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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

> Normally, children get infected by their second birthday. Now, “you’re going to end up having kids that are three, four years of age right now who have never seen RSV”.

In an ideal world, we'd vaccinate children against RSV. Acquiring immunity by suffering through an actual infection is always, always worse than acquiring it by a vaccine. About 100k children die from RSV each year!

Thankfully, there are vaccines in the pipeline [1], and I seriously hope that mRNA technology will increase both the development speed and the availability of vaccines in general.

[1] https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

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Sanofi have just today announced a clinical trial for a new RSV vaccine https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63572228.amp

> Acquiring immunity by suffering through an actual infection is always, always worse than acquiring it by a vaccine.

I mean, yes, but only because that's one of our criteria for approving a new vaccine.

> Acquiring immunity by suffering through an actual infection is always, always worse than acquiring it by a vaccine

say that to the whoever ends up coming down with narcolepsy, thrombocytopenia, acute peri/myo-carditis, shingles reactivation, etc.

We've had a lot of shingles cases the last year because of immune system damage caused by Covid. What are you even talking about?

I had a family member come down with shingles shortly after getting boosted, hasn't been infected with covid in years.

There's enough discussion about this happening after vaccination: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34579250/

"Conclusion: This study indicates that the occurrence of VZV reactivation is clinically relevant. However, our findings suggest that COVID-19 vaccination is safe, and remains strongly recommended." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35931613/

Of course there's the obligatory, robotic, throat-clearing that vaccines should still be taken even when they find evidence of a side-effect.

> I had a family member come down with shingles shortly after getting boosted, hasn't been infected with covid in years.

Covid has only been around for a couple of years.

He's talking about adverse events following covid vaccination.

For example, see: "The Incidence of Myocarditis and Pericarditis in Post COVID-19 Unvaccinated Patients-A Large Population-Based Study"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/

Above-normal levels of myocarditis and pericarditis were associated with vaccination (Pfizer has been used in Israel where the study originates) but not with covid-19 infection.

Someone who discusses Covid vaccination complications must also discuss Covid complications. It's well established that Covid is a vascular disease, and the risk of stroke is significantly increased in the year after a Covid infection. Anecdotally, my mother-in-law's dementia got much worse after she caught Covid. That stuff is nothing that I want, and the Covid minimizers encourage the spread of a dangerous infectious disease.

Was your mother in law vaccinated? If so then how do we tell if that or the disease caused the damage. It could even be some kind of synergy between them, like ADE.

My in-laws are on the conspiracy theory spectrum and not vaccinated. Sorry to bust a hole in your theory.

The covid vaccinations in wide use now (e.g. the mRNA-based shots, adenovirus-vector shots, and the Novavax protein-based shots) either cause your own cells to create or directly insert modified versions of covid spike systems into a person's circulatory system. The biodistribution study conducted by Pfizer for the Japanese government (using LNPs with a non-mRNA payload) showed that the LNPs did not all remain at the injection site but rather spread far and wide throughout the body and accumulated in particular organs.

You have my sincere sympathy with regards to your mother-in-law's condition.

I have heard similar and worse anecdotes in which covid vaccines (especially boosters i.e. nth shots) have been the culprits and seen some severe adverse reactions in close acquaintances.

That seems reasonable. Would you also agree to discuss COVID vaccine complications when discussing COVID infection complications?

> Above-normal levels of myocarditis and pericarditis were associated with vaccination (Pfizer has been used in Israel where the study originates) but not with covid-19 infection.

Studies in the UK [1] and US [2] have shown that while, yes, there is an increased risk for myocarditis in vaccinated people, the risk of myocarditis in infected people is way higher.

[1] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA....

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34341797/

If you take an intramuscular injection without aspirating the needle to make sure it's not found a blood vessel in the deltoid, you risk cardiovascular damage pointlessly. The standard of practice is so absurd and flawed yet its going to take years longer before people like you become aware of how badly we've been mislead.

This particular medical error scenario has been identified quickly with the covid vaccines and staff has been warned and trained.

One mouse study found that vaccine injection without aspiration did significantly increase the risk of adverse cardiac events. That research hasn't been reproduced in humans but this area deserves further investigation. At least early in the pandemic, US healthcare providers weren't routinely aspirating.

https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciab941

https://doi.org/10.1007/s43440-022-00361-4

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/postgradmedj-2021-141119

> At least early in the pandemic, US healthcare providers weren't routinely aspirating.

... What? Here in Germany, that's like one of the basic things that people who deal with needles on anything alive learn.

yea it doesn't happen much at all in the US, tons of normal ppl were hired to inject people and AFAIK that was never really part of instruction

I don't know the injection practices in Germany. The WHO and US CDC no longer recommend aspiration prior to intramuscular injection, mainly over pain management concerns. (I'm not claiming this is a good idea, just pointing out the current injection protocol.)

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/acip-recs/general-recs/admi...

In practice there is a wide variance between US healthcare providers depending on where they work and how they were trained. Some aspirate, some don't, some try but use the wrong technique.

Those studies you reference conflict with each other. The second isn't peer-reviewed.

From the first one, it actually says for men younger than 40, myocarditis is actually higher in vaccinated, whereas for women it's similar to infection:

"In men younger than 40 years old, the number of excess myocarditis events per million people was higher after a second dose of mRNA-1273 than after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test (97 [95% CI, 91–99] versus 16 [95% CI, 12–18]). In women younger than 40 years, the number of excess events per million was similar after a second dose of mRNA-1273 and a positive test (7 [95% CI, 1–9] versus 8 [95% CI, 6–8])."

That supports my belief that vaccination should be voluntary for everyone but especially young people.

Here's another one, published in Nature Medicine: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0

I haven't read it beyond the abstract.

We estimated an extra two (95% confidence interval (CI) 0, 3), one (95% CI 0, 2) and six (95% CI 2, 8) myocarditis events per 1 million people vaccinated with ChAdOx1, BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273, respectively, in the 28 days following a first dose and an extra ten (95% CI 7, 11) myocarditis events per 1 million vaccinated in the 28 days after a second dose of mRNA-1273. This compares with an extra 40 (95% CI 38, 41) myocarditis events per 1 million patients in the 28 days following a SARS-CoV-2 positive test.

From the Methods section of the Patone paper (your first link): "A self-controlled case series study of people ages 13 years or older vaccinated for COVID-19 in England between December 1, 2020, and December 15, 2021 [...]"

In other words, all of the participants received covid vaccines.

The second paper you've linked studied unvaccinated persons (mRNA-vax recipients were specifically excluded) and its claim of higher rates of myocarditis for covid infection is based other researchers' values of myocarditis incidence post-vax and, as alluded to in the Discussion section, skewed by relatively low 2nd-shot uptake among the American participants (myocarditis risk associated with mRNA shots goes up with each successive dose).

The Israeli paper looks at myocarditis in persons before the vaccines became available (March 2020) and then afterwards. In Israel, 2nd shot and further shot uptake was much higher than in many other places.

The good news is that everyone who was vaccinated also got COVID

I'm talking about any adverse event, like with the swine flu vaccine from the 2000s, for example, where people came down with narcolepsy. Then there's the swine flu vaccine from the 70s that caused GBS. It's just clear to me that saying "it's always better compared to infection" is just a lie. For the overwhelming majority, sure, but for enough people it's life-altering if not life-ending.

> For the overwhelming majority, sure, but for enough people it's life-altering if not life-ending.

I do not deny that vaccines can cause adverse effects - but outside of vaccine trials and Army experimental vaccines, the rate of adverse effects is vastly lower than the rate of the same adverse effect that people experience who get infected.

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