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My teenage athlete nephew mysteriously developed heart problems right around after he got vaccinated, and now he can barely walk up a flight of stairs. No one i

My teenage athlete nephew mysteriously developed heart problems right around after he got vaccinated, and now he can barely walk up a flight of stairs. No one is going to say the vaccine caused it, but the timing seems pretty damning. Meanwhile, if you look at the CDC stats, the risk of injury from covid for his demographic is at least an order of magnitude lower than his risk from riding in a car. Personally I don't believe that we are living in a rational society right now. For the fun of it, maybe I'll figure out one of those browser plugins to replace the word "science" with "propaganda".

zamfi 5y ago
> Meanwhile, if you look at the CDC stats, the risk of injury from covid for his demographic is at least an order of magnitude lower than his risk from riding in a car You have to look at the CDC stats and the vehicle fatalities to make this claim. "Risk from riding in a car" is extremely low. 0.008% of teens die annually (2400 out of 30 million, age 13-19) in car accidents. Case fatality rates from COVID are an order of magnitude higher for that age group -- 0.04-0.06%, depending on your source -- so you'd have to believe case underreporting by 100x (impossible, since cases are > 1% of population everywhere) in order for risk from "riding in a car" to be "at least an order of magnitude" higher.
- sgtnoodle 5y ago
  Okay. I already did that in recent memory, which is why I felt confident stating what I did. Since you gave a statistic for car accidents, I'll do the same for the covid side: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm Since the start of 2020, there have been 576 "All Deaths involving COVID-19" among people under 18 in the US. Compared to 60,811 deaths from all causes, that's slightly less than 1% of all child deaths. The 576 covers almost two years, so let's call it 300 deaths/year. Not accounting for the slight difference in age ranges, that's 1/8 your number of 2400 deaths/year from car accidents. I'd call that roughly one order of magnitude lower. If you clump in children under 13 in your car accident statistic, I suspect it would fall below 1/10. Is my math wrong or is your math wrong? If my math is wrong I would love to understand why.
  - zamfi 5y ago
    I think your math doesn't distinguish between rates and amounts: indeed, if every kid in the US got COVID and only 600 died, then sure, you could make the claim that it's less risky than driving. (Also, the pandemic would be over, rendering this whole conversation moot.) The truth is we don't know how many kids in the US have had COVID, but I'm pretty sure it's not 100% of them -- which is why the number I cite is the estimated case fatality rate and not just the total number of cases.
    - sgtnoodle 5y ago
      If you throw in an unknown scaler and fudge it, then yes you can make the statistic do whatever you want. I'd argue it's not a relevant or useful statistic, though. It's analogous to you telling me my risk of dying from a bullet to the head is near 100%. It's technically true, but I'm not going to super glue a kevlar helmet to my head.
      - zamfi 5y ago
        What’s the unknown scalar? We know the case fatality rate.
        sgtnoodle 5y ago
        I was thinking about it a bit more. Apparently the fatality rate of car accidents is 0.7%, so comparing that to a covid case rate of 0.06%, it seems like it's still an order of magnitude less fatal for a teenager to get into a car accident than to catch covid. It's been an interesting discussion, and I've enjoyed diving into the numbers more. Thanks!
        sgtnoodle 5y ago
        Oh, my apologies, I originally misinterpreted one of your earlier messages when you brought up underreporting. I understand where the 0.05% case rate number comes from (reported deaths divided by reported cases). I do personally think the reported deaths number is probably slightly over-reported and the reported cases is significantly underreported. Even if the case fatality rate is accurate, I just don't think it's useful when assessing personal risk unless you routinely go out of your way to catch covid. If you start getting into that level of detail, you at least need to correct for comorbidities as well. Specifically, when I say that it's an order of magnitude less likely for a teenager to die from covid than a car accident, I don't mean a teenager that caught covid or a teenager that was in a car accident. I mean a randomly sampled teenager out of the 60 million or so in the US.
ddingus 5y ago
Perhaps he got the vaccine in the bloodstream as opposed to muscle tissue as intended. There are reports now of injections done without pulling back to see whether the injection site is a blood vessel. How the drug performs is seriously different in blood stream vs muscle tissue. The primary impact of blood stream doses appears to be heart related problems. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34406358/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34406358/ TL;DR: The vaccine probably did not cause it. How it was administered could be the cause.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  I mean come on, if the administration of the vaccine caused it, the vaccine caused it. If he hadn't gotten the vaccine, it would not have been (as conjectured) injected into his bloodstream.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Fact is, how it gets injected appears to have a very significant influence on it's impact to the patient. There is a clear distinction here; namely, whether the vaccine was improperly used. Taking too much Tylonol can cause liver failure. Too much Ibuprofen can cause renal failure... In those cases, the drug was improperly used, but the cause analysis centers on improper use, because doing that multiplies the risk and symptom severity. See how that all works? Saying the "vaccine caused it" simply is not enough information, which is why I linked what I did. It is important that we get these discussions right. Edit: In the interest of accuracy, note I did not say the vaccine did not cause the trouble. I said it probably did not cause it, and I said improper injection probably did. Neither is an absolute. I did not intend, nor mean to imply otherwise. What I did intend was to improve on the clarity, scope and accuracy of the discussion. Why bother? Better discussion means more informed people taking fewer risks and or making more good choices, all of which will improve law, costs, outcomes. Getting back to the matter at hand, when we factor the elements down, we see one thing we can do right away, and that is we make damn sure we are administering vaccines properly. There are risks with the vaccine. They are small by percentage, but they are there. No argument from me. Those risks go up dramatically with improper injection; namely, it being delivered directly to the blood stream, which is entirely avoidable.

zamfi 5y ago

> Meanwhile, if you look at the CDC stats, the risk of injury from covid for his demographic is at least an order of magnitude lower than his risk from riding in a car You have to look at the CDC stats and the vehicle fatalities to make this claim. "Risk from riding in a car" is extremely low. 0.008% of teens die annually (2400 out of 30 million, age 13-19) in car accidents. Case fatality rates from COVID are an order of magnitude higher for that age group -- 0.04-0.06%, depending on your source -- so you'd have to believe case underreporting by 100x (impossible, since cases are > 1% of population everywhere) in order for risk from "riding in a car" to be "at least an order of magnitude" higher.

sgtnoodle 5y ago
Okay. I already did that in recent memory, which is why I felt confident stating what I did. Since you gave a statistic for car accidents, I'll do the same for the covid side: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm Since the start of 2020, there have been 576 "All Deaths involving COVID-19" among people under 18 in the US. Compared to 60,811 deaths from all causes, that's slightly less than 1% of all child deaths. The 576 covers almost two years, so let's call it 300 deaths/year. Not accounting for the slight difference in age ranges, that's 1/8 your number of 2400 deaths/year from car accidents. I'd call that roughly one order of magnitude lower. If you clump in children under 13 in your car accident statistic, I suspect it would fall below 1/10. Is my math wrong or is your math wrong? If my math is wrong I would love to understand why.
- zamfi 5y ago
  I think your math doesn't distinguish between rates and amounts: indeed, if every kid in the US got COVID and only 600 died, then sure, you could make the claim that it's less risky than driving. (Also, the pandemic would be over, rendering this whole conversation moot.) The truth is we don't know how many kids in the US have had COVID, but I'm pretty sure it's not 100% of them -- which is why the number I cite is the estimated case fatality rate and not just the total number of cases.
  - sgtnoodle 5y ago
    If you throw in an unknown scaler and fudge it, then yes you can make the statistic do whatever you want. I'd argue it's not a relevant or useful statistic, though. It's analogous to you telling me my risk of dying from a bullet to the head is near 100%. It's technically true, but I'm not going to super glue a kevlar helmet to my head.
    - zamfi 5y ago
      What’s the unknown scalar? We know the case fatality rate.
      - sgtnoodle 5y ago
        I was thinking about it a bit more. Apparently the fatality rate of car accidents is 0.7%, so comparing that to a covid case rate of 0.06%, it seems like it's still an order of magnitude less fatal for a teenager to get into a car accident than to catch covid. It's been an interesting discussion, and I've enjoyed diving into the numbers more. Thanks!
      - sgtnoodle 5y ago
        Oh, my apologies, I originally misinterpreted one of your earlier messages when you brought up underreporting. I understand where the 0.05% case rate number comes from (reported deaths divided by reported cases). I do personally think the reported deaths number is probably slightly over-reported and the reported cases is significantly underreported. Even if the case fatality rate is accurate, I just don't think it's useful when assessing personal risk unless you routinely go out of your way to catch covid. If you start getting into that level of detail, you at least need to correct for comorbidities as well. Specifically, when I say that it's an order of magnitude less likely for a teenager to die from covid than a car accident, I don't mean a teenager that caught covid or a teenager that was in a car accident. I mean a randomly sampled teenager out of the 60 million or so in the US.

ddingus 5y ago

Perhaps he got the vaccine in the bloodstream as opposed to muscle tissue as intended. There are reports now of injections done without pulling back to see whether the injection site is a blood vessel. How the drug performs is seriously different in blood stream vs muscle tissue. The primary impact of blood stream doses appears to be heart related problems. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34406358/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34406358/ TL;DR: The vaccine probably did not cause it. How it was administered could be the cause.

throwawayboise 5y ago
I mean come on, if the administration of the vaccine caused it, the vaccine caused it. If he hadn't gotten the vaccine, it would not have been (as conjectured) injected into his bloodstream.
- ddingus 5y ago
  Fact is, how it gets injected appears to have a very significant influence on it's impact to the patient. There is a clear distinction here; namely, whether the vaccine was improperly used. Taking too much Tylonol can cause liver failure. Too much Ibuprofen can cause renal failure... In those cases, the drug was improperly used, but the cause analysis centers on improper use, because doing that multiplies the risk and symptom severity. See how that all works? Saying the "vaccine caused it" simply is not enough information, which is why I linked what I did. It is important that we get these discussions right. Edit: In the interest of accuracy, note I did not say the vaccine did not cause the trouble. I said it probably did not cause it, and I said improper injection probably did. Neither is an absolute. I did not intend, nor mean to imply otherwise. What I did intend was to improve on the clarity, scope and accuracy of the discussion. Why bother? Better discussion means more informed people taking fewer risks and or making more good choices, all of which will improve law, costs, outcomes. Getting back to the matter at hand, when we factor the elements down, we see one thing we can do right away, and that is we make damn sure we are administering vaccines properly. There are risks with the vaccine. They are small by percentage, but they are there. No argument from me. Those risks go up dramatically with improper injection; namely, it being delivered directly to the blood stream, which is entirely avoidable.