Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Risk of myocarditis following sequential COVID-19 vaccinations by age and sex [pdf]

medrxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 207 posts

Re: Risk of myocarditis following sequential COVID-19 vaccinations by age and sex [pdf]

#101

Post by darkerside »

roenxi wrote: post #72
coolso wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This paper essentially argues that the risk of myocarditis in under-40 males getting 2 shots is greater (perhaps much greater) than the risk of getting it from COVID. There have been similar studies before, but none (that I saw) broken down by age and sex like this. This is especially fascinating to me because for months I noticed that whenever I or anyone else would bring up the fear of myocarditis from the vax (w…

They might still be right; this is only a pre-print, only focused on one specific aspect of COVID and the effect size is small. But if they are wrong, the most likely explanation is they misunderstood something and were just wrong. Ironically, as is well known but bears repeating, the vocal "follow the science" types tend more to be believers in authority figures than people who care what science says. They aren't es…

> Actual scientists will usually be circumspect until the evidence is overwhelming.

It feels so good to read that. I hope that is actually the case, and all the hysteria we're seeing these days is media overamplification.

Re: Risk of myocarditis following sequential COVID-19 vaccinations by age and sex [pdf]

#102

Post by sudosysgen »

Izkata wrote: post #95
sudosysgen wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 doses of pfizer seen to have more thab 75% protection against even Omicron. It was 90% before mutations for two doses The death rate on both are very low but much higher for the virus. However, the risk of hospitalization is significant with the virus, and much, much higher than with the vaccine. I don't want to be hospitalized. That's a very bad time. The people that may die because I took up a hospital spot proba…

> The flu doesn't threaten to collapse the healthcare system without vaccines. Yeah it does, even with vaccines... (2014) https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/flu-patients-fill-north-te... (2015) https://abcnews.go.com/Health/flu-closes-schools-flusters-ho... (2016) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/10/nhs-hospital... (2017) https://www.france24.com/en/20170111-french-hospitals-cancel... (2018) https://time.c…

That is for a few hospitals. The flu is not serious to lead to an actual, complete, collapse of the healthcare system as a whole where no resources are left to treat immediately life threatening conditions. That's what we were facing with COVID.

Even with unprecedented non-pharmaceutical interventions and with vaccines, many first world countries were at the point where they had to cancel cancer surgeries that were not immediately crucial to survival. That's not something that happens with the flu.

Now the flu is very serious as your links show. The flu vaccine is around 40% effective against hospitalization (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33378531/), and around 70% of seniors are vaccinated against the flu, for a total reduction of around 28%.

If we removed that reduction, the flu could still not be severe enough to lead to a complete collapse of the healthcare system without serious intervention. With COVID, that is guaranteed to happen.

But you're right in that the flu is a serious disease that puts a lot of strain on the healthcare system and I can understand how my comment could lead to underestimating that.

Re: Risk of myocarditis following sequential COVID-19 vaccinations by age and sex [pdf]

#103

Post by sudosysgen »

darkerside wrote: post #99
sudosysgen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This preprint agrees that the risk of myocarditis is significantly higher, except if you are a. A male b. Under 40 years old c. Took the Moderna vaccine So the statement that COVID has a higher risk of myocarditis is still true. The media and those people got their information from existing data. This data was correct for the original question. However it wasn't delineated by age and by vaccine, and it's only after t…

So, he just wasn't right yet? ...

Did he qualify the statement or make it in general? If he didn't qualify it, he is simply incorrect.

Additionally, if he suggested that for any demographic the vaccine is more dangerous than COVID, even if he mentioned that it was only for one demographic and only for one vaccine, he was wrong and remains wrong.

Re: Risk of myocarditis following sequential COVID-19 vaccinations by age and sex [pdf]

#104

Post by kuhewa »

1123581321 wrote: post #88
kuhewa wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I'm misrepresenting them even if I paraphrased. The vaccine doesn't saturate the body, and there's no evidence the heart is subject to these side effects due to lipid vesicles being uptaken from circulation because the heart uses them as substrate. Then to not leave any doubt, they cite McCullough on the topic who is way off the rails beyond available evidence.

Your second sentence seems like the most promising path to helpful discussion. It sounds like you're saying the Khan preprint is wrong because of an association with McCullough, but I don't know the name and it doesn't appear in the study (I haven't listened to the podcast.) I'm sure there's more to what you mean by disagreeing with the mechanism the other user proposed.

Nothing appears to be amiss with the Khan preprint, it just doesn't support claims being made.

Re: Risk of myocarditis following sequential COVID-19 vaccinations by age and sex [pdf]

#105

Post by Diesel555 »

blip54321 wrote: post #26
hnuser847 wrote: post #17

Wow, I just got the Pfizer booster a few days ago and I'm an under-40 male who has previously had pericarditis... I was worried about the risk being greater than the reward for my age group but didn't have the age-stratified data to prove it. Kind of regretting it now, especially since I only got it at the urging of my wife. I just needlessly increased the odds of a giving myself a heart issue for absolutely no reaso…

To be fair, we're still talking about 1:10,000 odds. You're much more likely to, for example, be hit by a car in the next year, even if you're in a high-risk category. I tend to run numbers here and compare to events I'm worried or not worried about. I can live with 1:10,000 risks.

What are the odds of being hit by a car in the next year? I'm honestly curious, so I googled what I could find. From what I find the odds of an injury from an accident are 1:8393 which does support your statement (assuming every accident is getting hit by a car).

https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-mortalit...

Do you have better stats?

Re: Risk of myocarditis following sequential COVID-19 vaccinations by age and sex [pdf]

#107

Post by ODILON_SATER »

sudosysgen wrote: post #93
coolso wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This paper essentially argues that the risk of myocarditis in under-40 males getting 2 shots is greater (perhaps much greater) than the risk of getting it from COVID. There have been similar studies before, but none (that I saw) broken down by age and sex like this. This is especially fascinating to me because for months I noticed that whenever I or anyone else would bring up the fear of myocarditis from the vax (w…

This preprint agrees that the risk of myocarditis is significantly higher, except if you are a. A male b. Under 40 years old c. Took the Moderna vaccine So the statement that COVID has a higher risk of myocarditis is still true. The media and those people got their information from existing data. This data was correct for the original question. However it wasn't delineated by age and by vaccine, and it's only after t…

I don't know. I feel that many people got unfairly labelled as "anti-vaxxer" because they simply opposed to forced vaccination --not the efficacy of the vaccine itself, based on the argument that risk of death from covid was relatively very low for healthy adults and children. And given the time constrains for the vaccine production and trials, it would have been prudent to assume that the side effects associated with the vaccines would not be fully revealed in time.

I believe the right move would've been to let people decide, especially after became clear that vaccination did not protect against infection in the medium run with Israel data being abundantly clear already in late spring of this year. I still believe vaccination rates amongst the old would have been extremely high, protecting those who are at-risk the most. I saw this happening in countries like Brazil, old people rushed to take the jab despite no clear mandates in the beginning of the mass vaccination campaign --although a lot of people got the Sinovac which are not as effective as Pfizer or Moderna.

> This preprint agrees that the risk of myocarditis is significantly higher, except if you are a. A male b. Under 40 years old c. Took the Moderna vaccine

A few things to consider, the paper's calculated myocarditis risk post covid is overestimated as it is impossible to know how many people actually caught the virus. It is reasonable to assume that the actual delta (risk myocarditis post vax vs risk myocarditis post covid) is actually larger, I believe this is just the tip of the icerberg.

Also, the bit about Males only. Pretty sure if you stratified the population even further, you'd find that young females are also at a significantly higher risk of myocarditis for vax vs post covid. As some mentioned here, it would be nice if the age intervals were a bit more stratified.

Re: Risk of myocarditis following sequential COVID-19 vaccinations by age and sex [pdf]

#108

Post by 3maj »

sudosysgen wrote: post #93
coolso wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This paper essentially argues that the risk of myocarditis in under-40 males getting 2 shots is greater (perhaps much greater) than the risk of getting it from COVID. There have been similar studies before, but none (that I saw) broken down by age and sex like this. This is especially fascinating to me because for months I noticed that whenever I or anyone else would bring up the fear of myocarditis from the vax (w…

This preprint agrees that the risk of myocarditis is significantly higher, except if you are a. A male b. Under 40 years old c. Took the Moderna vaccine So the statement that COVID has a higher risk of myocarditis is still true. The media and those people got their information from existing data. This data was correct for the original question. However it wasn't delineated by age and by vaccine, and it's only after t…

Government of Ontario (Province in Canada) published data months ago showing that young men were at higher risk from heart issues. Nobody cared and the all the local and federal news outlets refused to report on the numbers.

Re: Risk of myocarditis following sequential COVID-19 vaccinations by age and sex [pdf]

#109

Post by mhh__ »

cblconfederate wrote: post #98

I wish these papers were printed in journals that publish the reviewer comments. In fact i think it should be a requirement for all journals. Unfortunately all online commentary ends up becoming a pissing contest where everyone is trying to outwit each other instead of attacking the paper itself from all angles.

Oh god yes. Considering the leech-like synecdoche journals are for all that stinks in academia at the moment, I really wish they'd try and make a better place for public discussion between experts than Twitter spats.

There are probably far too many papers that academics have discovered flaws in but don't have time to do anything about

Re: Risk of myocarditis following sequential COVID-19 vaccinations by age and sex [pdf]

#110

Post by Ancapistani »

sudosysgen wrote: post #37
mrhands556 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IFR for males under 40 is 500/1000000 or .05% if they’re infected. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

That's a horribly misleading comparison. Compare the risk of illness with severity similar to heart complications, or compare death rates. Don't compare one to the other. The majority of myocarditis cases due to the vaccine don't even require hospitalization.

> The majority of myocarditis cases due to the vaccine don't even require hospitalization.

Interestingly, this stood out to me:

> The outcomes of interest in this study were hospital admission or death from myocarditis. Myocarditis was defined as the first hospital admission in the study period or death using International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 codes (Supplementary Table 6).

In other words, this study didn’t even attempt to measure the rate at which myocarditis occurred in each group - only the rate at which people were hospitalized or died from myocarditis.

Another thing that gave me pause: If someone with COVID-19 developed myocarditis, was hospitalized, and died… I would expect their reported cause of death to be COVID-19, not myocarditis.

Post reply on HN