Last Sunday I made the trek up to Concord, to a state run site to get my J&J booster. No particular reason, my work does not require it, just decided to do it (and no, I don't care if anyone else is immunized, much less boosted).
When I requested the J&J booster, the staff mentioned that it is recommended to get one of the other shots as a booster. In fact, the paperwork I had to fill out never allowed for the possibility that the person had taken the J&J vaccine as the original shot. It told me I had to have "both" shots in order to get a booster and questions were worded in such a matter that I had to answer "no" to them, even though it should have been yes in order to satisfy the intent (I scribbled explanations beside those answers). Anyway, I said, "No thank you" to getting one of the other vaccines as a booster. I did well with the first J&J shot, so want to stay with what I know. I'm not convinced that the mRNA tech is the way to go and the J&J uses older tech that is used for such things as flu shots, so I am just more comfortable with it.
Still, the J&J is not "proven" as safe, but then all the shots are still basically in trials. This can be shown by the fact that the CDC contacts me daily to see how I am feeling and if there are any side effects, just as they did with the first shot. I have never had the CDC interested in any other shots I've taken. I don't mind so much that I am basically a guinea pig, but it would be nice if they stated that up front so the general public fully understands that.
And, just because it bugs me after constantly hearing "the vast majority of hospitalizations happen in unvaccinated people", here is a little tidbit that I heard on the local news the other day.
So if you take the fully vaccinated (which now means boosted - and who knows if it includes those that only use J&J because no one talks about it) and add in the partially vaccinated (which could mean 1 or two shots of the big two, or maybe 1 or possibly boosted with J&J shots), that equals 39.2% - which is not so far off from the 44.9% of unvaccinated persons to warrant a "vast majority" ruling. If you insist on keeping the full versus partial separated, those stats seem to indicated that you are better off as partially vaccinated as opposed to being fully vaccinated. And then there is that 16% of unknowns - that could include people who have had the J&J if people are as confused as I was on how to classify the J&J.
If anyone is interested, here is the state run Dashboard on vaccinations. It loads extremely slowly, which is standard for PowerBI reports (I hate them - we use them a lot at work and it is not uncommon to wait up to 5 minutes to have one load).
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