New‐onset autoimmune phenomena post‐Covid‐19 vaccination | Hacker News Reader

New‐onset autoimmune phenomena post‐Covid‐19 vaccination

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

93 pointswalterbell153 comments

I wish we could have a disclaimer on every article/study about vaccine side effects, something like: "This is not an attack on vaccines, pharmaceutical interventions, associated stakeholders or policy makers. This is not a statistical assessment of risk for specific audiences. Please focus feedback and resources on specific treatments for the living human beings who have been injured. Even one in a million is of little consolation when you are the unlucky lottery winner. If we can keep the focus on actionable treatments for helping those few who have been injured, we can improve pre-treatment screening to reduce those few injuries even closer to zero. Let's aim for one in ten million or less."

Thanks you for this thoughtful response. I chose to be vaccinated and unfortunately have suffered serious consequences like a very small number of other people will statistically. It's been pretty disheartening to see that sharing anything negative about vaccines, even those warned about by medical officials, leads to very negative reactions from people (being told to shut up, being censored/downvoted online etc). I honestly no longer discuss why I'm sick or why I can't do certain things with friends or co-workers.

That is awful to hear. I unfortunately think this entire debacle will leave a lasting distrust of our medical providers and institutions. Vaccine hesitant are already distrustful, and I believe in the coming months/year as more stand up to the censorship of these real issues, a growing number of vaccinated will feel mislead and lied to (whether justified or not). The only recovery path I can see is the return of a strong level of informed consent between patient and provider, and big tech getting out of the healthcare game.

A good first step might be making sure the population is educated sufficiently to identify and weigh the risks between a 1 in 1,000,000 side effect, the disease the vaccine protects against, and the pure bullshit peddled by fear mongers.

Right now, we have people in the US who still believe that Covid is no worse than a bad case of the flu. All the evidence (at least for the pre Omicron variants) suggests that the reality, as viewed by death rate, is orders of magnitude more bleak.

> All the evidence (at least for the pre Omicron variants) suggests that the reality, as viewed by death rate, is orders of magnitude more bleak.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of CDC was actually in an interview recently where she said 75% of Covid deaths occurred in people with 4 co-morbidities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa7N-iNkaUE

This statement begs the question of what percentile of deaths occurred with no co-morbidities at all. In my mind at least, I don't know enough about the death rate to inform if its bleak or not judging as a healthy 41 year old without complicating medical factors.

I was looking at the CDC data for that claim, it looks to me like many of those "co-morbidities" referenced appear to be sepsis, respiratory failure, heart failure, and co-infections:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm?fb...

Most of those sound like they would have been caused by COVID. So, were they probably a fairly normal 41 year old, until they were in the hospitalized for COVID, developed complications, and died. Or is there more to the model here?

Even more confusingly, about half of the US population is obese, but it is only mentioned in a small percentage of death reports (up to about of quarter in the younger populations). Taken naively, this would seem to imply that being obese actually strongly protects from death. But I suspect that it is instead simply not being listed in the causes of death in most cases.

To answer my own question two weeks later, it turns out that number quoted on GMA was specifically the percentage of vaccinated people (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/covid-deaths-4-comorbiditi...). Her statement had no relevance to an unvaccinated person, as the grand-parent's comment was asking about.

I'm just an anecdote, but I've had COVID. It was less than a bad case of the flu. To pretend that it affects everyone equally and that they're all the worst thing ever is malpractice. Risk communication should always have been striated by age/comorbidity and let people make decisions from there.

I’ve had it to, after I was vaccinated. The thing is, you don’t know ahead of time how it will affect you. There are lots of examples of 30 something, fit, athletic even, people with no preexisting conditions, getting very sick and hospitalized, dying, or ending up with long COVID.

Beyond that, many people who are sick with it won’t quarantine themselves for 10 days or wear masks and end up infecting others —- assuming they even know they’re infected.

So this attitude of “well it was no big deal for me” does nothing to attenuate the risk downwards for others.

There’s a hell of a lot of selfishness going on by people who just don’t want to be inconvenienced by behavioral changes to protect others.

> There are lots of examples of 30 something, fit, athletic even, people with no preexisting conditions, getting very sick and hospitalized, dying, or ending up with long COVID.

These are anecdotes that stand out specifically because of their rarity. This is why we need what the other poster said - Data striated by age and gender.

While true, there are also examples with vaccine reactions.

There's a hell a lot of selfishness going on by people demanding perfect security and therefore whole industries to be shut down.

I am vaccinated and get tested at least 3 times a week because I still have contact to others, but the selfishness doesn't just affect on position in this debate.

Even if it's true that Covid most direly affects people in certain cohorts (and I think it's fairly clear that this is the case), the behavior of everyone is still a matter of public health for the reason that people in low-risk cohorts can pass the disease on to people in high risk cohorts.

Part of the "public" part of public health is that sometimes it's necessary to take actions as an entire population to limit the risk to a subset of people with higher risks.

I recognize that there are many factors besides dying of Covid at play here. A lot of people have certainly suffered economically, among a great many other affects, as a result of both Covid and the response to it.

I'm not trying to oversimplify here, but it's also not as simple as "let everybody make the best decision for themselves based on the available data". Which I'll point out we (mostly) didn't have in March and April of 2020.

I'm a very similar anecdote. Yes, covid sucked, but it was a mild 48hr illness in my experience. (And in the experience of dozens of my friends.)

It's quite incredible that the GP can complain on the one hand about "the pure bullshit peddled by fear mongers" and then — without apparently recognising the irony — goes on to peddle fear themselves.

Congrats to you and your friends.

Unfortunately that's not the case for hundreds of thousands of your compatriots and millions of your fellow humans.

Conflating fear mongering around vaccines with very few cases of serious side effects (none of which are contagious) with "fear mongering" around the virus itself which has caused literally millions of deaths and untold post-infection issues for millions more is what's really quite incredible.

You don't actually know how common vaccine side effects are, because standard practice is to assume anything that happens >7 days after a vaccine isn't caused by it. This was the standard used in the trials for example. But from the paper:

"the mean time to onset of symptoms [for VITT] after vaccination is 8 days ... The mean time to onset of symptoms after vaccination [for auto immune hepatitis] is 13 days, ranging from 4 to 26 days"

etc. The trials had many other problems like smartphone apps for reporting side-effects that had a fixed list of 'expected' side effects, without any free-form input field to enter new ones. It's clear when you look into the details here that nearly the entire medical system is strongly biased against any findings of side effects and sets things up carefully to let them make such claims, regardless of common sense or what you might expect ethically.

Surely we can deduce whether there are meaningful numbers of serious side effects by looking at past years in population data - especially in populations that have high vaccination rates. If rates have increased markedly, then there's obviously something to investigate. But as noted elsewhere, the rates seem to be 'in line' with pre-vaccine rates for a fair few side effects in a given population. They just get more press now because of the focus on health issues in the media and the hysteria around "vaccine injuries"

You'll get no argument from me that reporting standards leave a bit to be desired. The trials are the trials - they could be improved, sure - but side effect reporting didn't end with trials. Plenty of governments kept tabs on side effects post vaccine once they were being widely administered

But again, you don't know what the true current side effect rate is because it's not being measured honestly. There's a dropbox for people to write in and say they were injured:

https://openvaers.com/covid-data/mortality

which isn't nothing but all such reports are dismissed as coincidences or trolling. That's very unlikely to be the case, but even if you accept that argument, it means governments are forcing the entire population to take brand new drugs on the back of "drug firms assure us there are no long term side effects where long term means more than a week", which beyond being incredibly dishonest, would also be incredibly risky. Asteroids crashing into Earth or nuclear wars have nothing on governments forcing everyone to take a dangerous substance because they blindly trusted the makers.

This saddens me greatly.

I'm continually amazed at the arrogant, ignorant, and down right "head in the sand" nature that has swept across the minds of the land. Worse is that "their thoughts are not theirs". They are being taught to hate you because your truth is inconvenient.

I wish you the best recovery possible.

Good luck with any compensation. I hear it's even harder to get compensated through the countermeasure program than the regular vaccine program.

Yep, a lot of people are unaware that this is covered by a separate, wildly different program. The coverages are outlined here:

https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp/cicp-vicp

CICP only covers severe physical injury or death, has a 1 year filing limit, only covers related reimbursement (not pain and suffering), and is eligibility is an administrative decision (not a judicial one).

If "information is surprise" (Claude Shannon, 1948, https://plus.maths.org/content/information-surprise), we should be celebrating rather than censoring surprising information signals from living human outliers.

I relate. After my vaccination I had about 2 months of severe pains in my gut. I only told a few people because I really believe in the power of the vaccine and know people will twist my own words.

Hopefully you reported to VAERS. People need to report potential events so that the data is present to do statistical analysis on. It's a shame how terrible the data currently is with all the under reporting.

VAERS is garbage in, garbage out. There is no curation since it is self reported, you may as well mine Reddit comments or Twitter to get the same data.

There clearly is some curation because reports appear in the database in batches. Reports can be self reported but don't have to be.

Regardless, even if everything you say is true, what it means is that governments deliberately run useless post-trial safety monitoring mechanisms. Which is terrifying and terrible. Putting all humanities eggs in one basket, literally.

This is true of COVID "cases" and deaths as well.

Not really. Can have all cause mortality data from every year that tells us excess deaths. If we see a spike of 400k excess deaths for 2020 and 2021, then it’s pretty obvious how many to attribute to the virus.

Additionally, if someone is pCR positive, symptom positive, and dies from a cytokine storm, that’s pretty strong evidence.

But we don’t even need the latter. Excess deaths tell us approximately how many the virus killed, period, QED. There’s no denying COVID killed 10x more than the worst flu since 1918.

"Can have all cause mortality data from every year that tells us excess deaths."

Well, sort of for n-order impacts, but not for direct numbers. To do that the other variables have to stay the same, which clearly isn't the case with the affects of lockdown and medical system strains (increased drinking, drug use, mental health strains, etc; less preventative care and access to medical care, etc).

If the virus is indirectly killing people by overwhelming the healthcare system, i’d attribute the deaths to the virus.

Additionally I think we could look at countries whose health systems are bad or non-existent as a proxy to see excess deaths.

Are you trying to defend the notion that COVID isn’t any worse than the flu?

I’d say that as a balancing effect, the social distancing and masking of anything, has reduced deaths from other viruses in these last two years and so excess deaths might be undercounted. (Flu positivity is way down, and only 700 deaths recorded flu positive in 2020-2021 vs 22,000-39,000 in previous two years)

"Are you trying to defend the notion that COVID isn’t any worse than the flu?"

Nobody in this chain has suggested it. The person you responded to said that covid cases and death stats are garbage in garbage out. I would largely agree considering the underreporting of asymptomatic cases as well as the lack of distinction between causative and non-causitive hospitalizations and deaths.

The very argument you are making about possibly fewer deaths from other things supports my argument - the data doesn't exist to cover all the variables and some of the data is garbage. There is a huge difference between direct and n-order deaths, both for covid and other things. We could compare either one so long as we are all on the same page, but what's the point? The conversation was about data quality and not about lethality.

Do you think the data about excess deaths is less reliable than VAERS? On the one hand, we have actual factual data possibly with an unproven (but highly likely) correlation and on other hand, we have VAERS which can simply be spammed by anyone.

This feels like you are trolling at this point. Nobody said they are less reliable. The excess deaths weren't even a point in this discussion until you brought it up. The other commenter specific mentioned covid cases and deaths.

You mention "factual data". The excess death numbers are estimates, per the CDC. They are approximate and could be changed as new information comes to light, etc. No problem with that, but not exactly facts as far as attributing a hard death count.

The issue with the VAERS data isn't people "spamming" it. It's that legitimate potential events are not reported. The purpose of VAERS is to provide early warning. This means people are supposed to report events that don't have a different proven cause. Noise from coincidental events could then be removed using population baseline occurrence. I'd the data simply isn't there, then it's not very useful for that purpose. I believe they also perform some cursory validation with the provider before accepting/confirming it, but I could be wrong.

Yep, and yet it's the data the government uses for identifying issues...

I'm sorry to hear that. We need your voice. There are people who still haven't gotten "vaccinated" and are under pressure to do so. By speaking up you might be able to save someone else from what you're going through. Please don't let people shut you down. Your personal experience is the gold standard of scientific and clinical evidence. Any pushback you get is irrational and based on fear and ignorance.

> By speaking up you might be able to save someone else from what you're going through.

Exactly how? By not getting vaccinated? By making sure the risk of side-effects from the vaccine is lower than the risk of getting the disease? How can you weigh these risks? You can say, by doing statistics. You need to be able do estimate conditional expectations, the more granular the conditions, the better. For example you start with the unconditional expectation of having a severe outcome from Covid vs from the vaccine. The vaccine wins hands down. Then you do expectation conditional on age. The FDA and CDC did that when issuing their approval, and making the recommendations for various age groups. For more granular conditions, the CDC maintains the VAERS database [1], where every adverse event linked to a vaccine is tabulated. For example, let's say the CDC analyses this data set and concludes that for people with kidney stones the vaccine's side-effects outweigh the benefits. The CDC will issue the appropriate recommendation.

How exactly do you think someone's "voice on the internet" will result in people making better informed decisions, vs people actually listening to the CDC recommendations?

[1] https://vaers.hhs.gov/

I hope your situation will improve eventually. Are you at least getting compensated?

Someone else, but my guess would be no. It's not too difficult to get compensated if your injury is on the list of known injuries. This being a new vaccine, there is not a lot of history to have produced a robust list.

If it's not on the list, you have to prove that it was more likely than not caused by the vaccine. You have to provide the theory for the underlying mechanism that caused it. So if it's really rare, you're screwed because there likely hasn't been much if any research on it. Then it will take a minimum of 3 years to into a courtroom because the government has left the vaccine courts severely understaffed.

Dealing with something similar in my family. I believe it's an autoimmune autonomic dysfunction issue brought on by multiple simultaneously administered vaccines. This presented a few days after vaccination and the doctors didn't even report it to VAERS! They had no explanation of the cause yet didn't care to report it as a possible event simply because it's not required by law or "I'm not the primary care physician".

I wish we didn't need that disclaimer. This is not how science or the scientific method is supposed to work. You shouldn't need an entire paragraph apologizing about your findings so that armchair warriors and tech companies don't censor you.

It's honestly quite disturbing that this kind of upfront apologizing is needed.

Even HN has censored/flagged some papers, forestalling review and discussion. Time will tell if this was justified.

HN commonly deletes this stuff. Just today I saw a blog post from a professor in California on the efficacy of vaccines against Omicron over time. Went back to the HN home page and, poof, gone.

I appreciate how the abstract points this out:

> In fact, we do not aim to disavow the overwhelming benefits of mass COVID-19 vaccination in preventing COVID-19 morbidity and mortality

This is basically why you should always refrain from banning your opposition by means that aren't an argument.

I'm in this boat. I'm worried I now have a life long disability before 35. I'm waiting for an appointment with a Rheumatology consultant and I have been told by my doctor they have been inundated with people with post COVID vaccine side effects.

Edit: I would like to hear other people's experiences if they are willing to post them.

I’m sorry to hear about your issues. With respect, I’ll take a stand against your claim of there being a tsunami of patients with vaccine injuries innundating rheumatologists - I am in the field and continue to ask colleagues if they are seeing anything of the sort and no-one has seen anything like this.

However, if it is happening, we will surely see it in the data. Australia is almost fully vaccinated (but also more recently vaccinated than say the US) so maybe what you’re saying is still coming, but I think it is important to remain skeptical of large numbers of vaccine injured until there is reasonably robust data

Australian with pericarditis here. Both my cardiologist and GP told me they’ve seen a flood of patients (mostly 30-something men) and both told me separately that the published numbers are obviously wrong.

What I think is occurring, at least in the case of myo/pericarditis, is that nobody reports cases unless the outcome is really bad. GPs do not habitually report to the TGA, and most specialists don’t either. So the official numbers are really only those who went to hospital and it was bad enough that someone bothered to fill out the TGA form.

The TGA reporting is incredibly easy so that is disappointing. Speaking to my sister (cardiologist) and colleagues in GPland and physicians training I have not heard this - although I am easily able to accept that peri/myocarditis in its mild to moderate forms is more prevalent than the reported instances. I don’t wish to minimise your own experience but think the real crux will be if broader, more significantly lifelong autoimmune conditions develop.

Here in the US, the VEARS system is pretty easy to file a report. It suffers from severe under reporting.

At least you got a diagnosis. I know someone having the symptoms of a pericarditis for several weeks now but the doctors don't acknowledge them, telling they were merely pycholocial. If nobody reports these issues then they won't be widely known and they won't be treated.

Same here in the US with VAERS.

>I’ll take a stand against your claim of there being a tsunami of patients with vaccine injuries in i dating rhumatologies

I'm not making that claim. I'm only providing an anecdote about my local health service and that is what I have been told.

> However, if it is happening, we will surely see it in the data.

I guess it will take time since these conditions can take time to manifest or be diagnosed. I really hope it proves to be a rare occurrence.

Well I’m taking a stand against the anecdote then

> Well I’m taking a stand against the anecdote then

I am not generalising, just providing a single data point about my local health service which is very relevant to my treatment. Even if it an outlier or does not match your colleagues experiences it does not make it less true for me.

I recommend reading the top comment by walterbell. Not everything is an attack on medicine/science. While it's important to keep discussions honest/scientifically accurate, it's also important to show some empathy and realise not everything is a debate or attack.

If you read my comment you will see that it is not, in fact an attack on you and if I had not made the unfortunate use of the word ‘claim’ and instead said ‘I’d like to counter your anecdote with one of my own …… and lets wait until there’s more data’ then we wouldn’t be having this thread. As it stands I apologise and also retract my snappy comment that you are replying to above.

The problem with anecdote, whichever way you cut it, particularly in a charged debate like this, is that they get picked up and snowball just like the election being stolen. People believe them, even if there is no data. Now we can’t wait until the data is in in every circumstance particularly in a public health crisis. So it’s appropriate to try and inform, listen to the stories, and do the studies, and also recognise that when you try and give some new medication to billions of people there’s bound to be some blowback. But how much? To what degree? And are we communicating the issues in a truthful, timely and non-alarmist manner?

I agree and I really hope that in the long term the data proves any side effects are extremely rare and my experience is an outlier.

The way the public conversation has unfolded in this crisis has been extremely disappointing to say the least and I understand your position. All the misinformation, conspiracy theories and politicising has made any real conversation impossible. Anything can and will be used to undermine confidence in vaccines. Unfortunately that means genuine issues get bundled in with the untrue in most peoples minds in my experience at least. I really don't envy anyone in the medical field at the moment when facts are twisted/discarded and people are dying as a result.

I couldn’t agree more

> The problem with anecdote, whichever way you cut it, particularly in a charged debate like this, is that they get picked up and snowball just like the election being stolen

Rationalize all you want, you just stated that you don't like this information. Sometimes words reveal ourselves.

> we will surely see it in the data

Thats only assuming you have proper data collection and reporting in place. The current systems to do so are laughable.

We need more independent open-source data collection and analysis to supplement the limited reporting in VAERS (https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html, https://medalerts.org, https://www.howbadismybatch.com, https://openvaers.com/covid-data).

Oct 2021, https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/covid-vaccine-injur...

> More than 1,300 COVID vaccine-related injury claims are now pending before an obscure government tribunal ... Lawyers tell me the vaccine is so new that there’s virtually no definitive research on injury causation to cite ... In the meantime, people like McFadden face a strict one-year deadline from the date of vaccination to file a claim with the CICP.

2021 news reports on heart issues in athletes (missing baseline numbers for prior years): https://airtable.com/shrbaT4x8LG8EbvVG/tbl7xKsSUIOPAa7Mx

My MIL has rheumatoid arthritis which came on suddenly last year out of nowhere. It’s always in the back of your head that perhaps it has some link to the vaccination but I’m withholding judgment until proper statistics are available. She was a ( daily ) smoker but has given up since the diagnosis.

Note that everyone in both families are vaccinated, boosted etc and it has not changed her opinion on vaccination.

Rheumatoid arthritis among older female smokers is very common

Indeed, that’s why I gave the context.

---- deleted sorry I don't want to end up on a list ----

You know, you're also living through a global pandemic - that's a lot of mental weight to deal with whether you're conscious of it or not. The virus is an invisible, borderless threat to your existence. That's a lot of "24/7 background" stress to exist in with no relief, which makes it difficult to handle other stresses that life throws up.

I wonder if perhaps it's the global situation of the last 2 years that's causing issues rather than the vaccine

It's been a real struggle for lots of people, mental health wise, and given the US health system, I expect it's difficult to get support.

Anyway, I hope things improve whether it's a "vaccine injury" or something else

Don’t forget the placebo effect works both ways. All the antivax people that got the vaccine even though they may not have wanted to, are going attribute everything weird that then happens to the vaccine.

This is all going to take years to sort out and figure out what’s real and what’s not. And we’ll never know 100%. The bigger issue is whether we’ll be able to trust our present or future leaders to let science do its job.

> This is all going to take years to sort out and figure out what’s real and what’s not.

This is usually sorted out before mass vaccination. We rolled out completely novel technologies and skipped the medium and long term safety steps.

If these negative outcomes turn out to be true, there will be no going back from this. The future of mRNA will be circling the drain, and vaccination in general may go down with it. Distrust in science and government will soar and it may take decades to fix.

> If these negative outcomes turn out to be true, there will be no going back from this.

I really hope that we can have a sensible discussion about safety and relative risks with 90% of the population.

(Naive, I know...)

That seems incredibly unlikely. People who have been hesitant to get the vaccine have been mocked and ridiculed for months. I honestly can’t even imagine what will happen if it turns out that they were right to be hesitant.

There are no caveats to all the statements that the vaccines are safe and effective.

Speaking personally, they’ll need to do an amazing job quantifying the risks and performing further long-term studies before I would consider an additional booster shot.

One thing IMO - that would help our leaders is if they recognize “science” is not a person or a thing… it’s a process. Away if thinking that allows for the discovery of both positive and negative outcomes. It is a process. /2cents

"This is all going to take years to sort out and figure out what’s real and what’s not."

It shouldn't have to if the system actually works. The problem is VEARS sees significant under reporting. In theory, you should report every little thing that has an unknown cause. Then researchers can view the data and eliminate symptoms by comparing them to the population baseline occurrence.

We have unvaccinated control groups in countries that don't get a vaccine, so we probably will know at some point.

I'm starting to think 100% vaccination is a weird goal. There have been examples of drugs that only caused issues years after taking it. Thalidomide (called "Neurosedyn" in Sweden) is one. Even if issues arise right away, it may take years to gather statistical data to agree on the risk factors. In the meantime, to any one doctor, it may look random.

Injecting every person on Earth with one of only a few, new, vaccines seems dangerous. This has me wondering about two things:

1) Isn't it good to have an unvaccinated control group? 5-10%? Not just based on people who for some reason cannot take any vaccine, but healthy individuals.

2) Shouldn't we only use a single vaccine for every dose per person? To narrow the population affected by potential unknown side-effects.

Has anyone heard any officials/domain experts discuss this?

(I'm not against vaccination per se, and am myself on the third dose already. I'm just worried we're blinded by one danger, and willingly heading into another.)

They should have some kind of "can't remove from headline" disclaimers for papers like this to keep them from fueling idiocy.

This paper lays out in it's intro that it will make no attempt to find causation, yet in media this headline will be used almost exclusively to prove that point.

And yet also it’s standard medical practice to assume causation (for the purpose of not causing harm) when there exists correlation of adverse events with new treatments until proven otherwise.

If you read the paper it discusses causal mechanisms extensively. Reality is you can't get a paper about vaccine side effects out, or keep it out, unless you grovel in the intro and state that vaccines are wonderful, safe and everyone should take them. Skip the obligatory morality disclaimer at the start and you'll see lots of case studies where causality is obvious, along with discussions of how it works, e.g.

"A 67-year-old patient from Hispanic had petechial rashes on her legs and chest 2 weeks after receiving the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech). Then, she received the second dose of the vaccine two days prior to developed bleeding in her gums, a rapid rash covering her body and a subconjunctival haemorrhage in the right eye"

...

"There are several putative mechanisms by which COVID-19 vaccine triggers immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (ITT). First, Greinacher and colleagues considered that COVID-19 vaccination causes a rare ITT mediated by activation of antibodies against PF4 that stimulate platelets through their Fcγ receptors"

...

"First, an interval of 1–3 weeks between vaccination and the onset of symptoms supports a temporary causal relationship"

...

"For instance, a 30-year-old man, without family history of kidney disease, developed fevers, headache and brown-coloured urine, coupled with new-onset haematuria and proteinuria 1 day after vaccination, eventually diagnosed with IgA nephropathy"

Would these people have had a similar issue had they contracted COVID? In other words, is it the spike protein or the delivery mechanism that is causing these problems?

This is a pretty non-controversial paper and doesn't contain anything shocking or previously unknown, but the title has the potential to cause controversy. Here's my quick summary:

- Previous vaccines for HPV, Hepatitis B and Flu are known to (rarely) trigger or worsen autoimmune diseases such as Guillain-Barré syndrome.

- Lots of new Covid vaccines have been created globally using a wide variety of technologies (mRNA, Adenovirus vector, inactivated virus, etc), so it stands to reason they could trigger rare side effects and different technologies might be associated with different side-effects.

- It seems wise to research how different side-effects might happen with each type of vaccine.

- These side-effects are so rare that it has not been proven they are caused by the vaccines - "However, whether the association between COVID-19 vaccine and autoimmune manifestations is coincidental or causal remains to be elucidated." But given the timing of them occurring in large populations post-vaccination, it's worth researching the possible mechanisms to figure out why they happen and see if they can be prevented.

- Even when side effects do occur, they can typically be treated using the standard protocols for each condition. But the more we know about them, the better we would be at treating them and at predicting which patients would be more likely to be at risk of developing them.

- The risk of rare side effects does not mean that populations shouldn't be vaccinated, because the risks of COVID-19 itself are higher - "We encourage and support COVID-19 vaccination globally to create an immunity barrier among population."

- But we should monitor for side-effects and learn about the mechanisms at work so we can prevent them, possibly by screening patients most at risk - "Systematic monitoring and ongoing follow-up of autoimmune events will be critical in identifying potential associations between autoimmune manifestations and COVID-19 vaccination, specific mechanisms of diagnosis and risk stratification for future vaccination."

So in short, let's all be grown ups and study the rare side-effects of vaccines so we can make them every more rare through better prevention and/or treatment.

Here are the specific conditions they theorize might be (in rare cases) triggered or worsened by the two most common types of vaccines in the West:

mRNA (Pfizer, Moderna)

- Vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (i.e your blood won't clot well)

- Immune thrombocytopenic purpura (bruising caused by low platelets)

- Autoimmune liver diseases

- Guillain–Barré syndrome

- IgA nephropathy (i.e. kidney problems)

- Rheumatoid arthritis

- Graves' disease (i.e. thyroid problems)

- Type 1 diabetes mellitus

Adenovirus vector (Johnson & Johnson, AstraZenica)

- Vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (i.e your blood won't clot well)

- Autoimmune liver diseases

- Guillain–Barré syndrome

- Rheumatoid arthritis

- Systemic lupus erythematosus (i.e. Lupus)

The paper also summarizes how these might be caused, but that's way beyond a summary. Just read the paper of you are interested.

The main problem I have with all these papers is that they don't compare to the rates of symptoms from having had Covid.

A lot of the idiocy these kinds of papers cause would be muted if you could point at the paper and say "Probably of X from vaccine--N%. Probability of X from Covid--N+M%."

Of course, if the probability of X is less than with Covid--that's important to know, as well. It defines which vaccines we should be administering.

> “Probably of X from vaccine--N%. Probability of X from Covid--N+M%."

It’s always important to do the math. But you’ve missed the third, and most obvious, calculation.

Probability of X from vaccine+Covid — 2N+M, or whatever.

If that were the case, it would be very unusual and we wouldn't have to flag it as researchers would be jumping all over that.

> Even when side effects do occur, they can typically be treated using the standard protocols for each condition.

But most of these conditions don’t have great standard treatments? For example, auto-immune conditions are “treated” by taking immunosuppressive medications indefinitely.

Nice summary - with apologies I’ll nitpick - I am not aware of VITTP from mRNA vaccines. (Edit - I dial this back - I see the piece in the paper where they mention the case series from mRNA vaccines)

I think (I guess the audience of a scientific paper is more general a scientific audience) that it would be nice if there was at least a comparator paragraph to the risks of actual COVID disease.

Molecular mimicry is to me the most likely mechanism of the whole thing, and we keep finding out new ways COVID is damaging people down the track - this recent paper (below) shows a reasonably scary rise in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes in those less than 18 with a recent COVID infection.

Terrifying.

- (source) https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7102e2.htm?s_cid=mm...

> rise in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes in those less than 18 with a recent COVID infection

https://twitter.com/j_g_allen/status/1479876564930248708

> Careful with this study on diabetes. Worth skipping ahead to the limitations section…

  1. Single ICD code
  2. Differential exposure misclassification
  3. No covariates (obesity?!)
  4. only included those seeking care + insured

> (actually a great teaching case for EPI 101!)

Thank you

For VITT the evidence is pretty conclusive as far as I know, but this is a side effect particular to the AZ and J&J vaccines. I don't think any of the other ones except Guillain-Barré on the list have occured often enough to be able to really investigate causality, and they're not on the list of known side-effects on the label.

This is a review, it's not even trying to quantify anything or judge risks. This is an overview of possible mechanisms for thes autoimmune diseases in this situation.

I have an in-law who's been diagnosed with Crohn's disease, having been sick since her second AZ shot.

How much of this can be explained by pure statistics? When you have vaccination rates of 60% and above, you're going to see very rare diseases and disorders show up in the treated population. Correlation doesn't imply causation.

It would be great to see what the prevalence of diseases in treated population is compared to that in the previously (pre-covid) untreated population, I expect that comparing against the currently untreated population could be problematic due to the higher incidence of covid in this population.

I feel that the paper (from a scan admittedly) is more a anecdotal listing of cases so I don't get a feel for whether the needle has shifted or not wrt autoimmune case incidence. While I think it's a great idea to look into the effects of the vaccination on folks, I also fear that the downside effects of anti-vaxxers waving this paper around out of context saying you see you shouldn't get vaccinated because you're going to have all these autoimmune issues.

Downplay or pretend that side-effects do not exist will only exacerbate the already high distrust on medical institutions. Acknowledgement, sincerity and the will to improve is the only way to fix the huge distrust that has been built in the last couple years (or maybe decades).

Anyone that's worried about autoimmune phenomena after vaccination should look at autoimmune phenomena post Covid infection

Disclaimer: Former public health researcher; strongly pro-vaccine.

Your point is true. However, people may find the phrasing slightly aggressive.

The people posting symptom reports here mostly seem to be level-headed and understanding of the public health benefit they took a risk to bring about.

There needs to be an accepting forum for people to report negative outcomes. Such statements provide necessary information on the risks associated with the vaccine, and how to mitigate these risks. They are pro-vaccine.

> There needs to be an accepting forum for people to report negative outcomes. Such statements provide necessary information on the risks associated with the vaccine, and how to mitigate these risks.

I definitely agree with this, and the risks should be known. Especially in the context of a spreading virus.

But you can get COVID after vaccination too? How exactly does your argument sway someone either way? Just saying that both the disease and the vaccine cause the same side effects is not much of an argument…

Disclaimer: I’m fully vaccinated.

But they aren’t in the same magnitude - for example, incidences of peri/myocarditis is 30x (at a minimum) greater in someone who has COVID vs someone vaccinated; and vaccination leads to shorter milder breakthrough infections which (should - I can’t claim to have seen a study) lead to a lower incidence compared to someone who was unvaccinated and infected

Yes, that’s my doubt as well. Until we have more unbiased studies coming out, we can’t determine the impact of these side effects.

The problem with pro-vaccine propaganda is that it tells you to blindly listen to the science. The problem with that is “the science” is controlled by commercial interests and profit margins. It’s like telling everyone democracy is the One True Way and we end up in last-stage capitalism.

Well - I’m not sure I have doubts but I remain open to the possibility. As a doctor and public health advocate I think the vaccines are miracles and have saved already millions of lives. Our society is already fundamentally changed by the damage wrought by the virus. There are over 140,000 ORPHANS that have been created by COVID in the last 2 years in the US alone [0].

The vaccine is safe and effective, if unfortunately not sterilizingly effective. We could not have sat on our hands for 2 years waiting to see what happened to the 40,000 people in the initial trials.

If there is another chapter to the vaccine story it will come out, because ‘the science’ is not controlled by commercial interests and profit margins, ‘the science’ is something done by thousands of doctors and researchers scattered all over the planet, with access to huge troves of data that are not necessarily all entertained with corporate interests like in the US, and these people care about 2 things : the truth, and the people they care for every day.

I don’t want to get into a grinding debate about the commercial interests behind the vaccines - I am ready to accept that they quite often work in ways that would fail the smell test. But that is not science, science is the process of developing a better resolution of the truth and whilst it may be subverted by corporations it can not be stopped

0- https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p1007-covid-19-orpha...

You wrote a very long reply, but didn’t really address my argument directly. I am fully vaccinated, but I’m not blind to capitalistic interests and corruption.

The “science” in this case are vaccines produced by pharmaceutical corporations that have the ability to dictate that developing countries pledge their sovereign assets to cover their exorbitant pricing. (1) All vaccine companies are fighting over patents and ownership. And there’s innumerable other scandals. (2)

You appear to trust authorities way more than I do, so we probably won’t ever see eye to eye on this.

(1) https://www.fdanews.com/articles/202403-pfizer-stops-demandi...

(2) https://www.transparency.org/en/press/covid-19-vaccines-lack...

> The vaccine is safe and effective

Both the mRNA and the Adenovirus-based vaccines are novel and their long-term effects have not been studied. There is simply no scientific evidence that these vaccines are safe.

The benefits of administering these vaccines to vulnerable groups may outweigh the risks. But doing so for groups with little risks from Covid or even children where much less data is available is very questionable.

I'm responding with anger, thus I ask for mercy and understanding.

I used to be one of the authors of that science. I spent 7 years of my life working on it.

For this my take-home pay was close to the poverty line. I was qualified for a ~500K/year job at FANG.

That's a heavy sacrifice, not commercial interest and profit margins.

Your anger is misplaced. You assume I’m talking about individuals; I’m blaming capitalist corporations. Science is not a person, it is a process that involves innumerable functions of people - only one of which are the actual scientists.

A great example is the Boeing MAX scandal, where management ignored the engineers and pushed ahead. To be clear, I’m accusing Pfizer et all of corruption. And given their history, I don’t think I’m too off the mark. Underpaid scientists like you should be angry at the corporations and administrations that stole your money.

Yunohn, you are the one who used the term "the science" which you consider controlled by corporate interests. Mellavora's anger at your comment is justified since at the very least you were directly accusing them of being complicit. You are weaseling out.

Pfizer, can be corrupt, and price gouge, and be the perpetrator of various other evils. That does not change the fact that the vaccine they are mass producing based on research done by BioNTech, is ammong the most effective and safest of the 20+ vaccines. And that all of the available vaccines are vastly safer than the disease.

> You are weaseling out.

Thanks for telling me what I meant. But I did not mean that, and the square quotes were intentional. It’s a way of speaking that’s quite widely accepted, and referring to a phenomenon rather than individuals. Surely this is not new to you? Like when someone criticises an authority’s decision, the blame is on the decision makers, not the line workers.

Not much to respond to the rest of your comment - I wasn’t telling people to not get the vaccine, and I’m fully vaccinated myself. I’m emphasising the value of skepticism and questioning authority. Cheers!

What are you talking about? You consider "the science" to be e phenomenon? What does that even mean?

Also, plenty of people who are (voluntarily or involuntarily) spreading FUD are not directly telling others to do or not do something. They are just asking questions. And keep asking the same questions even after they have received answers repeatedly. It is still spreading FUD.

Skepticism and questioning authority is good, spreading FUD is not.

If you think I’m absurd for questioning authority and skepticism in situation where profits are astronomical and will be enforced by governments, I have a bridge to sell you.

Regardless, I can tell in your reply that you think of me as a kook, conspiracy theorist. Gday!

I do not consider scepticism and questioning authority absurd. I consider them healthy.

But I do consider persisting in the belief that "they" are hiding some unknown dangerous side effects from us to be absurd. Because there has been so much scrutiny over these vaccines. Each side effect was heavily analysed in multiple countries. Already more than half of the worlds population has been vaccinated. The vaccines are vastly safer than the disease.

> The problem with that is “the science” is controlled by commercial interests and profit margins.

Is it? A good proportion of academia is funded by states, non-profits, and tuition from undergraduate students, and researchers generally operate with a great degree of autonomy. Of course there is corrupt research out there, but I see little evidence that it's pervasive.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to live in 2022 and argue that academia isn’t influenced by capitalistic interests. This is so backwards of a viewpoint that I don’t have the time to argue further.

"influenced" is a much weaker claim than "controlled". Yes, there's a commercial influence, but does that prevent studies that are against those commercial interests from being conducted or those commercial studies from being criticised: no it doesn't.

I did not intend to weaken my claim - I actually do believe that most of research is controlled by commercial interests in one way or another.

Governments and corporations alike allocate capital towards research that they think benefits the populace or shareholders. This is measured with a dollar value, like most things in life (thank you last stage capitalism).

While the influence on certain topics might be lesser, it is definitely stronger for other topics. The vaccines are a good example of the latter, since it’s a highly profitable venture with a TAM of the entire global population. You can see this in broad daylight where Pfizer wanted to make their data public only after 75 years (1). Surely good science doesn’t need secrecy?

If this doesn’t invoke skepticism into how most research is influenced similarly, I’m not sure what to say.

(1) https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/paramount-importanc...

> You can see this in broad daylight where Pfizer wanted to make their data public only after 75 years (1). Surely good science doesn’t need secrecy?

Indeed it doesn't, and it seems that was upheld by the courts which made sure that there wasn't such secrecy. To me this is evidence that while they are powerful forces with ulterior motives, there are also powerful forces fighting for the common good. And that a good proportion of the time they are successful.

I would still beg to differ, but I can see that you’re infinitely more positive than I am.

Going to court to release such important data, should be a last resort. The elites and rulers should be happy to enforce this upfront. This only shows that there’s something to hide, and as we’ve seen before - they could easily fake/hide/destroy the evidence by the time they end up releasing it. Do note that it hasn’t been released yet.

@robbiep wasn't agreeing with you.

If you would of made this comment in the 70's or 80's you would have been called a commie bastard. You manage in just two sentences to conflate 3 different notions into one single "bad thing ™": science, capitalism and democracy.

Democracy does not equal/result in/require/corelate with/mean the same as/etc. capitalism. Before Marx, the very vast majority of non-democratic regimes have been capitalist.

There is no such thing as "the science" to people engaged in doing science. "The science" is only a concept for people who stay away from scientific pursuit. There is a thing called scientific consensus that means the collection of knowledge scientists widely agree best describes reality at a given moment in time.

The scientific consensus is not controlled by commercial interests for many reasons. Among those reasons here are just two: plenty of science is publicly funded and the scientific consensus is global therefore being beyond the capabilities of any single entity to direct. Individual scientists may be biased, but that bias is not coherent in the population of scientists.

In the case of Covid vaccines, even if "the science" was controlled by commercial interests, that would still not result in a conspiracy. There are 20+ vaccines and each manufacturers commercial interest would be to discredit competitors and sell more of their own.

The scientific consensus is pro-vaccine because vaccines have been prooven repeatedly in the past 100+ years to result in higher quality and longer duration of life. There is no consensus on which vaccine is better (for various definitions of better). But there is consensus that covid vaccines are the best tools humanity has for the foreseeable future to fight against the pandemic. And there is consensus that they are orders of magnitude safer than the disease.

Also, there is no blind single mindedness. The very reason you know about all of the side effects that have surfaced so far is because science was done. If "the science" was controlled, the featured article would not exist. We have known about the existence of side effects of vaccines since the start. Side effects were predicted and expected since before the vaccines existed, because all medication has side effects. They have been measured, and continue to be measured. This study is just one step on our quest to ever more precisely measure those side effects. So, yes, the impact of the side effects has been sufficiently determined to conclude that at the very least vaccination against covid is orders of magnitude safer than the risk of covid itself.

The the confusion you display by corelating such different notions in your comment, shows you have bought a narrative peddled by some grifters, hook, line and sinker. The same as all the people deceived to believe that the MMR vaccine causes autism.

Be sincere with yourself and admit that, at this point in time, the only studies you will consider unbiased are those that will confirm your own bias, namely that you consider the side effects of covid vaccines to be too risky.

Ok, but if I get vaccines I’m exposed, but may not be exposed to Covid or at least a variant that causes an immune disorder.

You’re at a 30x (minimum) increased risk, as well as running a 0.5-2% chance of dying depending on your state of health. If you’re less than 18, you have a higher risk of type 1 OR type 2 diabetes. Anyone who willingly runs that risk in the light of a (let’s face it, extremely safe) alternative is making some sort of strange calculus that is not in any way rational

Source for 30x risk of autoimmune disorder?

And no, the floor of fatality is not 0.5%, you’re off by an order of magnitude (too high) at least.

And source for risk of diabetes.

You’re throwing a lot of “facts” around that don’t seem to be true.

I am unfortunately off by a long way on myocarditis, the reported rates are 5-6x. I was confused, my apologies. [1, 2].

The diabetes link is 3. After posting it in another post I was directed to some useful criticism.

My numbers are IFR rates in a pre-vaccinated world not controlling for age. I think you’ll have to refine your counter claim on mortality, certainly it is lower in children and young adults, but CFR from early in the pandemic (and I accept poor correlation between incidence and reported cases) was scarily high for young adults before we knew how to treat it.

1. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133462-800-myocardi...

2. https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2021...

3. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7102e2.htm?s_cid=mm...

Nearly 0.2% of the US has died of COVID, so he can’t be that far off on his estimate, not knowing the age of yourself or other readers.

He said the lower bound was 0.5%.

So as a healthy 30 year you’re saying my risk of death is 0.5%?

And note the CDC said they’ll be providing data on who “died with covid” versus who “died from covid”.

Yeah, 0.5% might be a plausible lower estimate for his statement of an average member of the US population, but is probably a bit low. That assumes that 50% of the US population already got COVID, 0% got vaccinated, and none of them get COVID again. What we actually know is that re-infection with omicron is fairly common, that there are still many (unvaccinated) people have not yet ever been infected, and that the majority of the US is vaccinated.

So, I can't say your risk, since you didn't mention if you are vaccinated. Being vaccinated is statistically the best way to reduce the risk of death or other severe long-term health issues (other than getting younger) relative to your baseline risk, largely independent of age (the trials for very young children are still on-going). My sources for this are talking to doctors and reading the official reports.

Unless you're planning to isolate at home indefinitely or live somewhere very remote you are pretty much guaranteed to be exposed to covid at some point. A good proportion of my friends have already had it twice. Consider that Omicron is more infectious than the common cold and how many colds you've had in your life.

The main risk factor in whether you develop an auto-immune disorder (other than the specifics of your own body and immune system which you can't do much about) seems to be the severity of the infection. You can still get these issues with a mild infection, but it's much less likely. And a vaccine pretty much is just a very mild infection with an engineered variant that can't reproduce, which then also reduces the severity if you later catch it. So intuitively it would seem like a pretty good bet. And as others have pointed out the statistics support that this is also true in practice.

Sure, I might be exposed in the next few years, but that variant may be very different than current ones.

What if I got infected before being eligible to be vaccinated?

Then most likely you're not amongst the ones that suffer a reaction

> Anyone that's worried about autoimmune phenomena after vaccination should look at autoimmune phenomena post Covid infection

Hard to ignore, what with this being shoved down my throat 24/7 for 1.5 years.

Maybe the people affected would have got the same autoimmune reaction from both vaccination and infection.

For me, the post-viral symptoms have been a lot worse than the virus itself.

I developed gout in my mid 20s after a viral infection. My uric acid is always in the normal range and I get stereotypical gout symptoms including Tophi now that I’m 50. I can usually predict a gout attack when I get a cold, I have a feeling my immune system gets ramped up and my feet are collateral damage.

So I guess my point is, what percentage of the population is like my case and will eventually get an autoimmune issue from a viral infection? Omicron looks like it’s be eventually going to infect everyone, so avoiding the vaccine for a one in a million autoimmune reaction might be delaying the inevitable when you get infected by Omicron for real.

I have had autoimmune reactions from other viral infections too.

I don't think I got any worse after COVID-19 vaccination so I don't regret having it done if it helps the overall public health situation.

> Maybe the people affected would have got the same autoimmune reaction from both vaccination and infection.

Hard to tell directly, as it also has to do with how the virus spreads during an infection in a given person. But it is certainly a good area of research.

Isn't cytokine storm in the late stage of corona infection exactly that?

Kinda, but I'm not sure if it fits the autoimmune definition or just a runoff immune response (but still against the antigens)

Many people don't realize that antibody production is not necessarily a good thing. In a strep infection, antibodies are what actually cause rheumatic fever. That's why antibiotics are so important to kill off the infection before the adaptive immune system kicks in.

Anyone knows if it's common practice in China to write scientific papers first in Chinese and then translate into English? This paper is very good written!

It was probably assembled by professional editor. It is great job for digital nomads, and many bright people in line for this type of work. And paper has a good budget, there is an ad on first page :)

is anyone able to explain this in plain english please ?

This meta-study summarises various studies that look into reported cases of auto-immune problems after vaccination.

Most of these are in the order of 1-2 cases per million vaccine doses, and often close to the natural background rate of these problems manifesting in otherwise healthy individuals: If you look at 100,000 people for a year, you expect 2 of them to contract Guillain–Barré syndrome naturally, 1 to develop blood clots, etc. pp.

So the various studies also determine if there even is a statistically significant increase or not, which there sometimes is, sometimes isn't. The meta-study summarises all that.

And even taken together, all the various problems are not significant enough to counterindicate any of the vaccines, given just how much more dangerous covid infections are:

> Although allergic reactions to vaccines are rare, as vaccination programmes are being rolled out globally, many vaccine-related side-effects are being reported. Importantly, we do not aim to disavow the overwhelming benefits of mass vaccination with COVID-19 in controlling COVID-19 pandemic and preventing COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. We encourage and support COVID-19 vaccination globally to create an immunity barrier among population.

I'm not an immunologist, but skimming through this it seems to describe patient cases who developed auto-immune disorders after - not necessarily because of - a mRNA covide vaccine, and describes possible causal chains in the immune system.

Since these cases emerged within a month, it seems to describe extremely rare side-effects rather than anything widespread but as of now yet unknown.

One thing to note - they cover case reports following six major vaccine platforms, not just the mRNA ones. The review seems pretty good about differentiating when summarizing, but a lot (maybe a third?) of their descriptions of the individual case reports don’t specify which vaccine was given so you have to jump to the cited report in those cases.

It's a catalogue of potential side effects. What they don't state is frequency, and variance from normal population. Nor do they discuss viral risks of the same diseases.

Basically it's saying "this can happen" and that's useful but it would have helped enormously if they had said how many instances in what size cohorts.

The individual studies they're referencing do that. Overall, there's a risk, but it's negligible with sufficient monitoring.

Its a crime that third dose is obligatory in france despite lack of scientific data regarding the propensity of the strength of imflammation and oxidative stress following a third dose. I will coadminister an antioxidant to my forced injection in order to diminish risk of accellerated ageing. claimer: I have expertise in pharmacology

The problem I see is that it is applied to everyone. Children have an extremely low risk profile and the potential side effects might surpass a covid infection by some magnitudes.

The other issue not mentioned are the reported post-vaccine reactions where the person previously contracted Covid-19.

Q-Vax (registered for use in Australia only) vaccinates for Q Fever and has strict pre-screening to avoid vaccinating someone who had already contracted it.

This is because of the specific immunological response the body mounts to Q Fever (which would happen with a repeat infection) if a person already has antibodies, not because vaccinating someone who has already had the condition being vaccinated against has some inherent triggering effect that is detrimental.

There is no good reason to perform a similar screening in the case of SARS-CoV-2 and there is good reason TO vaccinate because the vaccine is more consistently protective against hospitalisation and death compared to an infection of the same

I must say I'm surprised at most of the comments here. Whatever happened to "corelation does not imply causation"?

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