[nikolay]

No vaccine would have been authorized on billions of people before 2020 if it had such prevalent incidence of peri- and myocarditis! But now it's authorized even of toddlers, which have even higher chance for future heart issues! And all this, because politicians didn't have the balls to keep the face mask mandates!

[jacobolus]

There have been a few (I at least found one case study in the literature, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34664804/) people to have died from vaccine-related myocarditis, but my impression from skimming a handful of relevant review papers and news articles is that the vast majority of vaccine-related myocarditis cases were mild and temporary, and that those were still extremely rare among vaccine recipients.

By comparison, (a) these vaccines have directly saved millions of lives (including saving at least tens of thousands of lives of healthy young men), and (b) infection by Covid-19 itself causes myocarditis at much higher rates.

It is likely that these vaccines have in fact prevented more instances of severe myocarditis than they have caused, without considering the large constellation of other dangerous chronic or fatal effects of Covid-19.

The risk/benefit calculations are stark here (in favor of universal vaccination, including for 15–25 year old men), and from what I can tell there is no evidence that the vaccines put children at nontrivial risk.

[ButtSpark69]

You're not wrong, but neither is the person you're responding to. You responded with logic for why the vaccine was a good idea, while they only talked about what was typical in the past. Past American medical philosophy has mostly been dictated by an attitude of "do no harm" rather than "optimize for least harm". These yield very different recommendations.

[jacobolus]

This is not a fair historical summary.

The smallpox vaccine causes roughly comparable rates of myocarditis, but that didn’t stop us from undertaking a worldwide vaccination campaign to eradicate the disease.

* * *

If there were like 100x more common serious side effects, we should maybe have a conversation about whether certain populations with low Covid risk or heightened vaccine risk should pick which vaccine to take based on potential side effects. But we are so far away from that kind of risk that it is hard to see the commentary from the anti-vax side as any kind of good faith conversation, compared to grasping at whatever straws they can find to spread FUD.

The basic summary is: these vaccines are extremely safe and extremely effective for people of every age. Please everyone get vaccinated. If you have had 2 doses >4 months ago, get boosted. Anyone who tells you that the vaccine is unsafe compared to catching Covid is either grossly misinformed or lying.

[erhk]

Birth control kills more women annually then any covid vaccine. If you engaged in non-procreative sex in the past year you've done something which has a greater risk for human life and health.

[GuB-42]

Procreative sex is deadlier, pregnancy can cause the same symptoms as taking the pill, but worse, and the act of giving birth is about 1/10000 chance of death.

Life is deadly, but both sex and covid vaccine rank low on the death list, and high on the life list.

[naasking]

Masks are nowhere near as effective as vaccines.

[nikolay]

If two people wear N95 masks, masks beat vaccines manyfold!

[johnisgood]

And in comparison to COVID-19? Do they actually need a vaccine to protect against COVID-19? If not, are we giving it to them in the chance that it reduces spread, or why? It has been said it reduces spread, but this is not what you observe in countries that are >80% fully vaccinated (at least double dose), so I do not get it.

[jacobolus]

Something on the order of 1e4 children aged 0–9 have died from Covid-19 so far, worldwide.

They face ~3 orders of magnitude less risk than elderly people (of whom ~1e7 have died so far), but it is still nontrivial and much higher than the risks from vaccination.

Small kids also spread Covid effectively. There have been a bunch of places with high vaccination rates where there were outbreaks in daycares.

> It has been said [the vaccine] reduces spread, but this is not what you observe

This is what you observe. There have been a large number of studies published examining the effects of vaccination rate on community spread showing that the reproductive number of the virus (at least the original and alpha/delta strains) is significantly depressed by vaccination.

With omicron, vaccine effectiveness vs. initial infection / mild disease is much worse than with previous Covid variants (though it seems that protection vs. severe disease / death is still robust), so we can expect to see significant spread in highly vaccinated areas, but still less and slower than among an unvaccinated population.

[johnisgood]

Well, a reply (from cudgy) to my comment says this:

> The vaccine does not prevent spread of Covid. Period. The smallest amount of research proves this to be the case.

So what is the truth?

[jacobolus]

The commenter cudgy who posted that clearly did not do nontrivial research on this question from reliable sources. The statement is flat out false.

The vaccines significantly reduce the chance of infection given identical exposure. For those who still get infected, the vaccines reduce the viral load throughout the infection, eliminate or ameliorate symptoms, and shorten the time during which an infected person is contagious.

They do not completely prevent any spread of the virus (nor does any other vaccine ever created for any disease), but they make a significant beneficial impact on the rate of spread. They both cut the rate of secondary infections within each household, and reduce the amount of inter-household spread in the community.

[johnisgood]

> Vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and accelerates viral clearance. Nonetheless, fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts. Host–virus interactions early in infection may shape the entire viral trajectory.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

[jacobolus]

That doesn’t contradict what I wrote, though obviously there is a lot more detail and nuance that could be added here.

A few months after the second dose, 2 doses of the mRNA vaccines is insufficient to reduce peak viral load for breakthrough infections by the delta variant of the virus, making the vaccine less effective over time at preventing basic transmission and mild illness (the 2-dose vaccine was more effective with previous variants). However, a booster dose seems to make a significant improvement:

> By analyzing viral loads of over 16,000 infections during the current, Delta-variant-dominated pandemic wave in Israel, we found that BTIs in recently fully vaccinated individuals have lower viral loads than infections in unvaccinated individuals. However, this effect starts to decline 2 months after vaccination and ultimately vanishes 6 months or longer after vaccination. Notably, we found that the effect of BNT162b2 on reducing BTI viral loads is restored after a booster dose. These results suggest that BNT162b2 might decrease the infectiousness of BTIs even with the Delta variant, and that, although this protective effect declines with time, it can be restored, at least temporarily, with a third, booster, vaccine dose.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01575-4

* * *

For the omicron variant, there is still further reduced effectiveness of these vaccines on basic transmission and mild illness (only 70% effectiveness after a 3 shots; I don’t think there’s much data yet about viral loads), though protection against severe illness should still be robust (but reliable data about this will not be available for another few weeks or months).

[cudgy]

The vaccine does not prevent spread of Covid. Period. The smallest amount of research proves this to be the case.

[desine]

It's not because of mask mandates, it's because every politician is invested in pfizer and moderna, it's because pharma has massive lobbying power, and because pharma companies make up much of the advertising revenue of the news networks in the USA