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Comment by tarsinge | Hacker News Reader

> In my own case, I had significant cardiovascular issues at a relatively young age, 1 week after I got my booster.

The vaccine is only a part of the virus right (the spike protein)? Yes for you it’s likely the cause, your experience regarding data collection might be anecdotal because there are growing evidence regarding myocarditis following the vaccine for example.

What is usually missed is that you and people responding like this would have been far worse with the virus alone, because you only got exposed to a fraction of it. The virus is known to cause significant cardiovascular damage (orders of magnitude more than the vaccine in healthy young adults), so it seems not that relevant to focus only on the vaccine at that point in the study.

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The virus is known to cause significant cardiovascular damage (orders of magnitude more than the vaccine in healthy young adults),

This is not true. It might be true across all age groups and genders, but when you narrow to young men, the vaccines shows similar rates of heart issues, or much higher in the case of Moderna, than from Covid alone.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbS_AvMaQAEiMCZ?format=jpg&name=...

https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-...

But the risk of myocarditis associated with the vaccine was lower than the risk associated with COVID-19 infection before or after vaccination – with one exception. Men under 40 who received a second dose of the Moderna vaccine had a higher risk of myocarditis following vaccination.

That risk rose with the second dose for all three vaccines studied and was highest for Moderna's, which had an additional 97 myocarditis cases per 1 million. For unvaccinated men under 40 with COVID-19, there were 16 additional myocarditis cases per million.

I'm cautious about that number. There were about 3000 people, and then cut down into only men, only under 40, must have had the moderna vaccine and must have had two doses (it's broken down even more in the article). The UI is hard to use on the actual article site but I think that's 44 events.

I had adverse cardiovascular issues soon after the vaccine. I've wondered about this, but as far as I can tell the 'covid would have been worse' argument is not definitive. At least with later strains, virus / spike protein may be more localized in the respiratory system than vaccine (at least in cases where the administration inadvertently crosses a vein. I've seen some studies on both sides of this argument, but nothing that was compelling to me. It didn't match my personal experience, that's for sure.

I had my adverse event with the second shot from the vaccine. I was scared to get the booster, eventually got COVID over a year (18 months?) since the original vaccine, so presumably it was offering no protection at that time. I got sicker with COVID. It was unpleasant, but it was 'like the flu, but different.' Very much a respiratory ailment.

My heart was not seemingly affected at all. I had an increase of 5-10 beats per minute for a day or too, which I also got with the flu. Following the vaccine I had a spike in resting hard rate north of 100 BPM almost all the time for months. I'm young, healthy, exercise a lot, etc. The period after my vaccine felt like I was in a bad way and it took a long time to recover.

I was so confident in the vaccines that I initially assumed I was developing a severe anxiety disorder. It was not good.

I can't conclude anything definitive from my anecdotal experience, but I'm not going to touch any mRNA vaccine until these cases are studied and understood.

> eventually got COVID over a year (18 months?) since the original vaccine, so presumably it was offering no protection at that time

I think you've misunderstood how the vaccines work. The protection provided by vaccines is not 100%. It doesn't necessarily give you sterilising immunity. The immunity wanes, but still gives protection against severe outcomes for a long time. You likely got a less severe bout of covid because you were vaccinated.

> I was scared to get the booster

> I was so confident in the vaccines

How do you reconcile these statements?

> I was so confident in the vaccines

This was before the first (two-dose) vaccine.

> I was scared to get the booster

This was after the first vax (two shots) and adverse reaction.

except the virus doesn't enter the body the same way as the vaccine. it may or may not have a different impact on cardiovascular system amongst the young people.

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