Not as bad as your case, but my smell sense dropped a lot during and after COVID. In my case, I would say my smell was diminished last about 7-14 days after I have recovered.
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Early on it was really scary and especially for parents of young children, who weren’t eligible for vaccination for a long time. I know several people who gave birth during covid and they were especially scared. One person I know with 2 kids under 5 just kept saying, we are just trying to keep them alive.
We never isolated our mail or groceries but we did everything else. As more data came in over the months, it became a little less scary. And as others have said, new data is accumulating all the time. There will be new viruses and they won’t all spread the way covid does. We will have to keep adapting to new viruses and climate change.
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The other senior in our house and I got the RSV vax two weeks ago; our Medicare Advantage paid for it. We wait until about Oct. 15 every year to get flu and we’ll get the new covid at the same time. I have never felt sick after a flu vax but had about 24 hours of “sickness” for each of my 4 previous covid vax. I may have been imagining it, but I also did feel somewhat lousy after the RSV.
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I have to plan the onsite vaccine clinic at my worksite and demand is so high right now that they are scheduling a minimum 6 weeks out at some vendors. It’s a combination of high volume requests, probably worker/resource still a little short, and also vaccine availability. So far they are showing the COVID vaccine is available, so hopefully we don’t get a shortage notice as we get closer to our early November date.
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Turns out the government excelled at logistics. 
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This is what I heard when I got my flu vax Wednesday - that the distribution has been unreliable. . This pharmacy was experiencing a very high demand for the Covid booster, and an unreliable supply. They’d get a shipment, if they were lucky, on a Friday and they’d be out of the vax the next Tuesday with no way to get more. They had been getting Pfizer. They said they are switching to Moderna and hoping their supply chain is better.
I got Moderna somewhere else the first week it was available. I was lucky - it was a Walgreens; but other Walgreens in the area were cancelling appointments at the same time.
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My first 2 doses were Pfizer and no side effects after. I had a Moderna in one of the boosters (I’m losing count how many there are now) and that one definitely gave me a mild fever or feverish symptoms over night. I was hoping it would be a Pfizer booster for this next round.
The fever could be an immune response, which shows that the vaccine is working and that you have a strong immune system. I have had a fever after all of my 6 jabs. 1 Astra Zeneca, 2 Pfizer, 2 Moderna and 1 Moderna Bivalent, and a Moderna XXB soonish. I also had spinal pain and an ocular migraine after the first Moderna.
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I think Moderna carries a larger mRNA “load”. The second shot of the original series literally left me lying on the bathroom floor. Subsequent modernas are just one uncomfortable night of various aches, and a little fatigue. The last one was nothing that a long nap and a hot toddy couldn’t handle. You’ll do fine!
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I have ocular migraines, but never had one after a vax. They are painless, but weird. Never last more than 15 minutes.
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Wow! Good thing you are keeping track! It may come in handy.
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I had a nasty flu in Dec 2018, 4 days after a flight into NYC from Toronto. The bug started to hit me while I was shopping for a Secret Santa at Kalustyan’s, and I broke into a fever around the time I got on the plane to fly back to Toronto. I was wearing a down coat zipped up on a full flight and I still had chills.
I had an ocular migraine that lasted for close to 24 hours. I couldn’t look at the computer or smartphone screen. Since then, the only one I’ve had was after that one jab.
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I had one or two during pregnancy. So weird.
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If I’m driving, I pull over until it passes. Seeing through jagged saw teeth of light isn’t optimal for driving.
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This unreliable availability happened to my husband and me before covid when we were trying to get zoster vaccine once we became eligible because of age. We scheduled online and showed up and were told, not available. We had to try 3 times. The data management systems were outdated then. Why were we allowed to online schedule when it wasn’t confirmed available? Back then we had much great success with CVS than with Walgreens.
And yes, we’ve read a lot about current spotty availability for covid and flu, which we both (age 68) and our son (age 24) plan to get before Oct. 31. And the advice is to call after you schedule online appointment to ensure availability. Well, pharmacies in our area weren’t answering the phone and weren’t returning voice mails when we were trying to get RSV. We’ll start trying for covid and influenza in a week or so. Husband and were able to get RSV a few weeks ago.
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I luckily had no issues getting RSV. Got it a month ago. I did have problems getting the record of it uploaded to the health department. The pharmacist did it when I went back and asked.
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are your local pharmacies doing online appointment for vaccines? that’s how i got mine. there’s no way to call - they are so incredibly, incredibly understaffed. when we were waiting for our shots the other week, the phone at the pharmacy rang continually the entire 45 min we were there and nobody even blinked. not a chance of anyone answering it.
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Yes, we’ve done all our vaccine appointments online for years before covid. It was Walgreens that sent confirmation email messages for over 65 influenza, zoster, and pneumonia, and then we arrived after waiting for over an hour after our confirmed appointment time, were told the vaccines we had confirmed were not available. I was just trying to point out that some of these supply and tech issues happened well before covid.
Of course it was much harder during the worst of the pandemic. We had to drive 40 miles away from Boston to get the first two covid vaccines. There were multiple problems with the online systems between the pharmacies, clinic, and that Mass. state information technology about what was available when and where, and the available appointments disappeared within seconds.
We made both our RSV vaccine appointments online. My husband’s came back with an error message. Mine didn’t. He was calling to try to confirm by pressing "pharmacy:. He was able to get a front desk person to answer who then transferred to pharmacy. He did not get the confirmation email message. I did. That’s why his appointment confirmation was in question.
We both got our RSV vax fine and on time two weeks ago. We hope for the same for all 3 of us for covid and influenza later this month!
"And the advice is to call after you schedule online appointment to ensure availability. "
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Ah, I see. To make an appointment and then be told the supply was gone - how frustrating!
And yeah, we drove 400-ish miles for our first COVID vaccines - I would’ve driven 400 more, tbh. I was freaked out.
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We realized at the time that we were lucky in Boston area to have to drive 40 miles “only” for the first vaccines. It was such a scary time. We were disappointed with the IT interface given Boston/Massachusetts is supposed to be great on IT…the Mass. state government never has been.
It was interesting…a mom working from home on maternity leave designed a better interface than the state gov was able to get done.
Driving 400 miles…I hope you stopped somewhere for the night? We were freaked out, too, especially before our late teen son qualified for vax early on, but not as freaked out as the parents of young children we know were…can’t go to day care, can’t go to grandparents, just trying to keep them alive.
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