A Tale Of Two Vaccines

On the morning of February 17, 2024, at approximately 10am in the morning, my brain exploded.

I had known it was going to happen, or at least something bad was about to happen, for a few days. On February 15th, two days prior, I woke up feeling extremely confused and agitated. I went to take out the garbage at one point, but was stuggling to figure out what I was doing and where I was. I called a taxi on my phone and got it to take me to the hospital, at which point I got a bit lost. When I finally got to see a doctor, I told her desperately that there was something wrong with my brain. They did a CT scan, but didn't find anything, so she sent me home.

At that point, the psychosis started ramping up, something I can only understand looking backwards. I went to a friends house directly from the hospital and started having weird conversations about going to jail for something I thought I had done. Obviously worried, my friend asked me to stay at his place for a few days until we could figure things out. I wasn't sure what was happening to me, but I felt like my brain was starting to get caught in a loop. I was trying to explain things to my friends, but kept ending up where I started with my arguments.

The night of February 16th, I fell asleep on my friend's couch. That night I had the most vivid dreams of my life. At one point in my dream, I dreamt that I had been deconstructed molecule by molecule and uploaded into a computer, as punishment for something I did. I wasn't going to live out my days there, as they were going to turn me off at some point, but I struggled to break free of my mental cage they had put me in. In another dream, my family had been flown in from Canada to watch me be executed. After which, the Spanish government was going to execute them as well. All because of something, whatever it was, that I had done.

I woke up around 3am, completely disoriented. I messaged my sister in Canada, something that was unusual at this time of night, and asked her where my parents were. In my dream they had been executed, and the dream world seemed to slip into the real world. I'm told I paced around for a few hours, or at least that's what my friend thought he heard.

When morning finally arrived, I found myself extremely paranoid - that the people around me were out to get me. I wondered if my friend had drugged me me in my sleep, and that was why I felt so out of sorts. What had they done? What was happening to me?

After pouring me a coffee and giving me a piece of toast to eat, my friend asked if I wanted to help him install a bike rack on his bike. I didn't really, as I wasn't sure of his real motives. Outside I grabbed the bike rack and held it in place so my friend could put a screw in. At that point I remember my hands started shaking and I felt my brain go from about 100% up to about 1000% with crazy thoughts. My brain was flooded with horrible thoughts about all the people who were about to die because of me, and that the only way I could stop it was by turning myself into the police. I stopped what I was doing, turned around, and bolted out the front door of my friends place, determined to stop whatever was about to happen.

I would spend the next 10 hours wondering aimlessly around the city, interacting with the police on two occcasions, laying down in garbage a few times, and would ultimately be found missing some of my clothes in a popular part of the city. The admission report from the hospital that said patient "found naked in front of a bingo hall."

July 2021, Canada.

About four weeks earlier, I was in Spain standing in line to receive my first COVID19 vaccine. It was mostly a lottery system, which each person in each age group was assigned one of the available vaccines. My determined vaccine was the Johnson & Johnson single dose one, which apparently gave full immunity after only one shot.

Immediately after getting my vaccine, I flew to Bologna, Italy, where I rested for a few days. Other than a headache the next day, I didn't really have any major reactions to the vaccine. Not long after I started hiking Alta Via 2 in the Italian Dolomites with a friend.

At some point during the hike I started feeling vertigo. Given that we were between 2500m and 3000m hiking, I figured it was just due to the altitude. Not long after my eyes started watering excessively, something I atttributed at the time to some random reaction to the sunscreen I was wearing while hiking.

This watering continued for weeks, and when I found myself in Gatwick airport waiting for a flight to Vancouver, I asked the pharmacist for any type of medication to help with whatever was causing it. So they gave me a few OTC allergy pills, despite me not having any allergies I was aware of.

Not long after landing in Canada, I met up with some of my friends, many of which I hadn't seen in years due to COVID19 restrictions. As the Johnson and Johnson vaccine hadn't been available in Canada, my friends jokingly bugged me that I was contagious and basically unprotected.

Not long after, my nephew decided to go to the mall to get his first vaccine, which would be Moderna. He had asked me to go with him, after which we would go for a few beers together. I thought that was a great idea, so I did.

At that point I had this idea that maybe I should just get another vaccine, one of the more popular ones like Moderna. That way my friends wouldn't be concerned and ideally I would have even more protection against COVID19. I asked at the vaccination centre if I could have one, and they said sure. I had travelled at this point to over 45 countries, and had had many different vaccines including Heb-B, Hep-A, etc, many of which requried multiple doses. So it didn't even dawn on me that having an addition shot might not be a great idea.

Regardless, I decided to go ahead with it, and got my second shot, roughly five weeks after my first one. Like before, I didn't really have any major reactions, and just went on doing my normal routine.

Roughly five days after the vaccine, I woke up and went to have a coffee ith my brother-in-law and sister, one of our morning routines. While sitting there sipping my coffee, I suddenly felt the world slipping away from me, and noticed the sudden loss of my peripheral vision. My adrenolin spiked, as did my heart rate. What had just happened? Over the next 30 minutes it would happen a few more times, so I decided to go to the hospital.

The hospital didn't really find anything wrong, but ordered a 24 hour holter monitor in case it was heart related. I wouldn't get those results for about two months, and by then I was in Spain. But the Holter monitor detected abnormal ST-T wave alterations and recommended an immediate cardiology consult.

Lab Reports

Spike (S) IgG — ~184 days

“The estimated anti-spike IgG half-life was 184 days …”
Wei J, Matthews PC, Stoesser N, et al. Anti-spike antibody response to natural SARS-CoV-2 infection in the general population. Nature Communications. 2021;12:6250. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-26479-2.  

Nucleocapsid (N) IgG — ~85 days

“…the mean estimated [anti-nucleocapsid IgG] antibody half-life was 85 (95% CrI 81–90) days.”
Lumley SF, Wei J, O’Donnell D, et al. The Duration, Dynamics, and Determinants of SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Responses in Individual Healthcare Workers. Clinical Infectious Diseases. 2021;73(3):e699–e709. doi:10.1093/cid/ciab004. 

Interpretation

If your anti-N IgG really has a ~386-day half-life, here are plausible explanations to consider (with papers you can cite):
• Persistent antigen/viral reservoir: SARS-CoV-2 RNA/protein has been found in gut and other tissues for months–years after infection, and circulating spike/N antigens are detectable in blood up to ~14 months. Refs: Peluso MJ et al. Sci Transl Med (2024) doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.adk3295; Swank Z et al. Clin Microbiol Infect (2024) doi:10.1016/j.cmi.2024.09.001.
• Durable long-lived plasma cells (LLPCs): Infection can seed LLPCs in bone marrow that maintain IgG titers with very slow decay even without ongoing antigen. Refs: Turner JS et al. Nature (2021) doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03647-4; Schulz AR et al. EBioMedicine (2023) doi:10.1016/j.ebiom.2023.104735.
• Silent re-exposures/reinfections: Anti-N levels (and avidity) can “boost” with unrecognized reinfections, making the apparent half-life look very long. Refs: Grebe E et al. Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Reinfections Using Nucleocapsid Antibody Boosting (2025) PMCID: PMC12044254; Golding L et al. J Infect Dis (2024) doi:10.1093/infdis/jiae072.
• Cross-reactive stimulation: Prior/common seasonal coronavirus exposures can generate cross-reactive anti-N responses that sustain a slow tail. Refs: Tso FY et al. Int J Infect Dis (2021) PMID:33176202; Murray SM et al. Nat Rev Immunol (2023) doi:10.1038/s41577-022-00809-x.

Takeaway for the blog:
Positive (+++) IFN-γ CD4⁺/CD8⁺ responses to Spike and N+M indicate strong, antigen-specific cellular memory. Because current vaccines are Spike-only, N/M-directed T cells point to prior natural infection (Spike reflects infection and/or vaccination).
Refs: CDC: how mRNA/viral-vector vaccines work (Spike only) • Thieme et al., 2020—T cells target S, M, and N after infection

These cellular responses can persist for years after infection and are common even when antibodies wane—so a “positive” T-cell test doesn’t, by itself, prove ongoing infection.
Ref: Guo et al., 2024—T-cell memory detectable 2 years post-COVID

That said, persistent antigen exposure is plausible: multiple cohorts detect S1/Spike/N antigen in plasma up to ~14 months post-infection using ultrasensitive (Simoa) assays, and tissue studies show SARS-CoV-2 RNA/protein in gut and other organs months–years after acute illness—especially relevant in Long COVID. Pairing plasma antigen assays with T-cell testing is a reasonable complementary approach.
Refs: Peluso et al., 2024—plasma antigenemia up to 14 months (Lancet Infect Dis) • Swank et al., 2024—circulating viral antigens post-infection (Clin Microbiol Infect) • Peluso et al., 2024—tissue T-cell activation + gut viral RNA up to ~2 years (Sci Transl Med) • Stein/Chertow et al., 2022—widespread tissue persistence at autopsy (Nature)

References