovering from the Covid-19 virus?

If so, you can count yourself part of a large group of women who have unfortunately gone on to develop “long hauler” Covid symptoms or “long Covid.” We are still learning exactly what triggers Covid-related symptoms after the original infection has resolved. As a new study published in the The Lancet revealed, symptoms of long Covid can last up to a year.

However, there’s also good news: If you’ve got symptoms of long Covid, there’s a lot you can do right now to feel better 

1. Support immune system regulation You want your immune function to have everything it needs to mount a healthy response to a virus — but you also want to make sure it has what it needs to recover from all this hard work. Your immune system may be in a state of imbalance and dysfunction after fighting off Covid-19, and this may be contributing to your symptoms. So, a good first step is to nourish and help replenish your immune system. New research has come out in the past year on nutrients that best support immune function health and regulation:

• Getting enough Vitamin D helps immune system function. Studies have shown it prevents severe Covid symptoms, reducing risk for multiple, severe symptoms (a contributing factor to long Covid), and also helps immune function “bounce back” post-virus.
• Probiotics can support immune system regulation, since almost 80% of your immune cells reside in the gut. Good gut flora is essential for balanced immune function.
• Melatonin, the body’s main sleep hormone, also acts as an antioxidant to help protect your immune cells from free radical damage, preserving cellular function.

2. Support your lymphatic system. Another important recovery step is helping your body detox by getting your lymph moving. Your body’s lymphatic system is responsible for removing cellular waste products and other toxins from your system. After a bout of Covid, your system may be overwhelmed with waste and toxins to dump, which can contribute to fatigue and brain fog. So, give your lymphatic detox system some added support. An easy way to do this is through sweating. Take a warm bath, go for a brisk walk (if you are able to), try a portable infrared sauna, and explore these other simple tips to support your lymphatic system.

3. Decrease inflammation. While there is still so much to be known about long haul Covid, the possible connection with autoimmune issues means that lurking behind the scenes in all this could be inflammation. We do know that in severe cases of Covid, there can be an over-abundance of inflammation-promoting cytokines. This can be a sign of an overactive immune system. Having post-Covid symptoms like joint pain is another clue that your system is overwhelmed with inflammation. You can take steps to decrease inflammation by making simple diet and lifestyle changes.

4. Shore up other health issues. The confounding part about long hauler symptoms is that most overlap with the hormonal symptoms that women in their 40s and 50s may already be experiencing. Are your fatigue and brain fog the result of long Covid or perimenopause? Is your hair loss a sign of low thyroid or could it be a reaction to Covid? You need to carefully assess your health and take action where you can.  You want to be sure that you aren’t overlooking your hormones, or the opposite, that you explain away post-Covid symptoms as perimenopause. You can use our free Hormonal imbalance quiz to help you identify hormonal symptoms.

5. Prioritize your sleep

If you’re feeling exhausted, it’s important to figure out how much sleep you’re actually getting. Falling asleep and staying asleep is an issue for many individuals. If you’re getting unrefreshing sleep, even though you’re in bed a normal number of hours, work on your sleep hygiene. Melatonin can help here too as the master sleep hormone can help you reset your circadian rhythms. You can also try a stress supplement to ease stress hormone imbalances that may be contributing to your sleeplessness.

Long Covid may be a risk, but that doesn’t mean it’s forever. Do what you need to do to get the targeted help you need to support your health.

Learn more: 5 vitamins and nutrients that support the immune system

The post Relief from “long hauler” Covid symptoms — what helps? appeared first on Women's Health Network.

By Dr. Sharon Stills, NMD

When you come down with a cold or flu virus, you expect symptoms to stick around for a week or two and then life pretty much gets back to normal. However, recovery from Covid-19 isn’t shaping up to be quite the same, especially for women.

According to new research, among all those who contract the CoV-2 virus, at least 1 in 10 will experience “long Covid,” or symptoms that persist or recur for weeks or even months after the virus itself has resolved. That’s many millions of people!  For those who had severe infections, the percentage seems much higher. And researchers say that 60-80% of the long-haulers are women.

Why is this? And what can women do to recover?

Symptoms of long Covid

Symptoms of “Long Covid” can vary — often widely — from mild to severe. As a study in the Lancet revealed,  the most significant symptom reported by long haulers is unrelenting fatigue and the related problems of muscle weakness, memory loss and feelings of “brain fog.” Other common issues include difficulty breathing, heart palpitations, hair loss, smell/taste loss, sleep difficulties and joint pain.

Which women are at risk — and why? 

Another new study, this one from a research team in the UK, pinpointed women aged 40 to 60 as being at highest risk for post-infection Covid symptoms.

The study analyzed data from 4,182 male and female Covid patients who used an app to log information about their health after testing positive for the virus. According to the collected data, women aged 40 to 50 were twice as likely to suffer from Covid symptoms that lasted longer than a month, compared with men the same age.  Women aged 50 to 60 were eight times as likely to become long haulers compared to younger age groups. After age 60, risk for long haul Covid generally leveled out between men and women. Besides age, experiencing five or more symptoms within the first week of illness was also associated with a heightened risk of lasting health problems

Why would so many middle aged women experience post-infection Covid symptoms?  Researchers point to similar patterns in the development of autoimmune disease among this same age group.  Conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, thyroid disease (Hashimoto’s disease) and lupus are two to three times more common in middle aged women compared to men. Risk for autoimmune disease between women and men generally evens out after women reach menopause, which again lines up with the long Covid data.

Exactly how an acute infection like Covid could create disturbances in the body’s self-regulatory mechanisms is still unknown, but researchers speculate that women could have an altered immune response. Women before menopause are known to have a more robust innate immune response, which is theorized to be the reason women are more likely than men to have autoimmune disorders. So it’s possible that for such women, the body’s immune system turns on to fight Covid, but then can’t turn back off and so remains on the attack, creating other problems in different organs and parts of the body, similar to an autoimmune response.

Other factors associated with women’s heightened risk of developing lasting Covid-19 symptoms included being overweight, or having asthma. This makes sense given that both asthma and obesity have links to autoimmune dysfunction.

Reducing your chances for long Covid — and recovering from your symptoms

There are two questions here: how to protect yourself from developing long hauler symptoms and what to do if you experience them.

Prevention starts with taking precautions to avoid contracting Covid in the first place. Get vaccinated, wear a mask, practice social distancing, don’t touch your face, and wash your hands. Of course, many of us have and will get the virus, and if you fall into the long Covid risk group (aka, you’re between the ages of 40 and 60) and go on to develop fatigue and other long hauler symptoms, here are four extra steps you can take to support your body’s recovery:

1. Support immune system regulation You want your immune function to have everything it needs to mount a healthy response — and recover from it. The good news is that so much research has come out in the past year on nutrients that support immune function health and regulation:

• Getting enough Vitamin D helps immune system function. Studies have shown it prevents severe Covid symptoms, reducing risk for multiple, severe symptoms (a contributing factor to long Covid), and also helps immune function “bounce back” post-virus.
• Probiotics can support immune system regulation, since almost 80% of your immune cells reside in the gut. Good gut flors is essential for balanced immune function.
• Melatonin acts as an antioxidant to help protect your immune cells from free radical damage, preserving cellular function.

2. Support your lymphatic system. Another important recovery step is helping your body detox by getting your lymph moving. Your body’s lymphatic system is responsible for removing cellular waste products and other toxins from your system. After a bout of Covid, your system may be overwhelmed with waste and toxins to dump, which can contribute to fatigue and brain fog. So, give your lymphatic detox system some added support. An easy way to do this is through sweating. Take a warm bath, go for a brisk walk (if you are able to), try a portable infrared sauna, and explore these other simple tips to support your lymphatic system.

3. Decrease inflammation. While there is still so much to be known about long haul Covid, the possible connection with autoimmune issues means that lurking behind the scenes in all this could be inflammation. We do know that in severe cases of Covid, there can be an over-abundance of inflammation-promoting cytokines. This can be a sign of an overactive immune system. Having post-Covid symptoms like joint pain is another clue that your system is overwhelmed with inflammation. You can take steps to decrease inflammation by making simple diet and lifestyle changes.

4. Shore up other health issues. The confounding part about long hauler symptoms is that most overlap with the hormonal symptoms that women in their 40s and 50s may already be experiencing. Are your fatigue and brain fog the result of long Covid or perimenopause? Is your hair loss a sign of low thyroid or could it be a reaction to Covid? You need to carefully assess your health and take action where you can.  You want to be sure that you aren’t overlooking your hormones, or the opposite, that you explain away post-Covid symptoms as perimenopause. You can use our free Hormonal imbalance quiz to help you identify hormonal symptoms.

Long Covid may be a risk, but that doesn’t mean it’s forever. Do what you need to do to get the targeted help you need to support your health.

References

The post Why are so many women suffering from “long Covid” symptoms? appeared first on Women's Health Network.

The aim of the vaccination campaign against Covid-19 is herd immunity — the point at which so few people are susceptible to infection that the virus runs out of places to go. It’s anticipated that we’ll cross this threshold when 80-90% of us are immune to the virus, either because we were previously infected and now have lasting immunity, or because we’ve received a vaccine. 

We have a ways to go to hit these numbers. At the end of 2020, The Economist estimated that 20% of Americans had been infected with Covid-19, leaving us with a gap to reach herd immunity of about 70%. 

If we did nothing and infection continued to spread at its current rate, it could take up to three to four years to reach herd immunity. That would mean years of packed hospitals, dying family and friends, business failures and burgeoning national debt. 

On the other hand, a robust vaccine program that ramps up to inoculate an average of three million people per week could cut the time it takes to reach herd immunity by 2.5 years. Staggering! Even Dr. Tony Fauci has predicted that with a successful immunization program, life could be back to normal in the USA by this fall. 

So, there’s no question an effective vaccine is good for our country.

But is the Covid-19 vaccine good for you? 

To answer this question, consider these four factors:

Is the Covid-19 vaccine safe? 

As of January 18, at least 11 million people in the US have received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine or the Moderna vaccine, both of which were approved by the FDA in November 2020. In their clinical trials, efficacy was broadly consistent across all age groups. No severe adverse reactions were recorded and mild side effects appeared in under 5% of participants. As vaccines are administered, the most commonly reported side effect is mild discomfort at the injection site, which is typical for any vaccine injection.

Both vaccines are the first ever developed using the technology of “messenger RNA” (mRNA) to produce immunity. Vaccine opponents have centered their objections around the newness of this method. Here’s what we know: the science of mRNA is biologically plausible as the method essentially duplicates the pathway in the body by which a pathogen triggers a response from the adaptive immune system. We use such “bioidentical” methods in many other settings; why not here? The irony is that the new mRNA technology may prove to be safer than the older vaccine methods – so let’s move on from that argument. 

Is one vaccine type better than another?  

Right now we don’t know enough to answer that. But we can say that the new mRNA vaccines have set a very high bar in the trials to date: it will be tough for the other types of vaccines to offer comparable or better results. It could be that one of the other candidates does a better job with certain subgroups, such as the elderly (whose immune systems broadly speaking are different than in younger people) or those who are truly immune-compromised. It’s quite possible that the mRNA will be superior in every respect.  

As for what’s on the horizon, there are three basic types of CoV-2 vaccines in advanced trials: the new mRNA vaccines, a “protein subunit vaccine” that uses proteins of the virus to stimulate an adaptive immune response; and “vector vaccines” based on the old attenuated-virus method, in which a live virus has been weakened to the point at which it stimulates an adaptive immune response without causing an infection.  

Which vaccine type does a better job of protecting all groups, providing long-term immunity, and with the least side effects? It’s going to take a year or two before we can answer those questions with total confidence. That means you’re going to have to make a decision about the vaccine that’s right for you before then.

Who should be especially “worried” about taking an “unproven” vaccine?  

So far, no groups are contraindicated from receiving a vaccine. Even pregnant women are advised that the Pfizer vaccine is safe. Notably, a big percentage of the early recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are nursing home residents, in effect an extension of the safety phase of the trials. This will never be a totally risk-free decision, no matter how much data we gather. There’s just too much variation from one person to the next; some people have adverse reactions to anything, and some of those reactions are serious. But that’s true about every risk we take, from crossing the street to flying in an airplane. 

Special note about anaphylaxis: Pfizer vaccine recipients in the UK suffered anaphylaxis following injection, prompting regulators to mandate a 15 minute “watch period” to ensure patients don’t have a reaction. This could be due to the polyethylene glycol content in the vaccine.

Vaccines are also in theory important not only for children, who are born as a kind of “blank slate” without an educated immune system (but a strong innate immune response), but for older people, whose immune systems are weakened and seem to lose the ability to recall prior threats. Add to that the high contagion rate of CoV-2…the lasting complications that arise in so many victims, even the young and apparently healthy…its highly novel presentation to the immune system… and the mixed evidence that even prior infection doesn’t always confer long-term immunity…

All of this together is helping a clearer picture to emerge. Our current view is that the first two vaccines seem remarkably safe and effective, the benefits far outweigh the risks, and so everyone should consider getting vaccinated as soon as you are eligible.  

If? When? And Which One? are deeply personal questions, which only you can answer.  

What say you?  

Learn more: The threat of Covid doesn’t mean we’re helpless

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