I got COVID-19 and I am begging you to get the vaccine

By all means, I am young. I am healthy. I eat a well-balanced diet full of vitamins and other good stuff, yadda yadda yadda. I still got COVID in a worse-than-mild-but-not-ICU-bad case. My symptoms included brain fog, complete fatigue (resulting in me sleeping 14-20 hours a day for 2 weeks), a lack of appetite, headache, etc. At various points, I would try to shower but simply lacked the energy to stand for long enough.

But the worst part was the bit afterwards—long COVID. I had brain fog for months afterwards and my lungs simply didn't want to breathe. I would try to go on walks but struggle with breathing and concentration after a mere thousand steps. I was convinced that all I needed was more practice, more exercise, but no amount of practice was able to get me anywhere near the point that I was at even during my laziest pre-COVID. Day after day, I found myself capping out at a thousand steps. It sucked more than actual COVID, in part because I was one of the earlier cases and the idea of long COVID hadn't set in yet. So I thought I was just being lazy, that if I could put mind over matter I would be able to heal. But even if I had known that long COVID was a thing, I would still have struggled with the concept that my body simply wasn't able to do the thing it used to be able to do.

At about 8 months, it was like the fog suddenly lifted—I could suddenly go two, three thousand steps in one go. My muscles were sore from the 'extended' exercise, but my lungs stopped burning. It was as if my body was suddenly catching up 8 months of recovery in 2 weeks.

I got both doses of the vaccine almost exactly a year after I contracted COVID. And yeah, it gave me a slightly raised temperature, a sore arm, the tiniest amount of fatigue. If I were to choose between getting COVID again and getting stabbed by an incredibly tiny needle, you know what I would choose! I highly urge everyone to truly think about the long-term consequences of getting COVID—maybe you get them, maybe you don't. But is it truly worth risking it when such a low-risk alternative exists?

And now: to address a few common reasons for not taking the vaccine.

If you are holistic to boost your immune system, you won't have a serious case of COVID

Yes well, I did in fact eat well and had a well-balanced diet that covered the RDI of each of my vitamins and took another vitamin C + zinc booster every day just to be cautious (also because I like the taste). And I still got a semi-serious case.

It is a well-known (and well ignored) fact that vitamins and other supplements will not help you ward off disease unless are in a dietary detriment [1]. I personally prefer to get my nutrients from food, but the point still stands: loading up on unnecessary multivitamins will not help boost your immune system and magically make you recover faster. So to reiterate: if you have met your RDI of your nutrients, you do not need more supplements! In fact, if you have already met or exceeded your RDI and continue to take supplements, you actually risk pushing yourself into vitamin toxicity.

I already got COVID! I have antibodies now!

I got blood tests every few weeks as part of a study on how long antibodies last and by the 8 month mark, I had no detectable antibodies. Although this is anecdotal, this phenomenon is also found in other studies [2]. So that means that you can in fact get reinfected, and there isn't much information yet on what that will look like.

Also, a vaccine will provide a much more well-rounded set of antibodies for you. Just saying.

Being young and healthy didn't work for you, but it works for me!

Being young and healthy may well have made COVID less miserable for me than it could have been, and I was still extremely miserable. But that's not the point—being young and healthy doesn't mean that you can't continue to pass on the viral load to others who may not be young and healthy, who may not have the option to be healthy. Not getting the vaccine just because you will be ok is an opinion that prioritises the self over the community.

By refusing to to be vaccinated, you are allowing yourself to remain a transmission point. A semi-vaccinated system provides an arena for the virus to mutate into one that the vaccine is not effective towards [3]. This is of course not a reason to not be vaccinated and doesn't make vaccines less safe.

If/when a vaccine-resistant COVID strain comes out, it's almost guaranteed it will hit you even if you have antibodies left because the vaccine allows you to build a more holistic resistance than your own body's natural reaction.

In short, please get the fucking vaccine. I'm begging you, I'm begging for my immunocompromised friends, I'm begging for my friends who can't get the vaccine.

[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/how-to-boost-your-immune-system/

[2] https://nbc-2.com/news/2020/11/27/covid-19-immunity-how-long-can-the-antibodies-last/

[3] https://news.ncsu.edu/2021/01/the-mutating-sars-cov-2-virus/

Other readings

https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2021/01/16/12-most-common-questions-about-covid-mutations-and-vaccines/?sh=19631355386b

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/02/herd-immunity-might-be-impossible-even-vaccines/617973/