More Novavax trial
Dec. 6th, 2021 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julietA couple of weeks ago I had the final appointment in my Novavax vaccine trial. They took a bunch more blood, and told me that I had the placebo back in Nov 2020, and the real thing during the crossover phase in April 2021.
(After April, I'd guessed that, because I had a 39 deg fever after the second dose, almost exactly 12 hrs after the jab and lasting for almost exactly 12 hrs. But in 'interesting placebo effect' news, after the very first jab, in November, which was in fact just saline, I also had a very slight rise in temperature and felt exhausted. My guess is that the exhaustion was stress, and the temperature was me talking myself into it; fascinating though! And exactly why double blind trials are important.)
However, I'm not done with them yet; immediately after that I signed up for their booster trial. This is for one dose of Pfizer after two doses of Novavax, and is an open trial (ie no placebo arm, I definitely got the real thing) as it's a safety trial not an efficacy trial. Some people have already had Pfizer after Novavax and there's no reason to suppose it's not safe, but both Novavax and the JCVI (quite correctly) want proper data.
So they did a bunch more blood samples, pregnancy test, blood pressure, height/weight, medical history, and gave me a booster. Which I would have been going to get anyway from the NHS, so it's nice to get to do Science with it as well.
I then went off to Manchester for a lovely weekend visiting my friend Rich from college, and seeing Billy Bragg. I cannot entirely recommend staying up drinking whisky til 3am as a post-booster-recovery strategy, but I got away with it ;) with the addition of a certain amount of paracetamol[0]. I had a fever overnight Friday, felt tired Saturday, and think I would have been back to normal Sunday had it not been for the gig, late night, whisky, etc. As it was I crashed entirely on Sunday (no temperature but shivering and exhausted), went to bed at 8pm, and slept for 12 hours. Totally worth it though; haven't seen Rich in two years and we had a lovely time.
[0] The very nice doctor, who was excited to hear I was going to see Billy Bragg, recommended this as a coping strategy for any side effects, so it was medically approved and everything. Possibly not so much the whisky ;)
(After April, I'd guessed that, because I had a 39 deg fever after the second dose, almost exactly 12 hrs after the jab and lasting for almost exactly 12 hrs. But in 'interesting placebo effect' news, after the very first jab, in November, which was in fact just saline, I also had a very slight rise in temperature and felt exhausted. My guess is that the exhaustion was stress, and the temperature was me talking myself into it; fascinating though! And exactly why double blind trials are important.)
However, I'm not done with them yet; immediately after that I signed up for their booster trial. This is for one dose of Pfizer after two doses of Novavax, and is an open trial (ie no placebo arm, I definitely got the real thing) as it's a safety trial not an efficacy trial. Some people have already had Pfizer after Novavax and there's no reason to suppose it's not safe, but both Novavax and the JCVI (quite correctly) want proper data.
So they did a bunch more blood samples, pregnancy test, blood pressure, height/weight, medical history, and gave me a booster. Which I would have been going to get anyway from the NHS, so it's nice to get to do Science with it as well.
I then went off to Manchester for a lovely weekend visiting my friend Rich from college, and seeing Billy Bragg. I cannot entirely recommend staying up drinking whisky til 3am as a post-booster-recovery strategy, but I got away with it ;) with the addition of a certain amount of paracetamol[0]. I had a fever overnight Friday, felt tired Saturday, and think I would have been back to normal Sunday had it not been for the gig, late night, whisky, etc. As it was I crashed entirely on Sunday (no temperature but shivering and exhausted), went to bed at 8pm, and slept for 12 hours. Totally worth it though; haven't seen Rich in two years and we had a lovely time.
[0] The very nice doctor, who was excited to hear I was going to see Billy Bragg, recommended this as a coping strategy for any side effects, so it was medically approved and everything. Possibly not so much the whisky ;)
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Date: 2021-12-06 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-07 06:27 am (UTC)