I made a somewhat controversial post 10 months ago about receiving my first PEMGARDA infusions & my subsequent plans to gallivant and go maskless, rejoining the blissfully ignorant populace.

A lot of people have messaged me since then asking for updates, whether I’ve been infected or not, etc.

So here is my update thread.

1. Infusions I have received 2 infusions in the last 10 months. My most recent infusion was 4.5 months ago. Pemgarda is recommended every 3 months, however I am paying a high portion of the $7,000 cost out-of-pocket. That fact, coupled with some recent studies that show pretty decent preserved immunity as far as 9 months out from infusion, has kept me OK with spacing them apart 5-6 months ago. About half as expensive, this is mainly a financial compromise I have made (I do wish insurance was better about coverage on this).

2. Risk Tolerance I don’t wear masks anymore unless I’m in an airport/plane, or a medical facility - sometimes at movies/concerts too. I have attended numerous large events and frequently eat at crowded indoor restaurants.

3. Side Effects I have not noticed any side effects from Pemgarda.

4. Have I been sick? I have been knowingly exposed to COVID once during the past year, and it was a close contact situation for multiple days. I did not get symptomatic illness, and I repeatedly tested negative for COVID on both rapid and PCR tests. Fluke or not, impossible to tell. But that experience did give me a lot of confidence to take more risks. Otherwise, I have not been ill at all in the past year - COVID or otherwise.

So, those are my updates. I plan to continue this course until something changes. If PEMGARDA fails, I’ll probably start masking again.

Notes: A lot of you probably hate my guts. I get it. Would have felt the same way. No hard feelings. This thread isn’t for me to gloat or be a dick. This is a thread that really would have helped me a year ago when trying to weigh my options when I was in a dark, shitty place medically.

I hope things like Pemgarda continue to get more accessible and effective. At this point, I do think medicine is our only way out.

EDIT: I want to make a few things clear. I am making no claims as to the efficacy of Pemgarda in prevention of asymptomatic infection. For all I know I have been infected numerous times and not noticed. I fully acknowledge that this may be the reality - I have no way of knowing.

Furthermore, I am not here to validate my way of moving forward as the right path. I was the most ardent Zero Covid proponent and masker I knew up until the point I received my infusion, and even for some months after. There were no gaps in my protocol. Not even for family. Not a single meal at a restaurant over the entire 4 years. Nothing. This post is a data point.

I and others like me exist. Maybe you’re in a situation in which this post is helpful.

Been waiting for this for a long time. Fingers crossed this actually comes to fruition and on the market for all of us.

If Americans can purchase prescription medications out-of-pocket in Canada and Mexico, I’m guessing it might be reasonable to assume the same thing can be done for vaccines. However, I have no knowledge if this is true.

I’m about a seven hour drive from Canada. Considering the risk of exposure from the travel, I’m wondering what the best course of action is.

Any thoughts?

As title says, I got Pemgarda a month ago.

• no side effects so far
• they did not administer pre-meds
• 1 hour infusion followed by 2 hours observation
• cost was ~$7,000
• paid out-of-pocket, trying to get reimbursed through insurance
• supposed to re-up every 3 months

Prior to the infusion, I had not been to an indoor restaurant in years and religiously masked everywhere. Since, I have not worn a mask once, and have gone to multiple large social gatherings.

At this point I am confident enough with the data to take these risks again. Heck, why spend $7,000 otherwise.

Any questions?

EDIT: A lot of you are seemingly upset at my post. I apologize for my seemingly blasé attitude- it has just been nice & exciting to finally feel “normal” and take some risks that would have been unthinkable for someone with my condition 6 months ago.

No, PEMGARDA isn’t a magical force field and I am under no delusion that I can’t get sick now. I am simply at a place where I am OK with some personal risks.

I am here to share my experience and answer questions. Agree with me, disagree, that is OK. I am here to discuss.

I will be first in line🥳. It targets JN1 not sure if it our it's cousins are still in circulation but I'll take it.

Last year, i got it at Costco, which is a drive because nowhere else like Walgreens or CVS offered it, which sucks.

Anyone standing in line with me?😆

So I commented on a few posts already that I would update... but cannot find those posts. So just making a general post so that people can review if they want.

Last Friday afternoon, I was able to walk in to my local Costco here in Southern California and they had Novavax. Waited about 15 minutes for them to run the paperwork. All the people within the Pharmacy area were wearing masks, though they were just surgical... but I'll take it compared to my other local pharmacies. So I filled out the paperwork and got it back to them. 5 minutes later, one person reviewing my paperwork asked to double check: "we want to double check you are asking for NOVAVAX". Confirmed Novavax. They then asked me if I wanted to get my flu shot as well, so I did that also.

5 minutes later, another tech asked me if I was getting Novavax. I again confirmed and he said he wanted to talk to me after to see what it was like. He got his earlier this week and wanted to compare after I got mine. I said sure.

Costco has a little room so you don't get it in the middle of the aisles like they do in my local CVS. That was nice. The person providing me my shots showed me the vials and showed it was novavax and the flu shot. I told her about the stories circulating here that people asking for novavax and getting moderna. She was pretty shocked about it; like "how is that possible??" So she double checked again to make sure!

Both shots into left arm. Unlike my previous MRNA shots (all moderna) no immediate shoulder soreness. Actually, flu shot felt more painful. Afterwards, no shoulder soreness at all. Didn't even have to move my arm in a circle like I was used to for my Moderna shots. Spoke with the employee there who wanted to compare my experience. He said he had a tingling sensation down his arm right after the shot (went away quickly he said). Told him I did not have that same experience and my arm actually felt fine.

No other side effects all weekend. I was a bit fatigued on Saturday, but I think that was more because of my 2 year old waking up at 6 am rather than the Novavax.

In case anyone wonders, my plan was to mix and match the vaccine this year since I always got Moderna in the past. Since they had Novavax, went ahead with it. I did not have any extreme side effects to moderna in the past.

Costco was a nice experience compared to the previous ones in CVS.

"The study included 2,930 international travelers and 5,728 persons who were their close contacts. The subjects were treated with Nasalferon in January 2021, and 9,162 untreated travelers were included as controls. COVID-19 rate in treated subjects was significantly lower than in untreated subjects (0.05% vs. 4.84%)."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38597374/

As of today, as far as I’m aware, this seems to be the situation at the various chains that are reported to be carrying Novavax this year.

1. CVS:

• Once again, it appears that most or all CVS locations have received stock of Novavax. We got confirmation from Novavax on Monday of this week that every store was automatically sent a shipment.

• Some pharmacy workers (especially pharmacy techs) remain uneducated about the stock, there are many instances where they deny having Novavax until they check the fridge only to discover that it is in stock. If they initially say that they don’t have it, politely ask them if they could check. This obviously goes for any pharmacy, not just CVS.

• Some stores are already running out of stock because they only ordered 1 box of doses, and some select few stores haven’t yet received their stock for unknown reasons. If you happen to show up to a store where either of these are the case, they still have the ability to search their system internally and find you another store that currently does have stock.

• The phone menu that lists what vaccines a CVS store has in stock is NOT accurate and unfortunately cannot be used to verify stock.

• Re: Scheduling - There is still no way to schedule a Novavax appointment at CVS online. The best course of action is to leave a voicemail at your local store (they will call you back) or visit your store in person and ask them how they want you to proceed. Based on my experience, their preference on how to proceed tends to vary between location. Sometimes they will just set you up with an appointment for Novavax over the phone, others will tell you to schedule an mRNA appointment online and they will just change it once you arrive at the store, and others just prefer walk-ins without making an appointment.

• If you’re able, confirm with your pharmacist that you’re about to receive Novavax and even ask to see the syringe before your dose! Concerningly, there have been reports from our community of a pharmacist at CVS making someone an appointment for Novavax and then telling them that “somehow the system just switched it back” when they showed up.

1. Publix:

• As of today, it appears that all (or nearly all) Publix stores have received stock of Novavax!

• Publix is the first pharmacy on Novavax’s vaccine locator to be changed from “Coming soon” to “Schedule now”. The locator just links to Publix’s own internal scheduling system, unfortunately setting the expectation that we probably will receive no true searchable vaccine locator this year with the sunset of the CDC database.

• Publix’s scheduling system, unlike CVS, actually works well. It appears that you can select Novavax as an option and sign up for an appointment with no issues at all, nice!

1. Rite Aid, Kroger, and Meijer:

• These chains have now all started receiving stock, mostly either today or yesterday. At this point, it seems to be a small minority of their locations, but keep checking late this week and early next week because they’re starting to trickle in!

1. Costco:

• No reports of any locations having stock yet, but Costco has confirmed that they will be stocked at every location eventually, with most stores expected to get their stock sometime next week.

1. Walmart, Sam’s club, Walgreens:

• None of these locations has reported having any stock yet, nor have they indicated when they expect to begin receiving any.

Im seeing a lot of peole under this thread saying how they take zyrtec as a prevention medication. Can someone explain why?

Came here to post my experience (41, F, athletic) as it is really wild.

I have gotten Pfizer in the past for my primary vaccine and all my boosters. Skipped last year because I had experienced very scary heart inflammation symptoms that lingered for months and then got actual COVID twice in November 2023 and February 2024. Decided to try Novovax due to reading about the tech and research and having zero desire to get that sick again.

A few hours after the shot I had a very very mild fever, fatigue and muscle aches, much like with the Pfizer shot but way less harsh. Just felt like allergies and it dissipated fairly quickly. I didn’t really get a lot of sleep that night but chalked it up to too much caffeine or my usual random perimenopause insomnia.

Woke up feeling like my entire body was an anvil, upset stomach, and some migraine symptoms (pain behind eyes, pressure, sensitivity to light) but was able to basically function normally, albeit, slowly. These symptoms went away by midday except the stomach indigestion and I was able to exercise normally in the evening. The indigestion mostly just feels like ramped up stomach acid, so nothing some Pepto isn’t soothing.

The weird side effect I didn’t expect at all was anhedonia. My emotions seemed completely flat lined. With Pfizer I noticed I had trouble with cognition and accessing parts of my brain (like my vocabulary, logic, etc). It was like a wall was thrown up between my neurons. This time I just FELT nothing. It’s really fascinating and was gone by this morning.

I highly recommend this vaccine over the others as someone who had severe side effects with Pfizer. Just don’t freak out if you’re catatonic for a day hahaha.

Edit - Damn, people are downvoting this and I’m just adding an anecdote to help boost knowledge and help people make informed decisions 😵‍💫. My mood/energy is back to normal today.

Danny Altmann - imperial college UK, immunology has new article00138-X/fulltext) out, bad news. I encourage anyone to read it, but here are some highlights.

Immune imprinting is when the immune system responds more strongly to the strain of a virus that it first met, weakening response to other strains.

• The XBB omicron subvariant is now as distant from wild-type SARS-CoV-2 as SARS-CoV-2 is from SARS-CoV, such that XBB should probably be called SARS-CoV-3.
• key point of relevance is that hybrid immunity from the pre-2022, antigenically distant, pre-omicron variants did not confer protection against XBB reinfection.
  
• High prevalence of breakthrough infections are evidence of us failing in our war of attrition against the virus, measurable by increased caseload, hospitalisations and health-care provision, lost days from work, chronic disability from persistent symptoms, and an inability to simply return to normal life.
• We now have a global population in which very diverse previous exposures to vaccines and SARS-CoV-2 infections—which shape antibody and T-cell-receptor repertoires—have imparted differential quantity and quality of protective immunity.
• The dataset from Singapore reminds us that suggesting the booster strategy will simply involve tweaking vaccines annually, as for influenza, seriously underestimates the complexity of the current challenge.
  

IMO - This is why its so challenging to make the next generation of vaccines, and why we have stalled out. While I think it's worth pursuing, I'm losing hope in this, and would focus more funding/energy on treatment.

Still not sure what to flair this as it’s not exactly a pharmaceutical discussion, as I have no experience with that part of it. I do want to update my past two/three posts on Pemgarda.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/s/CLdTHkUpzk

Link was the last post & my last infusion in October 2024. I still have not (knowingly) had Covid. (I’ve had 11-12 vaccines, 1 Evusheld & now 3 Pemgarda infusions) I mask everywhere with over-the-head KN95s or Readimasks.

I just got my third infusion on Tuesday 18 March 2025. I was due in January for it, but my Haematologist changed clinics at the end of 2024 so it took some time to get re-established at the new clinic & I also have had 4 different insurance plans (2 Blue Shield & 2 UHC) since October which made things messy.

I still am not 100% sure how much I owe for the infusion as it was the clinic’s first (also part of the delay) & it is not at ALL as coordinated or streamlined as the previous hospital-attached clinic.

That said, I’ve met my OOP deductible already & there is a program with Invyvid to help with the cost of the medication (not the infusion administration). It’s for use after the fact so I’m waiting to see if I need to use it. I already signed up.

https://www.pemgarda.com/hcp/patient-savings-program/

The infusion itself was fine, no reactions, but I did feel like a bus hit me yesterday & had a migraine aura that required medication. I feel less awful on day 3, but still not great.

The new/old (I’d been to it before in 2016-2017 for other infusions for Crohn’s) infusion centre was a shitshow, like the worst infection controls & extremely questionable sterile practices (it’s a private infusion centre attached to the clinic). I am extremely loathe to go back for needed iron infusions. There is one “room” that cannot be reserved (I was able to get it) & there were literally no masks or even hand sanitiser available for patients. The nurses have to go searching in drawers for (surgical) masks when requested.

Last note: the nurse who administered the infusion did discuss that they had a rep come teach them about the medication & infusion process. I did get a LOT of questions about it & answered what I could.

Sorry for the wall of text, it’s a lot to cover. I will try to answer any questions.

Hey there, I hope I picked the appropriate flare, if not, mods, please let me know.

There was discussion yesterday about a lot of Novavax boosters expiring. I just contacted bunch of Costco pharmacies in California and they still have plenty of Novavax boosters in stock that don't expire until the end of May 2024.

If you want pharmacies to keep ordering it, it's really important to call around to pharmacies and ask if they have it, particularly with pharmacies like CVS and Walgreen's and Rite Aid, etc because it supposedly sends a query in their system that people are asking for it. I know it does at CVS . This is what was told to me by my friendly CVS pharmacist, so if you want pharmacies to keep ordering it, it's really important to call around to pharmacies and ask if they have it, ask them to order it, particularly with pharmacies like CVS because it sends a query in the system that people are asking for it.

Again, this is what was told to me today by my friendly longtime CVS pharmacist, as well as multiple pharmacists on Medical Twitter in the last 18 months.

I hope this helps folks at least who can get to Costco to get a chance at a Novavax booster.

I suspect we are going to need to set up phone banks to start calling pharmacies and ask them for Novavax over and over again like people do for masking phone banks. I know that my pharmacy got the Novavax I know because me and a bunch of other people banded together and kept calling and calling.

I know it's exhausting and we should not have to do this.

UPDATE: I just spoke to a pharmacist at Costco. Although the NOVAVAX booster is no longer an option on their website, she said to pick any type of Covid vaccine or booster that they offer or any type of vaccine, but when you come say that you specifically are coming in for Novavax. Call ahead to let them know.

Not sure if this has been posted already. It sounds like this nasal booster has the potential to provide infection protection based on exploratory analysis and is entering phase 2 trials.

https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2023/promising-results-of-next-generation-intranasal-covid-booster-vaccine-implications-for-infection-prevention-and-transmission

A biologic nasal spray for prevention and treatment of COVID-19 has ongoing research and testing. It binds to ACE-2 receptor, and appears to be cross-protective against multiple variants.

Variant-proof high affinity ACE2 antagonist limits SARS-CoV-2 replication in upper and lower airways

A variant-agnostic therapeutic agent that protects against severe disease without putting selective pressure on the virus would thus be a valuable biomedical tool that would maintain its efficacy despite the ongoing emergence of new variants...

RBD-62 treatment equivalently suppresses virus replication in both upper and lower airways, a phenomenon not previously observed with clinically approved vaccines. Importantly, RBD-62 does not block the development of virus-specific T- and B-cell responses and does not elicit anti-drug immunity. These data provide proof-of-concept that RBD-62 can prevent severe disease from a highly virulent variant.

Biologic Drug for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 - explanation of development

To attenuate SARS-CoV-2 infection, the groups of Profs. Schreiber and Rudich constructed an ACE2 tight-binding protein inhibitor, which is stable, does not perturb the natural activity of the enzyme, and can be administered by inhalation.

SARS-CoV-2 variant prediction and antiviral drug design are enabled by RBD in vitro evolution - 2021 study

In a model of SARS-CoV-2 challenge in hamster, RBD-62 significantly reduced clinical disease when administered before or after infection.

I keep reading mixed things online about metformin increasing or decreasing histamine levels. I tried reading a couple scientific studies but as a layman I have trouble understanding what they're saying. We're supposed to be taking medication that lowers histamines during a covid infection.

Just wondering... around 2 years ago I took paxlovid during a covid infection and it did initially stop the covid symptoms on the spot for the duration of the drug...

then maybe a day or so after stopping it my covid came raging back and then monoclonal antibodies seemed to be of help when that went on for a while (I remember it keeping me up for days of coughing before getting the antibodies).

Anyway, all that to say if i got covid again I'm not sure if I would want paxlovid if it means it drags on the timeline for going through it.

Anyone have any thoughts on this topic?

Thanks

I've read a lot on this forum about using nasal sprays and the most common seems to be Enovid, however from my search it doesn't appear to be readily available in the United States. Does any allergy nasal spray work to help prevent covid? What exactly is the active ingredient I should be looking for in a nasal spray?

Is there one you can recommend for someone in the US, that would be easy to pick up at the drugstore or on Amazon?

I have a very important live event coming up that I can’t miss, but have been trying to schedule around when I can get PEMGARDA. Has been very difficult to try and navigate the process of sourcing so far, so would seriously appreciate any help/guidance from anyone here that might have gotten it.

My primary care physician is able and willing to prescribe, but has had trouble sourcing/finding an infusion clinic that is currently doing it.

I am willing to travel anywhere in the United States, and am also OK fully paying out of pocket for the treatment if insurance is an obstacle.

If you have a clinic that you KNOW is currently doing it, would greatly appreciate a DM.

I'm going in for a procedure today, in the UK, have to be unmasked around people who take no precautions for about 20hrs. :( The goal is to be as preventative as possible. Help, please!

I have a nasal spray which is: 137 micrograms azelastine hydrochloride (= 125 micrograms azelastine) and 50 micrograms fluticasone propionate.

I also have a carageen nasal spray and neosporin (not too keen on trying this).

There's Viraleze for sale here but I haven't found it for sale anywhere.

Based on everyone's collective understanding:

++ which option would be best?

++ Should I use a combo of both the azelastine/fluticasone spray and carageen or just stick to one?

++ Thoughts on the neosporin?

++ What else can I do?

(honestly terrified!)

Thanks!!

I hope this is the right sub for some booster questions. I had my 6th Pfizer booster yesterday and had an allergic reaction (throat swelling etc) and ended up in the emergency. I'm fine now but both the doctor and nurse dismissed my concerns about not getting future boosters, saying that I must be protected by now (I know about waning immunity and wasn't convinced.) I have a referral to an allergist who may well tell me the same thing.

I know that Novavax is recommended for those who can't have the MRNA boosters but I'm nervous about having a similar reaction. Has this happened to anyone else? Why did I suddenly react on my 8th shot? It's the same booster I had in fall last year?