My understanding is that almost all side-effects of mRNA covid vaccines originate in the fact that the body produces a part of the virus. If that part of the virus can damage the body, so can the vaccine. This is the mechanism for the myocarditis after vaccination. But it also means that the probability to get myocarditis from an actual infection is much higher because of the exponential growth of the real virus.
If that understanding holds up against scrutiny in the future, mRNA vaccines are an extremely safe and capable platform to deliver vaccines.
The chances of myocarditis are still much higher with actual Covid than with the vaccine. And given that Covid is endemic it's just a choice which immunization method you prefer Covid or mRNA.
Comparing the side effects of those two methods I think mRNA definitely wins out. Of course that's only the case if you ignore all the FUD being spread about how the mRNA vaccine will definitely kill you.
Pretty much. There are some indications that myocarditis, the most serious, but very rare and even more rarely fatal complication of the mRNA vaccines, is caused by accidental intravenous injection of the vaccine.
If this were the cause, I would expect to see similar rates of myocarditis from the viral vector vaccines, but it's much lower. The MRNA vaccines work by causing cells to produce antigens, which are presented on the cell surface and induce the immune system to attack the cell. We know now as well that the lipid vehicle doesn't stay at the injection site but distributes through the body to varying degrees. No need to posit a secondary mechanism - it's more likely the vaccine is just carried to the heart in some cases, is absorbed, and induces immune attack like it does in other tissue.
I've read that Myocarditis can happen with actual COVID cases as well [1]. To me that makes sense, considering that the mRNA-based vaccines generate a portion of the spike protein similar to the actual virus.
Prior infection does seem to provide better protection than vaccination against future symptomatic infections. But it's also possible that vaccination after infection could give a further boost to immunity.
We already know that the vaccines aren't very effective at stopping people from catching SARS-CoV-2 infections. However they remain very effective at preventing deaths. The vast majority of patients dying now are unvaccinated.
The myocarditis from COVID and vaccines plausibly have separate prognoses (we don’t even know much about either) but in any case for this population some studies have shown the risk is higher of this specific symptom for both mRNA vaccines.
The trouble with myocarditis caused by the mRNA vaccines is that even though the risk is low, for some of the age groups it seems to be higher than the risk of them being hospitalized due to Covid. (A risk which a lot of people seem to overestimate, but that's another story.) So even though they should be more worried about crossing the road than the vaccine, it's also entirely rational for them to consider the vaccine a bigger danger than Covid itself.
First, the risk of getting myocarditis after vaccination seems to be around 14 in 100,000.
"As of June 11, 2021, approximately 296 million doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines had been administered in the United States, with 52 million administered to persons aged 12–29 years; of these, 30 million were first and 22 million were second doses. Within the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) (4), the national vaccine safety passive monitoring system, 1,226 reports of myocarditis after mRNA vaccination were received during December 29, 2020–June 11, 2021."
Second, the risk of death is much lower:
"Of the 323 persons meeting CDC’s case definitions, 309 (96%) were hospitalized. Acute clinical courses were generally mild; among 304 hospitalized patients with known clinical outcomes, 95% had been discharged at time of review, and none had died."
Mycardis also happens from getting COVID-19, and the data shows it is more likely to happen and be more severe from an infection with Covid-19 than from the vaccine.
If you understand how the vaccine works, this makes sense, the vaccine simulates an infection with Covid-19, but gives your body the upper edge as the virus is not produced in it's full form and can't reproduce.
It's now believed the immune response is responsible for Mycardis, and that for COVID-19 infections the occurrence and effects are stronger because COVID-19 infects heart cells, and causes a stronger immune response than the vaccine.
When evaluating the vaccine you need to compare it against the risks of unvaccinated Covid-19 infections. In your lifetime you'll get one or the other, but if you look at all the known data, there's much more risks in an unvaccinated Covid-19 infection than the vaccines. That doesn't mean the vaccines are zero risk, but they seem the the right trade off if you consider the odds.
Edit: Also, only the lipid nanoparticle coating is unique to the mRNA vaccines, that means any side-effect caused by the vaccine is also caused by COVID, unless it's a result of the nanoparticle coating. From what I could find, it appears that only the allergic reaction is caused by the lipids, and the other known side-effects are all common with COVID as well and due to the body's immune response or the virus protein itself. And if you were curious, COVID also replicates using RNA, so both the vaccines and Covid also infect your cells with RNA.
Most young people recover from myocarditis quickly [1] so it stands to reason that covid symptoms in the unvaccinated could mask myocarditis and never detected because individuals recovered, whereas if you get myocarditis from vaccination, it’s more visible against the backdrop of health and therefore more apparent.
I’d want to see some explanation for a mode for why the mRNA vaccine would lead to higher rates of myocarditis than from infection when the vaccine is effectively a subset of the virus.
I mentioned the vaccine, and you're talking about COVID-19, which is not what I was talking about.
> Vaccines work by stimulating one's immune system response in ways similar to infection
Wrong. This is not how the MRNA vaccine works. The only thing that the MRNA vaccines produce is the spike protein, and it's bound with an additional part so that even the spike protein can't be active. It doesn't deliver the same immune response as it does from a COVID 19 infection at all.
All of which doesn't answer the question why are 12-17 year olds suffering a 1 in 5000 chance of getting myocarditis from the vaccine?
There have only been a handful of cases of myocarditis or pericarditis in mRNA vaccine recipients, generally young males. A handful. And none of them have died from it.
Remember that VAERS is pretty much the most garbage 'signal' you can possibly get when it comes to side effect reporting as there is pretty much no barrier to entry to get a 'side effect' in there - much less the requirement that you're a medical professional of any sort. It has its uses but saying someone died from the mRNA vaccine because it's in VAERS is like saying someone disappeared because of aliens. In fact, I'm sure you can find something like "turned me into an alien" in VAERS. I'd bet a beer on it.
Please get vaccinated if your doctor approves. Novavax isn't a for-sure deal, as it hasn't been peer reviewed and will be a long time until generally available if found viable.
Synthetic mRNA based vaccine induces heart damage is not a binary concept (i.e. you either have it or not), but depends on the amount of cardiac cells attacked and destroyed by the immune system due to exposing the spike protein. People develop problems many weeks after vaccination, here are exemplary case reports (excluded from the FDA funded garbage study):
Risk of myocarditis (heart inflammation) in men under 40 years old is higher after 2 doses of an mRNA vaccine than from SARS-CoV-2 itself, particularly after Moderna where it's many times higher: https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-myoca...
Article is an overview of the most interesting findings; in particular I'm referencing the second image, which is copied directly from a study that's linked right above it.
There is some preliminary evidence from an animal study that the myocarditis side effects aren't being caused by the vaccine per se but rather by bad injection technique.
> A study ... suggested it may be driven by an inflammatory response associated with SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein, which the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines coax the body to produce. The group reported finding certain antibodies in both vaccine-induced myocarditis patients and patients with severe COVID-19, which itself can cause myocarditis.
If those who had this reaction to the vaccine gotten COVID without the vaccine, would it not be likely that they would see the same inflammation response and the same heart damage? If that were the case, receiving the vaccine still seems like a reasonable choice.
If that understanding holds up against scrutiny in the future, mRNA vaccines are an extremely safe and capable platform to deliver vaccines.
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