r/VACCINES

i was at cvs getting another vaccine today & they asked me if I had gotten the tetanus shot. I said “probably not” so they told me to get it.

Now that I’m home and looking at the after visit summary I’m realizing that’s the Tdap which I just got in October 🤦 Which is kinda crazy cause I got the tdap at the same cvs so I thought they’d have it on file or something lol.

Do I need to do something about this or is it fine?

It’s the minute clinic so don’t have a dr number i can call. tried the number on my visit summary sheet but it’s just call agents who told me they don’t know lmfao.

Hello I plan to get my baby vaccinated at birth, but I am still worried because he will be going to daycare before he’s completed all 3 doses of hep b. How protected is baby after just 1 dose? And after 2 doses? I know baby is protected from vertical transmission (mom to baby) with the initial dose (I’m hep b negative anyway) but I can’t find any info on if this initial dose protects against any sort of hep b exposure from other contact such as a caregiver at daycare or another child/unsanitized surface at daycare. The only information I can find is that child is fully protected after all 3 doses, but my child will be in daycare well before he’s finished with all 3. I’m very worried he’s going to be exposed before he’s able to complete the vaccine series.

It was proven many times that vaccine against shingles steers off dementia, but why?

"Three non-mutually exclusive pathways merit direct evaluation:

1. reduced cumulative varicella-zoster virus reactivation burden, including recurrent and possibly unrecognized events;
2. vaccine-induced immune modulation that alters immune aging and inflammatory responses;
3. neurovascular and neuroinflammatory injury as intermediate pathways linking zoster to later cognitive decline."

TLDR: maybe varicella zoster speeds up dementia, maybe vaccines positivelly modulate your imunity even though you never meet the virus.

thoughts on the MMR vaccine? if your child has gotten it how did they do? I’ve gone down a long rabbit hole on TikTok about the MMR causing seizures, comas, etc. My daughter goes Thursday and I’m terrified.

This topic came up recently because a friend woke up to a bat in their room and needed a rabies vaccine booster. They had a similar thing happen several years ago, so it was determined they needed a booster for added protection.

This led to a conversation between a few of my friends and I who have also had the post-exposure series. We were all told (in different places) that these shots provide protection for 3 years. The thing is, I can’t find any information that confirms this. I checked with the local health agency and that’s not information they provide.

I wondered if anyone here has received these shots and been told the same thing, or any duration of time, about how long you are protected by the initial shots. When I look at federal and state health information, no clear timetable is given for how long the shots protect you.

Received part 1 of the HVP vaccine 1 month ago. I've always stayed up-to-date on my shots so I didn't hesitate when they said I needed it.

Now its been a month and the injection site is very tender and painful. There is a red welt that is so inflamed that I can't even sleep on that side anymore. I tried to be patient since I know my body needed time to react and create antibodies but this has never happened before. I just reached out to my doctor to follow up since I couldnt handle it anymore.

Please, if anyone has experienced this, tell me what might be happening.

I got vaccinated against dengue today, and I’m much happier about it than I expected to be. I’m Brazilian, and dengue is not some exotic disease we only read about in health articles. It is part of the atmosphere here. When the rainy season comes, so do the mosquitoes, the public health campaigns, the warnings, the stories of someone’s neighbor, coworker, aunt, patient, friend getting sick. In 2024 and 2025, the first months of the year were especially frightening in many parts of the country. This year has felt calmer where I live, thankfully, but dengue is still always there in the background.

I’ve had dengue before, and it was horrible. Not “a bad flu” horrible. More like: your whole body becomes heavy, painful, wrong. You feel drained in a way that is hard to explain until it happens to you. It is one of those diseases that people sometimes underestimate until it knocks them flat. The strange thing about dengue is that there are four serotypes. Having had one type does not make you safely immune to the others. So even though I had dengue once, I was still vulnerable. That is why getting a tetravalent vaccine, one designed to protect against all four types, feels like a very real layer of protection.

And Brazil is now doing something genuinely historic with this single-dose dengue vaccine. As someone who works in healthcare, being able to receive it through SUS, our public health system, felt deeply meaningful. A vaccine is not just a product. It is science, logistics, public policy, nurses, researchers, cold chains, paperwork, appointments, trust. It is a whole invisible structure turning into one small needle in your arm.

That matters even more because Brazil has a long and beautiful history of mass vaccination. We know how to do this. We have one of the most important public immunization traditions in the world. But in recent years, far-right science denial and antivaccine rhetoric damaged that culture badly. A country that used to be proud of vaccination had to watch misinformation make people afraid of one of the most effective public health tools we have.

So yes, I am proud today. Proud to be vaccinated. Proud not to be part of fear-driven denialism. Proud to trust science, public health, and the people who keep these systems alive even when politics tries to poison them. Today I don’t just feel protected. I feel grateful.

_ Update _

The thing about dengue is that it does not feel distant when you live here. It comes from mosquitoes — specifically infected female Aedes mosquitoes — and whenever heat and rain arrive together, any forgotten little pool of standing water can become a nursery. A plant pot, a bottle cap, a gutter, a backyard, a construction site. And then they find you. At work, at home, on the street, in a mall, anywhere. Brazil is urbanized, but it is also still very green in many places, and in the countryside and smaller inland cities that mix of heat, rain, trees, houses and standing water makes dengue prevention a constant battle. We do campaigns, we clean yards, we empty containers, we warn people, and still the mosquitoes are always there somehow. And when dengue hits, it is not gentle: high fever, crushing fatigue, headache, pain behind the eyes, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, body pain, and sometimes a drop in platelets, which is part of why bleeding risk becomes such a concern. You cannot just take any painkiller either. Anti-inflammatory drugs are avoided when dengue is suspected or confirmed, because they can make bleeding risk worse. So you are basically left with things like dipyrone, which many countries do not even use or approve, or paracetamol/acetaminophen — which, in my case, I am allergic to. So yes, dengue is not just “mosquito fever.” It is miserable, restrictive, and scary in a very practical way.

Hello, I am 17(f) and I'm unvaccinated, I think maybe some at birth but otherwise I haven't gotten any since then. I'm not upset at my mom for making this choice, she did her own research and I have been a very healthy kid all my life and I know she would respect whatever I do as long as I research myself. What I'm wondering is should I get vaccinated? And if so what should I get? I'd also really like to know the best place or method to research since it seems like both sides say opposite things a lot of the time. I'm still not sure if I want to get vaccinated and it is not on my priority list right now especially since I'm not really in the position to do so. My boyfriend is vaccinated and really concerned that I am not. I'm not very educated on it but to be totally honest I'm not that worried about it at the very moment especially because my immune system fights off sickness pretty well and I barely ever get sick. I also feel like there's a lot of people that reach adulthood and then just forget or don't organize appointments for vaccines but maybe I'm off. I know they only last a certain amount of time before you have to get another one so I don't know if I should get some at this point or not. I also felt really ashamed the first time I told him because I didn't know it wasn't normal to be unvaccinated so when he asked me when my last vaccine was I just casually told him I don't get any. I think it's out of worry for me but I just felt like a disease with the face he made and he's made comments that haven't outright said anything but just made me feel bad for it. Like talking about vaccines with his parents and his dad was like" well yeah but they're really old and not up to date right now" to which he said "well it's better than NOTHING" and kind of gave me a look. Anyway, any advice would be appreciated, especially on research methods or spaces.

Aside from some probably given the day he was born in a hospital, he has no memory of ever getting any vaccines growing up. His mother wasnt exactly the best. He is now 22 years old and I'd like to help him set up getting many of these vital vaccines but the amount and timelines are a bit confusing to me. Any advice for how to set such a thing up? He also has no insurance or doctors.

As a Pediatrician, we have been warning people this is what is to come. Measles is no joke. It was never a “mild” or “innocuous” disease of childhood. Welcome to the new normal:

Let me spell out the highlights:

- hospitalization rates of around 20% (That means folks are pretty sick!)
- few of those who need to go to the hospital have an underlying condition (This means they are normal healthy folk but are un-immunized)
- complication rates of measles are frequent (The most common immediate one being pneumonia)
- infected include all ages but especially vulnerable pregnant women and children under 5 years old (Tell me again how MAHA / Trump believe in Christ and caring for the vulnerable?)
- the ONLY seriously effective strategy to limit the spread and prevent the disease is by vaccinating with the MMR series (Good news it is 97% effective at preventing the disease = for the math morons = that is F ing amazing)

Here is the article by CIDRAP

A new study in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from scientists with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and their state partners analyzes the patients hospitalized during the first two months of the measles outbreak that swept through West Texas in 2025, finding that nearly all were unvaccinated children, only 11% had preexisting conditions, and respiratory complications were common.

From January 20 to March 18, 2025, 325 measles cases were reported in the region, and 60 patients—roughly one in five—were hospitalized. Of the 54 hospitalized patients with available medical records, all were either unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status. The vast majority (49; 91%) were younger than 18 years, and 48 (89%) had no underlying health conditions. One patient died. 
4 infected women were in third trimester of pregnancy.

Complications were common: 39 patients (72.2%) developed pneumonia, 25 (46.3%) experienced dehydration, one (1.9%) developed hepatitis [liver inflammation], and one experienced febrile seizures. Seventy percent required supplemental oxygen. 

Five hospitalized patients were adults, four of whom were pregnant and in their third trimester. None developed pneumonia or hypoxia (low blood oxygen levels), but two delivered infants during their hospital stays. Both newborns tested positive for measles within two days of birth.

“During these early months of the outbreak, approximately 20% of patients required hospitalization, a similar percentage to that reported during previous measles outbreaks,” the authors note, adding that the clinical characteristics, rates of complications, and outcomes for hospitalized patients were similar to those reported for previously hospitalized measles patients. 

“The outcomes experienced by patients hospitalized during this outbreak underscore the seriousness of measles infection and highlight that measles can cause life-threatening complications affecting multiple organ systems,” add the authors. 

Vaccination 97% effective at preventing disease.

Measles is highly transmissible and can cause serious complications, especially in children aged 5 years and younger. 

The disease was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, but the number of cases has surged in recent years. In the first half of 2026 alone, the country has registered nearly 2,000 cases. The total number of cases for all of 2025 was 2,288. Earlier this week, Florida reported the highest number of cases in the state in a single year in the past 25 years. 

The outbreak in West Texas, which became the largest US measles outbreak in years until South Carolina recorded 997 cases from October 2025 to March 2026, began in January 2025, when health officials identified a case in an unvaccinated school-aged child in Gaines County. By August, the outbreak had sickened 762 people. The outbreak was declared over on August 18, 2025—42 days after the onset of a measles rash in the last known patient.

Vaccination remains a critical tool for the prevention of measles infection and severe disease.

The authors say the findings highlight the importance of maintaining high measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine coverage to prevent severe illness, hospitalizations, and deaths associated with measles outbreaks.

“Vaccination remains a critical tool for the prevention of measles infection and severe disease,” write the authors, noting that one dose of the vaccine is approximately 93% effective at preventing the disease, and two doses are 97% effective. In addition, measles cases that do occur in vaccinated people tend to be milder, posing a lower risk of serious complications.

Hi everyone,

I'm a 21-year-old male currently receiving a rabies post-exposure vaccination series.

My second dose is scheduled for June 6 (Day 3), but due to a scheduling issue I may not be able to get it until June 7, one day late.

Will taking the second dose on June 7 be okay? If so, do I need to adjust the dates of the remaining doses, or should I continue following the original schedule?

I'd appreciate any advice or experiences from people who have been in a similar situation.

Thank you.

Last night I was walking my dog at dusk on a wooded trail with lamp posts spaced along the path. As I walked under one of the lights, I was looking down at my phone and suddenly felt something either brush against my forehead and make physical contact, or pass close enough that I felt the air movement from it.

I immediately looked up and saw what appeared to be a bat fly right past my face at about eye level. It happened very fast, so I can't say with certainty whether there was actual contact or whether it simply flew extremely close. I observed it weave through the treeline and then circle back and fly around the lamp post -- couldn't tell 100% for sure if it was a bat or a bird, but Google says this is more in line with bat behavior hunting for insects.

I don't have any visible bite marks or scratches, but I called my state's Department of Health for guidance. The nurse told me that if there's any doubt about potential contact with a bat, they generally recommend getting rabies post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP). She also mentioned that a significant percentage of bats (supposedly, 1 in 3) tested in my county have rabies, although I don't know if that's skewed because they're only testing the ones they catch from exposures.

Complicating things a bit, I have OCD and health anxiety, so I'm having a hard time determining whether I'm reacting reasonably to a real exposure risk or getting caught in a worst-case-scenario thought spiral. Right now I'm leaning toward getting the vaccine series just to be safe, but I'm still unsure.

For anyone who has gone through rabies PEP:

• What was the process like?
• Did the shots hurt?
• Did you experience side effects such as fatigue, flu-like symptoms, headaches, etc.?
• Any lingering or long-term issues afterward?
• Has anyone had to receive one of the follow-up doses late? I'll be traveling internationally and would likely receive the final dose on day 19 instead of day 14. The Department of Health told me that shouldn't be a major problem, but I'd be interested in hearing others' experiences.

Thanks for any insight.

Am I safe to get my MMR while breastfeeding my 4 month old? I know it’s a live virus so I just want to be safe in ensuring I don’t pass it to my baby but I’m frequently exposed to all sorts of viruses at work so I wanted to get an extra shot for myself.

Flu vaccines significantly reduce the number of illnesses in children, new research from Harvard Medical School shows.

For every 100 children aged 2-5 who get the shot or nasal spray, there are between 9 and 14 fewer cases, they found.

"In the United States, that's hundreds of thousands, if not a million cases of flu that we can avoid each year," Anupam Jena, the Joseph P. Newhouse Professor of Health Care Policy in the school’s Blavatnik Institute, said in a Monday statement. "That's a huge effect size."

I was scratched on my left index finger last May 14 and I couldn't get myself vaccinated fast because I was so busy with summer class. I just got my first dose yesterday. The side effects was such a pain - the headache couldn't make me work, I just stayed in bed. My doctor said my second dose is schedule on June 5...

So my question is .... Since I got scratched like 20 days or many days ago, am I still safe after taking my first dose? Like will I still experience symptoms?

I'm so sorry for this dumb question.. I'm just overthinking🙏🏼😞

Ok, so quick to the point I need a flu shot, but it's no longer flu season. The thing is, though, I've been insanely busy and could get one yet and need one by the first of july and didn't know that flu shots were only offered at certain times of the year.

So yeah I've been absolutely panicking trying to find places that'll offer it and haven't been lucky with CVS, Walgreens, or the walkin clinics for my local hospitals and don't know how to possibly get in with a doctor to try to get a flu shot. Desperate and would be so thankful for advice.