[HN Gopher] Myocarditis after Covid vaccination: Research on pos...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Myocarditis after Covid vaccination: Research on possible long-term
       risks begins
        
       Author : gjsman-1000
       Score  : 288 points
       Date   : 2022-11-14 14:15 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nbcnews.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nbcnews.com)
        
       | not_good_coder wrote:
       | The developer of the vaccine should not sponsor this adverse
       | effects trial.
        
         | nonethewiser wrote:
         | Careful, the news told me that's what conspiracy theorists
         | would say.
        
       | nradov wrote:
       | One mouse study found that vaccine injection without aspiration
       | did significantly increase the risk of adverse cardiac events
       | such as myocarditis. That research hasn't been reproduced in
       | humans but this area deserves further investigation. As per CDC
       | guidelines, US healthcare providers don't routinely aspirate
       | prior to intramuscular injection.
       | 
       | 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
       | 
       | https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/acip-recs/general-recs/admi...
        
         | ambicapter wrote:
         | aspiration here means?
        
           | enragedcacti wrote:
           | It means after inserting the needle you draw back on the
           | plunger to see if any blood is drawn into the syringe. If so
           | it means you hit a vein and should reposition the needle
           | because the shot is meant to go into the muscle rather than
           | directly into a vein.
        
         | chedca21 wrote:
         | And young male athletes with the greatest development of blood
         | supply in the deltoid represent the most common demographic
         | affected by acute cardiovascular injury post vaccine.
         | Coincidence?
         | 
         | The vaccines were not built to be aspirated, once the plunger
         | is up they can not be reset. It represents a fundamental lapse
         | in standard harm reduction.
         | 
         | Also "wait 15 mins to see if emergency care is needed" could
         | well have been replaced by allergy screening given before the
         | injection. Many thousands of cases of anaphylaxis from the shot
         | have been documented some of which were fatal, all avoidable
         | with allergy screening which is practically free.
        
           | AnthonBerg wrote:
           | I have asked for aspiration when I was vaccinated, all four
           | times. I've had Pfizer and Moderna. It was no problem.
           | 
           | There exist syringes which the injection cannot be aspirated
           | with, but those weren't used when I was being vaccinated.
           | 
           | --
           | 
           | Strong agreement on the concern about deltoid vasculature.
           | 
           | (I have direct, lived experience with someone at risk of
           | death from a substance going into a capillary which was
           | supposed to stay under the skin on injection. It happens.
           | It's real. Some doctors will claim it's "impossible", which
           | is obviously false when you look into it. The datasheet that
           | came with the injector needles even state that they're "over
           | 99.5 accurate in delivering a subcutaneous injection". I
           | forget the exact phrasing. It means that statistically, 1 in
           | 200 injections tends to go into a capillary.)
           | 
           | --
           | 
           | Also, it's interesting to look into the reasons why
           | aspiration was removed from standard practice. In a nutshell,
           | it's because of two things:
           | 
           | 1: Some syringes exist which cannot be aspirated with.
           | 
           | 2: Aspiration can be painful for infants and is tricky to
           | perform because they are small and they struggle.
           | 
           | These are the reasons why aspiration was essentially removed
           | from clinical practice. Really. Those are the reasons. It
           | doesn't make any sense. It's obviously harmful that
           | aspiration was stopped.
           | 
           | The papers the grandparent post links to are good.
        
       | pandeiro wrote:
        
       | dayvid wrote:
       | My main question is if the vaccine side effects are just a much
       | milder version of what would happen if you got COVID as opposed
       | to something vaccine specific.
       | 
       | If that's the case, then there would be more myocarditis issues
       | from people not vaccinating. I haven't received a straight answer
       | on this.
        
         | mrtesthah wrote:
         | > _...then there would be more myocarditis issues from people
         | not vaccinating..._
         | 
         | Yes.
         | 
         | Myocarditis seven times more likely with COVID-19 than vaccines
         | 
         | https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/967801
         | 
         | Myocarditis Risk 17 Times Higher for Unvaccinated Patients Ages
         | 12-30 Who Get COVID-19 Than COVID-Vaccinated Patients
         | 
         | https://www.epicresearch.org/articles/myocarditis-risk-17-ti...
         | 
         | Myocarditis risk significantly higher after COVID-19 infection
         | vs. after a COVID-19 vaccine | American Heart Association
         | 
         | https://newsroom.heart.org/news/myocarditis-risk-significant...
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | nonethewiser wrote:
           | I wonder why those studies differ from this one, that did not
           | find a higher incidence in myocarditis in COVID patients.
           | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/
        
             | russdill wrote:
             | The numbers in this study end up being relatively small as
             | there are only 200k people involved. "Nine post-COVID-19
             | patients developed myocarditis".
        
         | russdill wrote:
         | https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA....
         | 
         | "Myocarditis is more common after severe acute respiratory
         | syndrome coronavirus 2 infection than after COVID-19
         | vaccination, but the risks in younger people and after
         | sequential vaccine doses are less certain."
         | 
         | The study size is 43M people.
        
         | sfusato wrote:
         | _" Retrospective cohort study of 196,992 adults after COVID-19
         | infection in Israel between March 2020 and January 2021. [...]
         | We did not observe an increased incidence of neither
         | pericarditis nor myocarditis in adult patients recovering from
         | COVID-19 infection."_
         | 
         | Study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/
        
       | coinbasetwwa wrote:
        
         | tibbydudeza wrote:
         | Polio - people have forgotten rows of kids in iron lungs -
         | perhaps you should read some history books and forget the
         | crypto.
        
           | sfusato wrote:
           | I highly recommend "Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines,
           | and The Forgotten History".
        
           | tick_tock_tick wrote:
           | Smallpox and other random stuff exists too what does that
           | have to do with this conversation?
        
           | nomel wrote:
           | How is polio related to covid?
        
       | hitpointdrew wrote:
       | Seems like this should have been a requirement before any
       | emergency use authorization, and certainly before any mandates.
       | 
       | The fact that this research is just now being done ought to be
       | enough to immediately revoke the FDA emergency use authorizations
       | and pull the product from the shelves.
       | 
       | The covid vaccines have been a complete and utter disaster at
       | every level. The erosion of trust in the institutions that are
       | supposed to protect consumers has alone done exponentially more
       | damage than the virus it self.
       | 
       | We now have victims of vaccine injury so scared of societal
       | backlash they don't speak out, and doctors so scared of losing
       | their license/job they ignore the evidence in front of them.
        
         | yucky wrote:
         | The actual FDA approval letter[0] calls out in the document
         | that all long term testing will not be completed until May
         | 2027. Pointing that out has always gotten one branded as an
         | antivaxx conspiracy nutter, rather than a person who might want
         | to ensure that, well, long term testing data is actually in
         | before injecting something into their bodies.
         | 
         | [0] https://www.fda.gov/media/151710/download
        
           | bluGill wrote:
           | > long term testing data is actually in before injecting
           | something into their bodies.
           | 
           | You don't get a choice about COVID getting into your body,
           | and that is far worse than whatever possible long term
           | effects of the vaccine might be.
           | 
           | There may be concerning long term effects, but keep
           | persepcive, the worst possible case is still better than the
           | known case of COVID. And of course long term studies on COVID
           | are also still in progress with all signs pointing to even
           | more bad effects of COVID coming out in the coming years.
        
             | cragfar wrote:
             | >There may be concerning long term effects, but keep
             | persepcive, the worst possible case is still better than
             | the known case of COVID.
             | 
             | The most common outcome of Covid is feeling bad for a
             | couple of days (up to a week), and then moving on with life
             | across all age groups. This has always been the case.
        
               | hedora wrote:
               | Yes, but the bad outcomes of Covid are > 10x more common
               | than those of the vaccine, and they're also much worse.
        
               | cragfar wrote:
               | That really depends on the age group. The chances of
               | someone under 30 having any real negative effects to
               | Covid is virtually 0, while there is some evidence
               | pointing to males under the age of 30 having issues with
               | the vaccine.
        
               | bluGill wrote:
               | The chance of a male under 30 having issues is also
               | virtually zero.
        
               | yucky wrote:
               | Sounds like there never was a reasonable case for
               | mandates then :)
        
             | adamsb6 wrote:
             | > You don't get a choice about COVID getting into your
             | body, and that is far worse than whatever possible long
             | term effects of the vaccine might be.
             | 
             | You seem certain of this, but the vaccines are new enough
             | that we can't possibly have long term data to even
             | evaluate.
             | 
             | Bodies are complicated, even more than software systems.
             | I've been in enough SEV reviews where the root cause was
             | seemingly innocuous to know that I can't anticipate with
             | much confidence that any particular change won't result in
             | some cascading failure scenario. This is why we have test
             | environments. Luckily in software it's extremely rare for a
             | change to take years to manifest bad behavior, but not so
             | in medicine.
             | 
             | I'm no biologist, but an obvious question to ask is if the
             | spike protein by itself, which the vaccine will produce,
             | has different impacts than the spike protein coupled to the
             | virus envelope. It's certainly smaller, will it be able to
             | pass through areas where the whole virus package wouldn't?
             | What about the end of the spike that would otherwise be
             | attached to the envelope, will it have an effect?
             | 
             | You can't naively draw a Venn diagram of virus and vaccine
             | impacts where the vaccine impacts are fully a subset of the
             | virus impacts.
        
             | yucky wrote:
             | You don't get a choice about COVID getting into your body,
             | and that is far worse than whatever possible long term
             | effects of the vaccine might be.
             | 
             | That is actually yet to be determined, which is the point.
             | 
             | And I only mean that as it relates to specific demographic
             | cohorts, not overall. If I were elderly, diabetic,
             | immunocompromised etc. I don't think I'd hesitate. But the
             | data I've seen on my demographic cohort is a toss-up at
             | best, or even shows the vaccine to be riskier.
        
             | jaywalk wrote:
             | > You don't get a choice about COVID getting into your
             | body, and that is far worse than whatever possible long
             | term effects of the vaccine might be.
             | 
             | You don't know that, because we don't know what the "long
             | term effects of the vaccine" actually are.
        
               | ceejayoz wrote:
               | That's true in _both_ directions.
        
         | wrycoder wrote:
         | As soon as the EUAs were issued, the vaccine manufacturers shut
         | down clinical trial followup and, in many cases, allowed
         | vaccination of the control branch of the trials. Same for
         | Paxlovid, where support for independent trials was refused.
        
           | oezi wrote:
           | Citation?
        
           | throwaway049 wrote:
           | 'allowed vaccination of the control branch'
           | 
           | People in the control branch were told they were controls so
           | that they had the option to get the newly-authorized vaccine
           | for real. Standard practice for trials that go well.
        
             | wrycoder wrote:
             | And so the long term effects of the treatment are
             | uncontrolled.
             | 
             | I think it's standard practice for therapeutics, but not
             | for vaccines?
        
           | pieter_mj wrote:
           | I, probably with many others, didn't realize this could be
           | the consequence of an EUA until you mentioned it here. Thank
           | you.
        
         | oezi wrote:
         | No, that gets it totally backwards. The miniscule risks of the
         | vaccine are blown out of proportion by bad reporting and people
         | reading the statistics wrong.
         | 
         | In converse: we should have skipped phase 3 trials
         | (effectivity) and should have started vaccination after safety
         | was approved.
         | 
         | If anything the vaccination campaign has shown that sometimes
         | acting fast can be tremendously helpful.
        
         | UncleOxidant wrote:
         | Isn't he risk of myocarditis actually higher if you get
         | infected with covid compared with getting a covid vaccine?
         | 
         | https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-...
        
           | jsight wrote:
           | The problem seems to be that the vaccine isn't decreasing
           | infection risk all that much. Is it also decreasing
           | myocarditis risk among the infected? I've seen mixed results,
           | so it isn't clear to me.
        
           | hedora wrote:
           | Yes. In particular, the contents of the mRNA vaccines are a
           | subset of what a covid infection produces.
           | 
           | The anti-vax stance is similar to the claims that tightly
           | regulated nicotine vapes are worse than high tar cigarettes.
           | (Except that you can just choose to not smoke, of course.)
        
             | UncleOxidant wrote:
             | I hear a lot of anti-vaxy stuff about how the spike protein
             | is damaging in itself (implying that you shouldn't get the
             | vaccine because you'll have spike proteins flowing around
             | in your blood), but they seem to ignore the fact that when
             | you get actual covid the virus is multiplying in your cells
             | and spike proteins are more widespread and more numerous.
             | 
             | I see the argument here in this thread that the vaccine
             | isn't really preventing you from getting covid at this
             | point (which is probably largely true) but shouldn't being
             | vaccinated mean that you'll have a lower viral load and
             | shorter duration of illness?
        
               | dudeofea wrote:
               | catching covid always involves an infection of a
               | respiratory tract (nose, mouth, etc) but not necessarily
               | an infection in the bloodstream
               | 
               | covid vaccines are always present in the bloodstream
               | after injection, even if injected intra-muscularly
               | 
               | an early study in japan showed only ~25% of the vaccine
               | stays at the injection site
        
               | puffoflogic wrote:
               | > the virus is multiplying in your cells
               | 
               | The mRNA vaccines work by causing the spike protein to
               | multiply in your cells. Yes, the mechanism is different -
               | the virus copies _itself_ and the spike protein just
               | happens to be part of the virus, whereas the vaccine mRNA
               | just causes the spike protein itself to be copied. Note
               | that with the vaccine, you 're getting a massive number
               | of cells "infected" all at once, equivalent to quite a
               | bit of virus self-replication. So the result is the same,
               | a lot of spike protein floating around and doing damage.
               | The main difference in result is that with the mRNA,
               | there is an upper bound to the number of cells which can
               | be infected (and which therefore have to be eliminated by
               | your immune system), whereas with the virus there is
               | effectively no upper bound. But that doesn't translate at
               | all into a difference of how much damage the spike
               | protein produced by X infected cells produces, and it
               | doesn't mean that the number of infected cells with mRNA
               | is significantly less than the number of infected cells
               | you would have gotten with a successfully-fought-off
               | infection. So it _could_ do just as much damage.
        
               | Izkata wrote:
               | > The main difference in result is that with the mRNA,
               | there is an upper bound to the number of cells which can
               | be infected
               | 
               | Reverse-transcriptase enzyme in liver cells in a lab has
               | been shown to convert the mRNA vaccines into DNA. While
               | it's unclear if it would actually be a permanent change
               | to cells, DNA is a lot more stable than RNA and could
               | hang around a lot longer than expected, and result in a
               | lot more spike protein than expected.
               | 
               | https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/44/3/73
        
               | Izkata wrote:
               | You're missing part of the argument: Vaccine-generated
               | spike protein is free-floating, while virus-generated
               | spike protein is attached to the virus. The free-floating
               | spike protein is a lot smaller than the virus, so it can
               | get a lot more places, and while some will break off of
               | the virus and become free-floating it wouldn't be in
               | anywhere near as large amounts as vaccine-generated spike
               | protein.
        
           | weberer wrote:
           | Why did you ask that as a question if you have the answer
           | right there?
        
             | nomel wrote:
             | Understanding of this stuff can change, as evident by the
             | fact that this post exists and research is just starting.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | dbsights wrote:
           | > Associations were stronger in men younger than 40 years for
           | all vaccines. 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]).
           | 
           | > The risk of vaccine-associated myocarditis is consistently
           | higher in younger men, particularly after a second dose of
           | mRNA-1273, where the number of additional events during 28
           | days was estimated to be 97 per million people exposed. An
           | important consideration for this group is that the risk of
           | myocarditis after a second dose of mRNA-1273 was higher than
           | the risk after infection.
           | 
           | That's from the study you linked; for the group most at risk
           | of vaccine myocarditis, the vaccine was associated with a
           | higher risk than the virus. In this study, this was true for
           | Moderna, with Pfizer being about equivalent risk to the virus
           | (albeit without considering that the risk of infection
           | remains after vaccination). However, there have been other
           | studies that found this to be true for all mrna vaccines.
           | 
           | So to answer your question, its technically true, but only if
           | you dilute the at-risk group by including the entire
           | population.
        
           | halfjoking wrote:
           | That's what the CDC claims now.
           | 
           | Earlier in pandemic 196k post Covid patients were monitored a
           | year... "We did not observe an increased incidence of neither
           | pericarditis nor myocarditis in adult patients recovering
           | from COVID-19 infection."
           | 
           | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/
        
           | robocat wrote:
           | No, not for younger men: the risk of myocarditis from the
           | vaccine does not appear to offset the benefit. So if you only
           | care about _that one single dimension_ , younger men
           | shouldn't have the vaccine. That said, other costs and
           | benefits matter far far more I think.
           | 
           | Absolutely terrible reporting in that link - instead look at
           | the paper: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCU
           | LATIONAHA....                 In men younger than 40 years,
           | we estimate an additional 4 and 14 myocarditis events per
           | million in the 1 to 28 days after a first dose of BNT162b2
           | and mRNA-1273, respectively; and an additional 14 , 11 and 97
           | myocarditis events after a second dose of ChAdOx1, BNT162b2,
           | and mRNA-1273, respectively. These estimates compare with an
           | additional 16 myocarditis events per million men younger than
           | 40 years in the 1 to 28 days after a SARS-CoV-2-positive test
           | before vaccination. [ChAdOx1 == AstraZeneca, BNT162b2 ==
           | Pfizer, and mRNA-1273 == Moderna]            The risk of
           | vaccine-associated myocarditis is consistently higher in
           | younger men, particularly after a second dose of mRNA-1273,
           | where the number of additional events during 28 days was
           | estimated to be 97 per million people exposed. An important
           | consideration for this group is that the risk of myocarditis
           | after a second dose of mRNA-1273 was higher than the risk
           | after infection.
           | 
           | Disclaimer: I try to be apolitical however there is a strong
           | aura of bullshit around this topic so double check
           | everything!
        
           | YetAnotherNick wrote:
           | That is such a biased study. They aren't comparing Covid
           | postive + no vaccine with covid negative + vaccine. If that
           | was the comparison 1st group fares better as they did not
           | find any covid positive + non vaccinated being diagnosed with
           | myocarditis.
           | 
           | Also their dataset had 13% covid positive rate. So ideally we
           | should multiply the non vaccinated risk by 13%.
           | 
           | [0] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONA
           | HA....
        
             | xracy wrote:
             | I don't know about the rest of your methodology and I'm
             | suspicious of the concept of "Oh they forgot to multiply by
             | 13%" cause you just don't multiply percentages (with very
             | few exceptions). But more to the point, the group "Covid
             | Positive + No Vaccine" has a high sampling bias built into
             | it. Because you're sampling "People who _lived_ through
             | covid without the vaccine ".
        
           | alerighi wrote:
           | Except you can get infected even if you get the vaccine. In
           | fact it seems to me that people got it despite the fact that
           | they were vaccinated or not, without a particular logic.
        
           | Fomite wrote:
           | It is. With the exception of a very narrow age range of young
           | men, the COVID vaccine is protective against heart disease
           | alone, even ignoring all other outcomes.
        
             | wiredearp wrote:
             | Young men on the other hand appear to face the biggest
             | increase in COVID related heart attacks according to
             | https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/covid-19-surges-
             | linked..., so perhaps the vaccine remains their best
             | option.
        
               | Fomite wrote:
               | Indeed. In that group, it's merely...murky...rather than
               | "This is definitively a bad idea".
        
             | ifyoubuildit wrote:
             | > the COVID vaccine is protective against heart disease
             | alone
             | 
             | Wait, what? As in people should just take it as a
             | prophylactic for heart disease, without even taking covid
             | into consideration? It seems like this would be shouted
             | from the rooftops if it were true.
        
               | Fomite wrote:
               | No - it's protective against negative COVID-19 outcomes
               | _just_ if you consider cardiovascular outcomes, ignoring
               | all the others.
        
         | dempseye wrote:
         | The erosion of trust is actually a good thing, because those
         | institutions are undeserving of trust.
        
         | ivraatiems wrote:
         | > The covid vaccines have been a complete and utter disaster at
         | every level.
         | 
         | Sure, except for the 20+ million lives they saved:
         | 
         | https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
         | https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/06/covid-19...
         | 
         | > The erosion of trust in the institutions that are supposed to
         | protect consumers has alone done exponentially more damage than
         | the virus it self.
         | 
         | Source needed. Reading these comments, one would think nobody
         | ever died of COVID. One would think we didn't have hospitals
         | crammed to the gills with them.
        
           | anon291 wrote:
           | > Sure, except for the 20+ million lives they saved:
           | 
           | There is no reason to expect 20 million people in the United
           | States would have died if we had taken a european approach to
           | vaccination approvals.
        
             | frant-hartm wrote:
             | What was different in EU? Didn't we approve the same
             | vaccines few weeks later?
        
               | anon291 wrote:
               | In certain countries of the EU, boosters are not approved
               | for younger people.
        
             | ivraatiems wrote:
             | It's 20+ million worldwide, not in the US.
        
         | throwaway5959 wrote:
         | Still glad I took my chances with the vaccine:
         | https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/brie...
        
           | kitsunesoba wrote:
           | Seeing how family who got infected prior to vaccine
           | availability are still suffering brain fog and lack of energy
           | even now, I am too. The long term effects of covid concern me
           | far more than those of the vaccine do.
        
             | twerkmonsta wrote:
        
               | Enginerrrd wrote:
               | I'm glad the emergency use authorization allowed people
               | who are interested to get the vaccine. I don't think
               | mandates were ever appropriate, and I think people should
               | also have had a right to NOT get the vaccine.
               | 
               | The emergency use authorization seemed absolutely like
               | the appropriate course of action given the circumstances.
        
             | vikingerik wrote:
             | Remember the right comparison regarding apparent long-
             | Covid: What proportion of people would self-report brain
             | fog and lack of energy anyway, with nothing to do with
             | Covid?
        
               | AnthonBerg wrote:
               | This sort of claim has been made after a study was
               | released that took the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies
               | as the source of thruth for whether people had gotten
               | COVID-19.
               | 
               | This sort of claim can't be made on that basis because a
               | lot of people _do not produce antibodies after
               | infection_.
               | 
               | Paper: "Predictors of Nonseroconversion after SARS-CoV-2
               | Infection" -
               | https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/9/21-1042_article
               | 
               | Abstract: _"Not all persons recovering from severe acute
               | respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection
               | develop SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies. We show that
               | nonseroconversion is associated with younger age and
               | higher reverse transcription PCR cycle threshold values
               | and identify SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in the nasopharynx as
               | a major correlate of the systemic antibody response."_
               | 
               | Please note that this was already known when the study
               | which is taken to show that people are imagining long
               | COVID was published.
               | 
               | It's not a good study.
               | 
               | Quite a bit of research has been done since then which
               | further pins down the fact that long COVID is very real
               | and how to diagnose it with biomarkers, which turn out to
               | correspond very well with people saying that a SARS-CoV-2
               | infection messed them up.
               | 
               | Please also consider how harshly judgemental it appears
               | when someone accuses a large number of people of
               | imagining or making up a severe and disabling condition.
               | You have to be _very_ certain.
        
               | dekhn wrote:
               | How much of _everything_ can be explained by the brain 's
               | bias to ignore the base rate fallacy.
        
           | chedca21 wrote:
           | The danger of contracting covid was inflated relatively by
           | initial standards of care that later proved harmful;
           | https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/why-some-
           | doctors-...
           | 
           | Also using steroids like dexamethasone were a later advent in
           | treating covid that helped a lot. (They should have been
           | standard of care right away like they would have been for any
           | other respiratory illness).
           | 
           | These early follies increased the perceived need for a
           | vaccine then and today still; risk : benefit analysis for the
           | vaccines consider worst possible scenarios for covid, which
           | include defunct practices like high PIP ventilator use and
           | forgoing of common first-line treatments
        
             | xracy wrote:
             | Did you look at the article?
             | 
             | The time frames for the graphs are _not_ the beginnings of
             | covid (EoY 2021). By that time the initial standards of
             | care had improved to the steroid treatments (I can 't say
             | specifically which ones, because I do not know, but I _do_
             | know they were generally the standard of care at that
             | time).
             | 
             | The risk benefit analysis of the vaccine vs the disease is
             | ultimately something that's impossible to do at this point,
             | because it's impossible to be impartial to whatever side
             | you think is riskier. In general, I think a disease is just
             | always going to be riskier than a vaccine. Anything you say
             | about the vaccine could be true of the disease as well
             | until we have complete information about the disease.
        
           | thedrbrian wrote:
        
           | Server6 wrote:
           | I watched one of my best friends choke on his own lungs and
           | die of COVID last year. He'd be alive if he had gotten the
           | vaccine.
        
             | throwaway5959 wrote:
             | I'm sorry to hear that.
        
             | HideousKojima wrote:
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | spfzero wrote:
         | It also seems like, in the absence of assurance of long-term
         | safety, you would recommend the vaccine for at-risk groups
         | only. It's known now that the risk to young people (under 19)
         | is minimal: IFR < 3/1,000,000. And that was during the much
         | more dangerous early strain of Covid-19, not the ones
         | circulating now. Yet here we are in 2022 with a recommendation
         | from the CDC to vaccinate ages 5 and up, regardless of health
         | condition.
        
           | xracy wrote:
           | It is wild to me that people look at a number like
           | 3/1,000,000 and don't think wow, that's 1900 Children who
           | could die from something we have a vaccine for, that actively
           | prevents the cause.
           | 
           | Also, can you imagine losing a child to something that was
           | preventable? You can play numbers and statistics all day, but
           | we're talking about children's lives.
           | 
           | You're probably not a parent? But for reference, go find
           | examples of people who are parents that have lost children to
           | some cause, and see what they're doing now? I would bet 9/10
           | times they're trying to prevent that from happening to
           | others.
        
             | spfzero wrote:
             | I am a parent. It's not that I don't think some children
             | should be vaccinated; some should. Overweight, diabetic,
             | etc. We know where the risk is, and we know the vaccine
             | reduces serious outcomes. It's recommending it across-the-
             | board that I object to.
             | 
             | Now if your argument is "what's the harm?, why not
             | vaccinate everyone?" my answer would be we don't actually
             | know what the harm might be to these kids later in life. No
             | one does. Probably no harm, I guess? Maybe a 3/1,000,000
             | chance of harm? no one knows.
        
             | mach1ne wrote:
             | It's not a case where no children die if everyone takes the
             | vaccine and 1900 children die if nobody does. There are
             | numerous other variables at play, each of which contains
             | some unknowns and affects quality of life or even the
             | continuity of it. I can't say that I know what the
             | currently best course of action for children is, but the
             | problem is far from black and white.
        
             | dwmbt wrote:
             | same. it's also interesting that many of the folks
             | commenting are not likely to be in the most vulnerable
             | group at risk of developing myocarditis from the vaccine
             | [0] -- that unfortunate category is one that i belong to.
             | as a young man, i spoke about this risk nearly a year ago
             | to the tee [1]. since then, i've also found out i am
             | particularly vulnerable, as i had a history of heart issues
             | as a young child (heart murmer -> arrhythmia). it will be
             | nice to see more data available, but i don't regret any of
             | the vaccines in the slightest.
             | 
             | there are plenty of comments here that speak to the general
             | age recommendation other countries have provided, but i
             | have yet to see people connect the other MAJOR group of
             | people that should, by all means, totally, 100% consider
             | getting their nth vaccination -> anyone with a comorbidity!
             | if you are a young man with diabetes, the risks you face
             | from the vaccine vs a covid infection are no longer as
             | murky.
             | 
             | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33480849 [1]
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29221924#29223881
        
             | nradov wrote:
             | The COVID-19 fatality risk for children is very low overall
             | (0.002% estimated by the CDC). Those deaths have almost all
             | been in patients with severe pre-existing health conditions
             | such as obesity. For pediatric patients without pre-
             | existing conditions, the death rate is virtually zero. So
             | from a public health perspective it's most important to
             | focus vaccination campaigns on those at greatest risk.
             | 
             | https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2021-052273
             | 
             | https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fijpo.12920
             | 
             | To be clear, I am not telling anyone to avoid vaccination
             | for themselves or their children. Vaccination is a good
             | option for the vast majority of patients. Talk to your
             | doctor.
             | 
             | And ironically, school closures and lockdowns during the
             | pandemic actually _increased_ the rate of childhood
             | obesity. The purported  "cure" was not only worse than the
             | disease, it actually made the disease worse by placing
             | children at greater risk.
             | 
             | https://www.cureus.com/articles/107920-increased-
             | incidence-o...
        
             | hitpointdrew wrote:
             | You are ignoring the parents that lost children due to the
             | vaccine, or now have children with ongoing medical issues.
             | 
             | Children are not dying from covid. So there is no need to
             | vaccinate them unless they are in a high risk category.
             | 
             | The NY Times reported "For children without a serious
             | medical condition, the danger of severe Covid is so low as
             | to be difficult to quantify."
        
               | xracy wrote:
               | "Children are not dying from covid." Is a strong claim.
               | 
               | And it would be just as backed up as if I were to say
               | "Children are not dying from covid vaccines."
        
             | dekhn wrote:
             | You're trying to do "appeal to emotion" argument, doesn't
             | work super well here.
        
               | xracy wrote:
               | If you want my "appeal to numbers" argument, you can see
               | it all over this thread.
               | 
               | It seems like I'm getting a continual -2 on votes for all
               | of my arguments just cause I'm coming off as "pro-
               | vaccine". So it doesn't actually seem to matter what
               | appeals I make.
               | 
               | Also though, I don't really believe I'm changing anyone's
               | mind on this. I'm just inviting people consider the
               | humanity of things like "child deaths". Which, is much
               | easier to consider as a number than it is as an actual
               | concept.
        
               | dekhn wrote:
               | I have a couple kids (teens). I'm worried about many
               | other things, not COVID; it's just far down on my list of
               | things that I consider active risks to my children that I
               | have the power to impact.
               | 
               | I don't really have time to cross reference all your
               | different comments, but when you post a comment that is
               | _just_ appeal to emotion, I tend to mention it.
        
               | xracy wrote:
               | Also, brief note, that you might think you're an
               | emotionless rational machine, but very few people
               | actually respond well to that. So it's important to use
               | everything in your rhetorical toolbox including appeals
               | to emotion to try and convince the wide range of
               | responses people might have.
        
             | ckw wrote:
             | There are 5 reports of death following Covid-19 vaccination
             | in VAERS for children 0.5-5, and '1.6 million US children
             | ages 6 months-4 years have received at least one dose of
             | COVID-19 vaccine' as of 11-2-22. This is 3.125 deaths per
             | million, and VAERS notoriously undercounts.
             | 
             | There are 31 reports of death following Covid-19
             | vaccination for children 5-12, and '10.9 million US
             | children ages 5-11 have received at least one dose of
             | COVID-19 vaccine' as of 11-2-22. This is 2.84 deaths per
             | million. Again, VAERS notoriously undercounts.
             | 
             | https://openvaers.com/covid-data/mortality
             | 
             | https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-
             | covid-19...
        
               | xracy wrote:
               | EDIT: I wasn't kidding when I said I can play numbers and
               | statistics all day.
               | 
               | When you say "VAERS notoriously undercounts", I think
               | you're probably referring to the flu vaccine (where we
               | would have historical data), but I don't think it's fair
               | to say that would be true for the Covid vaccine.
               | 
               | Specifically because at the onset of this new vaccine,
               | people are much more likely to report that a death
               | happened after a covid vaccine. There is a segment of the
               | population that has never trusted the covid vaccine, so
               | they are a _lot_ more likely to report a death after
               | vaccination of a loved one. Also as the vaccine is new,
               | there 's probably a lot more data gathering around it
               | because scientists would definitely like to know if the
               | vaccine causes death. Lastly, it's an event you're much
               | more likely to have talked to with your loved ones before
               | you passed away, than with the flu vaccine.
               | 
               | My family knows I got a covid vaccine. My family has no
               | idea about my flu vaccine status.
               | 
               | Lastly, and most importantly, the numbers for those are
               | not intrinsically linked. There's not actually any
               | implied causal link in any of those numbers "VAERS
               | Covid/Flu Vaccine Reported Deaths by Days to Onset all
               | Ages". They are all just correlated. If you want to look
               | for a causal link you'd have to compare against the total
               | number of people who got vaccines on that day. And then
               | compare against total number of deaths for the whole
               | population.
        
         | AnimalMuppet wrote:
         | > Seems like this should have been a requirement before any
         | emergency use authorization
         | 
         | Well... _if_ you think that there 's a case for an emergency
         | use authorization, then you kind of _can 't_ wait to determine
         | long-term risks. If there's a Covid epidemic threatening to
         | kill millions of people in 2019, you can't wait for a study of
         | long-term consequences that terminates in 2027. You have to
         | decide with the information you have in 2019.
         | 
         | Was there a case for an emergency use authorization? Covid did
         | in fact kill millions of people, so arguably yes.
         | 
         | > ... and certainly before any mandates.
         | 
         | Yeah, there I'm with you.
        
         | queuebert wrote:
         | Covid has killed millions. How many have died of myocarditis?
         | While I agree with your sentiment, it's hyperbolic to claim the
         | vaccine has done "exponentially more damage than the virus".
        
           | NaturalPhallacy wrote:
           | Millions die every year for we are mortal and numerous.
           | Thankfully, the world's population _grew_ during the
           | pandemic.
           | 
           | 210,000 to 448,000 Americans die every year to _preventable_
           | medical errors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preventable_cau
           | ses_of_death#An...
           | 
           | This is more people than COVID kills in the same time period,
           | but strangely there's no panic about that. No mandates. No
           | significant steps from any authorities to do anything about
           | it. Perhaps because there's no money in that, unlike pushing
           | a remedy for something that's not as significant as people
           | feel.
           | 
           | edit: Since HN is ratelimiting me and not letting me reply to
           | the below, here's the reply I've tried posting after an hour
           | of "slowing down":
           | 
           | Checklists: https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/checklists-can-
           | reduce-fata...
           | 
           | The same thing NASA uses to prevent human error:
           | https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19910001641
           | 
           | Mandatory checklists would wipe out most of them, yet there's
           | no mandate for them.
        
             | cableshaft wrote:
             | What would be the mandate for user error (which is what
             | 'preventable medical errors' boils down to), beyond an
             | ongoing attempt to improve procedures in hospitals which
             | I'm sure they're already doing, especially since the US is
             | very litigious and they often get sued for malpractice.
             | 
             | Humans are messy, can't hold all knowledge about everything
             | in their heads at all times, and error prone. Unless you
             | replace them entirely you're not going to be able to
             | eliminate medical errors.
        
               | Fomite wrote:
               | There are a staggering number of mandates and regulations
               | around preventable medical errors. One that has been
               | absolutely defining is CMS not compensating for
               | healthcare-associated infections.
               | 
               | Also, many hospitals view things like infection control
               | or antimicrobial stewardship as cost centers, and they're
               | not doing nearly as much as they can.
        
           | anon291 wrote:
           | First do no harm
        
             | TehCorwiz wrote:
             | Chemo Therapy is literally poisoning you just enough to
             | kill the cancer.
             | 
             | The anti-arthritis medications I take cause terrible side
             | effects.
             | 
             | These options are still better than the underlying
             | problems. Throwing out pithy feel good quotes doesn't
             | capture the nuance of the line that doctors walk when
             | trying to treat illnesses. "Do no harm" is the ideal. In
             | reality it's to do less harm than the disease.
        
               | tibbydudeza wrote:
               | It reminds me of how Japanese honeybees kill hornets -
               | they overheat it by swarming it and flapping their wings
               | vigorously to transfer body heat and cook it alive.
               | 
               | They fortunately can tolerate a few degrees higher core
               | temperature than the hornet - it can't be good for the
               | bees but if your lifespan is 60 days.
        
               | chedca21 wrote:
        
               | ceejayoz wrote:
               | Ioannidis was _wrong_ , though. Drastically so. Analyzing
               | excess deaths make it very clear it's not the same
               | severity as severe flu; see the chart half-way down on ht
               | tps://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.ht
               | m.
               | 
               | At the time, he wrote
               | (https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-
               | making-a...):
               | 
               | > Some worry that the 68 deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S.
               | as of March 16 will increase exponentially to 680, 6,800,
               | 68,000, 680,000 ... along with similar catastrophic
               | patterns around the globe. Is that a realistic scenario,
               | or bad science fiction? How can we tell at what point
               | such a curve might stop?
               | 
               | It did exactly that.
        
             | Xylakant wrote:
             | This is not a good rule if taken to the extreme. Almost all
             | medical procedures have an associated risk, some higher.
             | The key question is whether the risk outweighs the
             | benefits.
        
             | flir wrote:
             | Well that's surgery out the window.
        
           | calculatte wrote:
           | With the way the numbers around Covid and Covid deaths were
           | cooked, there is no way to determine how many died from
           | Covid.
           | 
           | Excess mortality is higher now than during Covid
           | https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-are-excess-deaths-
           | hi...
           | 
           | There is evidence of statistical lies perpetuated to benefit
           | big pharma.                 - The extreme false positive rate
           | of COVID testing       - Blindly combining "of" and "with"
           | Covid cases for cause of death based on those same broken
           | tests.       - Influenza, pneumonia magically took a couple
           | of years off during Covid       - PCR testing cycles at
           | extreme highs
           | 
           | When all of the broken testing was finally admitted and
           | discontinued, were the previous misclassified deaths
           | reinvestigated or reclassified? Of course not.
           | 
           | The entire pool of data of Covid deaths has been poisoned.
           | There is no interest in accuracy. But there does seem to be
           | extreme interest in protecting the liability and profits of
           | the pharma companies that coerced unproven, untested,
           | ineffective "cures" that do not prevent infection, spread, or
           | reduce symptoms.
        
             | skyde wrote:
             | what do you mean by "than during Covid"? are you trying to
             | imply covid have been eradicated ?
        
               | dekhn wrote:
               | They mean the period from roughly March 2020 to ... hmm,
               | about Omicron.
        
             | AustinDev wrote:
             | Just a meta comment. This exact comment 1 year ago would
             | have been downvoted until it was dead. However, much of the
             | evidence for this was available at that time. I sadly think
             | we'll continue to see excess deaths climb over the coming
             | years particularly in the US.
             | 
             | I'm glad I only got the J&J shot way back when it came out
             | and avoided 3+ rounds of Pfizer or Moderna primary and
             | boosters.
        
               | calculatte wrote:
               | It seems the only difference between conspiracy theory
               | and accepted fact is about 18 months now.
        
               | Izkata wrote:
               | Depending on the exact claim it's often more like 12
               | months. A few even made it down to 6 months (affecting
               | periods, for example) and I think one was as low as 2
               | months.
        
               | dzader wrote:
               | you need to get off the internet for a few hours a day
               | buddy
        
             | hedora wrote:
             | Ok, I'll ignore the bit where you implicitly claim that
             | 1000's of independent county health offices colluded to
             | produce excess corpses before the vaccine came out, and
             | then somehow hid exponentially more corpses after it came
             | out.
             | 
             | Excess mortality is higher now because we're in the middle
             | of a massive rebound of all the other respiratory illnesses
             | (that were stopped by widespread masking and record flu
             | vaccination last year). Also Covid is still around. Omicron
             | has partially "escaped" the updated vaccines (which you
             | should take anyway).
             | 
             | Source for the respiratory illness spike:
             | 
             | https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/southeast-us-has-
             | hit...
        
               | calculatte wrote:
               | Go ahead and ignore it, because that isn't what I said or
               | implied at all.
        
             | the_why_of_y wrote:
             | The numbers were cooked particularly badly in Russia. There
             | are 2 different government agencies reporting Covid deaths
             | and excess deaths, and their numbers differ by a factor of
             | 7; meanwhile many deaths are reported as caused by "viral
             | pneumonia".
             | 
             | Meanwhile for the US and European countries, Covid death
             | and excess death numbers are pretty close.
             | 
             | https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/10/world/europe/covid-
             | russia...
             | 
             | > Excess mortality is higher now than during Covid
             | 
             | When did Covid disappear? This year, every week at least
             | 2000 people died of Covid in the US.
             | 
             | > - Influenza, pneumonia magically took a couple of years
             | off during Covid
             | 
             | Have you heard of mask mandates? How do you think they
             | affect the spread of Influenza?
        
             | neuronexmachina wrote:
             | > Excess mortality is higher now than during Covid
             | 
             | Interesting analysis of the UK's excess mortality published
             | in the BMJ: https://www.bmj.com/content/379/bmj.o2524
             | 
             | > Surprisingly, mortality rates in 2022 for most of the 10
             | leading "underlying" causes of death such as heart disease,
             | stroke, and lung and colorectal cancer have been similar to
             | previous years, or lower than expected. An exception is the
             | rate for "symptoms, signs, and ill defined conditions"
             | (mostly deaths resulting from old age and frailty) which
             | has consistently been higher than expected and also caused
             | the most excess deaths, but not enough to explain the
             | overall excess.4
             | 
             | > However, the Office for Health Improvement and
             | Disparities' (OHID) analysis of deaths by "any mention" on
             | the death certificate--rather than just the "underlying
             | cause" of death--shows a substantial excess, in particular,
             | of deaths from cardiovascular diseases and diabetes since
             | April,6 prompting an investigation by the Department of
             | Health and Social Care. Growing evidence suggests that
             | covid-19 increases the risk of cardiovascular problems even
             | months after infection,7 which could in part be driving
             | excess deaths. Covid-19 itself remains the sixth leading
             | cause of death, causing 200-400 deaths weekly--a reminder
             | that this virus remains a threat for the foreseeable
             | future.
             | 
             | > Another possibility is that people may not be receiving
             | the care they need from an NHS that was already
             | overstretched pre-pandemic and is now coping with
             | unprecedented backlogs of care and pressures on emergency
             | services. This "crisis" situation has an adverse impact on
             | all patients, but a lack of timely care can be especially
             | life threatening for people with acute cardiovascular
             | problems.
             | 
             | > ONS analysis shows about 3300 excess deaths occurred
             | during the heatwaves experienced in England and Wales
             | between June and August, mostly in older people.8
             | 
             | > ONS also notes that excess deaths can occur following
             | periods when deaths were lower than average, ie, "mortality
             | displacement."5 Could some of the excess deaths since April
             | reflect the lower ASMRs in early 2022?
             | 
             | I'm also curious about why there's such a difference in
             | relative excess death rates between the US and UK.
             | Currently in the US the weekly death rates are far below
             | what they were in 2020-2021: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/
             | vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
        
         | speeder wrote:
         | I think now I can finally write this in public: I didn't take
         | COVID vaccine at all, because for coincidental reasons, my dad
         | ended taking it first. Despite the fact he is already 50+ he
         | had really severe, but thankfully mostly temporary cardiac side
         | effects (mostly, because even months later he needed to go to
         | his cardiologist and change his cardiac-related medicine,
         | because since the vaccine his blood levels changed and he kept
         | having weird symptoms).
         | 
         | Since my dad had his health go so poorly after the vaccine, I
         | decided to not risk it, specially considering my existing
         | conditions.
        
         | NaturalPhallacy wrote:
        
           | Fomite wrote:
           | Flu shots target several strains of one virus, not several
           | viruses.
           | 
           | There is no credible epidemiologist who wouldn't call the
           | COVID-19 vaccines a vaccine.
           | 
           | And there are a _number_ of vaccines with limited reduction
           | in transmission but effectiveness against more severe
           | outcomes.
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | shadowgovt wrote:
       | If the risk of myocarditis after covid vaccination is lower than
       | the risk of hospitalization due to covid infection, mandating
       | vaccination is still good public policy. It ultimately shifts the
       | risk around, it is true, but it still improves the odds of
       | survival for the people who will contract myocarditis also,
       | because there was significant risk of covid crashing the medical
       | infrastructure. This is the part of the story people seem to
       | forget... It wasn't the primary risk of fatalities due to covid
       | that triggered mandatory quarantine and vaccination policies, it
       | was the threat of saturating healthcare facilities to the point
       | where people would die of myriad preventable conditions.
       | 
       | In the United States, we are still short-handed because nurses
       | retired and nobody is stepping up to replace them.
        
         | nonethewiser wrote:
         | The question is whether or not you can ever morally coerce
         | someone to inject something into their body.
        
       | ivraatiems wrote:
       | I would just like us all to stop pretending that any of one's
       | fear of COVID or skepticism of vaccines or distrust of whoever or
       | whatever is about rational calculated risks. It's about how we
       | feel, so let's talk about that.
       | 
       | Look, everyone is scared of doing something until they're scared
       | of not doing it. Everyone distrusts government until they trust
       | it, and distrusts pharma until they trust it. Some people will
       | wear their mask in the grocery store even though it's a cloth
       | mask that's as good as doing nothing because now it feels weird
       | not to. Some people won't take the COVID vaccine but they'll
       | happily take remdesivir and ivermectin. (Who do you think makes
       | remdesivir and ivermectin?) Some people will happily go to an
       | indoor comic convention that's an hour's drive from them, but not
       | to an outdoor wedding, because it would mean getting on a plane
       | (this actually happened with a family member of mine and I am not
       | over it).
       | 
       | All of which is to say that what people are really doing is going
       | with their gut. If your gut instinct is "COVID's not a big deal",
       | then of course taking an emergency-use-authorized vaccine for it
       | seems risky. If your gut instinct is "COVID is dangerous and
       | deadly", you'll take anything you can get. Now that things are
       | subsiding, and the fear is waning, I read an article like this
       | and I think "hmm, that does seem bad, we should look into it, but
       | also I am gonna keep doing what I'm doing and getting my COVID
       | vaccine because it seems like it's helping." On the other hand,
       | you have people who are _literally dying of COVID_ who are still
       | relieved they were able to dodge getting the vaccine because it
       | felt scary to get a not-fully-tested drug.
       | 
       | So I'm pro-vaccine because they seem like a good idea and my
       | experiences with them (four shots so far) have been positive, in
       | that my side effects were limited and I know there were
       | situations where I could have gotten COVID and I didn't. (And
       | when I did get COVID, it was extremely mild.) Who's to say how
       | I'd have felt if I were one of the few cases of myocarditis out
       | there? Who's to say how I would've felt if I'd had mild COVID and
       | recovered from it pre-vaccine? What if I'd been hospitalized with
       | COVID pre-vaccine?
       | 
       | Can we just admit this isn't about logic or statistics, and never
       | was? It was always a persuasion game either way.
        
         | jzb wrote:
         | "Can we just admit this isn't about logic or statistics, and
         | never was? It was always a persuasion game either way."
         | 
         | Kind of? The fact is that we've turned into a society where we
         | can't even be unified in trying to prevent disease. If "the
         | left" is for vaccines, masking, social distancing, etc. then
         | "the right" has to immediately be against it.
         | 
         | I don't recall any of my friends or family needing persuasion
         | at all. They believed in the science and were willing to adapt
         | as we learned new things about COVID (e.g. around masking and
         | social distancing). When vaccines were becoming available I
         | know my circle spent time looking over what information we
         | could find about which ones were better, side effects, etc.,
         | but were onboard with vaccine risk being better than COVID.
         | 
         | The FOX crowd, OTOH, went looking to scare people off vaccines
         | and made not masking a point of pride. It was tribalism, pure
         | and simple. If it were a persuasion game you might have seen a
         | lot more diversity in who was for/against the vaccines.
         | 
         | 30 years ago if we'd faced COVID (at least in the U.S.) and had
         | the vaccines available, I think we'd have fared far better.
         | People who couldn't agree on much else could've come together
         | in the face of a deadly disease. Persuasion, and logic, are out
         | the window.
        
           | linuxftw wrote:
           | > The fact is that we've turned into a society where we can't
           | even be unified in trying to prevent disease
           | 
           | The vaccines weren't trialed and aren't approved to prevent
           | the spread of the disease....so? I don't know about you, but
           | I actually read the FDA's initial report on the Pfizer
           | trials, and it was complete nonsense. They didn't even test
           | each participant for covid, only some participants, with no
           | clear reasoning as to which.
           | 
           | I'm never going to take experimental gene therapy drugs, it's
           | just never going to happen.
        
             | ivraatiems wrote:
             | > gene therapy drugs
             | 
             | The use of this term to describe an mRNA vaccine suggests
             | you do not understand how these vaccines work whatsoever. I
             | am not surprised you didn't understand the FDA's report
             | given that you don't understand how the vaccines work at
             | all.
        
               | linuxftw wrote:
               | A vaccine requires an antigen. There's no antigen in the
               | mRNA or Adeno-vector vaccines. I'm not willing to pretend
               | that these new medical products are in any way similar to
               | the previous technology.
               | 
               | Gene therapy accurately describes the drug's effect. It
               | injects instructions into your cells to replicate a
               | protein, that's gene therapy. In this case, rather than
               | treating some disease, it's designed to provoke an immune
               | response. Hard pass.
        
               | ivraatiems wrote:
               | > "A vaccine requires an antigen. There's no antigen in
               | the mRNA or Adeno-vector vaccines."
               | 
               | That's not what a vaccine is. Vaccines do not "require"
               | an antigen, they "act as" an antigen. Whether they
               | include the antigen directly or a mechanism for producing
               | it doesn't matter. Live-virus vaccines are just a more
               | imprecise version of the technology that powers mRNA
               | vaccines. They're doing the same thing, but more
               | sloppily.
               | 
               | > It injects instructions into your cells to replicate a
               | protein, that's gene therapy.
               | 
               | Again, you don't understand the term. "Gene therapy"
               | involves actually changing the DNA housed in the nucleus
               | in your cells. mRNA vaccines can't do that.
               | 
               | This is also how every virus, including COVID works.
               | "Injected into cells" is imprecise terminology that makes
               | it sound like it's doing something novel that will
               | persist in your cell after the mRNA decays. That isn't
               | true. The mRNA doesn't become part of your DNA. It
               | eventually decays and becomes useless. Until then,
               | mechanisms within the cell use it to produce the protein
               | - one of the _same proteins_ COVID produces when you are
               | sick with it.
               | 
               | If you are scared of this mechanism of action, you should
               | be _downright terrified_ of ever getting a viral
               | infection, or any vaccine at all, or really just living
               | in the world. Real viruses do the exact same thing,
               | except some of them (like retroviruses) also alter your
               | DNA. The human genome is littered with the genes for
               | viruses that wormed their way in over time.
               | 
               | mRNA vaccines are just doing the same thing the virus
               | already does, but in a more controlled, less dangerous
               | way, and obviously without viral replication in the host.
               | 
               | But, again, the whole point of my original comment is
               | that _none of this_ will matter to you, most likely. I
               | suspect you will keep believing false things about these
               | vaccines which justify your position that you don 't want
               | to take them. Hopefully this information makes some
               | difference to someone else.
               | 
               | Anyway, I think this is enough back-and-forth with you;
               | between this and the "Marxist-level thinking" comment
               | it's pretty clear there's nothing to gain by this
               | anymore.
        
           | ohiovr wrote:
           | I don't watch TV. I hate TV. I am a programmer. I will never
           | be programmed. People who fear, they do so because they were
           | programmed.
        
           | ivraatiems wrote:
           | > I don't recall any of my friends or family needing
           | persuasion at all. They believed in the science and were
           | willing to adapt as we learned new things about COVID (e.g.
           | around masking and social distancing).
           | 
           | And now that science shows the vaccines have risks that
           | weren't clear before, will this change how they feel about
           | them, or are they going to stick to their preconceived ideas?
           | Did they believe the science because they understood it, or
           | because they chose to trust people who were ideologically
           | aligned with them?
        
             | ohiovr wrote:
             | Its useless at this point. You can't unvaccinate someone
             | and there is no antidote. So I don't go around saying I
             | told you so. I am really sorry this all happened. The best
             | thing would be to dismantle gain of function and figure out
             | the intention of a company that called themselves ecohealth
             | aliance. The answer is in the name.
        
           | TurkishPoptart wrote:
           | I'm against social distancing because there is no scientific
           | basis or justification for it. Scientists just went on TV and
           | talked about an idea they pulled out from their behinds. I
           | guess that makes me on the right for not believing everything
           | that was presented to me on television, unlike my family, who
           | are on the left.
        
             | ivraatiems wrote:
             | If "stay away from people who might be sick" is an idea you
             | think scientists made up just now, I'm not sure what to
             | tell you. It's not that big a stretch to "anyone could be
             | sick because we don't know how this disease works yet, so
             | stay away from everyone."
             | 
             | Not advocating for social distancing as a policy at this
             | point in time, just saying, it made a lot of sense from a
             | risk-prevention perspective at the time.
             | 
             | But again, this is my point. It's trivially easy for me to
             | provide a logical explanation for why social distancing was
             | a sensible tactic. You are (probably) not going to be
             | persuaded. You (probably) like your evidence because it
             | matches how you feel, and I like mine because it matches
             | how I feel.
             | 
             | To be clear, I don't mean this in an aggressive way - I
             | don't think it is bad that you don't agree with me on this
             | in some kind of a moral way, at this point. I just don't
             | think any sort of evidence-based argumentation will bridge
             | the gap between us.
        
               | TurkishPoptart wrote:
               | >If "stay away from people who might be sick" is an idea
               | you think scientists made up just now, I'm not sure what
               | to tell you. It's not that big a stretch to "anyone could
               | be sick because we don't know how this disease works yet,
               | so stay away from everyone."
               | 
               | that wasn't the guidance. It was stand 2 meters from
               | anyone, even if no one is sick.
               | 
               | [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-
               | shows/572926-gottli...
        
           | Bhilai wrote:
           | Quite a bit of vaccine drama is not political but either
           | mistrust of the system or alternate beliefs. Here is an
           | anecdote - My family has a bunch of anti-vaxers who have not
           | had a single dose of COVID vaccine yet and claim they have
           | never gotten COVID. These are highly educated (masters in
           | engineering) and hard left leaning (Bernie/AOC supporters.)
           | They also mostly reject modern medicine and believe in
           | Homeopathy. So much so that their toddler had a pretty bad
           | fall that almost cut his tongue in half but they refused to
           | take the kid to emergency room and treated him with some
           | homeopathy chart of medicines they keep in their home. Their
           | family doctor convinced their elderly mom to get the vaccine
           | and now the mom claims to have gotten nut allergy from the
           | vaccine. Their mom is pretty left leaning too.
        
         | linuxftw wrote:
         | So, people losing their jobs for not taking an experimental
         | medical product was just a persuasion game? What?
        
           | ivraatiems wrote:
           | Yes, "do this or you're fired" is a coercive tactic. People
           | who are pro-vaccine want everyone to get the vaccine. They
           | believe it is a matter of life or death (frankly, I agree
           | with them, but I am trying to present this neutrally). So
           | that level of coercion, "fear losing your job if you don't do
           | this" is exactly what I'm talking about.
           | 
           | If people could be persuaded to do things that are in their
           | interest via rational discourse, and evidence favored
           | vaccines, it wouldn't be necessary to do that kind of
           | coercion. (Nor would it be necessary to so strenuously resist
           | getting them, you'd just say "here is the evidence I don't
           | need to get this," and everyone would accept it and let you
           | live your life.) That's my whole point.
        
             | linuxftw wrote:
             | > it wouldn't be necessary to do that kind of coercion
             | 
             | This is Marxist-level thinking.
        
               | WookieRushing wrote:
               | When risk to society becomes high enough then it becomes
               | necessary.
               | 
               | See paying taxes, conscription, jury duty
               | 
               | Though judging the level of risk is very hard and there
               | is often not a clear line of when force is needed.
        
             | fluoridation wrote:
             | >If people could be persuaded to do things that are in
             | their interest via rational discourse, and evidence favored
             | vaccines, it wouldn't be necessary to do that kind of
             | coercion.
             | 
             | Interesting. Of course, in this particular case that
             | coercion happens to coincide with a position you agree
             | with, but not in every instance that apparently justifiable
             | coercion will agree with you. I assume, for the sake of
             | consistency, you'll defend them in that case too.
        
         | sokoloff wrote:
         | Having some uncertainty around novel things seems reasonable.
         | We were all uncertain around COVID and around new vaccines
         | using a novel mechanism. People balanced those uncertainties
         | differently. I took the course of asking people I generally
         | trusted for their opinion and concluded that taking the
         | vaccines (3 for me so far, plus a bout of naturally-acquired
         | resistance via infection) was indicated. There were other
         | doctors whom I knew before COVID was a thing who were
         | recommending ivermectin. If that was your doctor, why wouldn't
         | you believe them just like I believed the doctors that I had
         | more association with?
         | 
         | My gut tells me "be skeptical of novel things, but balance that
         | skepticism a bit by asking people whom you trust to have
         | greater knowledge on the topic, ultimately making the best
         | decision you can".
        
           | phtrivier wrote:
           | Except when the only thing that can inform a good decision is
           | _time_ ; and when you can ask every trustworthy people you
           | know, and they will simply not have a clue _yet_, because no
           | one does and we're in the middle of the fog of war.
           | 
           | But I suppose we all preferred pretending we knew
           | _somethings_.
           | 
           | How about we get some empathy for the people who just ended
           | up on the many bad sides of the many bets ?
        
             | sokoloff wrote:
             | I'm not sure where the lack of empathy is above. I
             | have/wrote about empathy for people whose doctors gave them
             | advice that when followed will turn out, in retrospect, to
             | be wrong. Maybe that will be mine; maybe that will be the
             | others.
        
               | phtrivier wrote:
               | It was nowhere in your writing, sorry if that got
               | confused.
               | 
               | I meant basically: "maybe give the few young people who
               | suffered from some unforeseen side effects a break, and
               | the right to keep their job without a next round of jabs"
               | ? As far as I can tell, "having suffered side effects
               | from the first 1/2/3 injection" is still not a valid
               | exemption cause for vaccine mandates.
        
           | dpedu wrote:
           | Sure there was and still is uncertainty, but we need to talk
           | about the other side of that coin. You used the term novel,
           | which means: "new and not resembling something formerly known
           | or used" and that's just not the case here.
           | 
           | We didn't just invent a completely new vaccine mechanism for
           | covid, the mRNA technology has been known and in development
           | for half a century. This is just the first time it was
           | effective. Likewise with the disease itself, we know that it
           | shares a significant portion of its DNA with the disease
           | behind the 2002 SARS-CoV pandemic and has many other similar
           | parameters.
           | 
           | https://www.news-medical.net/health/How-does-SARS-
           | CoV-2-Comp...
        
             | sokoloff wrote:
             | Was there a previous vaccine widely deployed using mRNA
             | tech? If not, it seems like "novel" is entirely appropriate
             | concerning certain uncertainties of using such a vaccine.
        
               | dpedu wrote:
               | This seems like a setup for a gotcha, or did you label it
               | as novel in your comment without knowing the answer to
               | this question?
               | 
               | Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA vaccines targeting
               | infectious diseases including HIV-1, rabies, Zika and
               | influenza were already in clinical trials, as were mRNA
               | vaccines targeting multiple hematologic and solid organ
               | malignancies (Pardi, 2018).
        
       | robomartin wrote:
       | One of my kids, 15 at the time, was one of the reported cases of
       | myocarditis. At the time of his hospitalization he was one out of
       | 700 cases. He was in the hospital for two weeks. While under
       | observation after his release, we have not seen indications of
       | lasting damage. No way to know what the future holds. So far, so
       | good.
       | 
       | We are still not anti-vax at all. In fact, I might go for my next
       | booster today.
       | 
       | The one thing that angers me is that this incident cost us $10K.
       | Obamacare, which was forced upon us and costs us $2,400 PER
       | MONTH, did not cover it. We have no recourse whatsoever for this
       | incident and any future care requirements.
        
         | xadhominemx wrote:
         | Well COVID also causes myocarditis, so it's not surprising
         | there were a lot of cases at the hospital. The question is
         | whether the vaccines cause myocarditis at a higher rate than
         | unvaccinated/unboosted COVID infections. They _might_ for young
         | men. For every other group, unvaccinated /unboosted infection
         | is way more likely to cause myocarditis than the vaccine.
        
           | z7 wrote:
           | "Retrospective cohort study of 196,992 adults after COVID-19
           | infection in Israel between March 2020 and January 2021.
           | [...] We did not observe an increased incidence of neither
           | pericarditis nor myocarditis in adult patients recovering
           | from COVID-19 infection."
           | 
           | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/
        
         | giantdude wrote:
         | >One of my kids, 15 at the time, ...
         | 
         | You had 15 kids at the time? How many kids do you have now? My
         | hat is off!
        
         | jrumbut wrote:
         | Although it wasn't vaccine related, my wife had a similar bill
         | for a similar reason and I learned a couple things:
         | 
         | They may be saying the hospital or some provider within it was
         | out of network, challenge this on the grounds it was an
         | emergency. Challenge everything on the grounds that it was an
         | emergency.
         | 
         | We had excellent grounds to challenge a few of the charges from
         | the hospital (clear billing mistakes), but it never got to the
         | point of evidence. We just called to argue and they instantly
         | dropped them. I would strongly advise just calling and
         | complaining and seeing what that gets you.
         | 
         | Many hospitals offer interest/fee free installment plans, you
         | just have to ask.
         | 
         | I am, by nature, a mild mannered (perhaps even meek) person,
         | but let me tell you that just doesn't work with hospitals and
         | insurers. Their process requires you to take an
         | adversarial/demanding role with them otherwise you will not
         | just get billed unnecessarily but also not receive all the care
         | you are entitled to.
        
           | hotpotamus wrote:
           | I have an uninsured friend who just gives them a fake name.
           | Seems very non-confrontational to me.
        
             | sneak wrote:
             | Fraud is, of course, a criminal offense, which, if
             | prosecuted, can result in jail time and seizure of assets
             | as restitution.
        
         | thrwy_918 wrote:
         | > Obamacare, which was forced upon us and costs us $2,400 PER
         | MONTH, did not cover it
         | 
         | Can you expand on this please? I find it extremely hard to
         | understand how an ACA-compliant health care plan could "not
         | cover" a hospital stay for myocarditis. Unless you're on a
         | high-deductible plan and the entire stay was less than your
         | deductible?
        
           | GartzenDeHaes wrote:
           | Deductibles often run $5,000 to $10,000 and usually only 80%
           | is covered after that.
        
           | aaomidi wrote:
           | I have the same question here. What part of it wasn't
           | covered? Could you share part of the EoB with sensitive
           | information removed?
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | throwaway09223 wrote:
           | A two week hospital stay is orders of magnitude more than
           | $10k, so presumably the $10k representes the out of pocket
           | portion of the care.
           | 
           | I suspect the maximum annual out of pocket.
        
             | robomartin wrote:
             | >A two week hospital stay is orders of magnitude more than
             | $10k, so presumably the $10k representes the out of pocket
             | portion of the care.
             | 
             | No, that's not the case at all. We had to negotiate with
             | the hospital and settled for this amount. The ACA covered
             | none of it or a very small portion. I don't remember the
             | actual bill, my wife dealt with all of it (she is a doctor
             | and knows how to discuss such things with hospitals).
        
               | thrwy_918 wrote:
               | > The ACA covered none of it or a very small portion
               | 
               | The ACA is not an insurance plan, so I assume you are
               | using "ACA" as shorthand for "ACA-compliant insurance
               | coverage".
               | 
               | It is simply not plausible that an ACA-compliant plan
               | would wholesale "not cover" a hospital stay for
               | myocarditis, absent extremely niche and bizarre
               | circumstances.
               | 
               | Given that you don't seem very familiar with the
               | specifics, I have to assume that your information is
               | either missing some very important details, or incorrect.
        
             | threatofrain wrote:
             | A two week stay at the hospital may have amounted to over
             | $170k at the optimistically low end.
        
               | pantalaimon wrote:
               | How?! Did they have to build an extra annex to the
               | building just for that?
        
               | finder83 wrote:
               | And there lies the issue with propping up the demand side
               | of the equation with unlimited money from the government
               | rather than regulating the supply side with affordable
               | charges.
        
             | Rebelgecko wrote:
             | So it sounds like Obamacare did cover the vast majority of
             | the cost?
        
               | ceejayoz wrote:
               | Yes. People just don't understand what their plan's
               | deductibles mean, and the protections the ACA offers.
               | 
               | The parent poster likely benefits from the following
               | items on
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_Care_Act:
               | 
               | > Annual and lifetime coverage caps on essential benefits
               | were banned.
               | 
               | > Insurers are forbidden from dropping policyholders when
               | they become ill.
               | 
               | > All policies must provide an annual maximum out-of-
               | pocket (MOOP) payment cap for an individual's or family's
               | medical expenses (excluding premiums). After the MOOP
               | payment is reached, all remaining costs must be paid by
               | the insurer.
        
               | HarryHirsch wrote:
               | The problem field is slighty different: if your income is
               | constrained and you are generally in good health you are
               | going to choose a low premium plan with consequent higher
               | deductible. When it's your turn to end up in hospital you
               | get to pay up to the (substantial for you) out-of-pocket
               | limit, even though you belong to the demographic that
               | cannot afford it and Obamacare was sold to you as making
               | healthcare affordable and accessible.
               | 
               | Obama was a sellout.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | ceejayoz wrote:
               | All of this was true pre-ACA, but worse (in my family's
               | case, _much_ worse; we went bankrupt over $90k in medical
               | bills back in the 2000s). As it was, the thing barely
               | passed.
        
               | HarryHirsch wrote:
               | Ezekiel 4:12-15 applies:
               | 
               |  _'Eat the food as you would a loaf of barley bread; bake
               | it in the sight of the people, using human excrement for
               | fuel.' ... I said, 'Not so, Sovereign Lord! I have never
               | defiled myself.' 'Very well,' he said, 'I will let you
               | bake your bread over cow dung instead of human
               | excrement.'_
               | 
               | We could be dealing with worse shit, however shit remains
               | shit.
        
               | cercatrova wrote:
               | Cow dung is actually a great biofuel.
        
               | selimthegrim wrote:
               | Isn't this a take on fuels for the sacrificial/temple
               | fire?
        
               | HarryHirsch wrote:
               | No, it's not. The prophet is with the Jewish exiles in
               | Babylon and is enacting the siege of Jerusalem. Food,
               | water and fuel are running short in Jerusalem, and he
               | plays out what it looks like.
        
               | MajimasEyepatch wrote:
               | No, Joe Lieberman was a sellout, and Senate Dems refused
               | to kill the filibuster, so we got the best we could get
               | at the time. And even those insufficient changes were
               | considered such an affront to "personal liberty" or
               | whatever that it resulted in a historic midterm
               | "shellacking."
        
             | beebmam wrote:
             | Exactly right. People with insurance have zero idea how
             | much medical care actually costs because it's really hard
             | to keep up with all the health insurance documents one
             | receives.
             | 
             | Try being hospitalized without insurance. You'll find out
             | really fast. (I was, twice, circa 2010. I was unemployed
             | and uninsured)
        
               | munk-a wrote:
               | I would suggest a slight shift in wording from "how much
               | medical care actually costs" to "how much medical care
               | actually bills" since as we've seen both by examining the
               | meteoric raise in healthcare billing from 1930s-today and
               | by comparing the US health system to single payer systems
               | abroad it's pretty clear that the billing for US
               | medications, procedures, therapies and other healthcare
               | items is completely fabricated and arbitrary when
               | compared to the costs.
               | 
               | I think Obama-care (as much as I still support it in
               | contrast to just letting private healthcare continue as-
               | is) actually made things worse in the US by letting
               | insurers and providers use the government involvement as
               | a justification for their BS.
        
               | DebtDeflation wrote:
               | People who get their insurance through their employer
               | also typically have no idea how much their insurance
               | premium costs because the average employer pays 70-80% of
               | the actual monthly premium and what gets deducted from
               | your paycheck every month is just the remainder.
        
               | nightski wrote:
               | I'm guessing you are correct, seeing as in a similar
               | fashion I'd imagine there are a lot of people who have no
               | idea what their 401(k) is even invested in.
               | 
               | However when going through the annual election process it
               | generally makes it very clear how much you are paying out
               | of each paycheck and what the employer contributes. Now
               | whether people pay attention at all I can't say.
        
               | mindslight wrote:
               | > _Try being hospitalized without insurance. You 'll find
               | out really fast_
               | 
               | Actually no, you still won't. Because the hospitals send
               | out fraudulently inflated bills to increase their
               | negotiating leverage.
               | 
               | To know how much medical care actually costs, you need to
               | have "insurance" _and_ read through the itemized bills
               | and explanations of benefits. The top line large number
               | is the fraudulent amount that has no basis in reality,
               | there is an  "adjustment" based on the rates the
               | "insurance" company has actually agreed to pay, there is
               | the amount the "insurance" company pays them, and then
               | there is your portion. Adding the last two, or taking the
               | first minus the second, is as close to knowing how much
               | something costs as you can get in this fucked up system.
               | 
               | Also it bears repeating, never pay a medical bill unless
               | you're damn sure you're responsible for the amount [0].
               | Even if you have "insurance", often you'll get sent the
               | fraudulent bill right away, and it will take a month or
               | two for "insurance" to bother doing their job. Also
               | billing departments have no problem blatantly lying to
               | you if it might get them more money.
               | 
               | [0] Of course some times they have you over a barrel like
               | ongoing care getting denied if you have an unpaid
               | balance. In which case you just have to eat it and then
               | hassle your "insurance" company for half a year to get
               | your money back.
        
         | scifibestfi wrote:
         | You're not angered that you were advised to give this to a 15
         | year old with no upside even after he was hospitalized for 2
         | weeks as a result?!
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | RONROC wrote:
        
           | robomartin wrote:
           | > You're not angered that you were advised to give this to a
           | 15 year old with no upside even after he was hospitalized for
           | 2 weeks as a result?!
           | 
           | I am being as honest as I can be with regards to our feelings
           | on this. I can't say we are angry about that incident at all.
           | I think I can say we are not happy about not having been
           | provided with all of the information before he got his shot.
           | Frankly, I don't even remember if the data was available (I
           | do think it was, BTW). Remember, at the time, only about 700
           | cases.
           | 
           | Of course, the outcome might have had something to do with
           | the lack of negative emotions. I can probably admit our
           | position today would be massively different had we had to
           | face a range of negative outcomes post-hospitalization. These
           | can range from life-long afflictions to death.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | stronglikedan wrote:
        
             | hnrodey wrote:
        
               | TechBro8615 wrote:
               | OP didn't say they're giving their child another booster.
        
               | hnrodey wrote:
               | It was abuse at the first attempt.
        
           | oezi wrote:
           | The risk from myocarditis from getting Covid-19 is higher
           | than getting it from the vaccine. The decision to vaccinate
           | even young people made sense during the height of the
           | pandemic and it doesn't make so much sense now anymore.
        
             | cerradokids wrote:
             | Where did you get that data?
             | 
             | According to this study
             | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/ there is no
             | increase in Myocarditis cases among unvaccinated people who
             | have contracted Covid-19. This study tracked 196,992 people
             | which is a huge number, so the data here is quite good and
             | clear. Contracting Covid-19 does not put you at increased
             | risk for Myocarditis, the same cannot be said when
             | evaluating a population that simply received the
             | vaccination.
        
               | elsonrodriguez wrote:
               | Of note is that this study is based on PCR tests. We
               | would need a blood tests for more accuracy to ensure no
               | historical infection took place. This also doesn't
               | compare vaccinated infected vs unvaccinated infections.
               | 
               | It's a decent data point but not conclusive.
        
               | lamontcg wrote:
               | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0)
               | 
               | > We estimated extra myocarditis events to be between 1
               | and 10 per million persons in the month following
               | vaccination, which was substantially lower than the 40
               | extra events per million persons observed following SARS-
               | CoV-2 infection.
               | 
               | and they include a brief literature review:
               | 
               | > Our findings are consistent with those from a case-
               | control study of 884,828 persons receiving the BNT162b2
               | vaccine in Israel21. That study observed an association
               | with myocarditis in the 42 days following vaccination
               | (risk ratio of 3.24), but no association with
               | pericarditis or cardiac arrhythmia. Two further studies
               | from Israel add to our observations by providing clinical
               | review to ensure robust case ascertainment22 and
               | reporting investigations and outcomes in individual
               | patients with myocarditis following the BNT162b2
               | vaccine23. Witberg et al.21,22 observed a small excess in
               | events 3-5 days following the second dose of BNT162b2
               | vaccine, but most were mild presentations and just one
               | classified as fulminant22. Mevorach et al. observed an
               | incidence ratio of 5.34 for myocarditis in 5,442,696
               | persons following BNT162b2, although this was attenuated
               | when restricted to the 136 definite and probable cases of
               | myocarditis23. Risk of myocarditis was restricted to
               | males under the age of 40 years and only observed
               | following the second dose. Similarly, two studies from
               | the United States have reported an incident rate ratio of
               | 2.7 for myocarditis in the 10 days following the second
               | dose of both mRNA vaccines24 and an estimated 6.3 and
               | 10.1 extra cases per million doses in the 1- to 21-day
               | period following the first and second dose of both mRNA
               | vaccines, respectively, in those younger than 40 years25.
               | 
               | And conclude:
               | 
               | > In summary, this population-based study quantifies for
               | the first time the risk of several rare cardiac adverse
               | events associated with three COVID-19 vaccines as well as
               | SARS-CoV-2 infection. Vaccination for SARS-CoV-2 in
               | adults was associated with a small increase in the risk
               | of myocarditis within a week of receiving the first dose
               | of both adenovirus and mRNA vaccines, and after the
               | second dose of both mRNA vaccines. By contrast, SARS-
               | CoV-2 infection was associated with a substantial
               | increase in the risk of hospitalization or death from
               | myocarditis, pericarditis and cardiac arrhythmia.
        
               | gjsman-1000 wrote:
               | This study is, actually, irrelevant to disproving the
               | claim above.
               | 
               | It checks for the myocarditis infection from COVID-19,
               | but it doesn't actually control for vaccination status.
               | The people studied either are believed to have been
               | COVID-19 infected, or had been vaccinated, but there was
               | no designated unvaccinated control group.
               | 
               | In which case, you are potentially using "breakthrough
               | cases" of COVID-19 causing Myocarditis to make your point
               | (assuming they would be the same pre- and post-
               | vaccination), rather than a definitive look at people who
               | did not get the vaccine and how they fared. All the study
               | proves is that COVID-19 infections cause increased
               | Myocarditis... in vaccinated people. If you assume that
               | COVID-19 has the same Myocarditis effect in vaccinated
               | and unvaccinated people, it works; but if you accept that
               | maybe the effects of COVID-19 are different in vaccinated
               | people, it could fall apart, which is why the study about
               | how Myocarditis doesn't seem to effect the 160,000+
               | unvaccinated people studied still has value.
        
           | TheCoelacanth wrote:
           | "No upside" is not accurate. Hospitalizations from COVID are
           | quite rare in 15 year olds, but not remotely as rare as these
           | cases of myocarditis.
        
             | incrudible wrote:
             | What data do you base this on? According to QCovid.org, a
             | 19yo old white male had annualized odds of hospitalization
             | of less than 1 in 10,000 given the prevalence of the third
             | and second COVID waves in the UK. That is less than the
             | incidence of Myocarditis from the vaccine in that age
             | group.
        
         | blacksqr wrote:
         | >Obamacare, which was forced upon us
         | 
         | The ACA individual mandate penalty was eliminated in 2017.
        
         | uptownfunk wrote:
        
           | wiredearp wrote:
           | Well it hasn't been proven that it isn't either, in fact
           | https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/us/politics/moderna-
           | boost...
        
         | pasquinelli wrote:
         | > The one thing that angers me is that this incident cost us
         | $10K. Obamacare, which was forced upon us and costs us $2,400
         | PER MONTH, did not cover it. We have no recourse whatsoever for
         | this incident and any future care requirements.
         | 
         | that angers me too. america bumbled its way through the
         | pandemic, and we're no closer to getting single payer
         | healthcare. not even for medical care related to the pandemic,
         | which is collectively beneficial.
        
         | elevenoh wrote:
         | >We are still not anti-vax at all
         | 
         | deciding not to get a covid-19 mrna vaccine != anti-vax
        
           | robomartin wrote:
           | > deciding not to get a covid-19 mrna vaccine != anti-vax
           | 
           | Sorry, didn't mean to imply that. I just wanted to make it
           | clear that, despite this incident, we have not changed our
           | position with regards to vaccines of any kind. That's not to
           | say we might exercise more caution in the future.
        
         | tablespoon wrote:
         | > The one thing that angers me is that this incident cost us
         | $10K. Obamacare, which was forced upon us and costs us $2,400
         | PER MONTH, did not cover it. We have no recourse whatsoever for
         | this incident and any future care requirements.
         | 
         | Seriously? That's shitty. What's the insurance company's
         | rationale for denying the claim?
         | 
         | Isn't there some kind of government fund to compensate people
         | for vaccine side effects? Seems like you'd have a strong claim
         | to get reimbursed from them.
        
           | nradov wrote:
           | Yes there is a government compensation program:
           | Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).
           | 
           | https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp
        
             | HideousKojima wrote:
             | Keep in mind the CICP has both lower payout rates and
             | payout amounts than the VICP. Side effects from the covid
             | shots can only be compensated out of the CICP
        
             | dahfizz wrote:
             | www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/11/04/feds-pay-
             | zero-claims-for-covid-19-vaccine-injuriesdeaths/amp/
        
             | valarauko wrote:
             | Naive q: why are the mRNA COVID vaccines still covered by
             | CICP & not VICP if they're now fully authorized by the FDA?
             | I assumed the initial coverage under CICP was due to the
             | emergency authorization.
        
           | ceejayoz wrote:
           | > What's the insurance company's rationale for denying the
           | claim?
           | 
           | They didn't, if the parent poster only got billed $10k. Two
           | weeks in the hospital costs more than $10k; that amount is
           | likely their insurance plan's annual deductible, coinsurance,
           | and copays.
           | 
           | These expenses were a thing pre-ACA, to be clear;
           | deductibles, coinsurance, and copays existed before it. The
           | ACA _capped_ the amount you can be charged.
        
         | no_butterscotch wrote:
         | > We are still not anti-vax at all. In fact, I might go for my
         | next booster today.
         | 
         | I'm curious about this. In my world COVID is over now. I live
         | in San Francisco. Nobody I know is getting boosters or is
         | worried about it anymore.
         | 
         | Where do you live and what are the circumstances like there
         | that you're considering getting your "next" one? (you've been
         | boosted before?).
        
           | jsight wrote:
           | TBH, I tend to agree. Vaccines are readily available and most
           | of us have been exposed to COVID at some point. By this
           | point, there is little reason for behavior modification.
           | 
           | The boosters likely make sense for some people, but there's
           | little real data on their effectiveness. Outside of the more
           | vulnerable, I'd avoid them personally. The proof just isn't
           | readily available of continuous boosters being worth it to
           | me.
        
           | robomartin wrote:
           | > Where do you live and what are the circumstances like there
           | that you're considering getting your "next" one? (you've been
           | boosted before?).
           | 
           | Los Angeles.
           | 
           | I know lots of vaccinated people who are getting infected.
           | Just last week I went to a conference here in LA. I was going
           | to meet-up this week with on of the people I saw there. He
           | told me he got COVID at the conference.
           | 
           | Yes, I've had one booster. I travel a lot for business. I
           | think it might be prudent to take further precautions. I have
           | no reason to believe this is unsafe for me.
        
           | ipqk wrote:
           | People aren't talking about it anymore, but that doesn't mean
           | that they aren't getting boosters. Like, I just got my flu
           | shot, but haven't mentioned it to anyone.
        
           | gravelc wrote:
           | Circumstances change - super super glad I got my booster.
           | 
           | When I got it, I was a healthy, fit person without any of the
           | comorbidities that go along with COVID.
           | 
           | Last week I had a mountain biking accident and broke half my
           | ribs and punctured a lung. Then I got COVID in hospital.
           | Fortunately it was quite mild, and even that was a bit of a
           | nightmare as coughing was hell and I had quite low blood
           | oxygen.
           | 
           | Given the risks of a booster are so low (though non-zero) and
           | the risk that your health can change before you manage to
           | contract COVID, it seems like the smart proposition to me to
           | get the booster.
        
           | gizmo686 wrote:
           | Or maybe no one you know is talking about it. A few weeks
           | ago, I went for my annual Flu vaccine and saw that I was
           | eligible for the bivalent Covid booster as well. I didn't go
           | around telling people I got either vaccine. At this point, as
           | far as I am concerned, covid is jtst another vaccine to be
           | taken routinely as directed. Maybe that will settle down to
           | be anually like the flu, once or twice a lifetime like
           | chicken pox, or something in between like TDAP (once per
           | decade)
        
           | xboxnolifes wrote:
           | My world is split.
           | 
           | In my family sphere, covid is over. Though, to them covid was
           | always overblown with the response being worse than the
           | illness.
           | 
           | In my main friend group, most still feel we are still in the
           | middle of covid. Though, from my perspective, their
           | words/fears seem to differ from their actions.
        
           | enragedcacti wrote:
           | Not the OP but:
           | 
           | Covid definitely isn't over, it's just that we've gotten
           | better at treating it and people have decided that they are
           | over it. It is still killing almost 2000 people a week in the
           | US and it's very possible that we will see a huge spike in
           | that as we get further into winter.
           | 
           | the "next" booster is referring to the updated vaccine that
           | more effectively targets the dominant "Omicron" variant.
        
             | sharken wrote:
             | At least provide some facts to the 2000 people a week
             | claim.
        
               | greenyoda wrote:
               | The CDC is reporting 2344 COVID deaths per week:
               | https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-
               | home
        
               | origin_path wrote:
               | Be aware that since Omicron virtually all of those are
               | dying "with" COVID, not of it. Examples collected from
               | the Milwaukee coroner's office:
               | 
               | https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/six-recent-covid-
               | deaths-...
               | 
               | That's why the age skew is so high.
        
               | Avshalom wrote:
               | https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-
               | tracker/#trends_weeklydeath...
               | 
               | The last time it was _under_ 2000 was july  '21
        
               | cmh89 wrote:
               | https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-
               | home
        
               | MaysonL wrote:
               | https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2022/11/covid-
               | nov-11-2022...
        
               | NeutronStar wrote:
        
             | no_butterscotch wrote:
             | > the "next" booster is referring to the updated vaccine
             | that more effectively targets the dominant "Omicron"
             | variant.
             | 
             | Ah thanks for the context.
             | 
             | I've only gotten the J&J vax (the worst one?) back in April
             | of 2021, no boosters. I considered getting one but by then
             | they were recommending boosters every few months and I
             | decided to just "risk" it by not getting them? (I'm in my
             | 30s and in good shape/health so don't feel vulnerable, but
             | I understand that could be hubris and back-fire).
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | Izkata wrote:
               | > I've only gotten the J&J vax (the worst one?)
               | 
               | Back in those first few months I was keeping an eye on
               | reports of side-effects, and J&J actually looked like the
               | safest of the 4 available in the US. But it and
               | AstraZeneca got absolutely vilified while any claims
               | against Pfizer and Moderna got ignored as crazy
               | conspiracies.
        
               | SoftTalker wrote:
               | I've also only got the J&J, once, only because my
               | employer was threatening me with termination if I didn't
               | get vaccinated. They actually never followed through on
               | that threat for those that held out. I wish I hadn't.
               | Lesson learned, never again.
        
             | mikysco wrote:
             | Always worth pointing out COVID (very) disproportionately
             | kills the elderly (75+)
             | 
             | https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-
             | tracker/#demographicsoverti...
             | 
             | These stats don't indicate whether other confounding
             | factors led to an individual's death.
        
           | eftychis wrote:
           | People I know are getting COVID in the Bay Area -- multiple
           | weeks sick (I can count at least 6 -- in the moment -- for
           | the span of middle of October until now). We are still in the
           | pandemic.
           | 
           | The problem is it has to stop everywhere for us to get
           | complacent. Especially, given that _everyone_ wants to travel
           | -- and travel abroad.
           | 
           | Pandemic is here. Nothing is over. We are distracted with
           | other things. Things are "good" in San Francisco and the Bay
           | now. No guarantee it will be so tomorrow.
        
             | chroma wrote:
             | It should be clear by now that covid is never going away.
             | No country managed to stop it, no matter how strict their
             | policies were. Unless you plan to be a hermit for the rest
             | of your life, expect to get covid every few years.
        
             | daliusd wrote:
             | It is endemic not pandemic anymore.
        
               | Fomite wrote:
               | Endemic has a specific meaning - that there is an
               | expected number of cases in a given population.
               | 
               | That's not really established for COVID-19.
               | 
               | Also, endemic doesn't mean something doesn't matter. In
               | much of Africa, malaria is endemic.
               | 
               | What you mean is "As a society we stopped caring."
        
               | mensetmanusman wrote:
               | Not necessarily, endemic might mean that it matters, but
               | those who are especially at risk are taking more
               | precautions.
               | 
               | E.g. I see lots of young not wearing masks to protect
               | themselves, and I see more older people protecting
               | themselves with masks. Seems like a reasonable balance.
        
               | eftychis wrote:
               | Pandemic means it is endemic "everywhere."
               | 
               | https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/pandemic-vs-
               | endemi...
               | 
               | It does not describe severity. Ebola is endemic in parts
               | of Africa. I still hope nobody gets it.
               | 
               | We can change the meanings of words for political reasons
               | but who do we do a disservice too?
               | 
               | Given that it is a word from my mother language I find it
               | a bit insulting when politicians decide to change my
               | language though to benefit for a year or two.
               | 
               | Tl;Dr: Saying that covid is "endemic" to the whole world,
               | is an insult to my ears, logic, and a whole language and
               | people. They should pick a different word if they want to
               | disagree with doctors worldwide.
        
             | peterbell_nyc wrote:
             | Same here. I live just north of NYC and it seems like
             | pretty much everyone is getting covid. Luckily, mortality
             | attributed to covid is continuing to decrease suggesting
             | it's becoming less of an issue (in terms of deaths), but
             | even with ~320 deaths a day, we're still looking at over
             | 100k dying in the US every year of covid - despite the fact
             | that a lot of the most vulnerable already died.
             | 
             | I think we just have a new normal in terms of life
             | expectancy and mortality :(
        
               | Grim-444 wrote:
               | Weren't we already in that same situation every
               | year/decade prior to covid when between 20,000 and 50,000
               | would die from the flu each year?
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_influenza_sta
               | tis...
        
               | PuppyTailWags wrote:
               | I think 20k/50k + an additional 100k from covid is pretty
               | nasty, so I don't think it's the same at all. It's not
               | like flu and covid are the same disease. I'm thinking
               | covid will just add tens of thousands (or up to 100k like
               | GP said). Sucks.
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | Yea, it's not even remotely over. People are bored of it,
             | and it makes them sad, so a lot of them stopped taking
             | precautions, but it's not over. It just ripped through my
             | family in Florida (again) since nobody is masking there and
             | everyone is just carrying on as if it were 2019. My kid's
             | school seems to perpetually has a case or two. I take it
             | seriously by getting boosted, masking, continuing to avoid
             | crowds and public places that are indoors, and I intend to
             | keep doing so. People act like it's a TV show that got
             | cancelled or something. Nuts.
        
               | pandeiro wrote:
               | Nuts is that on the basis of the flimsiest of evidence,
               | your ascribing an efficacy in disease prevention to an
               | intervention (wearing masks) that was widely understood
               | to do no such thing prior to 2020.
               | 
               | Furthermore, respiratory disease avoidance on a society-
               | wide scale has never and almost certainly will never be
               | achieved. The assumption that it is an attainable goal is
               | truly nuts.
        
         | morpheuskafka wrote:
         | You didn't have any luck making a CICP claim? It says they have
         | approved five myocarditis claims in principle, but it seems a
         | lot less well documented than the corresponding VICP ("vaccine
         | court") for regular vaccines. It's a bit disconcerting that the
         | CICP is not overseen by a court the way the VICP is.
        
         | toast0 wrote:
         | > did not cover it
         | 
         | As in you paid the whole cost, and it was $10K, and it didn't
         | count on your deductables / out of pocket max? Or the patient
         | paid portion was $10K, the insurance paid portion was $0, but
         | now you're a lot closer to your maximums?
         | 
         | Did you file with the CICP? https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp
        
           | robomartin wrote:
           | > Did you file with the CICP? https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp
           | 
           | Yes, we did. It's worse than dealing with the DMV. I don't
           | know where we are in the process other than my wife (she is a
           | doctor) telling me not to hold my breath.
        
           | vanattab wrote:
           | I don't know if this is still the case but as of Nov 21 the
           | feds had paid zero covid cicp claims.
           | 
           | https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrze.
           | ..
        
             | ceejayoz wrote:
             | You wouldn't file a CICP claim for a bout of myocarditis in
             | which "we have not seen indications of lasting damage".
             | That's not what it's for.
        
               | gjsman-1000 wrote:
               | Well... according to CICP themselves, as of October 1st
               | 2022, they have only paid out 6 claims for COVID-9
               | vaccines - ever. Which, even by this NBC News article
               | standard, is low. However, 5 of them were for
               | myocarditis, 1 for anaphylaxis.
               | 
               | https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp/cicp-data
        
         | coinbasetwwa wrote:
        
           | MarcoZavala wrote:
        
         | rrauenza wrote:
         | Did anyone point you to this? https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-
         | compensation. ...does it apply at all?
         | 
         | Edit: ah, yes, found the sub thread on cicp.
        
         | MarcoZavala wrote:
        
         | arein3 wrote:
        
           | sfusato wrote:
           | There's plenty of would-do-it-again testimonials from a
           | hospital bed caused by a vaccine injury/side effect. There's
           | a famous Mark Twain quote that comes to mind.
        
             | floor2 wrote:
             | Making the statistically best choice is still the best
             | choice even if you get an undesired outcome.
             | 
             | Good poker players can lose all their chips at the table to
             | an unlucky draw and walk away knowing that they made the
             | right play and that they'd do it again, even if they got
             | unlucky on the river card. Good basketball coaches will
             | still draw up plays to get the ball into the hands of their
             | best shooter at the end of the game even if they miss
             | sometimes.
             | 
             | If you're choosing between option A that has a 0.0001%
             | chance of hurting you and option B that has a 10% chance of
             | hurting you, and you choose A and still get hurt, that
             | doesn't mean you made the wrong choice or that if you have
             | it to do over again you should choose B.
        
               | arein3 wrote:
        
               | ifyoubuildit wrote:
               | Except the issue is how certain we are of these
               | percentages. In poker, the win rate of AA against 72
               | heads up is well known.
               | 
               | In reality, we don't have that. We get whatever ideas
               | have the largest marketing budget behind them, and we
               | just have to trust them. It's more like "nobody gets
               | fired for buying IBM (or pick your favorite pundit)" than
               | running a poker scenario through a solver. And that's
               | fine, I don't think you can expect much more than that
               | out of people.
        
             | arein3 wrote:
             | A theory proposed by Charles Darwin comes to mind.
        
               | lob_it wrote:
               | Was that "empathy equals manufactured crisis cubed"?
               | 
               | Science is hard :p
        
           | mberning wrote:
        
             | arein3 wrote:
             | Doubling down on a choice that proved to be bad for them.
             | 
             | I don't understand why anyone would do that, perhaps only
             | because they understood that it was a mistake and they want
             | others to make the same mistake.
        
           | AmVess wrote:
           | Boggles my mind that parents are willingly exposing their
           | kids to something they absolutely do not need.
        
             | treeman79 wrote:
             | Schools required it. No exemptions.
        
               | GenerocUsername wrote:
               | Then the school should pay for the known side effects
        
               | thepasswordis wrote:
               | No amount of money can replace my child.
        
               | GenerocUsername wrote:
               | Then schools should not be mandating experimental
               | therapies
        
               | thepasswordis wrote:
               | You'll find no argument about that from me.
        
               | TurkishPoptart wrote:
               | Malice or stupidity? Collusion or conspiracy? I think
               | it's all of the above.
        
             | arein3 wrote:
             | The kid might even have had natural antibodies, since when
             | the vaccines were approved for kids a very big percent of
             | them already had covid.
        
               | nomel wrote:
               | With the media black out of anything anti-pro-vaccine,
               | it's not surprising that natural immunity provides better
               | protection isn't more well known:
               | https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-
               | cov-2-on...
        
               | floor2 wrote:
               | This argument has never made any sense. It's literal
               | survivorship bias
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
               | 
               | You're saying "If you survive getting covid without
               | serious injuries once, then you'll be less likely to get
               | serious injuries on a re-infection later". The vaccine is
               | to make it less likely that you get serious injuries from
               | that first exposure.
        
               | ifyoubuildit wrote:
               | Are there any people left that haven't had their first
               | exposure?
               | 
               | The argument makes more sense when you take into account
               | that the interesting case is actually "given that you've
               | already had covid, should you get vaccinated?" rather
               | than "given no exposures yet, should I make out with
               | someone that has it or should I get vaccinated". I've
               | seen a lot of noise about the latter case, and a lot of
               | overlooking the former.
        
               | nomel wrote:
               | Please read the context of what you're responding to.
               | This context isn't about survivorship bias.
               | 
               | COVID was around before the vaccines, and before the
               | boosters, and between the boosters. Some of us got it
               | before the boosters were available, and before the next
               | booster was due. This is the context you're responding
               | to.
               | 
               | For a stupid real world example, my college friend had
               | COVID was required to get the booster _while he was
               | recovering from COVID_ , so that he could continue school
               | after. There's plenty of nonsense still going around.
               | Natural infection usually doesn't count in the school
               | system, from what I've seen. Surprisingly it does, where
               | I work.
        
               | coinbasetwwa wrote:
               | I like the term "anti-pro-vaccine", the media would
               | simply refer to it as "anti-vax"
        
           | selectodude wrote:
           | https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA..
           | ..
           | 
           | Pick your poison, then.
        
             | busymom0 wrote:
             | 1. Risk of Myocarditis is higher for males under 40 from
             | the vax than from infection. Only if you look at the entire
             | population and dilute that risk do you see risk being
             | higher from infection.
             | 
             | 2. The vax doesn't prevent infection anyway, so whatever
             | the point they are making is moot.
             | 
             | 3. The risk is being compounded each time- first from vax,
             | then from infection, then from boosters.
        
               | TechBro8615 wrote:
               | Btw, this was all known with increasing confidence by
               | July '21 (Israeli data showed increased myocarditis risk
               | after second shot), and December '21 (Nature paper
               | stratified myocarditis risk by vaccination status and
               | age).
        
             | nmilo wrote:
             | > Overall, the risk of myocarditis is greater after SARS-
             | CoV-2 infection than after COVID-19 vaccination and remains
             | modest after sequential doses including a booster dose of
             | BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine. _However, the risk of myocarditis
             | after vaccination is higher in younger men, particularly
             | after a second dose of the mRNA-1273 vaccine._
        
               | ckw wrote:
               | And the peak age/sex related risk is almost certainly
               | understated in the paper, because 'younger men' refers to
               | the entire under 40 population.
        
               | vixen99 wrote:
               | An Israeli study reported here:
               | https://euroweeklynews.com/2022/07/08/no-increase-
               | myocarditi... ['The Incidence of Myocarditis and
               | Pericarditis in Post COVID-19 Unvaccinated Patients--A
               | Large Population-Based Study'.] finds "no increase in
               | incidence of myocarditis" after Covid infection in
               | unvaccinated adults.
        
         | kgwxd wrote:
         | ACA isn't an insurance plan. What was or wasn't covered, and
         | what your out-of-pocket costs were, have nothing to do with
         | ACA. ACA forced you to pick a plan or face tax penalties,
         | that's all, the rest is on the plan you chose. If you had
         | chosen to not have insurance at all, you'd have paid way more
         | that 10k and maybe even more than what you've put into your
         | premiums already. I pay $1640 a month for full family coverage
         | with a $600 deductible per person, per year, the second best
         | plan I could find. I think you got a pretty bad plan at
         | 2400/month with a 10k deductible.
        
         | treeman79 wrote:
         | Wife for a booster. Arm swelled up. Been a year. No
         | improvement. We had already had Covid. Current time in school
         | boosters. All the teachers kept getting covid anyway. Hard to
         | be anything then hostile toward anyone that is on the forcing
         | people to get shots or to cut them from services train.
        
           | megous wrote:
           | Same here. Since 1 day post vaccination pain in elbow for
           | almost a year (if she was doing physical job, she'd not be
           | able to work for amlost a year) On top of that constant
           | unending headache for first ~6 months.
           | 
           | Doctors help basically just "we don't know, there's no
           | research, it will hopefully get better". It did after a year.
           | Great. Govt pushed people to vaccinate to prevent the spread
           | (despite individual's risk being very low) with promise to
           | compensate in case of issues. lol, they didn't even
           | compensate people who were paralyzed after vaccination with
           | response "You can't prove it's from vaccination, sorry."
           | 
           | Zero benefit from the vaccination itself, since she didn't go
           | for a second shot after this.
           | 
           | Cost/benefit very negative, since she likely didn't need the
           | vaccination in the first place since she's not in the risk
           | group and this was just "for the society" thing. And turns
           | out it doesn't work againt spread much either.
        
         | tibbydudeza wrote:
         | A good thing he is so young - seems like a good indicator for
         | no lasting damage.
         | 
         | We really don't know much about this virus and by association
         | it's vaccine - it does not behave like the flu - lost a
         | colleague to Beta who was way fitter and way healthier than me
         | (he did Murtai and BMI) - he ended on a ventilator and died,
         | and I was just man down for week and a half at home.
         | 
         | It still took me weeks to recover back to myself again - still
         | got the booster shot afterwards.
        
           | coinbasetwwa wrote:
        
             | cmh89 wrote:
             | People are liable to drop dead the same day they drink
             | water! They must be connected!
        
         | chasd00 wrote:
         | my sister ended up with endocarditis and nearly died. She went
         | from "i feel bad, i should go to the doctor" to emergency heart
         | valve replacement surgery in about 8 days.
        
           | hotpotamus wrote:
           | Natasha Leone (famous actress) talks about getting
           | endocarditis and it was serious as well. She was very
           | vulnerable to it because of some behavioral factors. My
           | impression is that myocarditis is not as serious as
           | endocarditis though.
        
         | cryptonector wrote:
         | You don't have to be anti-vax to look at the facts you listed
         | and decide "maybe not for a while".
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | alerighi wrote:
       | I think that all this COVID stuff was everything opposite than
       | using science, starting from the people, including government,
       | taking of "trusting science".
       | 
       | Science is not a religion, and we don't have to believe in it.
       | Instead we need to be critic, conduct experiments, evaluate our
       | thesis, put everything into discussion. Something we didn't,
       | because you are a fool if you have doubts about vaccines, if you
       | talk about negative effects, they are 100% safe and you are an
       | ignorant.
       | 
       | This is the contrary of doing science. We didn't studied these
       | vaccines enough, we didn't take for serious people lamenting
       | adverse reactions, we did hide the news about that because we
       | feared people not taking the vaccine. Is this science? It's not.
       | 
       | If you look at the news, vaccines are 100% safe and doesn't have
       | any side effect. You ask people that got that, you get another
       | opinion. Me too after the third dose (that I wouldn't had got if
       | I wasn't forced to do so by our "democratic" government, no
       | wonder here in Italy last elections won the "fascists", if these
       | are the democratic people) I had serious side effects, I was
       | basically not feeling well for a week. To take into prospective,
       | when I got COVID in March 2020 when it was still a new thing I
       | only got a slight fever for two days, nothing compared of the
       | effect of the vaccine itself...
        
         | megous wrote:
         | Also classification of seriousness of side effects was kinda
         | skewed, too. If you didn't read into details of studies, you'd
         | think that claims like "serious side effects are rare", as
         | something that is a meaningful input to your decisionmaking
         | about getting vaccinated. But if it was defined as conditions
         | requiring hospitalizations or urgent care, then there are other
         | very comon side effects that don't require it and can still
         | upend your life if they last long time.
         | 
         | Being unable to work properly for longish time (say months to a
         | year), without needing hospitalization is quite serious to
         | anyone in working age. There was no way to judge how long
         | particular side effects can last (and likelihoods) from vaccine
         | studies, because data for judging this were not published,
         | despite for sure being available from the original trials to
         | the researchers.
         | 
         | There's apparently a lot of research about how to push people
         | to vaccinate and about vaccination hessitancy, though. :) But
         | providing some useful data about side effects, like how likely
         | they'll last 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months for a
         | vaccination that was intended to quickly give to almost
         | everyone... No, can't have that. That was almost impossible to
         | find. And if you did find something, it was some independent
         | research with small sample size.
        
         | TurkishPoptart wrote:
         | Correct, political science displaced science so quickly. Dark
         | days are ahead unless the public is informed and able to
         | resist. How did they force you to take a booster? Was it in
         | order to keep your job?
        
         | leetrout wrote:
         | > I had serious side effects, I was basically not feeling well
         | for a week
         | 
         | Would you care to elaborate? I had really bad brain fog.
        
           | nomel wrote:
           | Not him, but I had arm pain for over a year, under the
           | injection, along with extreme weakness in a particular
           | muscle/motion, from the first shot. I couldn't sleep on that
           | side at all, and could barely sleep on the other. It
           | eventually went away, but I was terrified it was permanent.
           | 
           | I did not get the boosters. I've had people say I'm anti-vax,
           | from this.
        
       | gjsman-1000 wrote:
       | Even though they still believe it is thankfully rare, this quote
       | is a little frightening:
       | 
       | "We don't understand yet and there's no good mechanism to explain
       | it."
       | 
       | Edit: I hate to make aspersions, but I suspect this article was
       | blocked from front page or similar. 13 votes in 20 minutes, and
       | yet a 14 point article over the course of an hour is sitting at
       | #19 while this is #74. Also #75 had just one more point over a
       | period of many hours. Huh.
       | 
       | Edit 2: Again, 23 points in 56 minutes versus 12 points in 10
       | hours (we are below that).
       | 
       | @dang I do not see how this is possible.
        
         | gjsman-1000 wrote:
         | This was fixed, thank you!
        
       | specto wrote:
       | This is anecdotal, and I still plan to get the latest booster
       | soon, but I have had pain in my left chest since the first covid
       | vaccine. I went to a doctor who ran an EKG but they said
       | everything was functioning correctly. Maybe someone knows if I
       | should get a second opinion? I can no longer sleep on my left
       | side since then as it causes the pain to increase, so I don't
       | believe it is related to myocarditis.
        
         | esperent wrote:
         | I'm sorry to hear that and I hope it turns out to be nothing.
         | 
         | It's important to remember that you are n=1 and the timing
         | could be a coincidence. It could be the vaccine. It could be
         | stress from the pandemic causing angina. It could be lifestyle
         | (do you exercise every day, eat healthily, sleep well, manage
         | stress? - if not then angina in your 30s/40s is common).
         | 
         | It could even, as happened to a friend of mine, be a nerve
         | issue in your chest muscles that's completely unrelated to your
         | heart (aside: my friend was extremely relieved by this
         | diagnosis which took quite a while to come by).
        
         | oifjsidjf wrote:
         | Well it's a good thing there is no important organ in your
         | chest.
        
       | Guthur wrote:
        
       | taolegal wrote:
       | The same people who wouldn't be charitable with, say, Exxon, are
       | bending over backwards to defend global pharmaceuticals.
       | 
       | Exxon has an interest in minimizing (disregarding) the harmful
       | effects of their products and same goes for Pfizer & friends
       | who's got every govt funneling money to them seemingly without
       | limit.
        
         | wwweston wrote:
         | At a first approximation, _everybody_ is charitable with Exxon,
         | as demonstrated by continued popular uptake of their products
         | across at least two spectra of political beliefs. Some may also
         | embrace critical beliefs about exactly how much oversight
         | /restraint Exxon should have and/or what forms of public
         | support alternatives should receive, but it's about as rare or
         | rarer to have Exxon's products treated with the suspicion that
         | vaccinations are more dangerous than the diseases they treat.
        
         | sn0w_crash wrote:
         | Remember Exxon has duped those same people into thinking they
         | are a "good" company
         | 
         | They rank higher than Tesla on ESG ratings.
         | 
         | Yes, Exxon.
        
           | taolegal wrote:
        
         | mberning wrote:
         | It's incredible how they managed to rehab their image almost
         | overnight. Anybody remember the bextra scandal? Yeah, these are
         | the same corrupt corporations.
        
           | lispisok wrote:
           | We went from finding out pharma companies exploded the opiate
           | epidemic to people getting tattoos of the brand of covid
           | vaccine they got in a few years. Just because pharma
           | companies make some useful products does not make them good
           | actors. Of course Pfizer is going to say everybody needs
           | another covid booster shot. Every time they convince people
           | they need another it's billions in revenue.
        
             | 2-718-281-828 wrote:
             | do you have a link? google just leads to stuff about how
             | long to wait with a tattoo after vaccination.
        
               | incrudible wrote:
               | https://twitter.com/senadaruc/status/1398599697934303232
        
               | InvaderFizz wrote:
               | Searching booster tattoo on Twitter has a few hits. But I
               | think they are all photoshop.
        
           | lob_it wrote:
           | Being a natural in the 21st century is the new status symbol
           | in the 1st world :)
           | 
           | 70% prescription medication useage makes being on (0) meds
           | very cool nowadays.
           | 
           | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130619132352.h.
           | ..
        
           | busymom0 wrote:
           | Not just bextra. The asbestos in baby powder and opioids
           | scandal is still ongoing too.
        
         | mertd wrote:
         | Oil consumption creates negative externalities for everyone.
         | Mass vaccination creates positive externalities. It's not that
         | hard.
        
           | Mountain_Skies wrote:
           | Does oil consumption not have any positive externalities?
           | Have mass vaccinations never had a negative externality?
           | Remember, the first world is not the entirety of humanity
           | before answering.
        
         | matrix_overload wrote:
         | Because the Big Pharma played the centuries-old trick from a
         | conqueror's handbook: give your vassals a tiny bit of power
         | over their peers, while pillaging the land for profit. So the
         | activists now enjoy the newly given power to bash, shame and
         | deplatform anyone who could be labeled as "antivaxxers", while
         | predictably turning a blind eye towards the hand that gave them
         | that power.
        
         | xracy wrote:
         | Nah, Pfizer is a terrible company. Pharmaceutical companies can
         | rot in hell.
         | 
         | But that doesn't change the fact that vaccines save lives.
         | 
         | It's not that I am bending over backwards to defend Pharma.
         | It's that people are bending over backwards to find shitty
         | things in the silver linings of these companies, instead of
         | just complaining about the thunderclouds themselves like the
         | rest of us.
         | 
         | Corporations are big. Companies can be capable of doing shitty
         | things and good things at the same time. If you wanna complain
         | about Opioids, I'm happy to have a conversation about how
         | terrible pharma is.
        
           | drcross wrote:
           | >But that doesn't change the fact that vaccines save lives.
           | 
           | Yeah, all fine and good when you have informed consent. I
           | _took my life in my own hands_ by not getting vaccinated for
           | covid after I looked at the mortality age graph, and knew I
           | was fit and healthy and didn 't need to worry.
           | 
           | Society at large, however, castigated me, threw me in the
           | same box as a conspiracy theorist, denied me my rights.
           | People acted goddamn stupidly about this subject. I'm angry
           | about this and I won't forgive and I won't forget.
        
           | akira2501 wrote:
           | > It's that people are bending over backwards to find shitty
           | things in the silver linings of these companies, instead of
           | just complaining about the thunderclouds themselves like the
           | rest of us.
           | 
           | I'm sorry.. but wasn't it the US Government make significant
           | investments in both companies producing this therapy? Wasn't
           | the the US Military that drove much of the initial interest
           | into mRNA therapies in the first place?
           | 
           | Why do we continue to consider these companies as anything
           | other than conduits of government research and funding? When
           | then is it a surprise when these companies don't recognize
           | this that people become offended?
        
             | xracy wrote:
             | If I'm reading your response correctly you're basically
             | saying "The silver lining that you're talking about wasn't
             | even initiated by these companies, but instead a function
             | of gov't interest/investment."
             | 
             | That sounds about right. I could believe that the only good
             | thing to come out of these companies is the result of the
             | Gov't makes them do things for the people. Profit is not a
             | good motive for a company investing in making people
             | healthy.
        
       | guelo wrote:
       | Any time we figure out something new related to COVID19 it is
       | used to justify everybody's political axe grinding and conspiracy
       | theories. Science takes awhile and it will keep trudging on no
       | matter what our cocksure overreactions are.
        
       | vaxitgood wrote:
        
         | scohesc wrote:
        
       | coinbasetwwa wrote:
        
       | Kalanos wrote:
       | my heart has hurt since the vaccine
        
         | bobsmooth wrote:
         | I've also had chest pains.
        
         | TheHypnotist wrote:
         | Well, case closed then.
        
       | marsven_422 wrote:
        
       | entwife wrote:
       | It is possible to get a COVID antibody test to determine whether
       | you personally have sufficient remaining antibodies, or would
       | benefit from another vaccine. In Barcelona, it is possible for
       | under 100 euros.
        
         | nradov wrote:
         | There is no evidence-based clinical standard to determine what
         | level of antibodies is "sufficient". Such tests are not useful
         | for most patients and fail to account for cellular immunity. I
         | am not discouraging anyone from getting a booster but the
         | timing should be based on other criteria.
         | 
         | https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/
        
       | midislack wrote:
       | Conspiracy theorists keep being proved correct. Experts say,
       | that's dangerous.
        
       | gjsman-1000 wrote:
       | Some added information: Some might wonder, won't the US
       | government pay me if I am injured (as unlikely as that is)? For
       | example, the young man the article talks about as having been
       | injured?
       | 
       | Yes - there is a fund, the CICP (Countermeasures Injury
       | Compensation Program). However, your odds of getting paid are
       | basically nil, as an adult; due to an extremely high standard for
       | proving causation, lack of awareness, and limited claim time (1
       | year from date of vaccination). So if you have a long-term effect
       | after, say, 3 years needing compensation, you won't be paid.
       | 
       | "As of October 1, 2022, the CICP has partially compensated one
       | COVID-19 countermeasure claim. There are potentially additional
       | expenses to be calculated for this claim, therefore, the claim is
       | still in the "Pending" compensation status. Forty-seven COVID-19
       | countermeasure claims have been denied compensation because the
       | standard of proof for causation was not met and/or a covered
       | injury was not sustained. Six COVID-19 countermeasure claims, all
       | of which are COVID-19 vaccine claims, have been determined
       | eligible for compensation and are pending a review of eligible
       | expenses. One eligible claim is the result of anaphylaxis, and
       | five claims are the result of myocarditis."
       | 
       |  _Six_ payouts as of October 1st, 2022.
       | https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp/cicp-data
        
       | TurkishPoptart wrote:
        
         | chedca21 wrote:
         | https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/wait-what-fda-wants...
        
           | TurkishPoptart wrote:
           | This is from a year ago. Please provide some context to your
           | reply.
        
       | puffoflogic wrote:
       | Why bother with expensive research when the HN comment section
       | has it all figured out? The vaccines don't cause myocarditis, and
       | if they do then it's not as bad as what COVID causes, and if it
       | is well COVID also causes it anyways so who cares, and if it
       | doesn't then at least the vaccines stop transmission, and if they
       | don't then at least they save your life, and if they don't then
       | at least we believe The Science!
       | 
       | Just a waste of money. The Science is settled.
        
       | phtrivier wrote:
       | Just so we now for next time: what is the proper way to express
       | concerns about _this_ kind of things with enough nuance and
       | moderation so as not to be automatically considered an anti-
       | scientist tin foil hat ?
       | 
       | What is the scientifically acceptable way to phrase "I'm not
       | concerned about BigPharma planting 5G chips in my future
       | children's eyeballs to turn them into communist ; but I'm very
       | concerned about blind spots during testing and biases in protocol
       | and just plain bad luck that made us miss something ?"
       | 
       | Maybe I just write too much software for a living, but my only
       | certitude was that something, somewhere, was going to break. At
       | least I can TDD the hell out of my paranoia. Don't let me write
       | health policy, ever.
       | 
       | Sidenode: if this kid had chosen the wrong profession in the
       | wrong country, he would now be facing either "getting a couple of
       | other shot" or "loosing its job".
       | 
       | If he had made a tiktok video about his problems, or a facebook
       | post, or a twitter thread, etc... at some point it would have
       | been flagged, and it would have only garnered the attention of
       | the worst possible scammers.
       | 
       | And, worst of all, I'm pretty sure his grandmother would now
       | refuse to get boosted.
       | 
       | Talk about loose-loose :/
        
         | scop wrote:
         | Eric Weinstein had a great segment on his Portal podcast about
         | this very thing. I can't recall the interview (maybe with
         | Balaji?), but if it comes to me I'll comment it. The gist was
         | that he was talking about Covid and he observed that the guest
         | had to spend an inordinate amount of time saying what he was
         | _not_ saying, to the point of being absurd. He had to
         | constantly preface his comments with a long series of
         | statements of disassociation.  "Now I'm not saying X, or Y, and
         | I'm definitely not a P, and I don't agree with everything Z
         | said but..." How can you have a conversation if so much time is
         | spent _not_ saying things?
        
           | phtrivier wrote:
           | > How can you have a conversation if so much time is spent
           | not saying things?
           | 
           | Slowly, in carefully written form reviewed by people with the
           | right training.
           | 
           | Unfortunately, in the middle of an emergency with the bodies
           | of voting-aged people piling up... Not at all.
           | 
           | (Although, I guess not going to the other extreme of "having
           | this conversation in bits of 140 characters among strangers
           | with advertisers at each corner" did not help much.)
        
           | savryn wrote:
           | watching eric go through his arc of disillusionment in
           | public, despite all his sincerity and hopefulness and
           | intelligence was really sobering for me.
           | 
           | A lot of us have this inner "oh if only I was a better
           | speaker / smarter / worked on my persuasion skills ..."
           | 
           | It's just not how power works. It's not how society works. I
           | get that now, and it was amazing anthropology to see it
           | unfold.
        
             | digdugdirk wrote:
             | Mind explaining what you mean by his arc of
             | disillusionment? I don't follow the guy, my only
             | recollection of him is from listening to him on a podcast
             | about some wild "physics theory of everything" a while
             | back. I recall it being one of those "I'm not sure if I'm
             | an idiot, or he's crazy, but this sure is a fun ride" kinds
             | of experiences.
        
         | root_axis wrote:
         | > _what is the proper way to express concerns about _this_ kind
         | of things with enough nuance and moderation so as not to be
         | automatically considered an anti-scientist tin foil hat ?_
         | 
         | The nuance is key. Frankly, I don't recall much in the way of
         | nuance, I pretty much always saw concern about vaccines framed
         | as a battle for freedom against a tyrannical political party.
        
           | phtrivier wrote:
           | Well, if you're scared of something, and it becomes
           | mandatory, even when the decision comes from the most
           | democratically elected government, you'll feel attacked.
           | 
           | Which raises a lot of questions (is "being scared" enough of
           | a justification for refusing a law ? On the other hands, do
           | democraticaly elected officials automatically get the right
           | do decide what people should be "scared" about, without
           | having any more evidence than anyone else - given that the
           | only thing that can give evidence is time, time, and more
           | time ?)
           | 
           | Questions that, unfortunately, had to be answered hastly and
           | withouth much concerns for the unlucky ones - which, to be
           | honest, is pretty much the theme of history, and we have been
           | among the lucky one until now, so maybe we don't have that
           | much to complain about.
        
         | daliz wrote:
         | You are completely right.
         | 
         | People who expressed concerns or some doubts just a few months
         | ago were attacked, downvoted, silenced and socially outcast.
         | 
         | This is not science. This is the opposite of science.
        
           | phtrivier wrote:
           | Well, at the peak of the epidemics, there was a whole
           | industry devoted to claiming the most bogus things and
           | preventing the people with the highest risk / benefit ratio
           | from taking their shots. I made fun of the most hilarious of
           | them too.
           | 
           | That did not make me any less scared of the "oooops" moment.
           | 
           | This will get worse (myocarditis today, menstural cycles
           | tomorrow, maybe strokes and cancer later ?), then worse (vast
           | number of people completely loosing faith into their docs and
           | letting a much worse epidemy settle), then worse, before it
           | gets... well, before life goes on and we mostly forget, as it
           | has ever done and as we ever did, I suppose ?
        
       | 6nf wrote:
       | We knew this 18 months ago when Israel first released their
       | results after vaccinating 7 million of their people. But talking
       | about it on Facebook or Youtube got you yeeted.
        
       | shingle wrote:
       | I can add my experience to this thread, as I was diagnosed with
       | "atypical" pericarditis a little over a week after my first
       | Pfizer shot.
       | 
       | This started with chest pains, gradually increasing over the
       | course of a day or two before I went to the hospital. I had to
       | ask them to test for myopericarditis, because they were pretty
       | much only considering an embolism or a panic attack. In that
       | sense I was lucky that I had read a paper a month or so before,
       | indicating young men (such as myself) as having an increased risk
       | after Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccination. After diagnosis I
       | had to go through a 3-month medication regimen which, I'll be
       | honest, wasn't all that fun for my intestinal tract.
       | 
       | Thankfully I was deemed healthy after half a year, with low
       | probability of lasting damage. Yet, the psychological weight of
       | being confronted with heart disease in your mid-twenties is
       | heavy. My opinions on vaccinations haven't really changed, though
       | I think the legal and societal pressure to get everyone
       | vaccinated was out of line and that opinion has gotten stronger.
       | Especially after knowing that vaccination doesn't affects
       | transmission as much as they hoped, I expected them to focus much
       | more heavily on the at-risk groups, but that didn't happen.
       | 
       | The worst part about all of this though is the obstinate denial
       | my cardiologists had of any possible relation between my Pfizer
       | shot and the pericarditis. They'd point to the fact that young
       | men can develop myopericarditis without vaccination. This is
       | true, though it's almost always the result of an infection, and
       | in my region of the world the vast majority of these cases result
       | from flu infections. However, when I had my diagnosis there were
       | barely any flu cases in the country, it just wasn't the season,
       | and most of all I wasn't ill. Pointing to the close proximity to
       | the vaccination was met with immediate and absolute denial.
       | 
       | I think that's what bothered me most: I did my part, I tried to
       | protect society by getting a shot, but when confronted with
       | negative fall-out I had to fight for a diagnosis and was pretty
       | much laughed out of the room for suggesting a relation to the
       | booster. I don't think I've processed this yet. It really feels
       | like I did everything I was told, giving up much of my hobbies,
       | social life etc., but when my health was on the line... "Ho pal,
       | can't be saying anything that could be contorted into criticism
       | of vaccination".
       | 
       | Little of it seemed "fair".
        
         | mach1ne wrote:
         | >I think that's what bothered me most: I did my part, I tried
         | to protect society by getting a shot, but when confronted with
         | negative fall-out I had to fight for a diagnosis and was pretty
         | much laughed out of the room for suggesting a relation to the
         | booster. I don't think I've processed this yet.
         | 
         | I recently came to believe that it's not accurate to model
         | random humans as reflections of self. Situations like this make
         | much more sense if you think the humans to be not much more but
         | nodes of some greater societal 'meme' (as in infectious
         | idea/ideology). Almost everyone is such a node in almost every
         | respect. Better to drop the belief that you're operating in a
         | world of copies of yourself, and rather embrace the model that
         | you're operating in a world of memes, the nodes of which the
         | people around you are. At least when it comes to explaining
         | behavior which you have trouble understanding.
        
           | nonethewiser wrote:
           | That's a complicated way of saying "people are individuals."
        
         | oliv__ wrote:
        
           | shingle wrote:
           | I understand where you're coming from, I really do. It's
           | rough to give up personal liberties for the "greater good",
           | even though we already do on a daily basis. You can't run red
           | light, you can't dodge taxes, ...
           | 
           | I don't think there was much malice in these new COVID-
           | related laws. Sure there was some cronyism for financial gain
           | in their execution, but that's not the point. I think they
           | were motivated by an seemingly ever-increasing aversion to
           | any form of risk and responsibility, both on governmental as
           | well as societal level.
           | 
           | I'd love to understand and internally evaluate every law and
           | practice that is put upon me, take my own responsibilities
           | based on a thorough understanding of the issue. However, the
           | world has grown too complex for any individual to understand
           | why we are supposed to do the things that we are told to. It
           | has become impossible to even _be aware_ of every law.
           | 
           | I don't know what the "solution" to this extreme risk
           | aversion is. I wonder if there is some historical precedent
           | of a society undergoing the same tendencies and how that
           | eventually got solved. Or didn't.
        
       | SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
       | Cool, now what's the incidence of Myocarditis and similar after
       | COVID-19 infection?
       | 
       | It's possible that such a vaccine causes a number of such cases,
       | and still prevents a much larger number of them. In fact it also
       | seems to be true in this case.
       | 
       | Discussing the vaccines out of this context, is scaremongering.
       | You're much better off taking your chances with the COVID-19
       | vaccine than taking your chances unvaccinated.
       | 
       | https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-...
       | 
       | https://openheart.bmj.com/content/9/1/e001957
        
         | fhrow4484 wrote:
         | > Cool, now what's the incidence of Myocarditis and similar
         | after COVID-19 infection?
         | 
         | Which mechanism would cause myocarditis when you get COVID 19?
         | 
         | The 2nd link in nradov's comment
         | (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33599243) states:
         | 
         | > These findings indicate that introducing the mRNA vaccine
         | into the circulatory system can lead to acute cardiac
         | inflammation. The mechanism behind this requires further
         | elucidation. However, it is speculated that this may be due to
         | the pro-inflammatory properties of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs)
         | used as carriers for mRNA.
         | 
         | The actual COVID-19 infection doesn't have any lipid
         | nanoparticles, does it?
         | 
         | Agree with overall sentiment of your comment though: the
         | overall real-bad symptoms caused by an infection when fully
         | unvaccinated are probably not worth skipping vaccine.
         | 
         | The clinical trials in op's article as well as nradov's comment
         | on "aspiration" to reduce myocarditis risk during vaccination
         | are both important topics to explore.
        
           | enragedcacti wrote:
           | I'm not sure how it causes it but it seems that it does:
           | 
           | https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm
           | 
           | > During March 2020-January 2021, patients with COVID-19 had
           | nearly 16 times the risk for myocarditis compared with
           | patients who did not have COVID-19, and risk varied by sex
           | and age.
           | 
           | > To minimize potential bias from vaccine-associated
           | myocarditis (6), 277,892 patients with a COVID-19 vaccination
           | record in PHD-SR during December 2020-February 2021 were
           | excluded.
        
         | sfusato wrote:
         | _" Retrospective cohort study of 196,992 adults after COVID-19
         | infection in Clalit Health Services members in Israel between
         | March 2020 and January 2021. [...] We did not observe an
         | increased incidence of neither pericarditis nor myocarditis in
         | adult patients recovering from COVID-19 infection."_
         | 
         | Study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/
        
         | kyleyeats wrote:
        
           | bluGill wrote:
           | > The vaccine doesn't stop transmission
           | 
           | That is utterly false!
           | 
           | If you don't get COVID because of the vaccine, then the
           | vaccine stopped the transmission. Even if you get COVID, the
           | chance you transmit COVID is reduced becuase the body spreads
           | less. If you do get it, but your body will also clear it
           | faster which is less time to transmit. Sure the above is 100%
           | stop all transmission, but it still stops the majority.
        
             | spfzero wrote:
             | It cannot stop transmission, clearly. The country is mostly
             | vaccinated and cases continue, no herd immunity ever showed
             | up.
             | 
             | The vaccines do reduce transmission in the minority of
             | cases where full-blown symptoms last long enough that the
             | reduction in infection length conferred by the vaccine is
             | significant. But for most cases, they never progress to the
             | point that the antibody response would become a factor, so
             | most vaccinated people spread it just as much as if they
             | were never vaccinated, in the early portion of their
             | infection at minimum. So even if everyone got their booster
             | today at the same instant, and every 6 months repeated
             | that, it would still not stop the free movement of the
             | virus among the population.
             | 
             | The only way to stop the spread is to do what China is
             | doing, but with air-tight effectiveness, which is
             | impossible.
             | 
             | That said, there's a big reason to get vaccinated and
             | boosted anyway if you are in a risk group, since it is
             | somewhat effective in protecting against serious and deadly
             | outcomes.
        
               | SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
               | > It cannot stop transmission, clearly. The country is
               | mostly vaccinated and cases continue, no herd immunity
               | ever showed up.
               | 
               | This is a miststament.
        
               | bluGill wrote:
               | While nobody knows the numbers required, we didn't get
               | enough vaccinations for herd immunity.
        
             | kyleyeats wrote:
        
         | abeppu wrote:
         | Also, myocarditis can be more or less severe, IIUC. The article
         | links to this CDC presentation, and on slide 5 they
         | characterize myocarditis associated with mRNA vaccination vs
         | myocarditis associated with viral illness. The proportion that
         | recover cardiac function, and the time to recover cardiac
         | function are better in the mRNA case.
         | 
         | https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-...
        
           | adamsb6 wrote:
           | Like just about everything, I would expect myocarditis to
           | have some distribution such that there's a group of people
           | who feel bad, but not bad enough to see a doctor. For the
           | vaccines I would expect that people would be less likely to
           | see a doctor because the vaccine side effects were so widely
           | talked about, and going to the doctor carried a risk of COVID
           | exposure.
           | 
           | The second does of vaccine knocked my wife and I on our asses
           | for three days. I broke a sweat unloading the dishwasher and
           | then had to go take a nap to recover. I figured we were just
           | unlucky enough to have an especially strong reaction and
           | didn't bother a doctor about it. Was that mild myocarditis?
           | I'll probably never know.
        
         | plgonzalezrx8 wrote:
         | The data is very unclear on this. Sure you found sources that
         | back your claim, but plenty of replies with sources that say
         | the contrary (From reputable sources). So in the meantime,
         | given the conflicting nature of all the reports, mandating
         | vaccines should NOT be a thing.
        
         | hitpointdrew wrote:
         | According to this study
         | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/ there is no increase
         | in Myocarditis cases among unvaccinated people who have
         | contracted Covid-19. This study tracked 196,992 people which is
         | a huge number, so the data here is quite good and clear.
         | Contracting Covid-19 does not put you at increased risk for
         | Myocarditis, the same cannot be said when evaluating a
         | population that simply received the vaccination.
        
           | selectodude wrote:
           | A more recent one disagrees.
           | 
           | https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA..
           | ..
        
             | hitpointdrew wrote:
             | From your study:
             | 
             | >In 42 842 345 people receiving at least 1 dose of vaccine,
             | 21 242 629 received 3 doses, and 5 934 153 had SARS-CoV-2
             | infection before or after vaccination. Myocarditis occurred
             | in 2861 (0.007%) people, with 617 events 1 to 28 days after
             | vaccination. Risk of myocarditis was increased in the 1 to
             | 28 days after a first dose of ChAdOx1 (incidence rate
             | ratio, 1.33 [95% CI, 1.09-1.62]) and a first, second, and
             | booster dose of BNT162b2 (1.52 [95% CI, 1.24-1.85]; 1.57
             | [95% CI, 1.28-1.92], and 1.72 [95% CI, 1.33-2.22],
             | respectively) but was lower than the risks after a positive
             | SARS-CoV-2 test before or after vaccination (11.14 [95% CI,
             | 8.64-14.36] and 5.97 [95% CI, 4.54-7.87], respectively).
             | 
             | BEFORE OR AFTER VACCINATION.
             | 
             | Every single person in that study was vaccinated, some of
             | them caught covid (either before or after being
             | vaccinated), some people did not catch covid at all. The
             | people that were vaccinated and contracted covid fared the
             | worst. There is no un-vaccinated group that caught covid
             | and never took the vaccine at all in this study.
        
             | anon291 wrote:
             | When data disagree, then you need better studies. Certainly
             | not blanket recommendations and requirements including
             | firing people who refuse to comply and making it impossible
             | to feed their families.
        
           | russdill wrote:
           | You're comparing a study with 200,000 people with a study
           | with 43,000,000 people.
        
             | nonethewiser wrote:
             | And you're comparing a study that monitored for less than a
             | month to one that monitored for 4 months.
        
           | AnimalMuppet wrote:
           | Now, to balance between you and the OP: Great, Covid looks
           | like it won't give me myocarditis. It can still kill me,
           | though. So now we have to balance a "may give me myocarditis"
           | vaccine against a "may kill me, but won't give me
           | myocarditis" virus.
           | 
           | You can't make the trade-off _solely_ on myocarditis.
        
             | nonethewiser wrote:
             | > Now, to balance between you and the OP
             | 
             | Well, no. That's moving the goalpost. The question was if
             | COVID was more likely to result in myocarditis than
             | vaccines. "Yes, but" still grants "yes."
        
             | SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
             | > Great, Covid looks like it won't give me myocarditis. It
             | can still kill me,
             | 
             | ... COVID can still kill me, or give me one of a number of
             | other long-term health issues. If myocarditis isn't one of
             | them, it doesn't really change the risk ratio.
        
               | sfusato wrote:
               | Doesn't that still apply to someone vaccinated though?
               | "... COVID can still kill me, or give me one of a number
               | of other long-term health issues"
        
               | SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
               | > Doesn't that still apply to someone vaccinated though?
               | 
               | Not at close to the same rate, no.
               | 
               | "can" would be a technically true but entirely misleading
               | word there, as the topic of conversation is the risk
               | ratio. "1 in 10 chance" things can happen. "1 in a
               | million chance" things can happen, also.
               | 
               | But these two "can" usages are not the same.
               | 
               | You should know this. You should not be playing word
               | games. Do you think, falsely, that COVID vaccination it
               | totally useless? If not, why imply it?
        
               | sfusato wrote:
               | So, what's the risk ratio? I haven't said that it's
               | totally useless, you simply excluded that possibility as
               | a given. Most countries around the world have stopped
               | recommending any further boosters to those under 50/65
               | years of age.
        
               | SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
               | > Most countries around that world have stopped
               | recommending any further boosters.
               | 
               | What makes you say that? It doesn't sound accurate at
               | all, given that Autumn booster programs are underway in
               | USA, UK, EU - and those are the only ones that I have
               | checked. And what are you attempting to imply?
        
               | sfusato wrote:
               | I'm not implying anything. See my earlier comment:
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33595347
        
               | SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
               | I also see the _late addition_ of "to those under 50/65
               | years of age" in grandparent comment, which changes the
               | meaning quite a bit. These countries, for many people,
               | _are_ recommending further boosters.
               | 
               | In the UK's case, the NHS "invites people 50 and over for
               | autumn boosters" (1) which doesn't rule out any further
               | action later for under 50s.
               | 
               | https://www.england.nhs.uk/2022/10/nhs-invites-
               | people-50-and...
        
               | sfusato wrote:
               | I've later added that "50/65 age" mention. Apologies for
               | that. So, you reckon this a not important change in
               | policy? I personally find it as a radical change in
               | policy, almost short of an apology to be honest.
        
               | hitpointdrew wrote:
               | >Not at close to the same rate, no.
               | 
               | That is highly debatable, especially with the current
               | (weaker) strains. Unless you have comorbidities or are
               | otherwise in a high-risk category the chance the Covid
               | will kill you is near 0.
        
               | puffoflogic wrote:
               | Only if your vaxxinated. If you arent then your gonna
               | die, pretty much for sure.
        
             | sfusato wrote:
             | You forgot the "may give me myocarditis (and covid might
             | still kill me)" on one end of the balance though.
        
               | bluGill wrote:
               | Then we have to account for the much reduced risk of that
               | though. sure it can, but relative risk is important.
               | Covid when vaccinated is far more likely to kill you than
               | all possible combinations of the vaccine and whatever
               | else.
        
               | hitpointdrew wrote:
               | > Then we have to account for the much reduced risk of
               | that though
               | 
               | I fail to see any evidence of "much reduced risk". We
               | know before vaccinations existed some people died, some
               | people were a-symptomatic. After mass vaccination
               | campaigns, same results. Have the deaths gone down? Sure,
               | but there are obvious factors, outside of vaccination,
               | that are certainly contributing to that, if not wholly
               | responsible for it. We know the virus has been getting
               | less deadly with each new strain, we know that putting
               | people on ventilators and cranking them up was 100% the
               | wrong treatment. The media has largely stopped beating
               | the fear drum, there are no more death counters up on the
               | news stations 24/7 so people aren't freaking-the-fuck-
               | out. I highly suspect you could have given out placebos
               | instead and would have seen the same results.
        
               | enragedcacti wrote:
               | > I fail to see any evidence of "much reduced risk".
               | 
               | If you just do a basic per-capita analysis the reduced
               | risk of death is in the range of 5-16x depending on age
               | group and vaccinated or vaccinated+boosted. There are
               | obviously confounding variables (do vaccinated people
               | behave differently? are healthier people the ones getting
               | the vaccines?) but I would argue that those numbers are a
               | pretty big W for vaccines as far as risk reduction goes.
               | 
               | And of course that is just deaths. You could certainly
               | look at numbers for severity of infection or long-covid
               | outcomes to further measure the efficacy of the vaccines.
               | 
               | https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-
               | compare-co...
        
               | hitpointdrew wrote:
               | >If you just do a basic per-capita analysis the reduced
               | risk of death is in the range 5-16x
               | 
               | I am not questioning that, but couldn't that 5-16x be
               | contributed to the latest strains being far less deadly
               | that the first few strains, much better and accessible
               | treatments (monoclonal antibodies), safer hospital
               | practices (not putting people on ventilators so
               | quickly/easily), etc.? How can we be so sure that the
               | majority of that 5-16x was from vaccination?
        
               | enragedcacti wrote:
               | Because that rate of reduction is in comparison to the
               | "control" group of unvaccinated people who are exposed to
               | the same strains and have access to all the same
               | treatments and hospital practices
        
           | blitz_skull wrote:
           | I had COVID twice, never got the vaccine (still haven't), and
           | I was diagnosed with Myocarditis. I personally know 2 other
           | young (< 30) males that have as well. Not "my buddy's friend"
           | but first-circle of separation friends. All 3 of us got
           | diagnosed with it. No other heart-related issues.
           | 
           | I might say there's a "statistically insignificant increase",
           | but to say there's no increase is just factually wrong. (And
           | statistically wrong too).
        
             | nonethewiser wrote:
             | Myocarditis existed long before covid. You can get it
             | without covid nor the vaccine. Your anecdote is as
             | informative as my friend who got it several years before
             | Covid.
        
       | origin_path wrote:
       | I'm very skeptical about their numbers.
       | 
       | Some time in 2021 there was a story about COVID vaccines and
       | heart issues here on HN. The comments filled up with people
       | saying that ever since they'd got their shots they were
       | experiencing new heart-related symptoms they'd never had
       | previously like permanently racing heartbeats,
       | palpitations/fluttering, inability to do exercise and more.
       | Unfortunately I'm not sure how to re-find that discussion. I also
       | have a good friend who works in IT who had a heart attack in the
       | weeks after his shots, but he refused to believe that's what
       | happened and never went in to get diagnosed (the symptoms were an
       | exact match however).
       | 
       | Some rough calculations indicate the numbers affected by this
       | kind of (hopefully) low level heart damage seem much higher than
       | claimed. They say of the "hundreds of millions" of shots there
       | are only 1000 cases of diagnosed heart damage from the vaccines.
       | Call it 1000/100,000,000 or one in a million. There are approx 5M
       | readers of Hacker News per month, so far less per day. Of those
       | only a tiny handful have accounts and post comments. If their
       | numbers are right then there should be ~no HN commenters with
       | post-vaccine heart problems but this thread filled up with people
       | posting their own experiences of such a thing.
       | 
       | Then there's also the other health problems. My gfs friends who
       | took it have been complaining that they seem to get sick with
       | colds/fluey things way more frequently since the shots, I heard
       | similar complaints from a couple of old coworkers. One of those
       | girls complaining of frequent sickness also reported disrupted
       | menstruation but the doctors have ignored it all because as far
       | as they are concerned, the vaccines are 'perfectly safe'.
        
         | gjsman-1000 wrote:
         | I, anecdotally, can report the same. Anecdotally, it seems
         | doctors are drowning in too much paperwork already to be
         | bothered filing reports, as well as suffering from denial that
         | this could be an issue (also preventing filing a report).
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | Ario5 wrote:
         | As someone who experienced heart attack like symptoms as an
         | under 30 year old, did go into the hospital and got a
         | pericarditis[1] diagnosis, I think that describing your friends
         | unknown heart condition as a heart attack is unnecessary fear
         | mongering considering similar symptoms can present themselves
         | as a much less severe condition. Both the Vaccine and Covid are
         | known have a low chance of causing heart issues.
         | 
         | [1]https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-
         | conditions/pericarditis/....
        
           | origin_path wrote:
           | I'm not a doctor, so maybe there's some deep difference
           | between something that has the same symptoms as a heart
           | attack and a heart attack. Regardless of what exactly it was,
           | it freaked him out, it freaked me out too and I'm glad there
           | doesn't seem to have been a recurrence (or if there was he
           | chose not to tell me, knowing that I'd tell him again to see
           | a specialist).
           | 
           |  _" Both the Vaccine and Covid are known have a low chance of
           | causing heart issues."_
           | 
           | It is 'known' by people who are deeply conflicted by their
           | own pushing of the shots and could thus never admit it, if
           | their policies had led to immune or heart damage. Nothing
           | much can be said about vaccine safety given that the public
           | health and research system are clearly terrified of doing or
           | saying anything that might reduce compliance with their
           | policies.
        
         | n4r9 wrote:
         | Is it possibly this discussion?
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27463732
         | 
         | There are people talking about heart palpitations or pains,
         | yard to say if that's enough to say they had myocarditis
         | though.
        
           | thatswrong0 wrote:
           | I posted in that thread - saw a cardiologist and they
           | confirmed it. In retrospect, it was probably the worst
           | illness I've ever had, being completely out of commission for
           | a month at age 29, where even doing simple things like
           | rolling over in bed would cause my heart rate to spike and
           | cause me to be short of breath. Couldn't do anything but lay
           | there. Luckily a scan confirmed no long term damage.
           | 
           | For some reason still decided to get the third booster.. and
           | I still ended up getting COVID twice (very mild both times).
           | Don't think I'll be getting any more COVID vaccines.
        
         | rozap wrote:
         | Me too. A few days after the latest booster I had some really
         | weird heart palpitations while resting, and I was feeling dizzy
         | with chest/shoulder pain after some moderate exercise. I've
         | stopped exercising which sucks, but will ease back into it. But
         | there's a history of arrhythmia in my family (heart issue
         | killed my dad at a young age), so that's probably a big risk
         | factor, and I'm in the "young male" risk group.
         | 
         | I don't know if I should keep getting boosters or risk a
         | potentially worse outcome from covid, which I haven't had yet,
         | though I've been very exposed to.
        
           | nradov wrote:
           | Unless you've been getting weekly PCR tests since the
           | beginning of the pandemic, there's no way to reliably know
           | that you haven't been infected. Many people experience
           | asymptomatic infections.
        
         | yonaguska wrote:
         | I wish I could find it, but google is insistent on working
         | against me here, but I remember reading from one of Pfizer's
         | data dumps that children in the vaccinated group of their
         | studies were at an increased risk of other respiratory
         | infections compared to the control group.
         | 
         | Anecdotally, some, not all, but some of my triple vaccinated
         | friends are getting sick constantly and they've said that every
         | time they catch covid, it gets worse. This is just a few people
         | out of several that I know, so it doesn't mean much if
         | anything.
        
           | nomel wrote:
           | > wish I could find it, but google is insistent on working
           | against me here
           | 
           | Bing/DuckDuckGo go is much better for anything with a
           | negative vaccine sentiment. I stopped using Google
           | altogether, because of the pandemic, after repeatedly
           | watching news articles and research papers disappear from
           | search results. I want a list, not a guided experience.
        
           | CadmiumYellow wrote:
           | Do you have any idea if this effect was found for the non-
           | mRNA vaccines as well? I had the Johnson & Johnson vaccine
           | with no boosters and I've been getting an unusual number of
           | colds this year, though I assumed it was due to life
           | returning to normal with a backlog of viruses I hadn't been
           | exposed to in 2020-2021. I did get covid twice after being
           | vaccinated though and both cases were very mild with the
           | second being almost asymptomatic. The two days after the
           | vaccine were the sickest I've been in a decade but it seems
           | it did its job re: making covid milder.
        
             | origin_path wrote:
             | Officially the increased sickness effect doesn't exist at
             | all. We only have these sorts of anecdotes and vaccines can
             | only be discussed occasionally on HN, and not at all on
             | most other forums, so notes can only be compared rarely.
             | 
             | Unofficially the effect does exist and goes by various
             | names: OAS, Hoskins Effect, immune imprinting. It can be
             | seen in some of the vaccine effectiveness data back when it
             | was being collected by places like the UK, where vaccinated
             | people were getting COVID at 4x the rate of unvaccinated by
             | the time they stopped reporting (and the rate was worsening
             | with time).
             | 
             | It can also be seen in the boosters trial data where they
             | had to switch the definition of success to antibody
             | production, because the boosters were not actually reducing
             | infection incidence e.g. the bivalent boosters were tested
             | on all of 8 mice and all 8 got COVID when exposed so
             | effectiveness is zero, but that didn't stop them being
             | approved on the basis that they caused production of
             | antibodies (to the variant targeted by the OG vaccine, not
             | Omicron).
             | 
             | OAS unfortunately can be caused by any vaccine tech. It's
             | not mRNA specific. The antibodies you produce are for the
             | older extinct variants that the vaccine trained you for,
             | not the current variants. The body doesn't recognize that
             | there's a difference.
        
           | iceburgcrm wrote:
           | What I understand based on a study posted here is the vaccine
           | reduces your bodies ability to reactive and after 9 months
           | the vaccine's preventive properties disappear making you more
           | likely to get sick. The more shots the worse the affect.
        
           | chedca21 wrote:
           | Pfizer's clinical trial showed 95% efficacy as a "relative
           | risk reduction" when researchers checked the clinical trial
           | data (which FDA wanted to withhold for 55 years but a Texas
           | judge ordered its release) , for the actual risk reduction it
           | was shown to be a negative value. Here is one resource on the
           | subject https://www.pandata.org/understanding-relative-risk-
           | reductio... I tried to find a better reference but can not
           | find the exact one I'm looking for which came from a Canadian
           | university (ryerson I believe)
        
       | annadane wrote:
       | Lots of suspiciously downvoted comments here.
        
       | drummer wrote:
       | Here are two books everyone should read:
       | 
       | https://archive.org/details/b2136140x
       | 
       | https://archive.org/details/confessions-of-a-medical-heretic...
        
       | loeg wrote:
        
         | no_butterscotch wrote:
         | > This thread is, predictably, a complete shit show. Flag and
         | move on.
         | 
         | Is there a way to counter-flag?
         | 
         | People who are passionate about discussing some topic may get
         | heated but I don't think that's a good reason for a Reddit-
         | style "thread locked by mods".
        
           | generalizations wrote:
           | You can 'vouch' for the thread (or a comment), but only after
           | it's been marked as flagged. Personally I think that's
           | unbalanced, since flags accumulate for a longer and more
           | visible period than when a thread can be vouched for.
        
         | preordained wrote:
         | Nope. Let discussion happen as it will in the cold light of
         | day.
        
         | warning26 wrote:
         | Well you see, my [insert relative] had [bad thing happen] thus
         | proving that [antivax talking point].
         | 
         | I've summarized every comment in this thread to save you some
         | time for your busy monday morning.
        
           | generalizations wrote:
           | Not really, unless you're only reading the threads that match
           | your bias. Most of the higher-voted top-level comments are
           | fairly substantial...unlike yours.
        
       | sfusato wrote:
       | Norway recommends booster doses for 65+ [0], Denmark for 50+ [1],
       | Australia for 50+ [2], Sweeden for 65+ [3], Finland for 65+ [4].
       | United States recommends booster does for 5+ [5]. "The (Florida)
       | State Surgeon General now recommends against the COVID-19 mRNA
       | vaccines for males ages 18-39 years old." [6]
       | 
       | [0] https://www.fhi.no/en/id/vaccines/coronavirus-
       | immunisation-p...
       | 
       | [1] https://www.sst.dk/en/English/Corona-eng/Vaccination-
       | against...
       | 
       | [2]
       | https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2022...
       | 
       | [3] https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-
       | agency...
       | 
       | [4] https://thl.fi/en/web/thlfi-en/-/thl-recommends-
       | coronavirus-...
       | 
       | [5] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/stay-
       | up-t...
       | 
       | [6] https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/wp-
       | content/uploads/2022/10/...
        
         | gjsman-1000 wrote:
         | Worth noting, the Florida Surgeon General's opinion was
         | lambasted in the mainstream media as him embracing conspiracy
         | theories (and there is some interesting added context there as
         | to why they believe so). Which... maybe two things are true at
         | once. Perhaps he was - but also, perhaps his stance is not that
         | radical. Radical compared to most Surgeon Generals in the
         | United States; but on an international level?
         | 
         | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/21/florida-c...
         | 
         | https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2022-10-12...
         | 
         | https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/11/medical-experts-rej...
         | 
         | https://abcnews.go.com/Health/scientists-pan-analysis-florid...
         | 
         | https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2022/10/15/they-are-right-w...
        
           | busymom0 wrote:
           | Even the neighbouring country Canada stopped giving Moderna
           | to people under 30 a year ago in September 2021. The CDC on
           | the other hand is still continuing on. Clearly something is
           | wrong in the US.
        
             | justsee wrote:
             | In Australia it appears they're changing public messaging
             | on vaccination for <30 yrs due to increased risk of
             | myocarditis and lack of notable benefits[1]:
             | 
             | "One of the nation's top advisers on vaccination says it is
             | unlikely young people under 30 will be approved for fourth
             | doses, as Australia turns its attention to antiviral access
             | to tackle yet another Omicron wave."
             | 
             | "Former ATAGI co-chair and current member Professor Allen
             | Cheng said the increased risk of myocarditis and the lack
             | of notable benefit from additional boosters meant it was
             | likely the recommended vaccine schedule for younger people
             | would remain as is. Some are approaching a year since their
             | booster shot."
             | 
             | [1] https://www.smh.com.au/national/why-you-won-t-get-
             | another-co...
        
             | Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote:
             | Canada might be our neighbor but it's wildly different from
             | a population and care perspective.
        
               | canadiantim wrote:
               | Why is that the case? Moderna is good for Americans under
               | 30 but not Canadians under 30?
        
             | atlgator wrote:
             | Money in politics is the problem in the US.
        
               | serf wrote:
               | it's amusing to think that US politics is the only one
               | with that problem.
        
               | atlgator wrote:
               | Did anyone say that?
        
               | x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
               | No, but then we should see more Western countries with
               | money problems having the same issues.
        
             | nomel wrote:
             | It became political, causing FDA heads to resign [1] after
             | threats [2]. And now, the latest booster was approved with
             | no human trials at all [3].
             | 
             | 1. https://www.businessinsider.com/2-top-fda-officials-
             | resigned...
             | 
             | 2. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/11/white-house-threatens-
             | to-fir...
             | 
             | 3. https://www.health.com/news/new-covid-boosters-human-
             | testing...
        
               | jjcon wrote:
               | Flu shots don't require human trials either, should covid
               | be all that different (genuine question) if so why?
        
               | nomel wrote:
               | Clearly, the flu shots are fairly established science
               | (1945, 77 years), of a well researched virus. They're not
               | a new form of vaccine delivery, pushed through on an
               | emergency basis, with exclusions to testing, with legal
               | protection against any damages for those exclusions, and
               | 70 year trial document release plans.
               | 
               | Could you help me understand why you think the context is
               | so similar between the two?
               | 
               | What's your opinion on members of the FDA leaving due to
               | widely publicized political pressure to approve the
               | vaccine? Do you think they were wrong for pushing back?
        
               | paul wrote:
               | It's both a novel virus and a novel vaccine. Without
               | clinical trials we really don't know if the boosters are
               | helping or hurting.
               | 
               | Also, we should be doing clinical trials on flu shots as
               | well. New drugs, even if they are only slightly different
               | still require clinical trials. Why is hacking the immune
               | system not subject to the same scrutiny?
        
               | walterbell wrote:
               | Flu shots were not mandated for work, study or travel.
        
               | belltaco wrote:
               | Not true.
               | 
               | https://www.cdc.gov/immigrantrefugeehealth/laws-
               | regs/vaccina...
               | 
               | https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/most-hospitals-now-require-
               | worke...
        
               | kube-system wrote:
               | All three of those are wrong in at least some
               | circumstances. Several members of my family have been
               | getting their mandatory flu shots for decades.
        
               | jjcon wrote:
               | Is anyone requiring boosters for work, study or travel?
               | Not to my knowledge.
        
               | koolba wrote:
               | New York University (NYU) requires boosters for all
               | students: https://www.nyu.edu/life/safety-health-
               | wellness/coronavirus-...
        
               | sfusato wrote:
               | _Harvard requires all students to be up-to-date on their
               | COVID-19 vaccinations including the bivalent Omicron-
               | specific COVID-19 booster._
               | 
               | https://www.harvard.edu/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccine-
               | informa...
               | 
               |  _Yale students will be required to get an updated,
               | bivalent COVID-19 vaccine booster by the start of the
               | spring semester._
               | 
               | https://yalecollege.yale.edu/get-know-yale-
               | college/office-de...
               | 
               |  _Tufts University followed suit on Sept. 16, announcing
               | it would require students, staff, and faculty to get the
               | omicron vaccine booster by Dec. 2._
               | 
               | https://coronavirus.tufts.edu/healthy-at-
               | tufts/covid-19-vacc...
        
               | pandeiro wrote:
               | University of California
               | 
               | "With this recommendation, the UC Vaccine policy now
               | requires all staff and students to get the bivalent
               | booster, when eligible"
               | 
               | [1] https://campusready.ucdavis.edu/covid-vaccination
        
               | Grim-444 wrote:
               | Flu shots also use a vaccine mechanism that's been
               | known/used for decades and is not a first of its kind in
               | history mRNA treatment. I feel like this difference would
               | lead towards one requiring more testing than the other,
               | at least in a rational society.
               | 
               | [Edit] For anyone that wants to downvote this, please
               | explain what I said that was untrue. Flu shots in the US
               | have never been mRNA based. Covid shots in the US are
               | mRNA based. Before covid, there was never at any point in
               | history an mRNA based vaccine rolled out to the public.
        
               | cthalupa wrote:
               | It is a rare but known side effect of even regular flu
               | vaccines causing myocarditis, e.g.
               | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6786665/
               | 
               | >The true incidence of myocarditis after influenza
               | vaccination may be underestimated because of the
               | subclinical and nonspecific clinical manifestations of
               | myocarditis. A prospective study about the incidence of
               | cardiovascular adverse events after smallpox and
               | influenza vaccination revealed that the rate of clinical
               | or subclinical myocarditis and pericarditis after
               | smallpox vaccination was approximately 1:5,500, despite
               | the fact that the rate of troponin elevation was 1:200
               | [9]. Similarly, 2.6% of the influenza vaccine cohort
               | showed new onset cardiac symptoms, such as chest pain,
               | dyspnea, and palpitation, but no case of clinical or
               | subclinical myocarditis and pericarditis
        
               | VBprogrammer wrote:
               | I didn't downvote you but if the 12 billion or so COVID
               | vaccine doses issued world wide don't convince you that
               | the vaccine is statistically safe, at least as safe as
               | something as common as paracetamol or aspirin, then what
               | amount of testing would convince you?
        
               | yonaguska wrote:
               | It doesn't convince me because I do not know anyone
               | personally that has had an adverse reaction to aspirin,
               | that didn't also overdose on it. Meanwhile, I know
               | several people that have had adverse reactions to the
               | vaccine ranging from issues with periods, to heart
               | problems, to death.
               | 
               | No one is seriously tracking the adverse reactions, we've
               | handed that off to the companies that produced the
               | vaccines. And doctors are afraid to or don't care to
               | raise concerns either. The vaccines are as statistically
               | safe for me as COVID is for my age and health profile.
               | And the vaccine makes no guarantee that I won't still
               | catch COVID. Why would I double my risk when I've caught
               | COVID, and it was nothing for me.
        
               | tinus_hn wrote:
               | So why are the companies in the article researching the
               | risks if according to you there clearly are no risks? Do
               | you know better than the manufacturers?
        
               | VBprogrammer wrote:
               | Please try to keep the level of discussion one step above
               | junior school. Otherwise there is no point in us
               | communicating further.
               | 
               | I didn't say there are no risks but those risks must
               | necessarily be very low, as otherwise with a sample size
               | of billions of doses issued even effects in the 1 in a
               | million would be readily identifiable.
        
               | pandeiro wrote:
               | Re: 'the level of discussion'
               | 
               | What you posted was condescending and demonstrative of a
               | large blindspot as to the degree of adverse event
               | surveillance actually being carried out.
               | 
               | Hope that helps you achieve the tone of discussion you're
               | aiming for, in the future.
        
               | tinus_hn wrote:
               | Right, so you already have all the answers, it's a big
               | mystery why the manufacturers are doing this research. A
               | big mystery to you, that is.
               | 
               | Indeed there is no point in communicating further, you
               | made up your mind years ago and you will probably never
               | progress beyond repeating the old talking points. Luckily
               | most of the rest of the world has started to see reality
               | is a bit more nuanced than 'COVID is doom, vaccine is
               | good'.
        
               | serf wrote:
               | >..risks must necessarily be very low, as otherwise with
               | a sample size of billions of doses issued even effects in
               | the 1 in a million would be readily identifiable.
               | 
               | it's by no means easy to identify trends that are worth
               | pursuing for a medical investigation in a varied cohort
               | of a billion people, and poll size is only a single
               | attribute -- this is made even harder during a vacination
               | campaign that is trying to effectively drive the un-
               | vaccinated rates to as close to 0% as possible, making
               | comparative studies even more difficult to establish.
               | 
               | Time/race/status/age/health all matter. You can't just
               | take a look at what conditions that the billions of
               | vaccinated share, that's ineffective for any kind of
               | impact study.
               | 
               | It's my opinion that any 'precise' data is going to come
               | about in years and years once we can establish a
               | generational gap between this event and others so that we
               | can effectively create a cross-generational comparative
               | study.
        
               | VBprogrammer wrote:
               | I agree with you that measuring precisely whether the
               | vaccine was beneficial for 15 year olds or not is
               | difficult.
               | 
               | However, at the same time we have people in sibling
               | comments claiming to know multiple people with conditions
               | ranging from changes to their menstrual cycle to death.
               | This can't possibly be related to the vaccine at anything
               | like the rate people are for some reason inclined to
               | believe.
               | 
               | Personally I found the effects from the 3rd booster
               | almost as bad as COVID itself so I'm unlikely to get
               | another unless there is a compelling reason.
        
             | barbazoo wrote:
             | I don't think that's true and it's not that hard to find
             | out https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-
             | health...
             | 
             | > Approved for:
             | 
             | > Primary series in individuals age 6 months and older, or
             | as a booster dose in individuals age 18 years and older
             | (Moderna Spikevax(r) COVID-19 vaccine)
             | 
             | > As a booster dose in individuals age 18 years and older
             | (Moderna Spikevax(r) Bivalent COVID-19 vaccine
             | (Original/Omicron B.1.1.529 (BA.1))
             | 
             | > As a booster dose in individuals age 18 years and older
             | (Moderna Spikevax(r) Bivalent COVID-19 vaccine
             | (Original/Omicron BA.4/5)
        
           | wwweston wrote:
           | There's a lot of daylight between "recommendations for some
           | higher age groups, no recommendation for lower age groups"
           | and "recommendation against for lower age groups." The
           | international recommendations cited above seem to be in the
           | former category. Florida's recommendations seem to be in the
           | latter. This might make them an outlier.
           | 
           | Whether it makes them conspiracy theorists is another matter.
           | If their position is sound, well, sound positions can be
           | embraced for sound or unsound reasons. If their position is
           | unsound, of course it will be for unsound reasons. So whether
           | they're _called_ conspiracy theorists matters much less than
           | their reasons.
           | 
           | What are their reasons? They appear to cite a large
           | _relative_ increase in myocarditis risk in younger men. A
           | statistically literate response would involve asking what the
           | absolute increase is... and the proper place to reckon with
           | relative comparison would be vs the unvaccinated infected:
           | 
           | https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-.
           | ..
           | 
           | I would _absolutely_ recommend anyone wondering about a
           | specific vaccination consult with a doctor or two (I do this
           | and have had a certain class of vaccines contraindicated).
           | But no red flags from medical pros on this one for me, and
           | personally, even as a man outside the high-risk age groups, I
           | can 't remotely see a reason for _assuming_ myocarditis would
           | be a reason for avoiding the vaccine. As far as I can tell,
           | it 's almost on the order of your lifetime chance of being
           | struck by lightning, and the chance of developing myocarditis
           | from infection is significantly higher.
        
             | adolph wrote:
             | Is someone a conspiracy theorist if they conjecture about
             | conspiracies or because they conspire with others to
             | promote a theory?
        
               | boppo1 wrote:
               | The former. The latter would be a theory conspiracist.
        
             | francisduvivier wrote:
             | Have you read this exception in the link you posted:
             | 
             | - "with one exception. Men under 40 who received a second
             | dose of the Moderna vaccine had a higher risk of
             | myocarditis followingvaccination. The Pfizer and Moderna
             | mRNA vaccines are available in the U.S." I'd say it's worth
             | a mention.
             | 
             | But then it's also quite an unfair comparison if you
             | compare the all the vaccinated against a filtered group of
             | unvaccinated people.
        
         | jjcon wrote:
         | And yet despite that these countries have much much higher
         | rates of booster vaccination than the USA does (not to mention
         | there are dozens of other countries not listed in your comment
         | with similar policies to the USA). I think this has more to do
         | with how the health agencies in these countries choose to
         | communicate than anything else; that is I don't think the
         | wording and nuance of all recommendations can be directly
         | compared so easily.
         | 
         | Norway: 70% Boosted
         | 
         | Denmark: 63% Boosted
         | 
         | Australia:56% Boosted
         | 
         | Sweden: 71% Boosted
         | 
         | Finland: 74% Boosted
         | 
         | USA: 34% Boosted
         | 
         | SOURCE: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-
         | vaccina...
        
           | veeti wrote:
           | These numbers are wrong for Finland. Source:
           | https://yle.fi/news/3-11863045
        
             | jjcon wrote:
             | I'm seeing 72.4 from your source (last updated just over a
             | month ago) vs 74% from the NYT. I'm guessing your source is
             | just slightly older?
             | 
             | +1.6% in the past month seems reasonable to me
        
           | rsj_hn wrote:
           | A lot of this has to do with social trust and politicization.
           | For a number of reasons, going back to the early days of
           | Tuskeegee syphilis studies, public health in the U.S. is
           | viewed by large portions of the public as imperious, corrupt,
           | unaccountable, beholden to big business and/or utopian
           | ideologies, and is generally viewed with suspicion by many on
           | the left and on the right. African Americans have the lowest
           | vaccination rates by race.
           | 
           | But this is across the board. Prior to covid, for example,
           | the ground zero for anti-vaccination movements was Marin
           | County, California -- one of the most liberal counties in the
           | nation, where only 50% of students in some schools were given
           | smallpox/measles vaccines and there were outbreaks as a
           | result.
           | 
           | Given this environment, American public health authorities
           | should recognize their credibility gaps and embark on a
           | program of transparency, consistency, accountability, and
           | humility.
           | 
           | Unfortunately this is the exact opposite of their behavior.
           | There remains deep ties between public health agencies and
           | large pharmaceutical companies, public health officials
           | continue to invest in and hold patents owned by companies
           | that fall under their purview, there is still a revolving
           | door between the two, there is very little transparency, no
           | accountability for funding research in foreign labs to skirt
           | US safety rules and congressional restrictions, public health
           | officials were widely photographed in meetings without
           | wearing masks (surrounded by masked servants), and they adopt
           | imperious tones demanding draconian punishments for
           | deviations from policy as well as calling for censorship of
           | their critics. Fauci's declaration that "I am the science" is
           | an example of this imperious attitude, which is frankly
           | disastrous.
           | 
           | Until there is real reform, the U.S. is going to maintain a
           | huge credibility gap vis-a-vis other nations, which will make
           | public health efforts that much harder here, and will also
           | lower long term public health outcomes.
        
             | annexrichmond wrote:
             | It's interesting the narratives you hear with regards to
             | antivaxxers.
             | 
             | My sister is vegan and is in many vegan, all-natural, etc
             | Facebook groups. She told me there's a lot of overlap of
             | people there and people who chose not take the COVID
             | vaccine.
             | 
             | One of her best friends is a teacher in Canada from
             | Trinidad; she grew up without vaccines and similarly never
             | gave her child the COVID vaccine
             | 
             | These two examples just seemed very different than the
             | typical "antivaxxer" I hear about. Although it still seems
             | premature to call someone who only doesn't take the first
             | mainstream mRNA vaccine an antivaxxer.
        
               | detaro wrote:
               | At least the former has been a common stereotype with
               | other vaccines too. (and people I know who are into yoga
               | have generally complained that there's a lot of
               | influencers peddling various "natural" cures and
               | conspiracy theories there)
        
               | dahfizz wrote:
               | Before covid, I think the "hippy dippy" vegan,
               | naturepath, yogi stereotype was associated most strongly
               | with anti vaxxers.
               | 
               | Covid was politicized, and so it became a right wing
               | stereotype to not want the vaccine. But specifically the
               | covid vaccine. I don't think most right wing anti-covid-
               | vaxxers are anti vax in general.
        
               | ben_w wrote:
               | > Although it still seems premature to call someone who
               | only doesn't take the first mainstream mRNA vaccine an
               | antivaxxer.
               | 
               | Non-mRNA COVID vaccines do exist.
        
           | sfusato wrote:
           | Is that counting the 1st booster? These policy changes came
           | after the 1st booster.
        
             | jjcon wrote:
             | > Is that counting the 1st booster? These policy changes
             | came after the 1st booster.
             | 
             | Yes it is counting any booster after primary 2 doses -
             | which policy changes specifically? Most of these countries
             | have been relatively consistent in their approach to
             | boosters.
        
               | sfusato wrote:
               | They stopped recommending further boosters to younger
               | people after the 1st booster. These 50+ or 65+ only
               | recommendations are rather recent. That's all I'm saying.
               | You would need to account only from the 2nd booster
               | onwards basically.
        
               | jjcon wrote:
               | > They stopped recommending further boosters to younger
               | people after the 1st booster.
               | 
               | Which country(s) specifically changed their guidance
               | about boosters after the 1st booster was released? Again
               | I'm not aware of large swings in policy in most of these
               | countries. Some aren't recommending 4th doses yet but I
               | don't think any have changed policies about boosters
               | after the fact.
        
               | bonzini wrote:
               | Almost all European countries (perhaps all?) have changed
               | policies about _further_ boosters. For example in Italy
               | the first booster was recommended to everyone and
               | required to prolong the validity of the vaccination
               | certificate, but the second (Omicron specific) is only
               | recommended to the same categories for which the flu
               | vaccine is recommended yearly.
        
               | piva00 wrote:
               | At least in Sweden the policy regarding booster after the
               | 3rd shot has changed [1]:
               | 
               | > Adults
               | 
               | > For adults aged 18-64, the recommendation for three
               | doses of the vaccinate remains in force. But anyone who
               | wants to receive an additional booster dose, dose 4, may
               | do so in the autumn of 2022. 65 plus and risk groups
               | 
               | > An additional booster dose of the Covid-19 vaccine is
               | recommended for the autumn and winter 2022/23 for adults
               | aged 65 years or over, as well as people aged 18 or over
               | who are in an at-risk group. This recommendation is valid
               | from 1 September 2022 and covers everyone who is at an
               | increased risk of serious Covid -19 disease.
               | 
               | [1] https://www.krisinformation.se/en/hazards-and-
               | risks/disaster...
        
               | jjcon wrote:
               | That is still recommending boosters 18+ though, its only
               | clarifying for additional doses beyond 3rd doses - they
               | didn't change their recommendation for boosters after the
               | fact.
        
         | benevol wrote:
        
           | origin_path wrote:
           | In fairness UK conservative media have been reporting on it
           | (Spectator, Telegraph). But it's being blamed on lockdowns
           | and NHS collapse. That might be true; not all countries have
           | excess deaths and it's a bit unclear to what extent the
           | effect is real. It depends a lot on how you model the
           | baseline.
        
             | hadlock wrote:
             | Which countries do not have excess deaths 2020-20201?
             | China, Australia, NZ might be on that list as they were
             | pretty good about keeping the virus out but I'm curious if
             | you know of any others. That's a wide claim, that not all
             | countries have excess deaths
        
               | origin_path wrote:
               | We were talking about in 2022 but I see now that the
               | original comment is flagged, sigh.
        
         | mikysco wrote:
         | The obvious explanation for other country's vaccine
         | recommendations is based in data. COVID kills the elderly (75+)
         | who are more likely to be battling multiple negative health
         | conditions beyond COVID.
         | 
         | https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographicsoverti...
        
           | thrown_22 wrote:
           | > The obvious explanation for other country's vaccine
           | recommendations is based in data. COVID kills the elderly
           | (75+) who are more likely to be battling multiple negative
           | health conditions beyond COVID.
           | 
           | That something so obvious was enough to get you labeled a
           | conspiracy theorist and banned off all major social media for
           | close to two years has set back trust in science by decades.
        
           | walterbell wrote:
           | No, those countries initially gave the Covid injections to
           | all adults, then altered their recommendations to exclude
           | some young adults, based on post-vaccine adverse events.
           | 
           | https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finland-pauses-use-
           | mode...
           | 
           |  _> Finland on Thursday paused the use of Moderna 's COVID-19
           | vaccine for younger males due to reports of a rare
           | cardiovascular side effect, joining Sweden and Denmark in
           | limiting its use._
           | 
           | https://www.fox19.com/2021/10/07/some-european-countries-
           | sus...
           | 
           |  _> All three countries based their decision on an
           | unpublished study with Sweden's Public Health Agency saying
           | that it signals "an increased risk of side effects such as
           | inflammation of the heart muscle or the pericardium" -- the
           | double-walled sac containing the heart and the roots of the
           | main vessels. It added: "The risk of being affected is very
           | small."_
        
             | nicoburns wrote:
             | They haven't changed the advice for the initial 2 doses.
             | They have given different advice for additional booster
             | doses. Which, per there own guidance seems to be largely
             | because people already have immunity (either through
             | vaccination or infection), and younger populations are not
             | considered to require additional immunity.
             | 
             | For example, from the second link above (Denmark):
             | 
             | > Why are people aged under 50 not to be re-vaccinated?
             | 
             | > The purpose of the vaccination programme is to prevent
             | severe illness, hospitalisation and death. Therefore,
             | people at the highest risk of becoming severely ill will be
             | offered booster vaccination. The purpose of vaccination is
             | not to prevent infection with covid-19, and people aged
             | under 50 are therefore currently not being offered booster
             | vaccination.
             | 
             | > People aged under 50 are generally not at particularly
             | higher risk of becoming severely ill from covid-19. In
             | addition, younger people aged under 50 are well protected
             | against becoming severely ill from covid-19, as a very
             | large number of them have already been vaccinated and have
             | previously been infected with covid-19, and there is
             | consequently good immunity among this part of the
             | population.
        
             | t0mas88 wrote:
             | In the Netherlands the Moderna vaccine is not used for
             | younger groups. I think the cutoff is 40.
             | 
             | Anyone over 12 can get vaccinated and get a booster, but it
             | will be the Pfizer vaccine.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | ccbccccbbcccbb wrote:
       | > He had known something was wrong: Then 22, he...
       | 
       | When you see 22 combined with the themes of coronavirus and heart
       | problems, rest assured, you're reading another piece of
       | subliminal NLP.
       | 
       | A link for the _really_ openminded:
       | 
       | https://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message4808522/pg1
        
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