I followed the arrows on the floor until I was sitting in a chair with a needle sliding into my arm. My third COVID-19 vaccine; my third dose of Moderna. I never thought I’d see the day – but here it was, Oct. 18.
I was at the front of the line in New Brunswick to receive a third dose. Immunocompromised individuals were followed by First Nations residents and healthcare workers.
When someone has an autoimmune disease, the body’s immune system attacks healthy body tissue, mistaking it for foreign tissue like viruses. There are more than 80 types of autoimmune diseases and they all have a different set of symptoms that present when their antibodies attack.
I have systemic lupus erythematosus, a disease most often found in young women. My antibodies will attack healthy tissue which can affect the skin, joints, kidneys, brain and other vital organs. The disease can result in comorbidities like arthritis, Raynaud’s phenomenon and fibromyalgia. Most autoimmune diseases are chronic, meaning there’s no cure, but symptoms can be treated using a variety of medications.
Colin Furness, an infection-control epidemiologist and assistant professor at the faculty of information at the University of Toronto, said a second COVID-19 vaccine quadruples a person’s immunity against the virus from the first. A third shot increases immunity by a factor of six from the second dose.
“Your first shot doesn’t do much, it just maybe primes the pump. The second shot gives you excellent protection in the short term, the third shot appears to really nail it,” said Furness. As a colleague of mine recently suggested, we may start to view this vaccine as a three-dose vaccine.”
When I walked into the small room to get my first dose, the pharmacist administering my injection looked at my medical history. He told me to be prepared that the vaccine might not give me any immunization. I didn’t let it ruin my excitement, but it certainly stuck with me.
“What we can’t answer is what’s the long-term potency. That’s what we don’t know,” said Furness. “We have seen Pfizer diminish, but we have seen a third shot help.”
Ashley Hatt, a fourth-year student at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, has an autoimmune condition called psoriasis and takes a biologic medication called Skyrizi that compromises her immune system.
Psoriasis is a chronic autoimmune condition resulting from sped-up skin production. This means a fast buildup of skin cells collect on the skin’s surface, cracking and bleeding. Since psoriasis is an autoimmune condition, white blood cells mistakenly attack skin cells which causes this rapid overproduction.
Hatt was first diagnosed with guttate psoriasis, one of the five types of psoriasis, at the age of 13. Guttate is common in childhood and causes small, pink spots. This later developed into the most common form of psoriasis – plaque psoriasis. Plaque causes red, inflamed, scaly patches to form, especially on the knees, elbows and scalp.
Almost all of her classes were in-person last year which made her nervous since the medication increases her risk of upper-respiratory infections.
“I’ve considered going off the medication, but ultimately, the inflammation that I would have from going off of it and suffering from symptoms again probably wouldn’t put me in any better position than my medication,” said Hatt.
Hatt’s medication, which is injected intravenously, alters her immune system and prevents interaction between the immune system and inflammatory pathways. The drug interacts poorly with “live” vaccines, like the chickenpox vaccination, so Hatt was unsure if she’d be allowed to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
But all the approved COVID-19 vaccines are either mRNA or adenovirus and don’t contain live virus, but instead contain a single gene from the virus that instructs a person’s body to make the protein.
Sami-Dee Chiasson, a STU student with type 1 diabetes, is waiting on recommendation from her doctor to get the third dose of the vaccine.
“Especially with the different variants and cases rising again, I definitely would feel safer with that third vaccine,” she said.
Type 1 diabetes is a chronic autoimmune disorder where a high level of glucose is found in the blood. Insulin is a hormone used to convert blood sugar into cells. This hormone is produced in the pancreas, but without enough insulin, the excess glucose builds up in the blood instead of being converted into cells. In a person with type 1 diabetes, the body’s T cells kill off insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.
Chiasson is from Prince Edward Island which only had a total of 308 cases throughout the entire pandemic, unlike N.B. with an almost 6,000 case total. When she was home for the summer, she didn’t feel as nervous because of the COVID-19 numbers, but that increased when she came back to STU in September.
“When I was deciding to come back to STU this year, or trying to do school online, I was really nervous about it,” said Chiasson.
I stayed with my family in Nova Scotia this summer and felt relatively safe with the measures the province had in place and the vaccinated status of my friends. Coming back to STU, I felt my anxiety start to grow, but it wasn’t just because I was going to be attending in-person classes again – I worried about the number of New Brunswickers refusing to get the shot.
Furness said it’s important for people that are vaccine-hesitant to compare the possible vaccine-related symptoms to the symptoms of COVID-19.
He said the fatality risk is extremely rare with the vaccine whereas it’s not with the virus. Furness said one of the worst vaccine risks is heart swelling, but most cases are mild.
“That list of vaccine risks can look a little bit scary until you realize that it’s forestalling this much, much worse list,” said Furness.
He said even if someone catches COVID-19 and manages to avoid most serious symptoms, it’s still possible for that person to have long COVID – long-term problems from the virus that persist even after recovering from the original infection.
Having an autoimmune disease made me hyperaware during the pandemic. I’ve never paid attention to my surroundings in the way that I have since March 2020.
I was given the privilege of getting a revolutionary vaccine and that made me want to help protect the even more vulnerable in any way I can.
“If we’re talking about immunocompromised people, and we’re talking about the vaccine, we should be also talking about what is the downside of avoiding the vaccine because you’re concerned about risks,” said Furness.
He wants immunocompromised people to know that even though the vaccine might not make them invincible, they can go to their doctors after getting it and request a blood test to check their level of immunity.
“I don’t want people who are immunocompromised to go ‘oh, it’s a magic vaccine.’ It’s not,” said Furness. “If you’re immunocompromised, I think caution is a byword.”
This story is originally published in this portfolio and was written for the Senior Seminar in Journalism class at St. Thomas University.
Hannah Rudderham Portfolio 