Comment by fsociety999 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fsociety999 | Hacker News Reader

This entire study should never have made it through peer review for this alone:

> The effect of vaccination was not systematically assessed. In total, 144 participants received an mRNA vaccination between the baseline and the follow-up scan. We performed separate analyses for participants with vaccination as well as for participants without vaccination. The results were not different from the findings of the full cohort as presented. The cardiac effects of vaccination require further research.

144 out of 346 total participants is statistically significant, but this number only includes people who received a vaccine dose between the baseline and the follow-up. The study makes no mention of people who received a vaccine dose before the baseline measurement. Since the baseline group covered people who got COVID between April 2020 and October 2021, there is a high likelihood that even more people were vaccinated before they were selected to participate in the study. Therefore, it’s impossible to prove if the cardiac related issues have to do with COVID or the vaccine.

In addition, two of the three authors of this study received speaker fees and grants from Bayer AG who helped develop and manufacture COVID vaccines in Europe.

The vast majority (>80% for men, >90% for women) of professional cyclists have gotten vaccinated, who are among the most closely monitored endurance athletes in the world, whose livelihood depends on their cardiovascular system.

If the vaccine were actually dangerous to your heart (or rather, more risky for their heart than getting COVID while being unvaccinated), they'd had have more than enough data to show it.

But in your example wouldn’t that just tell you that it’s not dangerous for endurance athletes? Unless I’m misunderstanding and you’re not extrapolating from that population to wider society.

Several vaccines were pulled from market for causing heart problems.

Were these among them?

Cardio problems are officially listed as possible side effects for Moderna, Pfizer etc... I really do not understand why we even have this discussion!

Cardio problems are a side effect of covid, so there is no surprise that it also is from the vaccines for it. What's interesting is comparing heart related issues between vaccinated and unvaccinated incidents of covid.

You said multiple vaccines were pulled from the market due to heart-related side effects. Both Moderna and Pfizer were never pulled, both are still available in many countries. The benefits obviously outweigh the small risk of side effects in the eyes of many regulatory authorities.

The AZ vaccine was not pulled from the market, the recommendation was changed to not give it to younger people anymore. Or at least this was the case for any market I know where it was initially approved.

That hardly tells me anything because essentially everyone has a weaker heart than a professional cyclist. So they may be more capable of fighting off whatever hypothetical damage there is.

It's like saying, "we threw a brick at 80% of NFL players and none of them were seriously injured by it. Therefore it is safe to have a brick thrown at you."

All that tells me is that if you are a supremely fit individual, you will likely not see any cardiovascular damage from the vaccine OR covid (hard to tell which).

That doesn't describe me or the vast majority of the world's population.

I haven't seen any evidence yet that fitness affects Covid infection outcomes. Age, yes, fitness not so much. And if anything, high performance athletes (as opposed to regular people who try to keep reasonably fit) are heavily straining their immune system, so actually they are more at risk of infection.

Obesity leads to worse outcomes [0]. I know it's not the same as 'fitness' (which is a pretty loosely defined term), but we at least know that extremely unfit people have worse outcomes.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/obesity-and-covid-19.html

Cyclists often have to wear a heart monitor when they sleep because their hearts are so efficient that their heart rate can drop to the point where it just stops, and they need to be waken before that happens so they can exercise to get their heart rate back up. They're a terrible group to use as representative of the general population. This includes the cyclist who recently died in his sleep and both long-covid and anti-vaccine theorists claimed it was from their favorite pet cause. Professional cyclists are physiological freak shows and should only be representative of other pro cyclists.

That's not how the human cardiovascular system works. It's not necessary to wake a fit person up because of a low heart rate.

You are apparently just repeating an unproven rumor that was printed in the book “The Death of Marco Pantani" by Matt Rendell. Back in Pantani's day, some pro cyclists had circulatory problems because they used EPO and/or transfusions to drive their hemocrit numbers way above normal levels. Doping controls eliminated that particular issue long before the COVID-19 pandemic (although it's likely that many pro athletes continue to engage in other forms of doping which don't affect hemocrit levels and which are harder to detect).

Having data to show doesn't mean being ready to share it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/20/health/the-cdc-isnt-publi...

I'm not going to believe athlete based statistics, way too much incentive to lie about being vaccinated and absolutely they have the means to get a doctor to vouch.

> This entire study should never have made it through peer review for this alone

Why do you assume the peer review didn't consider that, and consider it not significant before approval?

> In addition, two of the three authors of this study received speaker fees and grants from Bayer AG who helped develop and manufacture COVID vaccines in Europe.

Name an industry where the experts aren't employed by the someone in the industry.

> Name an industry where the experts aren't employed by the someone in the industry.

This is a strawman. It is a valid signal, when reading a scientific paper, to understand where the funding came from and if there could be any bias as a result. This happens all the time.

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