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Comment by _Microft | Hacker News Reader

The interesting table with absolute numbers is on page 18 of [0]. Expected and observed cases are cases of myocarditis / pericarditis here. Crude rate is the number of cases per 1 million administered doses. Use landscape mode if you are reading this from a mobile device, the table is narrow enough for that.

  Age group  Doses       Crude   Expected Observed 
              administ.   rate    cases    cases

  12–15 yrs    134,041    22.4     0–1        2 
  16–17 yrs  2,258,932    35.0     2–19      79
  18–24 yrs  9,776,719    20.6     8–83     196

[0] (PDF) https://www.fda.gov/media/150054/download

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Crude rate seems to be observed cases per million doses administered.

So a lot more incidents than expected, but still extremely rare (0.002% of doses).

Edit: missed an extra "0" in that percent, thanks for the the catch everyone who did

Thanks! It also says that in the footnote. I added it to the comment.

But it's only been a few months since administration, will the gap between expected and actual keep growing, or will they eventually level out?

Considering it mentions this is showing up within 1 week of administration, and there are already millions of "doses administered" accounted for in the figures, I wouldn't expect the rate to change significantly either way. I'm not a statistician though.

Post-viral myocarditis / pericarditis usually occurs in the days to weeks (up to about a month, generally) following a viral infection.

You mean 0.002% not 0.02%

For those getting worried like I was, it’s 0.002% or one in 50,000, not 0.02% or one in 5,000.

I don’t have the exact figures to hand but a rough googling seems to suggest a 1 in 100k risk for clotting in the AZ vaccine for young adults which of course, in many countries has been withdrawn for such rates in those groups.

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2021/a...

I think in general percentages less than 0.1% should be reported as "1-in-XXX". Certainly when I create pages to measure packet loss I put 1 in 50,000 rather than 0.002%

As a data oriented person I would prefer if the percentage is always available, otherwise I have to calculate it to use with other numbers.

For example: (chance of getting covid) * (chance of specific side effect) = chance of getting covid and experiencing side effect.

All percentages should be reported as "1-in-XXX".

The difference (in "certainty", not "risk") between 90% (1-in-10) and 95% (1-in-20) is the same as the difference between 98% (1-in-50) and 99% (1-in-100).

Yes, let's all look at statistics and not recognize these are real people who are developing heart damage from 'safe' vaccines.

A 0.002% risk of experiencing myocarditis due to the vaccine seems a better deal than catching COVID, which brings a ~0.3% risk of experiencing (symptomatic) myocarditis in a (to my non-expert understanding) similar demographic[1]. Many experts assume COVID will become endemic, so this is not a theoretical risk.

[1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/...

You aren't factoring in the likely substantial underreporting of this, the fact that this could be a symptomless issue until it isn't (i.e. young athletes suddenly having fatal heart failure), the fact that many people just got the vaccine, the possibility that the onset of this takes longer than they think, the low chance of catching covid in the first place, or the fact that the vaccine doesn't even guarantee protection against covid. Not to mention unknown unknowns.

I'm not anti-vaccines, I'm anti this experimental & rushed vaccine. Buy hey let's create vaccine passports and try to force everyone to get it because of politics.

In the same vein you might not be factoring in under-reporting of covid cases or the frequency of bad long-term effects of covid.

>I'm not anti-vaccines, I'm anti this experimental & rushed vaccine. Buy hey let's create vaccine passports and try to force everyone to get it because of politics.

The vaccines were not rushed irresponsibly. The schedule was accelerated and they are under emergency use approval, because of the, you know, emergency.

Also the reason governments want you to get it is not politics but economics.

Its an acute issue that is rare. In this case, its rarer than the normal rate from getting COVID isn't it? The chance of catching COVID is high, not low, without the vaccine. The vaccine does not guarantee protection in the sense that no vaccine does, but thus far it appears to work at least as well or better than any other vaccine. For the health issues, most of your same concerns apply to COVID which by definition carries at _least_ as much risk as the vaccine given its modus operandi. For the symptom in question the risk appears to be lower -- by a LOT -- than if people were to get the virus naturally. Its only being reported at all because the monitoring is good -- did you look at how few cases and the deviation they detected? Its on the order of normal: 100, now: 200, amongs _millions_ of vaccine doses. And presumably that's _after_ they rule out COVID. Per your "not guaranteed protection" line of reasoning, these cases might not even be from the vaccine in the first place, but from people who got COVID right around the same time. I can understand apprehension about new medicine.

As jb775 said, most cases simply won’t be reported. I wouldn’t be surprised if the actual rate is 10-50x higher.

But this is only reported cases. Most people wouldn't report even if they had symptoms. Others could be impacted without currently having symptoms.

Now prop this data of actual medical conditions created as a result of getting the covid vaccine up against the likelihood of getting covid in the first place, and the likelihood of having lifelong side effects as a result of getting covid. Risk of getting an experimental vaccine substantially outweighs the reward of the "protection" it provides.

Not sure why teh parent post got downvoted - we have plenty of examples right here in the various sub threads of people telling us exactly that. Almost none of all those who wrote a comment with their own anecdote seem to have reported it, many only realizing that there even is anything worth reporting after reading this discussion right here.

For most people it is perfectly normal not to report anything unless it's bad enough that they have to see a doctor. Most people already expect some side effects for a few days since we've been told to expect it, for anyone following the media.

A statement about under-reporting is not automatically "anti-vax".

> For most people it is perfectly normal not to report anything unless it's bad enough that they have to see a doctor.

This is exactly what's making me restless. Young men are the least likely group to see a doctor unless it's really bad. Thus the official statistics may be severely underreporting the real situation.

That's about the same rate as clots in AstraZeneca's vaccine.

So if I'm reading this correctly - that means about 1 in 90,000 people are getting myocarditis that otherwise you wouldn't expect to get myocarditis from the vaccine.

Is that correct, and if so, is that a big deal?

This feels like a pretty lazy anecdote to mention off hand without any context of how these two side effects compare in terms of lethality.

Blood clots from the adenovirus vector vaccines are far more lethal than the myocarditis. A good fraction die because the clot happens to be CVST (in the brain).

The mRNA vaccines seem to be the safest overall, although there is curiously little data coming in from inactivated virus vaccines. I'd be interested in seeing if they cause similar issues as the other two.

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