Posted on 04/28/2021 11:22:03 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
To the Editor:
I read with interest “Vaccines May Affect Women Differently” (news article, April 18). It fails to address what I consider some other important questions concerning weight, dosage and side effects. For example, does one size fit all?
With regard to Covid vaccines, everyone gets the same dose, whether the patient is a 5-foot-2 woman weighing 105 pounds or a 6-foot-4 man weighing 210 pounds. And some individuals are more sensitive to medications than others, and are more likely to suffer side effects (including tinnitus, which I experienced).
I believe in vaccines, and we all hope they are successful, but perhaps there are adaptations that can lower the side effects that some experience. As I learned in nursing school, weight is an important factor that is often used to calculate an appropriate dose of medication, and failure to do so may result in various side effects.
Are considerations for vaccines different than for medications? Can alternative lower dosages be available and administered to those of various weights and sensitivities, especially if they experienced side effects with their first vaccination?
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I think it’s the people that are only receiving a half dose are the ones who need to wear two masks.
Some prisoners were accidentally given what they call an overdose of the Covid vaccine. They say they weren’t ill effects but it was more than the intended dosage
Interestingly, dosage is something explored and and determined during the approval process. These idiots blazed right past that and just got emergency use with it’s lower standards.
How about lower IQ’s for all the experts.
Get the booster first and work backwards.
If you look at your bottle of Advil, it says “adults take two tablets”. Dose is always the same whether you’re a 5’2” 100 lbs woman or a 6’4 250 lbs man. Same for Tylenol, flu shot, NyQuil, and everything else.
A longstanding complaint about pharmaceutical testing is that it traditionally excluded women from test groups entirely. Why? You want consistency with your test group to reduce confounding factors because that simplifies your data. But women have monthly cycles that change hormone levels and introduce all kinds of complication. So the solution - for a very long time - was just to test everything on men. Often, just white men. The assumption was that we’re all human, so it’s close enough.
That’s somewhat changing now and testing on a diverse group is being prioritized more. It increases the cost and complexity of the clinical trials, but everyone immediately understands that it’s crazy to completely ignore half the population and how their bodies might react differently to it. When it comes to dosage on something like a vaccine, it’s unlikely that going with different dosages depending on the size and sex of the person receiving it will have much of an impact. Dosages are determined in pre-clinical trials and adjusted in Phase 1 and sometimes Phase 2 clinical trials.
After that, you test on a large audience in Phase 3 clinical trials to make sure it does what it’s supposed to do. So long as that Phase 3 clinical trial has a diverse population, you’re able to extrapolate that out with good accuracy. It’s not perfect, but there is no perfect without just giving it to everyone to find the edge cases. Phase 3 clinical trials cost an average of $50 million each and about 90% of them fail.
There’s nothing new being done here that isn’t done with every single medicine on the store shelf today. In fact, testing today is far better than it’s been in the past.
Not to sound cliche, but the vaccines will effect everyone differently. I am sure they would effect women a little different than men given physiological and chemical differences inherent in the two different biological sexes. They might even have different effects on different “races” of humans for similar reasons. That’s why FDA wants drug companies to do their utmost to enroll a very diverse population in drug trials.
Beyond the identity question, I do have a number of open questions about the strength of the dose, why it requires 2 doses, why the talk about booster shots etc. I only have a hunch that, given the massive failure that mRNA vaccines have been up to this point, that they actually did make these extremely “low dose” for fear of the types of reactions higher doses would cause... OR ... they know that the immunity doesn’t last very long thus the need for 3 shots a year plus more to come...
It was rushed, and I’m sure if they had more time they could figure out better ways. But they didn’t have time or incentive to take time.
“…As I learned in nursing school, weight is an important factor that is often used to calculate an appropriate dose of medication, and failure to do so may result in various side effects….”
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Do fat people have a stronger and more responsive immune system? Do skinny people have a weaker and less responsive immune system? Not trying to be a smart ass, I really don’t know. I do know (at least I think I know) that all adults (with some exceptions for older people who need a bigger dose because of their weaker immune system) get the same size of vaccine injections regardless of weight.
Zero works great.
“Do fat people have a stronger and more responsive immune system? Do skinny people have a weaker and less responsive immune system? Not trying to be a smart ass, I really don’t know. I do know (at least I think I know) that all adults (with some exceptions for older people who need a bigger dose because of their weaker immune system) get the same size of vaccine injections regardless of weight.”
My wife who was the head/lead office RN for a very large and busy Family Practice for about 40 years was just questioned on these issues by me. “She has Zero experience with this vaccine except being a patient and surviving 2 shots.
She said, “There was never any difference in vaccine doses due to weight differences, age or sex.
Toward the later couple of years of her practice: Older patients got a larger dose of the flu shot of the year and the pneumonia shot.(as you noted above due to our weakened immune systems).
I out weigh her, her female friends and our female siblings and we all got the same Pfizer dose. None of us are obese/over weight.
One of our 50 something sons, without an ounce of fat got the same dose as his wife and daughter (they are 35-45 pounds lighter than him.). They had minimal side effects. He was hammered by the first dose and missed close to a week’s work after his first dose. He had zero problems with his 2nd shot. His female family members had minimal problems with either shot.
One older male friend got shingles in the stomach area after his second shot and got an injection at an outpatient clinic and that cleared the shingles up.
I got Clovid Arm after my first Pfizer shot and it disappeared after 2+ days. An RN friend said it might have been shingles, and my 2 Shingles shots two years ago came to the rescue.
As posted before, our women folk, who got vaccinated across the nation had less side effects than the weaker sex, the guys.
Most of us are 2+ months after our second shot and are still alive and on this side of the grass.
“…our women folk, who got vaccinated across the nation had less side effects than the weaker sex, the guys….”
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As a member of that weaker sex, I hear you. My wife says sometimes I just exaggerate things so I can be treated like a big baby. She may be right. ;-)
My husband and I had our 2nd shots this past Friday. About 3 hours later my arm/shoulder started the familiar hurting. I stay up very late, so around maybe 2 or 3 in the morning I was feeling pretty chilly. Around maybe 5 a.m. (I stay up VERY LATE like I said) my teeth were chattering from being so cold. Very soon after my entire body was shaking uncontrollably, like I was riding a jackhammer or something. Did not like not being able to stop it. Took my temperature with a very shaky hand and it was up one degree from when I had taken it way earlier in the night to see if I had a fever, 97.7, this was all Friday night after the shot around 2 in the afternoon. Shakily took some tylenol and went to bed, no shakes once I hit the pillow. Saturday night I felt cold again but no chattering or shaking, took my temperature and it was up to 100.1. (I’m 64, 80 lbs., 5’1” and 0+, he’s 66, 145 lbs. not sure of blood type)...if any of that matters, which maybe it did) I was fine on Monday.
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