Comment by didibus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by didibus | Hacker News Reader

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Mycardis also happens from getting COVID-19, and the data shows it is more likely to happen and be more severe from an infection with Covid-19 than from the vaccine.

If you understand how the vaccine works, this makes sense, the vaccine simulates an infection with Covid-19, but gives your body the upper edge as the virus is not produced in it's full form and can't reproduce.

It's now believed the immune response is responsible for Mycardis, and that for COVID-19 infections the occurrence and effects are stronger because COVID-19 infects heart cells, and causes a stronger immune response than the vaccine.

When evaluating the vaccine you need to compare it against the risks of unvaccinated Covid-19 infections. In your lifetime you'll get one or the other, but if you look at all the known data, there's much more risks in an unvaccinated Covid-19 infection than the vaccines. That doesn't mean the vaccines are zero risk, but they seem the the right trade off if you consider the odds.

Edit: Also, only the lipid nanoparticle coating is unique to the mRNA vaccines, that means any side-effect caused by the vaccine is also caused by COVID, unless it's a result of the nanoparticle coating. From what I could find, it appears that only the allergic reaction is caused by the lipids, and the other known side-effects are all common with COVID as well and due to the body's immune response or the virus protein itself. And if you were curious, COVID also replicates using RNA, so both the vaccines and Covid also infect your cells with RNA.

> the data shows it is more likely to happen and be more severe from an infection with Covid-19 than from the vaccine.

No, not when stratified by age group. 2nd dose of moderna vaccine is 6x more likely to cause it for < 40 year olds [1]. If you stratify further (12-25) I suspect you'd find it's even worse. There's also a dose dependence where your chance of myocarditis increases with the number of doses [2], which not only corroborates [1] that the 2nd dose of Moderna is significantly higher risk, but that even 2nd dose of Pfizer puts is basically equal odds with the actual thing. And considering it's not either/or (i.e. the vaccines are not 100% effective at preventing your catching covid), this would mean that the vaccines are a net harm for younger age groups.

The dose dependence also seems to indicate some sort of cumulative effect (i.e. with enough infections or enough boosters, some vulnerable segment of the population will almost guaranteed to end up with myocarditis). Since we don't know how large this vulnerable segment is (perhaps somehow related to long-covid susceptibility), it's irresponsible to blindly recommend or mandate boosters for everyone.

> the vaccine simulates an infection with Covid-19, but gives your body the upper edge as the virus is not produced in it's full form and can't reproduce.

You could alternatively hypothesize that when acquired "naturally" the virus (and whatever proteins it ends up producing) don't immediately go into systemic circulation (instead it needs to progress from respiratory downwards), and the body has time to mount an attack before it hits systemic circulation.

[1] https://newsroom.heart.org/news/myocarditis-risk-significant...

[2] https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-myoca...

> Among men younger than age 40, the risk of infection-associated myocarditis was higher compared to the risk of vaccine-associated myocarditis: 16 extra cases associated with having infection before vaccination, with the only exception of a second dose of Moderna vaccine

Fair enough, it seems two dose moderna for men younger than 40 has higher risk of mycardis.

> this would mean that the vaccines are a net harm for younger age groups

I'm not sure that's the right conclusion. Appart for men younger than 40 with two dose moderna, your link shows a higher risk of mycardis from infection.

Also that study didn't have data about the outcome, but some of the other datasets I've seen showed that mycardis induced from COVID-19 in unvaccinated is often worse.

Personally, either or, I find overall the risk of Mycardis seems on par between vaccines and Covid-19, even if in some circumstances one can be higher than the other, they both remain low and close to each other.

I personally wouldn't worry about Mycardis in that case, but I'd focus on other side-effects instead that are more troubling, such as the long COVID related ones discussed here.

I'm not saying I think men under 40 benefit much from the vaccine. And in fact I think you bring a great point in that most of the advice is generalized and focused on at risk individuals, and I too would like if more nuance was provided, that took each individual context into account, age, race, sex, pre-existing conditions, weight, exposure, various COVID strain, etc. My main point was that you have to compare your own risk of getting Covid-19 unvaccinated against that of getting the vaccine, you can't look at each on their own, they both have more risk than not getting vaccinated and not getting COVID, but you must choose which you'd rather risk having first.

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