In total, more than 16 million injections have already been taken in our country. According to the Lareb side effects center, women and young people in particular report side effects relatively more often.
More headaches, muscle aches and nausea
From the research It appears that headaches, muscle pain and nausea are mentioned more often the lower the age of the vaccinated person. This applies to all vaccines.
According to Lareb, this can be explained because the immune system may react less in the elderly. In young people, the immune system reacts more strongly, so that they are also more likely to suffer from typical vaccination side effects such as fever and muscle pain.
Women are also more likely to experience side effects, although Lareb is not very good at explaining this. Women often also suffer more from side effects with other medicines.
“We don’t really know why some people react more violently to the corona vaccine than others,” says vaccinologist Anke Huckriede of the University Medical Center Groningen.
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Does that also mean: the more burden, the higher your immunity? “No, you can’t say that,” explains Huckriede. Studies show that the Pfizer vaccine provides 95 percent protection. Not all of those people have experienced side effects.
In general, side effects are a very good sign. “It’s a sign that your immune system is working and so doing well.”
Usually the complaints come a few hours after setting and disappear within a day or two. Incidentally, there are also people who suffer from it for a longer period of time.
Most common side effects
In addition to headache, muscle pain and nausea, the most common side effects according to Lareb are fatigue, fever, feeling unwell, joint pain, chills and pain and/or swelling at the puncture site.
In total, Lareb received 175 reports of complaints that are consistent with a severe allergic reaction to one of the four vaccines.
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“A swelling in the neck or armpit can be explained by the lymph nodes that react strongly to the vaccine. And that in itself is a good sign of the immune system,” explains Huckriede.
Yet Huckriede was also surprised by some of the side effects she saw. “But that’s not surprising. We vaccinate so many people that we now see things faster that we might not have noticed before. Although it is sometimes questionable whether it is really a side effect of the vaccine.”
Ready for your reaction
If you already react strongly to a corona vaccine, does this also mean that you might have had a more serious course of disease with corona without the vaccine?
“That is difficult to estimate. And it is also difficult for us to investigate. But I do think that there is a kind of predisposition in how you generally react to infections or vaccinations,” thinks Huckriede.
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Serious side effect
At Lareb there are also ten reports of an inflammation of the heart (myocarditis) and 22 of an inflammation of the pericardium (pericarditis). This concerns thirteen reports of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, seven of the AstraZeneca vaccine, eight of the Moderna vaccine and three of the Janssen vaccine.
According to Lareb, it is not clear whether all these cases are also caused by the vaccine. Anke Huckriede, vaccinologist at the UMCG: “We know that young men have an increased risk of heart inflammation or inflammation of the pericardium. It is possible that now that everything is under a magnifying glass, something like this will also surface more quickly.”
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