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Comment by lucd | Hacker News Reader

The vaccine antigen is only a small part of the virus. Furthermore is was modified and is inert. https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/vaccines/tiny-tweak-behi... Because of international pharmacovigilance we know that ARNm vaccine induce some myocarditis and pericarditis, at a much lower rate than the virus and less severe.

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There is not evidence that heart inflammation after vaccination is less common or severe than after COVID-19 infection. For instance: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.23.21268276v... suggests rates several fold higher for vaccination than infection. Not to say that on balance vaccination is anything but preferable to naive infection, but it's not a side effect free panacea.

Thanks for that link. It contradicts previous studies that put the risk of myocarditis from unvaccinated COVID infection at between 6 and 15 times higher than that from vaccination (and 30x general baseline rate).

So I read through it and in fact, it doesn't say what you assert to say it does. This is comparing vaccinated Vs vaccinated+COVID. See the comments from vepe for full explanation.

Is it comparing vaccinated vs vaccinated + infection or simply vaccinated vs infection (regardless of vaccination)?

Do we have data on specifically unvaccinated infections?

Otherwise we can only speculate on whether the long side effects of infection are less severe with vaccines than without. Considering the general hospitalization rate between unvaccinated vs vaccinated, I know what my guess would be.

This has been debunked many times

I don't see you posting links to papers that support your assertion.

Amongst others here's one. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998v...

See my comment above on why that paper tells us nothing about unvaccinated myocarditis rates.

The spike protein in the vaccine is not fully inert: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8084611

> The free-floating Spike proteins synthetized by cells targeted by vaccine and destroyed by the immune response circulate in the blood and systematically interact with angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors expressed by a variety of cells including platelets, thereby promoting ACE2 internalization and degradation. These reactions may ultimately lead to platelet aggregation, thrombosis and inflammation mediated by several mechanisms including platelet ACE2 receptors. Whereas Phase III vaccine trials generally excluded participants with previous immunization, vaccination of huge populations in the real life will inevitably include individuals with preexisting immunity. This might lead to excessively enhanced inflammatory and thrombotic reactions in occasional subjects. Further research is urgently needed in this area.

In the case of vaccine only / no infection, is vaccine-mediated inflammation long lasting and damaging? These effects in the paper (platelet aggregation, thrombosis) seem to be capable of causing permanent harm. Platelet aggregation seems like it would cause small amounts of systemic endothelial damage, atherosclerosis, thombrosis, ...

The level of inflammation no doubt varies on a case by case / individual basis, but is it possible that nobody gets out of the pandemic without some level of stress on their pulmonary and circulatory systems?

To state this succinctly, did Covid (whether infected or vaccinated) shave a few days off of all of our lives?

That paper was interesting and the bit about clinical trials is important, but they don’t really offer much evidence that there are substantial concentrations of free floating spike proteins in the blood following vaccination, or that this would be the cause of the inflammatory and thrombotic reactions, vs just the more general immune response

As far as I can tell they’re just citing this one paper about the ACE2 degradation, and the study doesn’t directly address SARS-CoV-2 infection or vaccination at all.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4231883/?r...

50% and lower rate (the hk children myocarditis study) isn't a "much lower rate". Factor in omnicron and the clear difference between vaccinating everyone and 10% of society getting the virus and unsolvable questions should begin to arise.

99%+ eventually getting infected is more likely. Multiple countries already have confirmed infections over 10%.

The CDC estimated that about 44% of Americans had been infected as of October 2021. We're probably well over 50% now due to the Omicron wave.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

the CDC quite likely skews low, given the political ramifications. i've heard non-governmental estimates as high as 80% at this point. my expectation is that 2/3 of americans have had it, which is roughly borne out in my anecdotal experience, particularly since omicron. i think that's why we're seeing the mediopolitical machine starting to relent on covid policy in the past few weeks (that, and it's an election year).

But that's just an assumption. Many people seem to have pre-existing immunity. A study was done in which unvaccinated, non previously infected volunteers actually lay down in bed for a while with SARS-CoV-2 infected liquid in their noses (eww). So they were unequivocally exposed to a massive dose but only about half got COVID. There is no explanation for this within the bounds of the assumptions made by authorities.

In reality, even if you get Omicron now it's so mild it's unlikely to cause any more heart damage than any other common cold. The danger has passed. Except that, almost everyone decided to massively expose themselves to spike protein over and over. So if spikes cause heart damage and they do, especially when the vaccine gets into the bloodstream, then the vaccines will do more damage than the virus could ever do simply because nobody has pre-existing immunity to it.

Some level of pre-existing immunity due to prior exposure to other similar coronaviruses is possible but hasn't been confirmed.

https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(21)00571-3/ful...

Many patients who are exposed to SARS-CoV-2 quickly fight off the infection with an innate immune response before the adaptive immune response really engages. That can happen with no pre-existing immunity. Some people just have better immune systems.

Are you trying to define an immune system that can fight off SARS-CoV-2 without having seen it before is not "pre-existing immunity"? If so isn't that merely playing with words? You seem to be agreeing with what I'm saying but arguing that the terminology should be different.

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