[HN Gopher] Covid and the Heart: It Spares No One - Johns Hopkins
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Covid and the Heart: It Spares No One - Johns Hopkins
        
       Author : alwillis
       Score  : 147 points
       Date   : 2022-03-22 16:42 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (publichealth.jhu.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (publichealth.jhu.edu)
        
       | darzu wrote:
       | What's the effect size? Didn't see this anywhere in the article
       | and seems pretty important to know.
        
       | anamax wrote:
       | Do we know whether Covid-19 is different wrt heart and other
       | effects than other corona viruses or even flu viruses in general?
       | For example, how is Covid-19/SARS-CoV-2 different from 2002-4's
       | SARS-CoV-1 in this respect?
       | 
       | I ask because the reports of mental sluggishness for a couple of
       | months after Covid-19 reminded me of how I felt after some
       | previous flus.
        
         | andrew_ wrote:
         | New studies are suggesting links to nerve damage as a cause for
         | long-covid symptoms https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-
         | news/long-covid-sympto...
        
           | anamax wrote:
           | My question is how different covid-19 is.
           | 
           | One of the things that has come out of Covid-19 is how little
           | was actually known about flus, despite the fact that flus
           | have been killing 30-70k Americans each year for decades.
           | This ignorance is "interesting" because "we need to be ready
           | for the next Spanish flu" has been at the core of the "give
           | us more money for research" argument for decades.
           | 
           | For example, it looks like we still don't understand
           | transmission in any useful sense. There was some reasonable
           | research in the late 40s but we've learned more in the last
           | two years than in the intervening 80 years.
           | 
           | Yes, some of the tools used in the last two years weren't
           | available 20 years ago but they were available 10 years ago.
           | That said, many of the tools have been available, albeit
           | unused, for 80+ years.
        
             | avgDev wrote:
             | I think going forward we are going to learn a lot more
             | about these long term issues. Before COVID, getting chronic
             | fatigue from flu was mostly ignored by the medical
             | community. Now, with popularity of covid a lot more doctors
             | are aware of some possible neurological issues.
             | 
             | There have been case studies, research and support groups
             | for these things for many years. However, handful of
             | physicians treating patients. I am now seeing more doctors
             | seeing patients with odd symptoms at clinics all over the
             | US, some even have ads targeting long covid.
             | 
             | I think we are going to make some major advancements in the
             | next 10 years, and I'm happy many suffering quietly will be
             | heard.
        
       | johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
       | The racist and white supremacist republicans have put everyone in
       | grave danger. A part, which has absolutely no regard for human
       | lives and well-being.
        
         | elevenoh wrote:
        
       | throwawaycities wrote:
       | There was a lot of information coming out of college athletics
       | early on consistent with the research in this article. Young,
       | healthy athletes that were asymptomatic showed signs of
       | inflammation in the heart.
       | 
       | Since then there were follow up studies which were split in their
       | findings. The early studies used MRI testing and suggested "high-
       | risk" of heart damage/myocarditis in the athletes. Follow up
       | studies tended not to use MRI, opting for testing for certain
       | proteins associated with heart inflammation and ultra sounds and
       | those studies found heart damage to be uncommon in the athletes.
        
         | thelettere wrote:
         | If there's been such heart damage to athletes that caught it,
         | how come they all are invariably coming back to the same exact
         | performance they had previously? Is there such a thing as
         | damage to the heart that has no effect on performance,
         | particularly the incredibly demanding kinds of performances
         | that sports like professional basketball require?
        
           | wolverine876 wrote:
           | > how come they all are invariably coming back to the same
           | exact performance they had previously?
           | 
           | What is that based on? It wouldn't be hard to study, given
           | the statistics already available.
        
           | okaramian wrote:
           | I think this post lacks an understanding of heart conditions.
           | You can have an enlarged heart or other heart issues and
           | still be a professional athlete. Ask Reggie Lewis. It took
           | Jason Tatum many months to get back to some kind of playing
           | condition after he contracted Covid, etc.
           | 
           | https://www.nbcsports.com/boston/celtics/celtics-star-
           | jayson...
        
           | reggedtorespond wrote:
           | They haven't all. Look up Asia Durr if you want an anecdote.
           | #2 draft pick for WBNA and hasn't played since her rookie
           | season due to long haul covid effects.
           | 
           | I am not aware of any study on covid in athletes in
           | particular, though.
        
           | tremon wrote:
           | Some cyclists even survive cancer, and then come back to a
           | higher level of performance than they had previously. Does
           | that mean there is such a thing as a cancer that has a
           | positive effect on athletic performance?
           | 
           | To keep on the topic of cyclists:
           | 
           | Tim DeClerq - out for months after being diagnosed with
           | pericarditis after Covid infection.
           | 
           | Sonny Colbrelli - suffered cardiac arrest yesterday after his
           | race, two months after Covid infection.
        
           | throwawaycities wrote:
           | To your second question, yes, heart inflammation doesn't mean
           | they can't participate, participate at a high level, or that
           | the athlete even notices any issue. It means they have heart
           | inflammation which carries associated risks both long term
           | and acute. If you are looking for anecdotal evidence, there
           | are plenty of athletes that talk about post covid struggles
           | that include a range of issues impacting performance (i.e.
           | reduced cardio, more labored breathing, brain fog).
        
       | Dharmat55 wrote:
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | wlakjlkjkerg wrote:
        
       | timr wrote:
       | It's worth saying that all of Al-Aly's papers so far have had the
       | same basic structure, and the same basic problems: they take a
       | population of older, sicker people (veteran's administration
       | data), compare to some synthetic, non-randomized control group
       | (this is where the "study of 15M" comes from), then extrapolate
       | from that comparison to _everyone_. This is problematic for a few
       | reasons:
       | 
       | * the older, sicker population is simply not representative of
       | the population at large. No amount of normalization or adjustment
       | can truly fix this.
       | 
       | * Moreover, the normalization process creates a "modeling
       | problem" -- it's too easy for the researcher to find whatever
       | outcome he's seeking by mucking with the weightings. With methods
       | like this, you have to be _very_ careful interpreting the
       | results, because tiny details in the methods matter a lot.
       | 
       | * the signals in the data often are smaller in magnitude than the
       | covariates in the study population (e.g. finding an X% difference
       | in thing Y, when the population is _more than X% sicker_ ,
       | overall)
       | 
       | * Use of ICD (medical billing) codes for a study like this is
       | fraught. Choice of codes can create/remove a small signal in the
       | data, and yet, it's not always clear that certain codes _should_
       | be used (basic example: do you use the ICD code for a bypass
       | graft as a  "cardiac event" in a study like this? Almost
       | certainly, a heart bypass surgery reflects a life-long problem,
       | not an acute event due to Covid.) Again, methods matter a great
       | deal here.
       | 
       | * Al-Aly is...less than transparent...about the size of the
       | observed effect and its dependence on age and health. Often these
       | details are buried in supplemental materials, and then he goes in
       | the news media and makes bombastic claims about something "even
       | happening in younger populations", based on a relatively weak
       | effect size extrapolated in younger, healthy people.
       | 
       | * Relatively strong claims are made about _small_ differences in
       | outcome. For example, I just saw one last night from Al-Aly that
       | turned a 13 per 1000 difference in outcome (1.3%), into a
       | breathless claim of  "over 40% increased risk". Mathematically
       | true, perhaps, but utterly misleading (also, the difference was
       | observed primarily in the oldest people, so the citing _mean
       | difference_ was simply wrong).
       | 
       | I could go on. Point is, please don't take this study as
       | definitive. This is _one_ paper, and Al-Aly has an agenda.
        
       | SnowProblem wrote:
       | We should expect some heart damage because it happens after the
       | flu too, but this study is flawed. If you had covid but weren't
       | tested, you were put into the control group, meaning the
       | conclusions they draw (ie. 5% increase in heart problems after a
       | year) are going to be higher than in reality.
        
       | temptemptemp111 wrote:
        
       | smitty1110 wrote:
       | Dr. Al-Aly's paper is here:
       | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01689-3?s=08
        
         | yamrzou wrote:
         | Previous discussion:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30249618
        
       | rkk3 wrote:
       | What was the methodology around asymptomatic covid cases and
       | cardiac outcomes?
       | 
       | This seems like a sensationalist claim.
        
       | mmaunder wrote:
       | Don't obsess over this. It'll distract you and stress you out,
       | which comes with its own health risks. None of us get out alive
       | anyway. Go live as healthy a life as you can, find happiness, and
       | help others when the opportunity presents.
        
         | vkou wrote:
         | You don't need to obsess over this, but you do need to remember
         | that there has been, and continues to be a large pro-COVID
         | faction that insists that getting everyone sick with it will be
         | no big deal, because it only kills <0.X%> of people in
         | <particular age range>.
         | 
         | They were, of course, speaking from a position of ignorance of
         | long-term side effects, because the data wasn't yet in. It's
         | been two years, and in many ways, the data is _still_ not in
         | yet.
         | 
         | We'll have another go-around[1] on the COVID rodeo next holiday
         | season, if another dangerous variant emerges.
         | 
         | [1] Just because the news has forgotten about the virus,
         | doesn't mean that the virus has forgotten about us. There are
         | more daily worldwide cases right now, then there have been at
         | _any_ point prior to November 2021. That 's a lot of
         | opportunity for variants to mutate.
        
           | brink wrote:
           | A life well-lived comes with inherent risks.
           | 
           | I'm not saying I want to go live recklessly, but I'd rather
           | die slightly less old and happy, than old and miserable
           | because I spent it worrying only to realize on my deathbed
           | that I never lived.
        
             | rootusrootus wrote:
             | > I'm not saying I want to go live recklessly, but I'd
             | rather die slightly less old and happy, than old and
             | miserable because I spent it worrying only to realize on my
             | deathbed that I never lived.
             | 
             | So you're somewhere in the middle, like basically everyone
             | else? Or are you saying that you're the reasonable one and
             | anybody who takes precautions against COVID infection is
             | living their life in a miserable state of worry?
        
           | president wrote:
           | Most are willing to live life to the fullest with negligible
           | risks. Others who want to live life locked down and living in
           | a plastic bubble, feel free to do so. If you think Covid can
           | be eradicated with zero-covid policies, look at how China is
           | faring [1]. Live and let live.
           | 
           | [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/refuse-quarantine-
           | frustr...
        
             | vkou wrote:
             | The whole point of this sub-thread is that for the past two
             | years, there has been no end of wishful-thinking arguments
             | that tried their best to downplay and ignore the risks.
             | 
             | But your raise an excellent point - if only there were
             | solutions that allowed you to live life to the fullest with
             | negligible risks...
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_washing
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_control_(respiratory_d
             | i...
        
           | mwint wrote:
           | > It's been two years, and in many ways, the data is still
           | not in yet.
           | 
           | But we hopefully aren't expected to hide until the data _are_
           | in?
        
             | vkou wrote:
             | You're expected to take simple, cheap precautions,
             | proportionate to the expected consequences.
             | 
             | You're also expected to not take what you think is the best
             | case scenario, and extrapolate that it's the scenario that
             | we are actually in.
        
       | kragen wrote:
       | A more accurate headline would be "it spares 93%-97% of people,"
       | though the interview meticulously omitted almost all quantifiable
       | information. The hazard ratios in the paper smitty1110 cited
       | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01689-3?s=08 are
       | mostly 1.49-1.85, which as I understand it means that people with
       | covid were 11/2-2 times as likely to experience the condition,
       | pericarditis or stroke or whatever, than thr control group. The
       | exceptions are things that normally happen only once in a
       | lifetime, like cardiac arrest (HR=2.45), so we're still talking
       | about a tiny fraction of people.
       | 
       | This justifies the statement in the paper's abstract, "Our
       | results provide evidence that the risk and 1-year burden of
       | cardiovascular disease in survivors of acute COVID-19 are
       | substantial," but (unless I'm misunderstanding the paper) shows
       | that the interview headline is an irresponsible, sensationalist
       | lie.
        
         | jah242 wrote:
         | I would add that for the non-hospitalised groups it is
         | substantially lower again at more like HR of 1.3-1.4 - (see
         | supplementary tables - https://static-
         | content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs415...)
         | 
         | I would also add a few factors that likely mean that this is an
         | upper bound: 1. As noted this is without vaccination 2. The
         | mean age in the study is 60-65 (depending on the regression) 3.
         | There is inherent bias in testing uptake (case ascertainment)
         | over the period of the study early in the pandemic. This means
         | the sample is inevitably skewed towards more severe cases (and
         | will miss a very large fraction of asymptomatic cases) than
         | either the population of Covid positive individuals or the
         | sample of positive covid people today (as now testing is
         | abundant).
         | 
         | This is not to say that the study is wrong that COVID increases
         | one's risk of heart disease but for me the language used in the
         | interview does seem inappropriate.
        
         | dash2 wrote:
         | I now feel much less happy than I did. "Significant increase"
         | could mean anything. A risk ratio of 1.49-1.85 is a _huge_
         | increase. These conditions are rare but not that rare. Now I
         | should be twice as worried about them? Oosh. Will someone at
         | least tell me that Omicron 's not so bad?
        
         | exo-pla-net wrote:
         | False.
         | 
         | > We went into it thinking that [the risk] was going to be most
         | pronounced and evident in people who smoked a lot or had
         | diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, or some [other] risk
         | factors. What we found is that even in people who did not have
         | any heart problems start with, were athletic, did not have a
         | high BMI, were not obese, did not smoke, did not have kidney
         | disease or diabetes--even in people who were previously healthy
         | and had no risk factors or problems with the heart--COVID-19
         | affected them in such a way that manifested the higher risk of
         | heart problems than people who did not get COVID-19.
         | 
         | They found that even mild COVID damaged otherwise healthy
         | people's hearts so badly that their risk for heart problems are
         | now comparable to those of obese people.
         | 
         | In other words, it _does_ damage your heart. That damage
         | _might_ result in a heart attack, reflected in the increased
         | hazard ratio.
        
           | fallingknife wrote:
           | > In other words, it does damage your heart. That damage
           | might result in a heart attack, reflected in the increased
           | hazard ratio.
           | 
           | Or it only damages the heart in a small number of patients,
           | and that damage always results in heart conditions. It is not
           | possible to tell the difference between these two
           | possibilities without actually taking a sample and looking
           | for asymptomatic heart damage in the affected patients, which
           | this study did not do.
           | 
           | These are the stats for heart conditions on mild covid
           | patients from the paper.
           | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01689-3/figures/5
           | They don't look bad at all. Where is it stated that this
           | effect is as bad as obesity?
        
           | margalabargala wrote:
           | > They found that even mild COVID damaged otherwise healthy
           | people's hearts so badly that their risk for heart problems
           | are now comparable to those of obese people.
           | 
           | > In other words, it does damage your heart. That damage
           | might result in a heart attack, reflected in the increased
           | hazard ratio.
           | 
           | This seems an inaccurate reading of what's in the study. They
           | did not find that _all_ people who had COVID had heart
           | damage, which would be the case if  "it _does_ damage your
           | heart " were true. Instead it found that _some_ previously
           | healthy people now had some heart damage.
        
             | DiggyJohnson wrote:
             | Well put, I think this should be considered the prevailing
             | consensus for this discussion, frankly. There's a lot of
             | noise here...
        
             | dwaltrip wrote:
             | Thanks for clarifying.
             | 
             | What percentage of previously healthy people had heart
             | damage from covid? Did they break this down by age and
             | vaccination status?
        
             | hedora wrote:
             | How did they know they were previously healthy? Did they
             | have pre-infection health screens?
        
               | cde-v wrote:
               | Yes, they were all vets in the VA system so their pre-
               | infection health had been documented.
        
           | bhk wrote:
           | First, the study does not even use the term "mild". They did
           | look at three levels of severity: non-hospitalized,
           | hospitalized, and admitted to ICU. The "non-hospitalized"
           | group surely includes people who would describe their case as
           | "worse than any flu", as well as those would describe theirs
           | as "mild" (e.g. a few sniffles for a few days, like a number
           | of my friends recently.)
           | 
           | Second, the hazard ratios differ widely between the three
           | levels of severity. For example, for MACE (major adverse
           | cardiac events) versus the contemporary control group, hazard
           | ratios are:                   Non-hospitalized  1.26
           | Hospitalized      2.41         ICU               4.36
           | 
           | One would expect a similar gradation of risk by severity
           | among the "non-hospitalized" group.
        
             | froh wrote:
             | In the context of this and similar studies non-hospitalized
             | means 'mild', even if it subjectively was 'real bad'
             | 
             | Hospitalized is severe
             | 
             | ICU is very severe / life threatening
        
           | TrevorJ wrote:
           | >They found that even mild COVID damaged otherwise healthy
           | people's hearts so badly that their risk for heart problems
           | are now comparable to those of obese people.
           | 
           | False.
           | 
           | The study did NOT look for heart damage in the study
           | population as a proximal cause for other cardiac events, it
           | simply looked at incidence of cardiac events. Your
           | interpretation is one possible explanation as to why this
           | might be, but the study neither supports nor disproves this
           | explanation.
        
             | Retric wrote:
             | False...
             | 
             | Increased incidents is in support of that conclusion, but
             | does not provide direct evidence of it. An important but
             | subtle difference.
        
               | TrevorJ wrote:
               | Lack of evidence supports precisely _nothing_.
        
               | Retric wrote:
               | Increased incidence is evidence as is the known link
               | between viral infections and heart problems.
               | 
               | Suppose your car doesn't start. That supports the
               | possibility of a dead battery, it also supports broken
               | wire or anything else that's a possible cause. What it
               | doesn't support is your car being in proper working
               | order.
               | 
               | If your car doesn't start and you haven't used it in 2
               | months, well it could be something else but ...
        
               | TrevorJ wrote:
               | >Suppose your car doesn't start. That supports the
               | possibility of a dead battery, it also supports broken
               | wire or anything else that's a possible cause. What it
               | doesn't support is your car being in proper working
               | order.
               | 
               | Yes, these are hypotheses. But they are not meaningful in
               | a scientific sense until you design a study and set about
               | to try to disprove them. OP's claim was in relation to
               | precisely what a scientific paper did or did not prove.
               | Therefore, the appropriate level of rigour we need to
               | apply here is a scientific one.
        
               | Retric wrote:
               | It is the study's author referring to damage, he wasn't
               | willing to say what kind.
               | 
               | "even in people who were previously healthy and had no
               | risk factors or problems with the heart--COVID-19
               | affected them in such a way that manifested the higher
               | risk of heart problems than people who did not get
               | COVID-19.
               | 
               | It was really eye-opening that the risk was also evident
               | in people who did not have severe COVID-19 that
               | necessitated hospitalization or ICU care. People who got
               | COVID-19 and were asymptomatic ...
               | 
               | Why would SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID 19,
               | which we all thought about as a respiratory virus, attack
               | the heart up to a year down the road?"
               | 
               | I am sure the author would love to preform a more
               | detailed study, but calling his conclusions unscientific
               | seems to be overreaching.
        
               | tpoacher wrote:
               | aw, cmon, you broke the "False" chain ...
        
               | TrevorJ wrote:
               | True. ;)
        
               | adrianmonk wrote:
               | Nevertheless, the sentence begins with "they found that",
               | so the sentence is false.
               | 
               | "They found that" means their findings _include_ it.
               | Which is different from their findings being _consistent
               | with_ it.
        
               | Retric wrote:
               | He did say: _What we found is that even in people who did
               | not have any heart problems start with, ... --COVID-19
               | affected them in such a way that manifested the higher
               | risk of heart problems than people who did not get
               | COVID-19._
               | 
               | That doesn't imply that COVID caused damage directly, it
               | could have done something else and that something else
               | caused damage. But that still means COVID started a chain
               | of events resulting in heart damage.
               | 
               |  _Why would SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID 19,
               | which we all thought about as a respiratory virus, attack
               | the heart up to a year down the road?_
        
           | postalrat wrote:
           | Is "False." the new "Wrong."?
        
           | bigfudge wrote:
           | No, there's not enough data to be sure either way, but given
           | that some/most people experience absolutely no lingering
           | symptoms the simplest explanation is that even mild disease
           | cases damage in some people.
           | 
           | EDIT: to be clear. We have no idea if the outcome-generating
           | process is continuous or discontinuous. You seem to think
           | it's continuous, analogous to risks from smoking or obesity,
           | but others would assume not.
        
             | Retric wrote:
             | Lingering symptoms isn't a useful diagnostic tool in this
             | case. Hart damage is generally invisible up until people
             | have a significant problem. This is why young marathon
             | runners occasionally die of undiagnosed heart problems and
             | the elderly get in depth testing before voluntary medical
             | procedures.
             | 
             | Hypothetically, if 3/4 of population has the baseline risk
             | and 1/4 the population has 8x the risk then you could say
             | most people are at identical risks. But unless you can
             | determine which population someone was in that's
             | irrelevant.
        
         | wrs wrote:
         | The headline is badly phrased but I wouldn't call it a "lie".
         | The intended interpretation is that significant long term risks
         | were observed across the broad population, including otherwise
         | healthy people. I perceive pretty widespread belief to the
         | contrary right now, which could be dangerous for public health
         | planning.
        
           | hedora wrote:
           | Future experimental vaccines could contain tracker chips and
           | cause autism.
           | 
           | ^--- also not a lie.
           | 
           | I'd expect John Hopkins to do better though.
        
         | throwaway22032 wrote:
         | It's baffling that a public health institution would discredit
         | themselves so obviously in this way.
         | 
         | I don't understand the world that these people live in. It's
         | like they don't understand the concept of trust _at all_,
         | they're a few iterations of doubling down on just going into
         | some sort of echochamber nonsense.
         | 
         | The headline isn't even true in the superlative sense (e.g.
         | maybe it spares the odd person, but we make a reasonable
         | allowance for that in colloquial speech.). It's in fact the
         | case that it spares the vast majority - most of us have zero
         | detectable symptoms, both during infection and after the fact.
        
         | xorfish wrote:
         | The increased risk affects everyone, even if the risk doesn't
         | materialize for everyone.
        
           | jdmichal wrote:
           | "At increased risk for being at increased risk" is
           | theoretically meaningful, but practically nonsensical unless
           | you can tell which group someone falls into. If you can't,
           | you may as well collapse all the probability into either
           | being at increased risk or not.
        
       | fallingknife wrote:
       | This chart from the actual paper contains much more useful
       | information than the linked article.
       | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01689-3/figures/5
       | 
       | Basically, don't worry about this if you were not hospitalized
       | with covid.
       | 
       | Whole paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01689-3
        
       | quadrifoliate wrote:
       | Looking at the title, I am sad to see the discourse in research
       | sink to this level over the last few years (well, _I think_ so -
       | perhaps it was already at this level before?).
       | 
       | Honestly, it's hard to blame the author(s) for using such a
       | clickbait title when Governments across the world have done
       | precisely the same thing by trivializing the effects of a largely
       | unknown disease, banning public health measures, or declaring the
       | lifting of public health restrictions as a "Freedom Day".
       | 
       | I don't have a great solution for this - perhaps just that we
       | should all tend towards discourse that is a bit more dry and
       | phrased in terms of data; and steer it back to that phrasing when
       | required.
        
         | EricE wrote:
         | The experiences of countries that didn't lock down proves that
         | the "restrictions" were ineffective at best and more and more
         | it looks like they caused and are continuing to cause more
         | harm.
         | 
         | Lockdowns in cities was particularly dumb. Let's lock everyone
         | indoor, in apartment buildings with shared air systems - yup,
         | brilliant strategy for a highly contagious respiratory virus.
         | If the weather is nice enough for people to be outside, the
         | more that are outside the better!
         | 
         | The selective enforcement driven by non-medial reasoning was
         | even more egregious. For example, forcing small businesses to
         | close while allowing big box stores to remain open - either the
         | virus is deadly enough to warrant the prohibition of ALL public
         | contact or it isn't. Same with the ridiculous posturing during
         | the "summer of love" as if the virus was smart enough to avoid
         | spreading at BLM protests, but deadly everywhere else outdoors.
         | 
         | All the lockdowns did was foster the greatest transfer of
         | wealth from the little guys to the big guys in all of human
         | history :p
         | 
         | Even the definition of "emergency" is now hopelessly devalued.
         | The best analogy to demonstrate this that I have heard: If
         | someone asks to borrow your car for two weeks and after two
         | years they still haven't brought it back, they are no longer
         | borrowing your car.
         | 
         | How many people ended up in the hospital on a ventilator and
         | potentially died needlessly while the government panned
         | ivermectin and HCQ and the media/big tech demonized, banned and
         | flat out declared war on anyone talking about anything other
         | than complying with ridiculous mandates and vaccination as the
         | only solution? Going on a ventilator was a 50/50 death
         | sentence. ANYTHING that could have POSSIBLY prevented ANYONE
         | from ever having to go into the hospital should have been
         | thrown at anyone willing to try it. Ivermectin and HCQ are
         | DECADES old, given to millions if not billions of people and
         | even if they were 100% ineffective they certainly were not
         | going to do harm to the VAST majority of people. But here we
         | are. People still make fun of Ivermectin with the "horse
         | dewormer" slur. It's very common for drugs to have human and
         | animal uses and anyone who implies otherwise is either grossly
         | ignorant or the most evil kind of person out there deliberately
         | distorting actual science for political/tribal reasons.
         | 
         | I could go on, but the parameters of the disease were well
         | known by the March after the December the virus really broke on
         | our consciousness. The real problem is politics and money took
         | over. Big pharma had a risk free gravy train as long as the
         | "restrictions" and vaccine mandates were underway. Politicians
         | got to boss people around and make themselves even more
         | important. The government, media and big tech blatantly
         | collaborated in flogging the messaging in ways never before
         | seen in human history.
         | 
         | Trust in government, the media and big tech is at an all time
         | low for very, very good reasons.
         | 
         | What's going to be really tragic - there may be a future
         | biological incident where there are legitimate reasons for
         | dramatic and long term restrictions; good luck getting everyone
         | to cooperate after the ridiculous way COVID was handled. The
         | more evidence that keeps coming out that much of the response
         | and overreaction to it was utterly unwarranted, the more trust
         | is going to be eroded. The most egregious that I am just
         | dumbfounded that here is ongoing controversy over: it's beyond
         | criminal that ANY kids are being forced to still wear face
         | masks. It's flat out child abuse mainly to pleasure the teacher
         | unions.
         | 
         | That you seem to be implying that governments didn't take COVID
         | seriously enough when it's beyond obvious now that the opposite
         | is true - the vast majority of governments dramatically
         | overreacted and probably made things FAR worse with their
         | policies shows just how big of a disconnect remains,
         | unfortunately.
        
           | stjohnswarts wrote:
           | The lockdowns were not ineffective. They were only less
           | effective because of people who cried "muh freedumbs". Masks
           | have repeatedly shown to be effective, especially the
           | N95/KN95 variety. Vaccines were shown to be very effective,
           | if not 100% preventative. Big Tech is not a publisher and
           | expects you to be skeptical of things you read that don't
           | come from mainstream sources. Mainstream sources, other than
           | Fox, tend to have some bias, but almost always contain facts
           | they are based on. Fox however regularly breaks that trust
           | between media and viewers/readers and has been called out
           | over and over.
           | 
           | ----
           | 
           | There are tens of thousands of stories that go out every day
           | without errors. Pulling 8 or 10 stories out of those
           | thousands upon thousands of stories that go out on legit news
           | sources being incorrect or slipping in way too much does not
           | bring into question the other 99.99% legit stories. You
           | aren't making much sense to me here. Almost a million people
           | have died above and beyond what normally would not have died
           | in the USA due to Covid-19. I don't know about you, but that
           | makes me extremely sad with the knowledge that 70-80% of
           | those deaths could have been prevented with vaccines,
           | masking, and observing proper protocols. It breaks my fucking
           | heart to be honest, and I didn't even lose anyone close to me
           | personally.
        
       | zuminator wrote:
       | I'd be curious to know how the numbers compare other infections
       | generally. This page [0] leads me to conclude that all types of
       | infections, even the common cold, often affect the heart
       | adversely. Are Covid's effects on the heart more severe than
       | other studied viruses, or is this really just business as usual,
       | the main difference being the comparatively widespread nature of
       | the Covid virus?
       | 
       | [0] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-
       | conditions/myocarditis/s...
        
       | etaioinshrdlu wrote:
       | I had chest pains for the first time in my life in 2021 and I'm
       | in late 20's. Doctor couldn't find anything. Felt much better
       | after a month. But it came back after getting a booster.
       | 
       | I had COVID confirmed in 2020 with no such issues. For me, as far
       | as i can tell, the chest pains are more correlated with the
       | vaccinations. I'm rather grumpy at the idea of getting additional
       | boosters.
        
         | wolverine876 wrote:
         | Sorry about the chest pain, but I don't think a guess that
         | vaccines caused chest pains - something that many people have
         | experienced long before Coronavirus and vaccines - informs the
         | conversation.
        
         | brianwawok wrote:
         | It's possible they are related, or also possible just
         | coincidence. When I was 31 or 32 I had a bout of crazy chest
         | pains. Did all the tests, got all the EKGs... end result was Dr
         | told me I was fine, lay off the stress. Has not come back, so I
         | think it was just a reminder to take care of my flesh bag a big
         | better.
        
         | yosito wrote:
         | I'm sorry you had that experience with vaccines. I know it
         | won't make much difference to you personally, but the truth is
         | that these sorts of chest pains and heart problems are far more
         | common in immune-naive people who are infected with covid than
         | in people who get vaccines.
        
           | andrew_ wrote:
           | Could you drop a link to some research for side effects of
           | immune-naive infection versus vaccine? I've read the latest
           | on the Pfizer side effects but have nothing to compare it to
           | for immune-naive infection effects and rate of those kinds of
           | symptoms.
        
           | EricE wrote:
           | Citation needed!
           | 
           | In fact, there is more and more data every day the EXACT
           | opposite is true.
        
             | PierceJoy wrote:
             | You demand citations from the parent, and then immediately
             | make an opposing claim without providing any citations.
        
               | ccn0p wrote:
               | Lots of signals coming from the VAERS system [1]? And a
               | few studies to take a look at below. I'd be curious what
               | folks think about these studies.
               | 
               | In any case none of this compares to post-infection heart
               | issue stats but it seems to me that there should be more
               | research in this area.
               | 
               | "Myocarditis Cases Reported After mRNA-Based COVID-19
               | Vaccination in the US From December 2020 to August 2021"
               | [2]
               | 
               | "Epidemiology of Acute Myocarditis/Pericarditis in Hong
               | Kong Adolescents Following Comirnaty Vaccination" [3]
               | 
               | [1] https://openvaers.com/ [2]
               | https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788346
               | [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/
        
         | wlakjlkjkerg wrote:
        
         | tui_smuggler wrote:
         | Same for me (30), second dose gave me chest pains for 4/5 days.
         | Doc did the standard checks and came back with nothing. First
         | time I have ever experienced anything like this. I will not be
         | ever injecting myself with another rna based "vaccine" again.
        
         | abhishekjha wrote:
         | Surprisingly I am having the same symptoms. Like I can feel
         | chest pain during cycling and hours after I am done. This was
         | not the case earlier.
         | 
         | I haven't got it checked yet. I am gonna do that soon.
        
       | EricE wrote:
       | It will be interesting to see the long term numbers for this on
       | the vaxxed vs. unvaxxed.
        
       | azth wrote:
       | What about those that took the vaccine?
        
         | exo-pla-net wrote:
         | If you're referring to cases of myocarditis caused by
         | vaccination itself, the cases are negligible: 2.3 per 100,000
         | [1]. Compare that with the apparent near-certainty of heart
         | damage (and likely brain damage) if you contract COVID while
         | being unvaccinated, and the decision to not get vaccinated is
         | not just selfish but self-destructive.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110737
        
           | vikingerik wrote:
           | Heart damage from Covid is nothing like a "near-certainty".
           | The vast majority don't experience it, upwards of 95%
           | depending on the study. Framing this as "near-certainty" or
           | "spares no one" is irresponsible fear-mongering.
        
             | exo-pla-net wrote:
             | Near-certainty is literally the finding of the linked
             | article. You're confusing your numbers. Heart damage !=
             | heart attacks.
        
             | runako wrote:
             | This claim really requires a citation of some sort. In
             | particular,
             | 
             | > don't experience it
             | 
             | is reckless, given that we know the vast majority of heart
             | disease is undiagnosed until there are symptoms.
        
             | pdonis wrote:
             | The study is not saying that 95% of people who get COVID do
             | not experience heart damage. It is only saying that 95% of
             | people who get COVID did not have a heart-related acute
             | event in the time period examined. That doesn't mean they
             | had no heart damage at all. Their hearts were not directly
             | examined.
             | 
             | The point of this study was to assess whether people who
             | have had COVID are at increased _risk_ for heart-related
             | problems (and the conclusion was that yes, they are), not
             | to assess what percentage of them had actual heart damage.
        
             | Daishiman wrote:
             | 95% is not a "vast majority"; that's 5% of the population
             | with quantifiable degradation in heart function. I fear for
             | the catastrophe it will cause 20 years down the line in
             | increased disease burden.
        
           | j16sdiz wrote:
           | It's 1 in 10,000 according to NHS's vaccine factsheet.
        
           | andrew_ wrote:
           | > near-certainty of heart damage (and likely brain damage) if
           | you contract COVID while being unvaccinated
           | 
           | This is the first I've seen it presented as a near-certainty.
           | Where is this documented?
        
             | wolverine876 wrote:
             | I think they are referring to the paper in the OP.
        
           | the_doctah wrote:
           | Please knock it off with the "selfish" nonsense. Even if
           | everyone got vaccinated, the virus would still get passed
           | around. Then, when the next variant inevitably arises, and
           | everyone's immunity wears off, we're back at square one. The
           | anti-anti-vax crowd is just a walking meme at this point.
        
             | seattle_spring wrote:
             | > The anti-anti-vax crowd is just a walking meme at this
             | point.
             | 
             | Not more than the actual anti-vax crowd.
        
             | wolverine876 wrote:
             | > Even if everyone got vaccinated, the virus would still
             | get passed around.
             | 
             | That's not necessarily true. The virus needs to spread
             | faster than it dies (look up the R value). Vaccines have
             | eliminated other diseases, such as small pox.
        
               | cf141q5325 wrote:
               | Thats not a realistic option for COVID and the vaccines
               | we have for it. Its a leaky vaccine (meaning you still
               | get sick and spread it just as much) and the reduced
               | likelihood for infection is nowhere near enough to get R0
               | under 1. Especially with every mutation (delta, omicron
               | ...) having higher R0
        
             | usefulcat wrote:
             | You have a valid point, but hospital beds are still a
             | finite resource. So in that sense, yeah, it is selfish to
             | not get vaccinated in the absence of other mitigating
             | factors, since vaccination prevents hospitalization in a
             | large majority of cases.
        
               | EricE wrote:
               | What's even more selfish is not treating COVID but just
               | telling people to wait until it is bad enough to go into
               | the hospital before doing anything, when we absolutely
               | knew very early on that anyone going on a ventilator was
               | essentially a 50/50 death sentence. Keeping everyone off
               | of ventilators at all costs should have been the number
               | one goal instead of futilely trying to stop the spread of
               | a highly contagious arial virus that is in the same
               | family as the common cold. I know few people who would
               | think you were rational if you prescribed any of the
               | COVID "solutions" to try to prevent cold viruses - yet
               | somehow we were going to be effective with COVID?
               | 
               | What's beyond evil is demonizing any treatment other than
               | vaccination - but that's still going on even today, as
               | evidenced by posts like yours.
               | 
               | I got COVID and was (and still am) unvaccinated, yet I
               | did not get anywhere near a hospital; and that is what
               | happened to just about anyone who wasn't in one of the
               | well known and well understood risk groups.
               | 
               | Treating everyone the same instead of focusing on those
               | most at risk was and still is particularly dumb, but here
               | we are with people like you still making completely
               | baseless claims that are certainly not backed by any
               | actual medical science.
               | 
               | Before baselessly judging everyone else as selfish you
               | might want to spend more time looking in a mirror.
        
               | usefulcat wrote:
               | What I'm saying is that maybe some people who have been
               | hospitalized due to covid wouldn't be in the hospital if
               | they had gotten vaccinated.
               | 
               | Hospital beds are not an unlimited resource, and there
               | are plenty of other conditions apart from covid that may
               | also require hospitalization.
               | 
               | I genuinely fail to see what is unreasonable, selfish or
               | factually wrong about any of the above statements.
        
               | KerrAvon wrote:
               | Counterpoint: dude does not have a valid point.
        
               | cf141q5325 wrote:
               | Does that cover risky behavior that could lead to
               | hospitalization as well? Lets be honest, we did collect
               | quite a bit of data over the pandemic years and your risk
               | of hospitalization from COVID is not some random chance
               | but determined by your state of health.
               | 
               | Differently put, i am having a hard time calling healthy
               | teenagers selfish if nobody thinks about calling anyone
               | with a still obese BMI after 2 years the same. Because to
               | be perfectly blunt, looking at the numbers the later is a
               | lot bigger of a problem then the former.
               | 
               | edit: In case anyone is skeptical about the giant impact
               | obesity has, here the CDC numbers from last year
               | https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2021/pdf/21_0123.pdf
               | Figure 1 has leading underlying medical conditions.
               | Hypertension, Lipid metabolism (cholesterol), obesity
               | itself, diabetes and coronary atherosclerosis being the
               | first 5. Table 1 has the numbers of hospitalized. ~95%
               | had two or more on the list.
        
             | KerrAvon wrote:
             | You are correct. We should use the terminology "insanely
             | selfish." If everyone (not immunosuppressed etc) got
             | vaccinated, fewer people would die. This is science, not
             | religion. This is not hard to understand unless you're
             | willfully committed to ignorance. The existing vaccines
             | have so far still been effective against newer strains,
             | just less so.
             | 
             | > The anti-anti-vax crowd is just a walking meme at this
             | point.
             | 
             | This is a semantically null statement.
        
         | blueline wrote:
         | > This study was done before vaccination was widely available.
         | Is there any indication that, for example, breakthrough
         | infections would have a different result long term?
         | 
         | > Yes. We are [studying] this, but I think the jury is still
         | out. We're certainly very interested in addressing that
         | publicly as soon as we can.
        
           | smegsicle wrote:
           | neat! that first quoted line has css text-transform:uppercase
           | in the article, so firefox copies as original, lowercase
           | text, but chromium copies as all caps!
        
         | lapetitejort wrote:
         | > THIS STUDY WAS DONE BEFORE VACCINATION WAS WIDELY AVAILABLE.
         | IS THERE ANY INDICATION THAT, FOR EXAMPLE, BREAKTHROUGH
         | INFECTIONS WOULD HAVE A DIFFERENT RESULT LONG TERM?
         | 
         | > Yes. We are [studying] this, but I think the jury is still
         | out. We're certainly very interested in addressing that
         | publicly as soon as we can.
        
       | Fargoan wrote:
       | My friend died 2 days ago. Heart attack at 31 years old. He had
       | some unhealthy eating habits, but nothing out of the ordinary and
       | he was at most slightly overweight. I wouldn't be surprised if
       | him having covid a couple months ago was a major factor in his
       | death.
        
         | parrellel wrote:
         | Very possible, there was a teen girl who was recovering from
         | Covid around here a month ago that just hemorrhaged to death.
         | Cardiovascular damage continues to be no joke.
        
         | IAmGraydon wrote:
         | Young people who are seemingly healthy do die of heart attacks
         | from time to time. This happened before Covid. If we're picking
         | random things preceding his death, why not some other thing he
         | did in the last couple of months? Why Covid?
        
         | stjohnswarts wrote:
         | Seems unlikely. Usually something as drastic as a heart attack
         | at a young age like that is linked to genetics.
        
         | LouisSayers wrote:
         | Unfortunately these things happen sometimes.
         | 
         | Unless you investigate though it's all pure speculation.
         | 
         | Here's a pro athlete that also died (at age 33) - riding his
         | bike up a hill.
         | 
         | https://i.stuff.co.nz/sport/other-sports/76467759/kiwi-mount...
        
         | melling wrote:
         | Was the person vaccinated? This was done before people were
         | vaccinated so it's unclear if being vaccinated helped:
         | 
         | "THIS STUDY WAS DONE BEFORE VACCINATION WAS WIDELY AVAILABLE."
        
         | wolverine876 wrote:
         | I'm very sorry about your friend. That's incredible - 31 years
         | old. How heart-breaking it must be.
        
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