Fully vaxxed here: two initial full dose Moderna jabs in 2021. Continued taking precautions including masking. But by late 2021 most people in my area weren't taking any precautions, including city bus passengers, some Uber and Lyft drivers, etc.
I still caught the Super Cooties in late 2021, hitting me hard the beginning of October that year. At first I thought it was just bronchitis or upper respiratory/nasal inflammation. But it dragged on and on, with symptoms more akin to COVID. Not bad enough for an ER visit or hospitalization, but I needed two course of Prednisone to knock back the inflammation to a tolerable level.
And it completely zapped my energy for months. I had vertigo and had to quit riding my bike outdoors for most of 2022. I took up jogging more often, walking when I didn't have energy for that. Some indoor bike trainer sessions. But I never regained my pre-COVID strength and energy. Similar reports from friends my age who had the same experience, and these guys were even stronger riders than I was. We've lost about 10%-25% of our former physical stamina.
I got my half-dose Moderna boosters on schedule, December 2021, June 2022, and a couple of weeks ago mid-Dec 2022. Ditto, flu, shingles, etc. I've seen younger, stronger people who decided against the COVID vaccine and ended up in the hospital ICU or morgue, including some friends and distant relatives. While the current mutations appear to be more virulent but less deadly, I'm going to continue getting the boosters as long as it takes and the vaccines are updated to keep up. Nothing new there. Most of us who were infants and little kids in the 1950s-'60s got multiple doses of vaccines for polio, DPT and others. I still have my childhood shot card that shows I received four and sometimes five doses over a period of a few years in early childhood. We've just forgotten what it took to rein in formerly widespread communicable diseases. I've wrangled with an auto-immune disorder for about 20-25 years, so I don't take it lightly.
On the plus side I seem to be getting back to where I was pre-Super Cooties. I had to postpone a planned half-marathon run in 2021. I finally did it on the last day of December 2022, this past Saturday, running a solo 13.3 miles. And a warmup and cooldown indoor trainer spin of 30-45 minutes each. And walked a mile and a half home from the store carrying about 10 lbs of groceries after my run. I wasn't fast, but I finished. So I'm finally encouraged after a year of struggling to regain my former fitness.