Chris Rock got vaccinated early. I mean, he probably got vaccinated when I did – late March, early April. In May, Rock was on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and Rock joked about how he cut in line to get vaccinated, and that he ended up getting the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaxx:
Rock mentioned to Jimmy Fallon that he was tested for the virus before he was allowed on the late-night talk show, saying he had already been vaccinated. “I’m two-shots Rock, that’s what they call me,” the comic-actor said, before specifying he received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is a single-dose jab. “That’s the food stamps of vaccines,” Rock joked of his J&J shot. Rock then, seemingly joking, said he cut the line to get his shot early. “I didn’t care. I used my celebrity, Jimmy,” Rock said. “I was like, ‘Step aside, Betty White, I did Pootie Tang. Step aside, old people.’”
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is supposed to be quite effective at keeping people from being hospitalized. Like, obviously, you can still catch Covid even while vaccinated, but the data from the studies indicate that J&J is incredibly effective at keeping people with Covid from hospitalization and death. I’ve heard that the Delta variant is f–king with some J&J-vaccinated people though. And as it turns out, Chris Rock is one of them. He got a breakthrough Covid infection and he tweeted this over the weekend:
Hey guys I just found out I have COVID, trust me you don’t want this. Get vaccinated.
— Chris Rock (@chrisrock) September 19, 2021
There are dumbasses in his mentions, crying about “why would you recommend the vaccine if you’ve got Covid even while vaxxed.” Because while Rock is obviously sick, the J&J vaccine has surely lessened his symptoms than if he caught Covid and was unvaccinated. But even then, the breakthrough cases are no joke and everyone needs to still be careful, and like Chris Rock said, get vaccinated.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
I got the J&J vaccine and am so grateful for it. I still wear my mask everywhere I go and will for the foreseeable future.
The scuttlebutt now is if you got a viral vector vax, and get an mRNA booster, you have excellent coverage for delta. Just like getting covid then getting a booster, or getting three mRNA vaxes.
I got my second Pfizer on 4/14, am 55, have (latent) asthma, and look forward to a booster. I buy KF94s on amazon and have been a religious masker since Jan 2020. I’m not going to stop. Missing out on restaurants, cinema and live productions sucks, but getting sick and possibly making a stranger or someone I care for sick is not worth the risk. I suspect by spring we will be in a very, very different situation…at least that’s what I’m gonna cling to to get through this potentially frightening winter. My love of 27 years finished his Pfizer series in Jan of 2021, but he is 59 and an MD, so I want him boosted asap. 😰
I wish we were collecting better data on breakthroughs. Right now the US is only doing it for severe illness, but it would be helpful to us AND the rest of the world if we knew perhaps those who got certain vaccines might need the booster over others.
Yes, this exactly.
I had time yesterday and just reported every single tweet I saw within a 15-minute period that contained vaccine misinformation. Hope others took the time too because the quote-tweets were chaotic.
Hope he recovers soon and doesn’t suffer any lasting health consequences from the infection.
My older nephew got the J&J last spring in NY (through NYU). I worry about him (he’s still living/working now in NYC). He was born with allergies severe enough to require him carrying an EPI pen throughout his late teens, and while his allergies have lessened, I worry he’s prime to be a “breakthrough” case. He does mask everywhere, and says he’s careful and aware, but he’s 23, and we all know how invincible we all felt at that age.
I hope he will be able to get a Moderna booster , and the sooner the better. I like the percentages of protection for that one more than the others.
Can you get the Moderna booster after the J & J shot? I wasn’t sure if you had to use the same vaccine as a booster, or if you could cross over. I know the J & J is a different type of vaccine than the Moderna or Pfizer. We got the J & J early because that was the only one available to us at the time.
As of now, boosters are not legal unless you have an immunocompromised status. That doesn’t keep doctors from getting them, though, and J and J appears to be boosted by a combination with otherMRNA-based shots, as well as a booster of J and J.
Source: NY Times has had several articles about that J and J (I got that one and I’ve read them all.)
@outoftheshadows
If someone were distressed about needing a booster, all I’m gonna say is a drug store will vaccinate you, because they don’t know your status. I don’t feel there is much sense to sit on mRNA vaccines that are in deep freezers locally now. They don’t last indefinitely, and it’s better to use them than to let them expire. They won’t be pulled from local stock to ship to other countries anyway. Once they are in pharmacies, health care facilities, they basically don’t count anymore except to vaccinate local populations. If anti-vaxers don’t want them, then vulnerable populations (albeit less vulnerable than) want them, they should be able to get them after the most vulnerable ( immunocompromised, elderly, healthcare worker and other first-line workers) have been boosted. It just doesn’t make sense to let them expire when production of non-shelf stable vaccines continues for first world countries.
I got Pfizer in April and caught COVID from my kid bringing it home from school (we had several close contact notices prior). He had only been at school for less than 2 weeks. We all mask in my house any time we go outside. My kids all wear masks at school, however they tell me that they have classmates who don’t and its impossible to social distance.
I am very thankful I got vaccinated because the breakthrough was so bad, if I had not been vaccinated I definitely would be one of those people in the hospitals. So please, please, get vaccinated. The point of the vaccine is to keep you out of the hospitals, and if you do go to the hospital, to keep you from dying.
Also a “mild case” is what I had and it was like the worst flu I have ever had. I am still recovering. You only get upgraded if you end up in the hospital. So put that in perspective, the worst flu/cold you ever got and you’re still considered a “mild case” because you can recover at home.
I’m curious- when you say flu, are you talking about influenza a or b? Or do you mean a bad respiratory virus that you didn’t influenza test on? I’m asking because when we first move to the midwest state we’ve been in since 2004, I got a verified case of influenza a and have never been so sick…fever over 104, mucous plugging in lung ( coughed it out after an albuterol home nebulizer -I had active asthma at the time)- thought I was going to die. The body aches and bed soaking sweats (they lasted after the worst was gone… I can’t imagine that getting much worse. Your account scares me and I am hopeful that you were using the term ‘flu’ loosely.
Yikes. One of my twins got pertussis a year later (from a midwest pocket) after being fully vaccinated per American College of Pediatrics schedule; he was sick but not nearly as bad as it could have been, and our whole household had to go on prophylactic antibiotic ( whatever that was in 2005). Scary stuff. It absolutely boggles my mind that so many are so goddamned cavalier about covid
I wish they’d make a decision on boosters already but I know collecting and analyzing data takes time.
Vaccines are to stop the spread through communities, not make us invincible. I think mandates were too long in coming.
I hope he recovers fully.
The problem is how we educate people on vaccines. People conflate it with a cure or total immunity. In reality, what it does is allow your immune system to mount a rapid response to a serious infection. Time is what it gives you. Your body technically has the ability to kill nearly any virus or bacteria on its own, but it’s a matter of how long it takes to mount the defense before the symptoms kill you. A lot of the really serious ones like smallpox, rabies, etc. simply act too quickly to stop them. (HIV is dangerous untreated precisely because it destroys the CD4 cells that drive your immune system response. Measles does something similar, though to a less fatal extent.)
Vaccines make sure those who would have had minor or asymptomatic cases suffer not at all, and for those who have likely had fatal ones, it gives their body a fighting chance to survive it under hospital care. The rule of thumb should be that if you have a breakthrough case with a vaccine, presume that an unvaccinated infection probably would have killed or seriously threatened your life. Good on Chris for understanding that and being responsible with his commentary.
@VeronicaS – I 100% agree with your explanation but I disagree that it’s in how we educate persons. I’ve never seen it said by the scientists etc that it’s a full on cure or immunity. Even tho MSM can be very wrong just for clicks, I haven’t seen/heard it there either. When we were just beginning to talk about vaccines, I remember them talking about the efficacy percentage with the highest being 90 something. Disingenuous, dishonest ppl make it sound as though reputable people have been saying vaccines are cures, which, as you rightly pointed out, has never ever been the case.
Wow, you folks know your stuff! I just learned more here than a ten minute read of either the NYT or WAPO. Thanks for posting.
When J&J was first released, I was disappointed to have to get two Moderna shots. Now I am grateful. Moderna seems to be holding up better than the others, not by much, but still.
The data really shows that Moderna has the best efficiency especially with Black people and Pfizer is the least. I kinda dislike the overarching narrative that there’s some kind of hierarchy with vaccines.
Pfizer is not that effective against the Delta variant — you won’t get as sick as you would if you weren’t vaccinated, but breakthroughs are a problem.
This demonstrates what using one’s media platform responsibly looks like. I am send healing energy to the brother.
Be well Mr. Rock.
I had a breakthrough case after getting J&J in mid-March. I was really sick for about 2.5 weeks, but I was never bad enough to think about going to the hospital. I felt like hell, but I didn’t feel like death. But yeah it’s no joke.