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Comment by criticaltinker | Hacker News Reader

> the amount of people suffering myocarditis and other vaccine complications is in the double-digits

This is not true, according to the CDC (as of August 18th) there at least 742 cases of myocarditis and myopericarditis associated with vaccination, potentially upwards of ~1,300 [1].

For males age 16-17 the reporting rate of myopericarditis after 2 doses of Pfizer is 71.5 per 1 million doses administered (0.0071%) [1].

Compared to natural infection, vaccination is likely still a favorable tradeoff for most people. However the tradeoffs are highly dependent on age, health, and gender. Stratifying by these factors is essential for any scientifically accurate discussion of risks.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-...

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Personally, my heart & chest are still recovering from the second Pfizer shot, after having ECG, bloodwork and nearly going to the ER. Wont be getting a booster, thats for damned certain.

I suspect the number to be significantly higher than whats reported.

Literally billions of people around the world have been vaccinated against Coronavirus now. How high can the chance of serious short-term side effects be?

Again, depends on age, condition. I'm currently fighting long COVID symptoms that have showed up after vaccination. I never had COVID, but the vaccine has given me - chronic fatigue - chronic headaches - brain fog. From JJ vaccine.

If you look into the Australia, Canada and Norway data you see that the numbers are higher than initially expected. Serious side effects like TTS were thought to happen around 1 in 100k, but they now think it would be something like 1 in 20 000. Perhaps less, if you account for people that don't even realise they're getting it.

The vaccine are something like 5x reduction in mortality, but they are not perfect.

lol that's the same logic that resulted in 100M passwords and credentials being leaked....again and again and again.....

mistakes are normal, to assume none is truly unfathomably dense....

A large sample size provides more conclusive results than does a small sample size.

In the case of Coronavirus vaccines, the sample size is 1/3 the population of Earth.

If hundreds of millions of vaccinated people were developing heart problems it would be noticeable.

I note you conveniently left out "reported" cases from your sentence. You are citing numbers reported by VAERS which is not at all the same as confirmed cases. Please don't fear-monger on HN.

I cited numbers reported by the CDC who reviewed VAERS reports and determined that a subset met the CDC’s own criteria.

I accurately transcribed facts from an official CDC document, and even linked the source, nothing more. Do you really think that is fear-mongering?

The CDC is actively investigating many of the reports, dismissing them as not confirmed is a bit disingenuous at the very least.

I think parent is commenting here that the CDC is talking about self-reported data. We're not talking about a diagnosis from a doctor. Calling them "confirmed" is just as disingenuous, if I'm understanding the explanations in the slides you link.

Slide 11 appears to say that a large number of cases were hospitalized. If this interpretation is correct, we are talking about a diagnosis from a doctor, not self-reported data.

All the slides say is that there were 700ish reports that met case criteria as reported through VAERS, a self-reporting system. We are not told any information about which case criteria were met (objective vs subjective), comorbidities, reason for presentation (all vital information for a true diagnosis not report). We are not told about degree of hospitalisation or reason for hospitalisation. We are most certainly not given confirmed cases as GP claims, the stringent criteria for which are listed one link deep from the presentation. We are left with a misleading link to a scary-sounding number that is being posted by multiple accounts across HN with nebulous intent and in some cases history of posting blatant misinformation. I feel that calling this practice out when I see it helps if just a little bit.

In this case a look through GP's recent comment history reveals many comments with disinformation and fear-mongering.

Does the link https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs/mm7027e2-H.pdf on the same page 11 answer your concerns? That paper (from June) explains in some details what the CDC did, and I would assume that the slides are just an update of the numbers on the paper to a later date. At least the author of the slides was an author of the paper, so I would infer that they kept doing whatever they were doing in June.

One thing that the paper is pretty clear about is that in order to proclaim a "case", the CDC reviewed medical records and interviewed the healthcare provider looking for specific criteria. It seems like all criteria include at least one test, e.g. EKG, in addition to symptoms reported by the patient. It's not like they ran a SQL query over a bunch of dudes reporting chest pain---the CDC did their homework. If anything, I have more confidence in the CDC and the vaccines now than I had before reading these documents.

Of course I read through the link. It did not alter my reading of the slides in the slightest. The simpler tests recommended in the paper are not as objective as you might think. Again, the slides do not give us the information used and the interviews you mention did not happen for entire age categories. I'm glad you have confidence in the CDC and vaccines; GP does not and is actively trying to mislead users of HN. Appreciate the downvotes instead of discussion.

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