COVID-19 Vaccine

 When LBCC staff member Paul Tannahill got COVID-19  and did test positive in November, his symptoms were just congestion and headaches. His symptoms only lasted a week and a couple of days. Today he is fine and healthy and has no symptoms. He hasn't gotten the COVID vaccine.  

With COVID-19 there is a whole spectrum of COVID and he was on the lower spectrum of the COVID cases. Paul Tannahill said he is at high risk because of three separate reasons: 1. He's in his 50’s; 2. He has high blood pressure; and 3. He has hypertension. 

What he helped him get through COVID, he said, was focusing on how he felt every hour. He said, “Something to keep in mind, you are far more likely to live through it and you are far more likely to have small symptoms.” 

The symptoms of COVID-19 have a far variety from headaches to no sense of taste or smell and fever. In Oregon alone, the number of people who have passed away from covid is 1.891 and in the united states, there have been 420,000 people who have died from covid. 

According to the CDC, you can't get the virus after you get your rounds of the vaccine. The side effects of the vaccine are like the flu and it might affect your everyday activities. The symptoms could be pain and swelling in the injection spot. The symptoms throughout the body are chills, tiredness, fever, and headache. 

Talking to Ammon and Emily Lujan, who are nurses in Utah who are COVID nurses when COVID first came around, the main symptoms that determine if a person has COVID or the flu is if they have any smell or taste or not or any constant headaches. These symptoms are the main signs that you have covid

When they took the vaccine, Ammon was feeling a severe headache for three days on the first shot, and on the second shot, he felt soreness on his left arm. Emily's symptoms after the injection were that her arm was sore where she got the shot and she felt aches and pains in her joints during the first shot, and during the second shot, she was feeling like she was more tired and felt like she had flu symptoms for a week and some head pressure. 

Ammon is feeling no symptoms today, but Emily is still feeling today that her lymph nodes in her arm are still swollen. Ammon’s worst side effects symptoms were headaches and Emily's joint pain. 

When the pandemic first arrived in Utah, they said, cases were minimal but since Utah doesn’t initially implement lockdowns or restrictions there are more covid patients and the hospital that Emily and Ammon work at and the sister hospital are both filled up all the covid beds. 

Emily said that “COVID is like Russian roulette because the spectrum was so wide,” Emily Lujan said.  

Since COVID’s arrival in the United States, a lot of new treatments have started including more steroids for patients who are more severe; vitamins for the less severe COVID patients; plasma from donors who had COVID has been beneficial; people who have covid they get blood clouts very easily so they get blood thinners to reduce that risk, chest physical therapy, exercise is proven to help them get over COVID, and sleeping on their stomach helps as well.