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Comment by boplicity | Hacker News Reader

Of course -- why wouldn't I? They're free, effective, and extremely low risk.

Nothing is free. Some things are just paid for in other ways like taxes, debt, and inflation.

Also, I know zero people personally who've been seeiously affected by COVID. However,I personally know one pro vaccine person who was hospitalized by a heart attack immediately after his third shot.

To date there has only been a single prospective study on post vaccination myocarditis: https://www.mdpi.com/2414-6366/7/8/196

The study estimates that risk of myocarditis is much, much higher than previously reported. We simply don't have the data because reporting has not been stringent and no one is doing the appropriate research: https://youtu.be/2mWZY6vmdBM

This is the salient point here. Despite the data showing effectiveness of vaccines, all it takes is one personal connection to have a negative response to make me swear to never take one again. Much like this user, I think the pandemic was a blessing in disguise to show me who the real free thinkers are, and who is simply a sheep following what others say is best.

Are you a sheep if those 'others' are the majority of medical professionals?

It depends? Medical professionals are certainly not some kind of infallible bloc. Ignaz Semmelweis, who advocated for hand washing before delivering babies, was mocked and derided by doctors at the time. Then there's this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...

From the abstract:

"The clinical presentation of myopericarditis after vaccination was usually mild and temporary, with all cases fully recovering within 14 days."

And as for your example, there are two things to keep in mind:

1) "Data" is not the plural of "anecdote", so saying you don't know anyone who's been seriously affected by COVID isn't very clear. How many people do you know who have had it? How do you know they weren't seriously affected by COVID? Were they related, or were they random individuals? Sampling error is a real thing.

2) Correlation does not equal causation. One person hospitalized with a heart attack after his third shot could be due to lots of things, including random chance or a hidden heart condition that was just pushed over the edge by his body's immune response to the vaccine.

Actually, the risk is stratified by age. With this entire pandemic, risk has been stratified by age, co-morbidities, etc.

If you're a male under 40 years old your risk of myocarditis is higher from the vaccines. Not to mention, if you don't have co-morbidities, your risk of death from COVID is quite low. It's a simple cost benefit analysis, really. According to a linked study (ahajournals.org link), risk of cardiac related issues from vaccine for males under 40, like myself, is 1/10000 or 0.0001. Risk of cardiac related issues from covid-19 for males under 40 is about 0.0000016, so about a factor of 6 lower risk. Additionally, as we know from more recent studies, especially with the Kraken XBB variant, vaccines offer virtually no protection and almost everyone will get infected. So we can code probability of infection post-vaccination and post-natural infection as equal for the sake of simplicity. Additionally, there is a growing body of research discussing reinfection issues during a subsequent infection by vaccination status, and the latest numbers I extracted from the paper are coded below. In summary, for me, a 32 year old male, we get the following risks profiles:

vaccine risk = P(problem | vaccine, male under 40, no comorbidities) * P(covid | vaccine immunity) * P(problem second infection | vaccine immunity) vaccine risk = 0.0001 * 0.95 * 0.51 vaccine risk = 0.000004845

natural immunity risk = P(problem | covid-19, male under 40, no comorbidities) * P(covid | natural immunity) * P(problem second infection | natural immunity) natural immunity risk = 0.0000016 * 0.95 * 0.47 natural immunity risk = 0.00000007144

vaccine risk vs. natural risk

Vaccine 67X more risky than natural route (FOR ME)

Myocarditis risk vaccines vs. natural immunity males under 40: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.1...

XBB 1.5 Kraken likelihood of infection: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36580913/

Serious issues associated with subsequent infection by vaccination status: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...

> "The clinical presentation of myopericarditis after vaccination was usually mild and temporary, with all cases fully recovering within 14 days."

The sample size of the study was far too small to estimate risk of serious illness, and, if you took the time to read the study, you would know that already. The point was to estimate the overall risk of myocarditis using a prospective study and compare it to contemporary estimates, and, unsurprisingly, the study showed that the risk may be much, much higher than currently reported.

> "Data" is not the plural of "anecdote

Thanks for the unneeded lecture! Notice that I:

1) supplied a study with data to back up my anecdote.

2) pointed out that there is actually a dearth of high-quality data which would prevent anyone from concluding anything in either direction based on data alone.

3) The prospective study I linked already addressed correlation versus causation.

It looks to me like, when you see scientific evidence that contradicts your current biases, you reach for some very weak tools to try to justify ignoring the evidence. That's not surprising, frankly. Most people are that way.

Just because clinical symptoms of myocarditis resolve after 14 days does not mean the subjects in question will not suffer increased risk from cardiac scarring on an ongoing or even permanent basis. It would be extremely irresponsible for any scientist to conclude "they're totally fine after that point" and that is not what is implied by the paragraph you quoted.

I've just been lazy to get the 4th, but I don't have any reason not to. I also haven't had covid yet (that I know of), so whatever I've been doing these last few years seems to have been working (primarily, I just wear a mask in enclosed public spaces).

I've noticed that there is a lot of anti-vax stuff surfacing on Twitter recently though (thanks Elon!), so maybe that is where the OP's comment is coming from. For example:

https://twitter.com/KariLake/status/1614876088081211392

and the correct response (from Aug 2021):

https://twitter.com/BadVaccineTakes/status/14258035022746296...

Man I sure wish I shared your certainty on the subject. It would make my life a lot easier.

I'm sure you're certain about quite a few things -- you just probably don't spend time thinking about them, hence them not "registering" as things you're certain about.

"extremely low risk" could still be of marginal benefit depending on how high your risk is for severe outcomes from COVID. It could be quite low if you are reasonably young, in good health, and have already recovered from an infection.

How are we defining effective? Everyone I know has gotten Covid regardless of how many vaccinations/boosters.

They define effective using a complicated statistical derivative that inverts the data. This is mostly visible in UK data and other occasional studies, because most public health reports hide the true numbers. UK does now too but for the longest time published both pre and post adjustment data.

The actual effectiveness, as defined by case rates by vaccine status, have been strongly negative for a long time. Around a year now. Vaccinated people catch COVID a lot more often than unvaccinated people do.

The reason they claim effectiveness is they use an adjustment procedure to try and correct for "bias". The procedure dates from before COVID. It breaks if people can volunteer to get tested, by making the vaccines look more effective. They don't care because it turns bad news into good news.

Also they classify people as vaccinated weeks after someone gets the shot. Negative consequences from the shot are then assigned to the unvaccinated cohort. Again they shouldn't use stats that way but they do.

Real effectiveness is negative.

> Real effectiveness is negative.

Your whole comment reeks BS. I don't see any plausible explanation for _negative_ effectiveness. And you don't link any data to support your point.

These comment threads are all posted on a link to a scientific paper showing that mRNA vaccines may cause class switching to a type of antibodies which cause tolerance (reduced immune response) to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Vaccine enhanced disease is not a new phenomenon and not outside the realm of possibility for the COVID vaccines.

I was once like you. When I first learned about negative effectiveness I thought that was crazy. That's not possible surely? Hah. I was such a child. It can happen, has happened in the past with other vaccines and has now happened in a big way with COVID vaccines. The biological mechanisms are well known by immunologists for many years, look for "OAS" and imprinting. Or heck read the fine article we're discussing on this thread, which is about the body making the wrong sort of antibodies due to over-exposure (which makes it easier to become infected).

You don't have to believe me. Maybe you'll believe Dr Fauci:

https://youtu.be/uagsb4wii3E?t=3401

    so when you have that many people in a trial

    56:41 not only are you looking to see if it works but you're constantly keeping your eye

    56:47 on safety to make sure that a vaccine actually doesn't enhance disease

He says they have to watch to make sure vaccines don't enhance disease, because negative effectiveness is a problem that's occurred in the past especially with HIV vaccines.

So now we established that my comment doesn't reek of BS, here's data on covid vaxx negative efficacy:

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/theres-something-antigeni...

https://dailysceptic.org/tag/negative-efficacy/

Follow the white rabbit but don't use search engines. Searching the obvious queries on both google and duckduckgo gives back CDC propaganda and none of the results actually discuss negative efficacy. The extent of the coverup is pathetic.

> Also they classify people as vaccinated weeks after someone gets the shot. Negative consequences from the shot are then assigned to the unvaccinated cohort. Again they shouldn't use stats that way but they do.

"Unknown" also tends to get grouped in with "unvaccinated", skewing it even more.

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