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

[ajc]

Am I hearing this right? You got COVID-19 right after you got the vaccine? That's a bit puzzling...

It's actually not that uncommon to get COVID-19 right after the vaccine.

It takes like 2 weeks for the body to create the antibodies after the vaccination, and many times newly vaccinated people are careless with isolation and mingle with people without safety precautions.

 

[Watasha]

I took the J&J. It's a calculated risk. I read that COVID-19 can attack the auditory nerve, no thank you. Let's end the pandemic.

 

[Juan]

That's a mischaracterization of what happened here, and, as I said, data blips and temporary halts to rollouts are pretty normal in "these situations", given that situations where EUA is even a thing that's on the table are few and far between.

As for "all over the news", my initial googling of this very quickly led me to the articles I posted. So, I am asking again:

It does look like there was some sort of "cute" behavior on behalf of AstraZeneca, but, on the other hand, the big gorilla involved here is Pfizer and I could give you a 10 page diatribe about the immoral, illegal shit Pfizer has done in my life time.

A flipside of all this is: besides AstraZeneca, all the vaxx's are heavily IP protected. Johnson & Johnson is giving their vaxx out at cost -- but they are not giving up the rights. All of this makes it sound like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and modeRNA want to move into "profit massively from COVID-19 vaxx" mode as soon as it's politically possible.

This is not true of AstraZeneca, and as such, they are sort of looking like the closest thing we're going to have for a "common carrier" to get vaxx to impoverished nations that Pfizer is going to raise their nose at. As a result of that, it means there is inherently bad blood between Pfizer / modeRNA / Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca.

So, when we have something like this AstraZeneca press release which was... challenged, but not in the normal channels, but through an unprecedented and very public press release that (temporarily) dinged their stock, it's hard for me to not at least suspect a political motive of some kind.

But, none of that really "matters". The dust on this has settled and a 5% differential in AstraZeneca's actual effective rate is both mathematically insignificant, and also not relevant with regard to how vaxx rollouts should proceed.

That's why I asked what you thought was interesting about this, the whole thing seemed incredibly predictable to me. Non issue that gets lots of news clicks because anything with "COVID-19" and "vaccine" will get lots of news clicks, so, hey, let's fabricate some controversy.

What do you think of 29 million vaccines of AstraZeneca mysteriously found in Italy, despite those vaccines were intended to be sent to other countries?

 

[Ed209]

Am I hearing this right? You got COVID-19 right after you got the vaccine? That's a bit puzzling...

Same thing happened to my wife. She had the vaccine and then immediately caught COVID-19. There simply wasn't enough time for her body to build antibodies, and it's after the second shot that the best immunity is attained.

Remember, the vaccines don't stop you from catching it. They stop you from becoming really ill.

 

[linearb]

What do you think of 29 million vaccines of AstraZeneca mysteriously found in Italy, despite those vaccines were intended to be sent to other countries?

I think there's nothing mysterious about it and that it was a combination of misinformation and the EU looking for something to get outraged about when, in fact, AstraZeneca did nothing wrong, as was quickly clarified and confirmed in the press?

EU's 'most embarrassing' day: How the story behind the vaccine factory raid unravelled

(Telegraph uses annoying Javascript; if you don't want to subscribe I recommend doing this in your Chrome settings )

(PRESTO CHANGO, NO MORE OBNOXIOUS PROMPTS. In the case of WaPo, this does also prevent a lot of images from displaying at full resolution but I don't really care, it's better than getting nagged).

It was an extraordinary story – the European Commission had turned detective to find AstraZeneca's secret stockpile of vaccines reserved for Britain.

During a surprise raid over the weekend, an elite unit of Italian military police acting on EU orders discovered 29 million jab doses hoarded at a factory near Rome.

The discovery appeared to confirm the EU's long-held suspicion that AstraZeneca was giving the UK special treatment, secretly exporting doses to its home country while failing to deliver on contracts agreed with Brussels.

Yet, as EU officials admitted on Wednesday, the allegation, briefed to the Continental press, simply wasn't true.

In fact, most of the doses discovered in the Italian factory were destined for the EU itself, with the remainder headed for poorer countries across the world.

One former Europe minister called it possibly the "most embarrassing day in the EU's history".

So... what do you think is interesting about this? It's got nothing to do with vaccine safety and efficiency, and, as I do not live in the EU, it has nothing to do with availability for me.

This is the second time you've posted something I see as basically a non-event and asked me what I thought about it without providing your own opinion. I am not here to be a sounding board to reject every single bit of bad COVID-19 information that manages to make it into the mainstream news, sorry.

My main interests being here are keeping up on anecdotes from vaxx'd headringers, providing any actual longitudinal data about tinnitus and the vaccines as it emerges from the various research apparatus around this, and making some effort to dispel or mitigate the effect of the various well funded disinformation campaigns that are trickling out.

Of the last six things I've been asked in this thread (so not just talking about you), four or five were things that people could easily have googled a bit more deeply, found primary sources, found the original data, and come to their own conclusions about. And, shit, people shouldn't trust me to do that for them, anyway -- if you can read my overly-verbose posts, you're capable of going to the horse's mouth, reading the whitepapers, and reading industry analysis from credentialed PhDs (as well as, necessarily, doing extensive research into those credentialed PhDs, since everyone has an agenda of some kind once there's cash on one side of the table and a mounting pile of millions of corpses on the other).

 

[linearb]

Newspapers in general exist to sell newspapers; there's a wide spectrum of stuff from tabloid rags to esteemed publications, but they mostly vary in the degree to which they are willing to bend the narrative to suit their own particular bias. If you take some real widespread event and then read the coverage in: NYT, WSJ, and then go look at NewsMax, it's clear that both the NYT and WSJ are presenting, generally, the same basic facts but parsing the narrative that emerges around them somewhat differently, to better serve the interests of their financiers and subscribers. On the other hand, NewsMax and their ilk are willing to completely ignore or reject large parts of reality, to serve a narrative that already exists.

All of this is to say, by the time something is in a newspaper (or, god forbid, a cable newscast) it's gone through, minimally, five or six layers of filtering and massaging of the narrative. Therefore, the best thing to do when presented with a newspaper article about some scientific whitepaper, is to go read the whitepaper, ask any close personal friends you have in the field to clear up any misgivings you have, and then go read the various newspaper coverages to understand the narrative they are injecting around this.

This sounds like a lot of work, and it is, at least unless you cultivate a social circle that's got a few biochem specialists, a bunch of CompSci and data people in it, and maybe a couple geologists, vulcanologists, etc, to boot (good people to ask about Very Alarming climate articles, for instance). This is a thing I've done sort of by accident because I'm a not-that-mathematically-bright nerd who likes to spend time around people who are clearly smarter in specific domains than I am, but, literally anyone can do this because the world is full of bored subject matter experts.

It's simply amazing to me the number of times I have blind emailed some professor who was a co-author on some paper to ask for clarification of some small detail, and gotten a 4 paragraph reply with an invitation for further dialogs. Some high profile people are very busy, but even Dr. Rauschecker in Georgetown's audiology dept returned emails from me multiple times.

I'm probably one of the worst people anyone should ask for my hot takes on the news of the day, because I am:
* fiercely biased along many different axis
* kind of an asshole, even on a good day
* not in any way qualified to speak with any authority about anything besides a small subset of things like "can you prove this function is NP complete?" or "given these two service call implementations, which will be generally more performant across this domain of possible inputs given a standard distribution".

Vaccine shit? Hell, I didn't even know that coronaviruses HAD spike proteins until a year ago and I didn't understand how they used them to attack in vivo for like another 2 months after that.

 

[Juan]

Of the last six things I've been asked in this thread (so not just talking about you), four or five were things that people could easily have googled a bit more deeply, found primary sources, found the original data, and come to their own conclusions about. And, shit, people shouldn't trust me to do that for them, anyway -- if you can read my overly-verbose posts, you're capable of going to the horse's mouth, reading the whitepapers, and reading industry analysis from credentialed PhDs (as well as, necessarily, doing extensive research into those credentialed PhDs, since everyone has an agenda of some kind once there's cash on one side of the table and a mounting pile of millions of corpses on the other).

I think it is the job of the media and governments to do that.

I am surprised that, being COVID-19 the main topic of discussion right now and the focus of the media, there is not accurate information anywhere, about what was the exact process the vaccines followed to get approved and whether there was any waiver to the normal process of vaccine approval. The media does not talk often about side effects of vaccines. There is no information either on how long immunity is supposed to last after getting vaccinated.

I am just shocked at the lack of information, and I think it is the duty of governments to provide accurate information to their citizens, so that they can make an informed decision on whether to get vaccinated or not.

 

[Ryan Jones]

Just got my first Pfizer vaccine today. Nothing to report yet other than a sore arm.

Will update any impact to tinnitus in a few weeks.

 

[linearb]

I think it is the job of the media and governments to do that.

I agree and they've universally been shit: governments have been hamstrung by trying to balance economics vs death and mostly failing at both, and the media is selling sensationalism as always.

I am surprised that, being COVID-19 the main topic of discussion right now and the focus of the media, there is not accurate information anywhere, about what was the exact process the vaccines followed to get approved and whether there was any waiver to the normal process of vaccine approval. The media does not talk often about side effects of vaccines. There is no information either on how long immunity is supposed to last after getting vaccinated.

All of this information is out there. It's not necessarily easy to find or parse, at least in the case of the second thing.

In the case of the first thing, in the USA only, all the vaccines are being authorized under Emergency Use. This does mean normal drug testing protocols are being shortcut; at the same time, that's the only way to respond to a pandemic requiring new drugs in a time effective manner, and this sort of situation is exactly why emergency use authorization protocols exist.

The FDA themselves provides this page which puts it in pretty simple terms:

Understanding the Regulatory Terminology of Potential Preventions and Treatments for COVID-19

Finding the exact differences would require reading dozens to hundreds of pages of policy about how approval works, to see what exactly is being skipped but I think the short version is you don't really have anything like a normal Phase-III with long term followup prior to pushing the stuff out the door. On the other hand, mRNA tech has been in active experimentation including in humans going back a decade, and these vaxx's are built on a decade plus of SARS vaxx work, so it's not exactly like starting fresh. (And, if we'd had to start truly fresh, we would never have found an effective vaccine this fast, I suspect).

The second question, as to long term immunity, is pretty hard to answer right now because we simply don't know, exactly because of the first thing: emergency use means this stuff is out in the world en masse, before we have follow up data. So, we don't know how long immunity lasts, we don't know how readily people who are vaccinated might still be able to spread the virus, and there's a lot of things we're only guessing about how effective the various vaxx's are against some of the newer viral strains showing up.

I think it's reasonable to expect that at best we're looking at something that's going to want annual boosters, but, that will also allow for RNA tweaks as the virus evolves, not entirely dissimilar to how flu vaccines are formulated each year.

 

[Juan]

I agree and they've universally been shit: governments have been hamstrung by trying to balance economics vs death and mostly failing at both, and the media is selling sensationalism as always.

Governments have taken different stances regarding the AstraZeneca vaccine. Most of the EU is still administering the vaccine and some countries are even vaccinating people over 65 with AstraZeneca.

However, Norway has decided to conduct further studies to ascertain why blood clots appeared after getting vaccinated with AstraZeneca, and they are not using that vaccine until things are properly investigated.

 

[PeteJ]

Women experience more side effects than men with COVID-19 vaccines, re: CDC:

Women Are More Likely To Have COVID Vaccine Side Effects Than Men. Fun!

AstraZeneca continues its PR disaster train...

Buh, I wanna take daaaaa vaccine!

AstraZeneca trial results may have included 'outdated' information, U.S. health officials say

 

[frischky]

I dunno... I am split between Pfizer and J&J. One shot in my opinion lessens the chances of bad side effects so I am leaning towards J&J.

 

[Cal18]

I plan on dosing with 1200mg of NAC for at least a few days leading up to the vaccination. It might also lower anxiety if you know you're going in with some kind of protective measure.

 

[Ken219]

Tinnitus is a side effect from COVID-19, as well as all the vaccines.

Is tinnitus a side effect from COVID-19 and/or the vaccine? This is confusing.

I received my first shot of Pfizer and my tinnitus did not change.

 

[Lucifer]

Is tinnitus a side effect from COVID-19 and/or the vaccine? This is confusing.

I received my first shot of Pfizer and my tinnitus did not change.

I think tinnitus is a side effect from both COVID-19 and the vaccine. What I have noticed is that Pfizer seems to have the least side effects for tinnitus than the others.

 

[Gabriel5050]

I have a few thoughts: First, maybe I was part of the the asymptomatic crowd. Maybe I got COVID-19 through my parents, whom , since the beginning of this ordeal, have still been working. Neither me, nor they, seem to have been affected by this virus. Thank God.

Second - I am behind the idea of getting vaccinated but since my tinnitus and fear of sounds affects me to the point where I only leave my house if I absolutely have to, I just am not in the position to risk getting my tinnitus worse for the vaccination process, considering I also have to go twice. You can point fingers at me. I know it's the rational thing to get vaccinated. But the tinnitus makes me suffer way more than covid could. And if I already happened to have had it, the damage could already be done. I'm hoping maybe we can get herd immunity and to a point where enough people are vaccinated that we can all be safe.

 

[Watasha]

I have a few thoughts: First, maybe I was part of the the asymptomatic crowd. Maybe I got COVID-19 through my parents, whom , since the beginning of this ordeal, have still been working. Neither me, nor they, seem to have been affected by this virus. Thank God.

Second - I am behind the idea of getting vaccinated but since my tinnitus and fear of sounds affects me to the point where I only leave my house if I absolutely have to, I just am not in the position to risk getting my tinnitus worse for the vaccination process, considering I also have to go twice. You can point fingers at me. I know it's the rational thing to get vaccinated. But the tinnitus makes me suffer way more than covid could. And if I already happened to have had it, the damage could already be done. I'm hoping maybe we can get herd immunity and to a point where enough people are vaccinated that we can all be safe.

The Texas Roadhouse CEO story confirmed it for me. Apparently COVID-19 can attack the auditory nerve.

I took my chances with the J&J vaccine. No issues yet.

 

[PeteJ]

I don't want to risk SSHL no matter if there are slim chances of it happening.

Some workmates got COVID-19 and they were fine after like a month. It was like a bad flu in most cases, and there were some people that did not have any symptoms whatsoever, but had the virus.

So I don't see the point of getting vaccinated when the effects of the vaccine are the same effects of the virus. Most people I have talked to have experienced fever, extreme fatigue, or have vomited for a day or two after getting vaccinated.

That's good common sense.

There's a lot of fear mongering by COVID-19 fanatics but it can't be disputed that all the COVID-19 vaccines are experimental.

 

[PeteJ]

I have a few thoughts: First, maybe I was part of the the asymptomatic crowd. Maybe I got COVID-19 through my parents, whom , since the beginning of this ordeal, have still been working. Neither me, nor they, seem to have been affected by this virus. Thank God.

Second - I am behind the idea of getting vaccinated but since my tinnitus and fear of sounds affects me to the point where I only leave my house if I absolutely have to, I just am not in the position to risk getting my tinnitus worse for the vaccination process, considering I also have to go twice. You can point fingers at me. I know it's the rational thing to get vaccinated. But the tinnitus makes me suffer way more than covid could. And if I already happened to have had it, the damage could already be done. I'm hoping maybe we can get herd immunity and to a point where enough people are vaccinated that we can all be safe.

Why didn't the entire country of Sweden drop dead? Shouldn't the hospitals been full of people dying and dead bodies everywhere?

They didn't enforce restrictive COVID-19 measures. Either they got herd immunity or maybe the fears are extremely exaggerated.

There's no reports of a significant increase in tinnitus cases there either.

 

[kingsfan]

I've been off the forum for a couple weeks and just scheduled to get the Pfizer vaxx in a couple days.

All of a sudden there are bunch of posts on here about people's tinnitus getting worse from it. What the hell?

 

[Ryan Jones]

@kingsfan, I went ahead and got the Pfizer last week. I'm going to report back in a few weeks on any impact to my tinnitus.

My thought process is that there seems to be more supporting evidence of COVID-19 itself causing increase than the vaccine, so I chose the lesser of 2 evils. Sucks that we have to be put in this position though... Seems like so many treatments for other ailments have negative side effects to tinnitus.

For what it's worth, I know several people with tinnitus who have gotten vaccinated with no ill effects.

 

[Alue]

Hmm I have a Moderna shot scheduled for tomorrow (well technically today). Reading all the reports of side effects (not just tinnitus) has me slightly worried.

 

[Ed209]

Hmm I have a Moderna shot scheduled for tomorrow (well technically today). Reading all the reports of side effects (not just tinnitus) has me slightly worried.

It's 100% your choice, Alue, whether you have it or not, but if you're worried about your tinnitus becoming worse, then I'd be far more concerned about the virus.

 

[Diesel]

Here are the updated numbers as of 3/24/21:

Pfizer:
No Change: 26
Temporary Change: 4
Long Term Change: 3

Moderna:
No Change: 10
Temporary Change: 6
Long Term Change: 5

AstraZeneca:
No Change: 4
Temporary Change: 2
Long Term Change:

J&J:
No Change: 2
Temporary Change: 1
Long Term Change:

Still looks like Pfizer is the safest of the 4 shots. Not enough responses regarding AstraZeneca and J&J to make a decision.

Something to keep in mind when reading this. A lot of people who had "long term changes" didn't follow up. So their "long term change" could have resolved and we just didn't hear about it.

You should update this, seems like a lot of new activity today on vaccines.

 

[PeteJ]

I am at high risk for hospitalization from COVID-19. My PCP was telling me that I needed to be prepared to isolate as much as possible for the next 1-3 years if I do not choose to vaccinate. I do believe the stress of quarantine and COVID-19 over the last year contributed to my hearing situation.

Based on what? Do you have pre-existing health conditions that have the potential to lead to hospitalization?

Why do people think COVID-19 can lead to serious problems or even hospitalization when you need a test to even know if you have it?

 

[linearb]

One of my best friends has loud, multitone, bilateral tinnitus.

He got his first modeRNA shot ~5 days ago without batting an eye about it, and reports no changes to his tinnitus. He said that if it made him feel tired or crappy, it blended into the background of being in lockdown in a 1200 square foot apartment with two small children

You should update this, seems like a lot of new activity today on vaccines.

Yeah, except these numbers are so far out of line with the much broader and less biased datasets in the adverse incident reporting DBs that it's pretty hard for me to swallow this without a grain of salt the size of a golfball. This is a strangely self-selected group here, with, generally, a fairly hyperacute awareness of our tinnitus.

Based on the threads on this forum I'd likely prefer Pfizer, but I'll likely take modeRNA if offered first, because if I ignore this forum I know 3 people in real life with existing hearing issues and tinnitus who've gotten modeRNA with no problems, and polling for this specific issue on a non tinnitus forum with a much larger set, overall, of people who got vaxx'd led me to a lot of people who reported pre-existing tinnitus but literally zero anecdotes of even temporary worsening.

I've had temporary worsening after flu vaccines; this doesn't worry me much, since I know a nonzero number of people get the flu and go deaf as a result each year. Vaccines are immunologic; anything that mucks with the immune system instantly has effects on cortisol and other hormone regulation, so it's very easy for vaccines to cause temporary changes in all sorts of conditions.

For whatever reason this year's flu vaccine didn't make me feel ill, but I did have a ~7 day tinnitus spike that was correlated, based on timing. No idea what that means but it's not gonna impact my flu shot next year, because I know from the stats that the risk to me from these shots is fairly tiny compared to the risk to my small children of me not getting the vaxx.

EDIT: When this thread was posted, I voted Yes, planning to, but I will wait a while to see if there are any potential long-term side effects" --

At this point I would change this to "yes, as soon as it is available". I believe the long-term data that is emerging about COVID-19, escape variants, and the vaccines is quite sufficient for me to make a reality-based decision on. That was not the case when this thread was posted but we've vaccinated hundreds of millions of people since then.

 

[kingsfan]

@kingsfan, I went ahead and got the Pfizer last week. I'm going to report back in a few weeks on any impact to my tinnitus.

My thought process is that there seems to be more supporting evidence of COVID-19 itself causing increase than the vaccine, so I chose the lesser of 2 evils. Sucks that we have to be put in this position though... Seems like so many treatments for other ailments have negative side effects to tinnitus.

For what it's worth, I know several people with tinnitus who have gotten vaccinated with no ill effects.

I'm still going to go head with it, even though I'm worried. My asthma has been so bad lately that I feel I'll have a really rough time if I do catch COVID-19. I think the steroids and antibiotics I took for my asthma already worsened things, or at least caused a spike, and I'm tired of worrying and monitoring my tinnitus.

 

[Alue]

It's 100% your choice, Alue, whether you have it or not, but if you're worried about your tinnitus becoming worse, then I'd be far more concerned about the virus.

I'm actually more concerned about other side effects than tinnitus. I have heard a couple reports of people having chronic headaches/migraines after taking the Moderna vaccine.

I think I'll go ahead and take it. Fingers crossed.

I'm going to have to start traveling again soon, ugh. I traveled early March and the airplanes were completely full, the airport I had a layover in was packed like it was Christmas time and like we weren't in a pandemic. I wouldn't be flying right now if I didn't have to for work. That's why I'm wanting to get vaccinated sooner than later.

 

[tpeters1]

I wanted to chime in on this post because I may be one of the more recent ones on here to have gotten the first shot and had a dramatic increase in my tinnitus.

I received the first of the Moderna shots on the 19th of this month and the tinnitus increased the day after, and as of today there has been no change whatsoever. The level of it is not unbearable for me yet, but for others I think it definitely could be. I'm hoping that it dissipates back down to it's original level sometime soon, but with it being so steady, my hopes are not very high.

If I had it to do again, I WOULD NOT get the vaccine, and am certainly not getting the second dose!!!

 

[Ed209]

Why do people think COVID-19 can lead to serious problems or even hospitalization when you need a test to even know if you have it?

Maybe because nearly 3 million people have died, and significantly more have been left with lasting damage.

I didn't need a test to know I had it. I became very ill; the test merely confirmed it.