Personally, I would probably drink water- you’ll want your kidneys and liver doing their thing full force I think. I’d probably do day before/day of/day after or as long as symptoms last.
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One of my husband’s students is dealing with this. Got her second shot today, probably going to miss class tomorrow because of side effects. No real idea if the side effects would have been better without the fasting, of course, but it’s an added complication. But , just so you have the data point, she kept her fast and nothing terrible happened.
Ramadan Mubarak 
ETA of course, she’s 17 or 18, with a teenager’s constitution and stamina.
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shots, shots, shots 
No advice re: fasting, just excitement.
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Everyone I’ve seen has been not fasting the day after if they have side effects, and then sort of choosing what to do day of depending on time of appt. Like if you can drink a lot of water and eat good fuel for sehri, and your appt is in the afternoon, you are probably fine through iftar. If you have a morning shot or miss sehri, you might want to not fast after the shot just because you need water to get things processed.
Also I am not a doctor this is just what I’ve seen my muslim friends that have gotten shots in the past 3 days do 
but one of THEM is a doctor so…
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Seconding the at least water recommendation. I was SO thirsty after my shot.
Are the rules for Ramadan like the catholic fasting rules where one can abstain from fasting due to medical needs? My church was always very clear that God would not be offended if you had to break fast because you were sick.
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Yes if you are sick, no fasting. Also if you are a kid, breastfeeding, pregnant, or on your period. Or otherwise unable to safely fast Those are standard but you can get more complicated if you are looking for loopholes, obviously different depending on which Islamic scholar you are listening to. Some people make up the fast days and some don’t
My friend’s loophole was that she fasted based on the times of Mecca. Which was convienently mostly while she is sleeping in pacific time…
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Our task force is suggesting fasting before and during and only breaking the fast if side effects show up. But also we’re still trying to get first shots happening
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They’ve opened access to the AZ shot for people aged 40+. My current thought is to give it a few days, because there are people who need a shot much more than me, all the teachers, parents, people working outside the home. And then if there seem to be slots, put the shadowy one on to appointment searching. Because I want to get it, but I don’t want to elbow in.
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I think that teachers and essential workers have been eligible for appointments for 2 weeks or so. And the stay at home office workers who are exactly forty in a hot spot booked april 25 appointments on Friday. So I’d say that two weeks is a long time more to wait to book
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thanks, I’ve not kept a close eye, because it was basically ‘not you yet’, which wasn’t helpful for my brain. I was thinking 3-4 days to let parents in and such, but if the shadowy one hears that there is space, I’ll tell them to go ahead.
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I obviously don’t know the religious implications, but I would think you want to be well hydrated for the shot, which probably means water the day before, or at least plenty when you break your fast. The day of the shot, I’d think for sure you at least want water. I was told by the pharmacist to make sure to drink plenty afterwards. I think food is likely less important on either end. Ramadan Mubarak. (I can’t get “Merry Ramadan!” out of my head after seeing Tik Toks from Muslims who had encounters with people trying to be friendly, but not quite getting there…)
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Personally I would eat food day of, because I had to drive 40 minutes to the shot and I was worried about being woozy and driving. (I wasn’t woozy and mostly don’t get woozy from shots, but my sister does and so I was worried 
). I’d probably fast the day before if the shot was in the afternoon so I had time to hydrate day of? But I’d definitely do water day of and day after and then play it by ear depending on how my symptoms went.
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The latest NYT email (main section) cut for length: about fear and returning to normalcy after the vaccine
A fable for our times
Guido Calabresi, a federal judge and Yale law professor, invented a little fable that he has been telling law students for more than three decades.
He tells the students to imagine a god coming forth to offer society a wondrous invention that would improve everyday life in almost every way. It would allow people to spend more time with friends and family, see new places and do jobs they otherwise could not do. But it would also come with a high cost. In exchange for bestowing this invention on society, the god would choose 1,000 young men and women and strike them dead.
Calabresi then asks: Would you take the deal? Almost invariably, the students say no. The professor then delivers the fable’s lesson: “What’s the difference between this and the automobile?”
In truth, automobiles kill many more than 1,000 young Americans each year; the total U.S. death toll hovers at about 40,000 annually. We accept this toll, almost unthinkingly, because vehicle crashes have always been part of our lives. We can’t fathom a world without them.
It’s a classic example of human irrationality about risk. We often underestimate large, chronic dangers, like car crashes or chemical pollution, and fixate on tiny but salient risks, like plane crashes or shark attacks.
One way for a risk to become salient is for it to be new. That’s a core idea behind Calabresi’s fable. He asks students to consider whether they would accept the cost of vehicle travel if it did not already exist. That they say no underscores the very different ways we treat new risks and enduring ones.
I have been thinking about the fable recently because of Covid-19. Covid certainly presents a salient risk: It’s a global pandemic that has upended daily life for more than a year. It has changed how we live, where we work, even what we wear on our faces. Covid feels ubiquitous.
Fortunately, it is also curable. The vaccines have nearly eliminated death, hospitalization and other serious Covid illness among people who have received shots. The vaccines have also radically reduced the chances that people contract even a mild version of Covid or can pass it on to others.
Yet many vaccinated people continue to obsess over the risks from Covid — because they are so new and salient.
Visitors riding the swings at Adventureland, in Farmingdale, N.Y., yesterday.Johnny Milano for The New York Times
‘Psychologically hard’
To take just one example, major mediaoutlets trumpeted new government data last week showing that 5,800 fully vaccinated Americans had contracted Covid. That may sound like a big number, but it indicates that a vaccinated person’s chances of getting Covid are about one in 11,000. The chances of a getting a version any worse than a common cold are even more remote.
But they are not zero. And they will not be zero anytime in the foreseeable future. Victory over Covid will not involve its elimination. Victory will instead mean turning it into the sort of danger that plane crashes or shark attacks present — too small to be worth reordering our lives.
That is what the vaccines do. If you’re vaccinated, Covid presents a minuscule risk to you, and you present a minuscule Covid risk to anyone else. A car trip is a bigger threat, to you and others. About 100 Americans are likely to die in car crashes today. The new federal data suggests that either zero or one vaccinated person will die today from Covid.
It’s true that experts believe vaccinated people should still sometimes wear a mask, partly because it’s a modest inconvenience that further reduces a tiny risk — and mostly because it contributes to a culture of mask wearing. It is the decent thing to do when most people still aren’t vaccinated. If you’re vaccinated, a mask is more of a symbol of solidarity than anything else.
Coming to grips with the comforting realities of post-vaccination life is going to take some time for most of us. It’s only natural that so many vaccinated people continue to harbor irrational fears. Yet slowly recognizing that irrationality will be a vital part of overcoming Covid.
“We’re not going to get to a place of zero risk,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, told me during a virtual Times event last week. “I don’t think that’s the right metric for feeling like things are normal.”
After Nuzzo made that point, Dr. Ashish Jha of Brown University told us about his own struggle to return to normal. He has been fully vaccinated for almost two months, he said, and only recently decided to meet a vaccinated friend for a drink, unmasked. “It was hard — psychologically hard — for me,” Jha said.
“There are going to be some challenges to re-acclimating and re-entering,” he added. “But we’ve got to do it.”
And how did it feel in the end, I asked, to get together with his friend?
“It was awesome,” Jha said
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I saw that circulate in my circles but it had far more to do with the fact that the there are a lot of people who say we should not accept traffic deaths as the cost of doing business. People perceive that traffic violence is a norm we’ve accepted, but it does not have to be. There are actual solutions and policies that reduce deaths on our roadways. Vision Zero is the policy that says we accept 0 deaths on our roadways and our goal is 0.
Same as Covid, though I hadn’t drawn the link. What people are and aren’t willing to accept is interesting. I do wonder, seeing how the argument that was made that covid deaths among vulnerable and older populations was an “acceptable risk” changes for some people (aka some lawmakers…) vs the fact that younger people’s lives are the ones most at risk from traffic violence. Traffic violence is the #1 cause of death for americans ages 1-44.
it makes you wonder if some people don’t really care about other people.
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tomorrow marks a week since i got my 2nd dose. i am feeling fine during the day but still getting slammed with fatigue at like 6-ish pm every day. today it was accompanied by chills and not being able to get properly warm for a few hours.
i’m positive it’s still better than getting covid but really? a week? seems excessive compared to what i’ve seen others going through. blerghhhhh
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I think the past few years have made it abundantly clear, to me, that there are many people who absolutely don’t care about other people.
Can you explain the term traffic violence? Is that only intentional acts? It seems like many deaths are truly the results of accidents. Possibly with fault, say sleepiness, or inability to drive in poor conditions, but no intent to harm. Is this ‘violence’?
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Well, I think the the past year has absolutely cleared up that the All Lives Matter crowd never meant it.
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I am no expert, but I think the point is to say that many of those situations are not really accidents, but happened because of poor design decisions and tradeoffs. e.g. cars go more slowly if there are trees around, so if you decide to put in a highway and don’t have space for trees, you are accepting certain risks. People are probably more likely to not realize they are falling asleep at the wheel if the streets are very long and straight. Those rumble strips on the side probably help a ton.
Like, there used to be a bug in powerpoint that if you had opened the spreadsheet to create a chart, and then your mouse was outside of the spreadsheet and you used the scroll wheel, it would crash powerpoint and you’d lose all your work. It wasn’t an intentional act by anyone at microsoft that powerpoint couldn’t deal with the new scroll wheel, but it certainly lost me hours and hours of work over the years before it was fixed.
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Traffic violence doesn’t have to be intentional. There is a reason we don’t use the word “accidents” when describing traffic crashes In the planning community. Crashes are preventable, even if not by the specific person. They are caused by societal conditions, lack of alternative travel options, and poor engineering conditions.
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Yay, I got an email reminder for my 2nd dose tomorrow at Walgreens.
I realize this does not sound like a big deal, but the Walgreens here have been “losing” people’s 2nd dose appointments a lot lately, I have no idea why. And also cancelling some because OOPS we only have Moderna now at this location but we gave you Pfizer the first time. But from what I read on Vaccine Hunters, if you get the email the day before then you are good. WHEW.
I was mentally preparing for a day of calling around for a second dose today after first calling Walgreens to see if they have any record of me, as this has happened to a lot of people. Now I don’t have to do that, which is a relief.
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