> According to a large 2022 study led by researchers at Harvard University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the group at highest risk of myocarditis and pericarditis after vaccination—males ages 12 to 17—saw 35.9 cases per 100,000 (0.0359 percent) after a second vaccine dose, while the rate was nearly double after a COVID-19 infection in the same age group, with 64.9 cases per 100,000 (0.0649 percent).

Every article on this subject seems to feel the need to clear its throat by citing numbers like this, but I'm not sure why. Since the vaccines do not prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection, the risks are cumulative, not mutually exclusive. The protection they are said to provide is against severe cases and death, which are already vanishingly rare in the adolescent cohort to begin with.

There's also good reason to doubt that there has been an honest accounting of the causes of myocarditis. A friend of mine is now experiencing cardiac issues after 3 injections of Moderna -- his doctors attribute it to the mild COVID case he had (despite taking all the shots) and have not even considered (let alone reported) the possibility that it is an adverse event.

A huge population-level study in Israel found no increased risk of myocarditis from SARS-CoV-2 infection in 2020 before the vaccine rollout: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/