Will You Get Vaccinated for Coronavirus (COVID-19)? Can It Make Tinnitus or Hyperacusis Worse?

When a vaccine for COVID-19 arrives, will you take it? I'm curious what the opinion is on here.

As of now, I'm saying no. We don't know the potential long term side effects of this vaccine, because it's been rushed to market. I'm scared what effects it could have on the ear/tinnitus/hyperacusis/hearing.

But I am unsure whether it would be best to take it or not.

 

I'm a little in the same boat because mRNA vaccines are completely new (Pfizer, who appears to be first) and we don't yet know long term implications. My hunch is it will be fine based on how it works but I would like to see the long term data to feel comfortable. I work from home now and am low risk for contracting COVID-19 however.

Novavax has a candidate that isn't far behind and uses a more conventional approach. I think I will opt for them personally depending on their data (which so far looks great).

 

That's a big question for me too. We probably would get the Russian vaccine and it seems to be really, really rushed although our politicians claim that it's 92% effective and safe. But I also worry about COVID-19's effects on tinnitus for myself and COVID-19's general effects on my family members who are in the at risk group.

I'm not sure whether we have a choice, I wouldn't rule out that it will be mandatory. Maybe not on paper, but the state could make living very difficult for people who are not willing to vaccinate.

 

I will get it immediately to protect my family members who could very well die if they were infected.

I wonder... If the vaccine provides 90% protection, if you are unlucky and still contract the disease, will you get a less serious version of it than you would without the vaccination?

 

This is a good thread and my compliments to the author.

Conspiracy theorists believe COVID-19 isn't an accident but is deliberate and part of a New World Order. They create the problem (COVID-19), get a reaction (fear) then supply the solution (vaccine). Problem, Reaction, Solution. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but have listened to top UK Scientists and Epidemiologists for months on TV and Radio talking about COVID-19. They say to find a vaccine for any virus, it takes at least 5 to 8 years of vigorous testing, screening and research to find out if there are any side effects adverse reactions with people taking it.

In less than one year we are led to believe a vaccine for COVID-19 has been found and is supposed to be safe. It has me thinking, did they indeed have the vaccine all the time?

 

I read somewhere that Denmark had mandated the COVID-19 vaccine for its citizens.

Is that not true?

As for getting the vaccine myself, no, I will absolutely not be injecting unwanted medicine, for all the reasons Dr Mike Yeadon, former head of allergy and respiratory biology at Pfizer has been shouting from the rooftops since March of this year.

 

I will take it unless there are serious potential side effects. I will wait to see what the Lupus Foundation says. Hopefully, during this time, scientists are also working on better treatments where one has the option to do away with the vaccine.

 

There is a proposed new epidemic law, yes, but nothing's been settled. It has been met with heavy criticism and quite a number of people are appalled by this potential new law which includes the government's right to force a vaccine (and other treatments, and isolation) upon a citizen... amongst other things...

I don't think the law will pass. It's simply too drastic, but one thing I've learned from 2020 is: expect the unexpected, so who knows... I really hope it doesn't have to come this far. If it were a much more malevolent disease then maybe such drastic measures would have to be taken, but COVID-19... albeit serious, is not SO serious that a forced vaccine should be seen as a solution. After all, most people who get it have a fairly mild case.

 

My thinking exactly Michael.

 

I do feel for you folk in the northern hemisphere - COVID-19 has really gotten away from you in Europe and the US. We are incredibly fortunate here in Australia.

As for a vaccine I’m doubtful I’d be getting one - I don’t get an annual flu shot either. Mostly due to fear for my hearing health. I do hope though that we don’t get to the point where our basic freedoms are impinged if we choose not to take this vaccination. It should be treated the same as the flu vaccine.

 

No, I would like to wait and see. Also, I'm cautious about my tinnitus. I hope we are offered a choice, yes or pass, at this time.

 

@ajc -- It's actually (from my understanding) pretty well documented that getting the disease after getting a vaccination can actually make you worse than if you had no vaccination at all. Below is a snippet from an article which discusses some of the history of coronavirus vaccine development. I found this article after a quick online search, but I'm sure there are many more than might give more succinct explanations of this phenomena.

"... Around 2012, they had about 30 [coronavirus] vaccines that looked promising. They took the four best of those and … manufactured the vaccines. They gave those vaccines to ferrets, which are the closest analogy when you're looking at lung infections in human beings.

The ferrets had an extraordinarily good antibody response, and that is the metric by which FDA licenses vaccines. Vaccines, as you know, are never tested in the field. They never give 5,000 people the vaccine, 5,000 people a placebo vaccine, and then tell them to go out and live life and watch what happens to those people. That never happens.

The way that vaccines get licensed is that FDA gives people a vaccine or the industry gives them the vaccines, and then they do a serological response [test to] see 'Did you develop in your blood antibodies to that target virus?' The ferrets developed very strong antibodies, so they thought, 'We hit the jackpot.' All four of these vaccines ... worked like a charm.

Then something terrible happened. Those ferrets were then exposed to the wild virus, and they all died. [They developed] inflammation in all their organs, their lungs stopped functioning and they died."

It's worth repeating in case you missed it. The vaccines worked great, based on vaccine theory, but when the vaccinated animals were exposed to the wild virus, they died. This is as bad an outcome as one could possibly get. Kennedy continued:

"Then those scientists remembered that the same thing had happened in the 1960s when they tried to develop an RSV vaccine, which is an upper respiratory illness very similar to coronavirus. At the time, they did not test it on animals. They went right to human testing.

They tested it on I think about 35 children, and the same thing happened. The children developed a champion antibody response — robust, durable. It looked perfect [but when] the children were exposed to the wild virus, they all became sick. Two of them died. They abandoned the vaccine. It was a big embarrassment to FDA and NIH …

Those scientists in 2012 remembered that, and they said, 'This is the same thing that happened [back then].' So, they look closer and they realize that there are two kinds of antibodies that were being produced by the coronavirus. There are neutralizing antibodies, which are the kind you want, which fight the disease, and then there are binding antibodies.

The binding antibodies actually create a pathway for the disease in your body, and they trigger something called … a paradoxical immune response or paradoxical immune enhancement. What that means is that it looks good until you get the disease, and then it makes the disease much, much worse..."​

 

Just saw that major protests about this are happening in Copenhagen. We've got a similar situation building here. A few academics wrote a paper arguing it may be technically possible to use our Mental Health Act to force vaccinations. It's taken many months but I think forcing a vaccination will be the line in the sand for most people, especially for a disease that like you say, is fairly mild, has a 99.5% survival rate, and average age of death of 82 for those who do succumb. 2020 is the year that conspircay theories look more plausible than the media's reality.

 

For those considering getting a flu shot, the following article has some information on how it could affect susceptibility to COVID-19; could be helpful in making a decision:

Might Flu Shots Increase COVID-19 Pandemic Risk?

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• People who received the trivalent influenza vaccine during the 2008-2009 flu season were between 1.4 and 2.5 times more likely to get infected with pandemic H1N1 in the spring and summer of 2009 than those who did not get the seasonal flu vaccine
• A double-blind, placebo-controlled study on ferrets confirmed the results, showing the seasonal influenza vaccine did worsen symptoms after subsequent exposure to the H1N1 virus
• A 2011 study found the seasonal flu vaccine may weaken children's immune systems and increase their chances of getting sick from influenza viruses not included in the vaccine
• In a 2012 study, children receiving inactivated influenza vaccines had a 4.4 times higher relative risk of contracting noninfluenza respiratory virus infections in the nine months following their inoculation
• A 2020 study found people were 36% more likely to get some form of coronavirus infection if they had been vaccinated against influenza

 

Because I believe unsafe vaccinations played a major role in my own overall health picture, I follow the "controversy" around vaccinations fairly closely. A few years ago, I attended a meeting at our local library that was hosting a forum on vaccinations.

Something that really caught my attention at that meeting was there were two separate day care center workers there who both described how easy it is to spot big differences between unvaccinated children and those who received normal vaccinations. In short, the unvaccinated children were calmer, behaved better, were more patient, had greater focus, etc.

Here's an eye-opener... (Can be either read or watched -- approx. 20 min.)

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Nails the Vaccine Argument…

 

Mercola is a quack. He is probably selling vitamins or some other snake oil to protect against COVID-19.

 

Here in Australia over our winter we had very low rates of influenza given we were doing the COVID-19 safe thing with social distancing etc etc. A flu shot would have been particularly unnecessary to get this year.

 

I'm not taking the vaccine, no way. I will not risk my tinnitus getting louder. I will take my chances with COVID-19.

 

But why do you think that the vaccine will make your tinnitus louder, but COVID-19 (or meds to treat it) won't?

 

It’s a big risk to take - once it’s in your arm there is no turning back. Flu shots are known to cause SSHL in people too (search this site).

 

I know too many people who have died... all ages... most were healthy.

 

I never want to be first in line for anything, but I have enough first responders / doctors / other essential workers in my social circles that well before it's even available to me I'll probably know a dozen or two people who have had it.

I don't like getting flu shots, but I do it based on my analysis of infant mortality risks from vaccinated vs unvaccinated parents. Anything that screws with the immune system is pretty spooky, but viruses massively screw with the immune system. So, I imagine I will roll the dice on the vaccine at some point.

I've never had any kind of adverse reaction I'm aware of to a vaccine. I've also never had an mRNA vaccine, as far as I know, it's pretty space tech. So, spooky virus or space tech immulogical modulator? I'll probably go with the space tech. It's pretty cool, honestly; it encodes for the COVID-19 spike protein sequence only, and your immune system figures out how to rip it apart. It's spooky because it's bleeding edge, but conceptually it freaks me out less than vaccines that use weakened live strains, especially for something as weird and still not especially well understood as COVID-19.

COVID-19 has been demonstrated in numerous studies to cause hearing problems at a relatively high rate; the odds are that any weird audiological impacts of the vaccine will be less common, just because the overall safety data on the Pfizer candidate looks kinda sorta convincing. (It grinds my gears to say this, I have disdain for pharmaceutical companies in general and Pfizer specifically).

The idea that they "had it all along" or anything of the sort is silly; COVID-19 is novel but coronviruses are not. The specific spike protein this poops out hadn't been mapped until COVID-19 was fully isolated and mapped sometime early this year, so unless you're into really far out conspiracy theories, we're just looking at the results of a pretty accelerated R&D cycle (which has also led to a half dozen high profile failures or things which ended up looking a lot less promising by this stage).

The cryotemp requirements of the pfizer vaccine are kind of a bummer, it's going to make distribution a lot more complicated. Some of the other candidate drugs were fine at freezer temps; this stuff has to be on dry ice or it becomes unstable relatively quickly. People I know who use dry ice industrially have already been complaining about a potential squeeze on supply.

 

I think I am going to wait to make sure that there are no long-term side effects.

 

The only study I saw regarding hearing issues with COVID-19 was with a small group of people in a hospital picked out specifically because they had hearing issues. What other studies are there? How rare is this symptom?

 

My impression is that I've seen at least a couple different studies. Any serious illness and fever also has some risk of causing hearing issues. I don't even know if I've seen the study you saw; I've seen a clinical case and a few nonclinical anecdotes of SSHNL linked to COVID, and then I thought I saw one followup study that had found hearing issues in some small-but-worrying percentage of people. I can find all but the latter of these easily on google; if I dig up the last thing I will post it here. I believe I read it on here, though.

edit:

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201106/covid-may-cause-tinnitus

this is a relatively bad writeup but it's referencing probably the same study you were talking about? I guess a thing that would be good to know is whether that's 40% of people having a transient worsening like you might expect with many bad illnesses, vs a more long term problem. We might not have good numbers on that for quite a while. I'm going to stick with trying to not get it in the mean time...

 

Really? I’m only reading mostly overweight, elderly folk with other health issues are dying from COVID-19 (or with?) COVID-19.

 

Could you link the thread(s) where flu shots and SSHL are talked about? I'm searching the site, but I can't seem to find this particular issue.

I had the flu shot last Tuesday and - knock on wood - no problems until now.

 

I would much rather wait and see what the longterm data shows. If I was 80, however, I’d just take it.

I’ve spoken to my medical friends and they mostly say that they wouldn’t take it (yet). To me, this seems like more of an extended/wide-scale phase II/III, considering how quickly this has been rushed through. I just hope the cure doesn’t turn out to be worse than the virus.

 

I've never bothered with the flu vaccine, partly because it only seems to be around 40-60% effective, but I will probably take a COVID-19 vaccine, as it is reported as being around 90% effective. Am not likely, however, to be someone who will be able to get it particularly early. Would be interesting to know of any reliable evidence in terms of side-effects for tinnitus.

 

I didn't expect to find people here who prefer taking their chances with a deadly virus over a tested vaccine. The virus has been shown to cause hearing loss (although luckily in a very small % of patients), while there are zero reports of hearing loss caused by the vaccines (of which studies have been released, of course).

I'll get my shot asap (I accidentally voted wrongly, can I change my vote?). I've been getting flu shots for years now, never had any issues besides a sore arm. I agree that mRNA vaccines are bleeding edge new, but the technology is so promising.