9 ms·

So kind of on topic... I have two boys, one under 5, the other under 10. I am trying to get good data to determine if vaccination is risky or not. Recently a

So kind of on topic... I have two boys, one under 5, the other under 10. I am trying to get good data to determine if vaccination is risky or not. Recently a relative sent me a story about MIS-C, which seems to be new. But trying to get good data on other things like myocarditis risk/rates is like sorting for a needle in a scrapyard. Does anyone have any good data, preferably raw statistics on this? Thank you in advance!

thehappypm 5y ago
Do either of your children have any comorbidities? That would be a strong deciding factor for me.
Synaesthesia 5y ago
The little risk you take by getting the vaccine is more than offset by the far lower risk of getting the disease, which has all kinds of implications. Since it was approved for children by the FDA I assume they did rigourous testing
- kikokikokiko 5y ago
  Children with no commorbidities have NO reason to get exposed to the risk of taking the vacine. Yes, it's a small risk, but ANY vaccine must be a cost benefit weighted decision. Rabies is a 100% lethal disease, but that is not a valid reason for everyone to get vaccinated for it, the risks of vaccinating everyone in this case outweigh the risk that a randomly selected person would eventually die from rabies. This whole discussion is so stupid, from the beggining everyone could see the stats and see who was at real risk or not from this disease.
  - Sparkle-san 5y ago
    Children are still susceptible to long-term complications from getting covid. Like you said, it's a cost benefit decision, but there's real risks associated with children getting covid that seem to be going unacknowledged given that, unlike rabies, millions are going to be infected with covid.
    - EricE 5y ago
      - Sparkle-san 5y ago
        Yes, that's one end of the cost benefit analysis and on the other end the 6,400 cases of MIS-C in children who got covid in the US. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#mis-national-surveillance https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#mis-national-surve...
      - kingsloi 5y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Health_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Health_Defense
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        > Tell this mom that the infinitesimal chance that her child would have from COID side affects was worth it for the problems she is now facing That's an awful way to analyze risk. If you have a one in a million risk of something, and you trade it for a different but nearly-identical one in a million risk for the same thing, and then get the bad outcome, you did not make the wrong choice. Let alone if you traded for a lower risk. Every step you take, you trade out trillions of potential futures. You are always, always creating new risks and destroying old risks. A decision like getting vaccinated is easy to point at and say "oh I shouldn't have done it" but you could just as realistically say "if I hadn't eaten tuna seven weeks ago these problems wouldn't have happened". You do not get to compare the outcome of a specific case, only knowable in hindsight, with the "infinitesimal risk" of the alternative.
        twofornone 5y ago
        The point is that people need to stop presuming that these vaccines are without risks of their own. This is proven false and the true risk is still uncertain. Officials are only recently acknowledging for example that vaccines can influence monthly cycles - that was just a cooky conspiracy a few months ago. Data collection regarding adverse events was laughably inadequate based on testimony over Pfizer's clinical trial protocol, and their data is still not available for review by anyone other than the FDA, which is known to suffer from regulatory capture. Rosy claims about the vaccines have been repeatedly walked back...the safety of these vaccines is likely overstated.
  - phlipski 5y ago
    Rabies doesn't spread like covid...
    - EricE 5y ago
      COVID isn't deadly like rabies either. Indeed COVID is turning out to be less deadly than the flu for the vast majority of people, especially the more recent variants. While being far more virulent they are also far less likely to make one seriously ill, let alone kill.
      - wolverine876 5y ago
        Over 800,000 people have died in the US alone, more than any other event in US history.
        Nemrod67 5y ago
        2M people die every year in the USA, is that more than any other event in History? such lunacy
        robflynn 5y ago
        They clearly mean from one specific event. What one event in the USA has lead to 2 million deaths? You're combining all deaths and treating it as if it were the same thing.
        JacobThreeThree 5y ago
        >You're combining all deaths and treating it as if it were the same thing. Couldn't that be applied to deaths from other diseases? Why wouldn't all influenza deaths be considered one event by this standard?
        robflynn 5y ago
        No? Are we in an influenza pandemic or epidemic right now? Again, we're talking about events here. There have been six of them in the last 140 years with respect to influenza. The Spanish Flu pandemic killed 675k (in the USA, like 50 mil worldwide or something wild like that.)
- benmmurphy 5y ago
  it's worth the OP trying to find data on how much risk covid presents to their children and what the risks of the vaccine are. the UK has this risk calculator for COVID in adults: https://qcovid.org/ https://qcovid.org/ . I'm not sure if there is anything similar for children. probably, the risk of the vaccine or covid is so low for children it doesn't really matter what you do.
- mizzack 5y ago
  > Since it was approved for children by the FDA I assume they did rigourous testing Reminder that the two most senior FDA vaccine oversight officials resigned in protest before the age 5-11 EUA was approved. Reminder that the previous FDA commissioner currently sits on Pfizer's board. Reminder that regulatory capture of the FCC, SEC, and other govt. agencies is popularly accepted as fact, but somehow the FDA is immune to that criticism.
  - standardUser 5y ago
    OK, now do that for the 50 or so other national health agencies that have independently approved these vaccines. Or did you forget that these vaccines have been reviewed and approved by thousands of qualified staff all over the world?
    - collias 5y ago
      Reminder that many European countries do not suggest the vaccine for children, and some have even banned it in the case of Moderna.
      - standardUser 5y ago
        The EU has approved Pfizer for children 5 and over. Moderna is still being reviewed for younger children. Exact guidelines may vary by country. Overall, Pfizer has been approved in 137 countries and Modern in 85.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        phillc73 5y ago
        One EU country where the guidelines vary is Sweden, who are specifically not recommending COVID vaccines for 5-12 year old children.[1] [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-decides-against-recommending-covid-vaccines-kids-aged-5-12-2022-01-27/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-decides-against-...
- umvi 5y ago
  > Since it was approved for children by the FDA I assume they did rigorous testing I wouldn't make this assumption, especially in light of the the conditions under which it was approved (extreme political pressure, rushed/bleeding edge data, etc.) It's probably fine, but my kids aren't going to be first in line because they are in the control group (https://xkcd.com/2576/ https://xkcd.com/2576/).
thurn 5y ago
The overwhelming conclusion I've drawn from this pandemic is that it's ultimately about people's level of trust in their own ability to analyze data vs trust in authority figures. There have been so many examples of 'vaccines cause harm!' articles that fundamentally misunderstand basic statistical concepts like selection bias or simpson's paradox (see the covid-datascience.com blog for lots more of these). Is your prior on 'I will not make a significant analytic error' higher than 'the FDA analyzed the available data correctly'?
- kenjackson 5y ago
  And your trust in the government. If your prior on the government is that they aren't to be trusted then it doesn't matter how good of a job the FDB did in analyzing the data -- you aren't going to believe what they release to the public. I think this is the bigger issue. Most people I know who say, "I'll do my own research" are the same people who asked me what kind of computer to buy. And they know a lot more about technology than medicine. But its they don't trust the government.
- rimliu 5y ago
  Look where big bosses from FDA ended up.
- steveylang 5y ago
  In reality, few people have the time or want to make the effort to comb through and analyze original sources. So most of us rely to varying extent on who we trust and consider to have accurate opinions or assessments. One huge problem with COVID has been the emergence of essentially propaganda pieces masquerading as detailed, rigorous analysis. These give people a false sense of confidence- "Hey I've done my research!" when in reality you can google for 20 minutes and come up with impressive looking links for whatever view you are already predisposed to believe. I'm sure these existed before, but COVID has taken things to another level.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    > , few people have the time or want to make the effort to comb through and analyze original sources. I mean, unless it's your profession, you're not. At best, you're reading an article (with summarized data that you hope was aggregated correctly) in a journal. To the best of my knowledge, the raw datasets that those are based on are rarely shared.
logic_beats_pro 5y ago
Really tough to tell because there's a lack of data. Parents aren't vaccinating their young children because they have the strongest immune systems and it's unnecessary. Here are CDC submitted reports of myo/pericarditis seen so far broken out by age: https://openvaers.com/covid-data/myo-pericarditis https://openvaers.com/covid-data/myo-pericarditis So take from that what you will. And if this is your first time encountering VAERS, the reports actually submitted are estimated to be between 1 and 10% of total adverse effects experienced. If you're into reading studies, here are some that are largely unknown: https://www.rwmalonemd.com/heart-blood-clotting https://www.rwmalonemd.com/heart-blood-clotting Good luck!
- veilrap 5y ago
  This is somewhat misleading information. VAERS is an open database, it can be easily submitted to by anyone, it's not a good source of truth and may contain statistical bias. Parent's ARE vaccinating their children, millions of kids age 5-11 have had the vaccine: https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-tracker https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-trac... Depending on the state, the total % vaccinated in that age group varies between ~20-50%.
  - TrevorJ 5y ago
    >VAERS is an open database, it can be easily submitted to by anyone, it's not a good source of truth and may contain statistical bias. This is 100% true, but it leaves out some context. Prior to covid, it was thought that vaccine side effects were statistically underreported by a significant amount in VAERS. For the signal we are seeing in VAERS to be totally spurious seems highly unlikely, given this fact. It's also worth noting that effects which have a significant time-delay are unlikely to be captured. All this is to say: yes the data are noisy, but we'd need to erase/explain away the numbers by at least an order of magnitude to erase the spike we are seeing, and that seems like a tall order. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK232983/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK232983/
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
salemh 5y ago
naasking 5y ago
Myocarditis risk stratified by gender, age group, vaccine and infection: https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-myocarditis-stratified https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-myoca... Males under 40 roughly have the highest risk from multiple Moderna doses, followed by infection, followed by two Astra doses, followed by two Pfizer doses. I expect two COVID infections would increase the risk like it seems to do with the vaccines.
- eitland 5y ago
  This is very interesting to me if true, both because - I thought the risk from getting an infection would be much higher than any vaccine combination (but here multiple Moderna doses seems to increase the risk even more) - again, if this is true it still validates the rest of my reasoning: except for multiple doses of Moderna any other combination of mainstream vaccines seems to be safer than actually getting the infection (I note that there is a lot of uncertainty which is why I use "seems to be" instead of "is".)
  - chris_va 5y ago
    The "risk from getting an infection" includes many other side effects besides myocarditis, I would not evaluate the risks from an unvaccinated viral infection (which can cause 100 other things besides myocarditis) vs the risk from vaccination (or vaccination + viral infection, which the most likely long term outcome) on the myocarditis axis alone.
    - naasking 5y ago
      Yes that's fair, but the risk profile from the vaccine is also not just relegated to myocarditis, that's just what's been getting attention. It will probably be years before we have an accurate risk assessment of both infection and vaccines. Given the availability of vaccines, it still makes sense to be choosier if you're in a potentially vulnerable population, which is what the paper suggests.
  - synquid 5y ago
EricE 5y ago
- sfteus 5y ago
  Important to note that Children's Health Defense is a highly suspect organization. Rated "conspiracy-pseudoscience"[1], described as "one of the main sources of misinformation on vaccines"[2], with numerous articles describing their fake health posts on social media[3][4] and shady leadership[5][6]. Not saying everything from that site should be discarded, but should definitely be taken with a grain of salt. ----- [1]: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/childrens-health-defense/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/childrens-health-defense/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Health_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Health_Defense [3]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/social-media-hosted-lot-fake-health-news-year-here-s-n1107466 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/social-media-hosted-lot... [4]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/11/15/majority-anti-vaccine-ads-facebook-were-funded-by-two-groups/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/11/15/majority-an... [5]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-robert-f-kennedy-jr-distorted-vaccine-science1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-robert-f-kenn... [6]: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-health-pseudoscience/anti-vaccine-propaganda-robert-f-kennedy-jr https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-health-pseudoscie...
angryasian 5y ago
your kids will be fine either way, but they are far more likely to catch and spread without being vaccinated.
sfteus 5y ago
I can't find much besides models for < 16 unfortunately. However, for 16-40, Patone, et al[1] estimates that myocarditis incidence is around 2/mil for AstraZeneca, 1/mil for Pfizer per does, and 6/mil for Moderna first dose, 10/mil for the second, compared to 40/mil for an active infection. Singer, el al[2] (pre-print) states that males < 20 are roughly 6x less likely to develop myocarditis from vaccination compared to an infection. The AMA[3] also has some info on both myocarditis and MIS-C. 95% of those who developed MIS-C were unvaccinated, and up to 40% required some sort of respiratory or cardiovascular life support (compare to 0% of those vaccinated). Also states ages 12-15 appear less likely to develop myocarditis than the 16 - ~40 range. Everything I've read so far is that myocarditis from vaccination usually resolves fairly quickly. ----- [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0.pdf [2]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998v... [3]: https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/population-care/unvaccinated-kids-much-higher-risk-severe-mis-c-outcomes https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/population-care/unv...
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  Do these papers differentiate infection with and without vaccination? Meaning, if an unvaxxed person has X myocarditis risk from the vaccine, and Y from infection, what is the myocarditis risk of infection after vaccination?
  - sfteus 5y ago
    I haven't seen anything comparing the two yet, but I would be interested in seeing that. I'll note that in general, I have seen studies indicating that the risk of both MIS-C (linked in GP) and long-covid[1][2] are decreased when comparing vaccinated/unvaccinated post active infection. I've also seen reports that those unvaccinated who experience long-covid sometimes see reduced / cleared symptoms after subsequent vaccination.[3] We also know that antibody titer levels seem to be correlated with a reduction in infection, which is why when those begin to fall off we see more breakthrough infections. And finally we know that building long term T and B cells tends to see a quicker, more effective immune response, both of which should be created post-vaccination. Given that, I would speculate that vaccination is likely to reduce overall proliferation of cell infection (including directly infecting cardiac tissue via the ACE2 receptors) via having more free-floating antibodies in your system, and is likely to reduce the overall immune-mediated inflammatory response to the virus as it can respond more quickly before the virus has had a chance to proliferate as much. Both of these (reduced inflammation, reduced cell infection) should reduce the risk of myocarditis as a result of infection. And I would speculate that that tracks with other observed reduction of symptoms of infection (MIS-C, long-covid). Again, speculation on my part; I would definitely want to see studies to confirm or refute that. ----- [1]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00460-6/fulltext#seccestitle10 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... [2]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.05.22268800v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.05.22268800v... [3]: https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/vaccines-long-covid https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/vaccines-long-covid
rossnordby 5y ago
I'm not aware of any great data on myopericarditis for very young people, and not as many have been vaccinated, so I extrapolate from older age groups: Of 3 482 295 individuals vaccinated with BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech), 48 developed myocarditis or myopericarditis within 28 days from the vaccination date compared with unvaccinated individuals (adjusted hazard ratio 1.34 (95% confidence interval 0.90 to 2.00); absolute rate 1.4 per 100 000 vaccinated individuals within 28 days of vaccination (95% confidence interval 1.0 to 1.8)). -https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068665 https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068665 Among more than 2.5 million vaccinated HCO members who were 16 years of age or older, 54 cases met the criteria for myocarditis. The estimated incidence per 100,000 persons who had received at least one dose of vaccine was 2.13 cases (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.56 to 2.70). The highest incidence of myocarditis (10.69 cases per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 6.93 to 14.46) was reported in male patients between the ages of 16 and 29 years. A total of 76% of cases of myocarditis were described as mild and 22% as intermediate; 1 case was associated with cardiogenic shock. After a median follow-up of 83 days after the onset of myocarditis, 1 patient had been readmitted to the hospital, and 1 had died of an unknown cause after discharge. -https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110737 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110737 So vaccine-related myopericarditis looks rare and mild. Effectively, and possibly literally, no one dies as a result. I actually ended up with a probable case after my second dose, but it was extremely mild (no functional impairment, just periodic discomfort for some months). I suspect most cases are something similar- not fun, but not spooky. I'm not a doctor nor do I have any relevant specialty, but I'm reasonably sure that reducing incidence of MIS-C or other rare severe outcomes of covid is a net win in younger people.
- andai 5y ago
  I saw a comment here recently with data that showed the rates for myocarditis for both covid and vaccinations respectively, I recall the chance of developing myocarditis after vaccination being 4x lower than after getting covid. Assuming that's right (perhaps someone more knowledgeable can provide a source), this seems to imply that vaccination reduces the risk of developing myocarditis by 4x, assuming everyone will eventually be infected. I'm also curious what effect age has on the risk in both cases, ie. if the same ratio holds for young people.
rhino369 5y ago
I was going to wait until all of the first world health bureaucracies cleared it. But now my kids had covid (before they were approved even in the US) and it wasn't a big deal. So I'm not going to get them shots until the natural immunity is proven to fade, which may be never.
neuronic 5y ago
Just one more point as food for thought: One more thing to consider is that the virus is also able to cause myocarditis, especially if you don't rest long enough even if feeling fine. In fact, the virus can potentially cause additional complications even with mild symptoms. There are also things we don't really understand yet with post-viral syndromes which affects many people (disclaimer: Epstein-Barr / Mono messed me up, personally). This isn't unique to SARS-CoV-2 either, it's a more general viral infection thing and can happen just as well with influenza. With Omicron, it's also very likely that people will get it sooner or later - vaccinated or not. Granted, most myocarditis goes unnoticed and recovers very well with a bit of rest.
jpeloquin 5y ago
> I am trying to get good data to determine if vaccination is risky or not. Rather than giving you a list of work that you may suspect of being curated, I will show you how to quickly find what you're looking for. One of the great things about the National Library of Medicine is that a human looks at each and every paper and assigns standardized semantic tags to it. These are called "MeSH terms" and you can filter the entire library by them. You mentioned interest in myocarditis, and the following would be an appropriate search query in pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov for this topic: myocarditis[mh] AND vaccines[majr] AND COVID https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=myocarditis%5Bmh%5D+AND+vaccines%5Bmajr%5D+AND+COVID&sort=pubdate https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=myocarditis%5Bmh%5D+AN... The "mh" selects articles that were tagged with that MeSH term. The "majr" selects articles that were tagged with that MeSH term and were mainly about that term. In this case, the structured query drills down from thousands of potential results to 61 results, which is manageable to triage manually. Edit: Here's how you can figure out wish MeSH terms exist: https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > In this case, the structured query drills down from thousands of potential results to 61 results, which is manageable to triage manually. If, of course, you have the domain knowledge required to do so.
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    You would probably need some basic domain knowledge to interpret medical publications in peer reviewed journals. I'm not saying they are the same expertise, just that "requiring expertise" as a prerequisite is pretty reasonable.
throwaway5752 5y ago
Ask your pediatrician. If you don't trust that they know better, get a new pediatrician. I'm not being glib, this person has made it through a grueling education of their undergrad, med school, and residency. They are well acquainted with hard sciences and research. If you don't trust them on their area of expertise, then that is the problem. Anecdotally, every doctor I know has gotten their own children vaccinated as soon as it was available (or enrolled them in clinical trials, to get it earlier).
eximius 5y ago
What data do you want? The all-mortality risk for vaccinated individuals is lower than unvaccinated. Unless your children have special circumstances, the answer is to vaccinate. The risk rates for myocarditis 1) extremely low to be caused by the vaccine 2) lower than the risk of P(Myocarditis | COVID)*P(COVID). That is, the risk of catching COVID AND developing Myocarditis is higher than developing it from the vaccine.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  This is a great example of misleading statistics! This comment is saying that vaccinated people are more likely to die than the unvaccinated. Sounds like a lie, but nope! It’s true. Why? The unvaccinated population is much, much younger and healthier than the vaccinated. 95% of the above-80 cohort is vaccinated. Essentially nobody under 5 is. This is called a confounding variable, and is used to spread fake news.
  - eximius 5y ago
    > This comment is saying that vaccinated people are more likely to die than the unvaccinated. That's definitely not what I was saying. I'm curious which part have you that impression?
Herodotus38 5y ago
Two of my three children are in the vaccination age range (edit the 5-10 range that was the most recent change) and I did a dive in the primary data as I was worried about the risks/benefits of myocarditis vs risk of severe COVID (we had also had COVID in April 2020, but I was the only one tested positive because at that time only healthcare workers could get a test if you weren't hospitalized). I hope this resource helps you, it helped convince me that the benefits outweighed the risks: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-11-2-3/04-COVID-Oster-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-...
twic 5y ago
This is the latest advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation which summarises and synthesises the evidence: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jcvi-update-on-advice-for-covid-19-vaccination-of-children-and-young-people/jcvi-statement-on-covid-19-vaccination-of-children-and-young-people-22-december-2021 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jcvi-update-on-ad...

thehappypm 5y ago

Do either of your children have any comorbidities? That would be a strong deciding factor for me.

Synaesthesia 5y ago

The little risk you take by getting the vaccine is more than offset by the far lower risk of getting the disease, which has all kinds of implications. Since it was approved for children by the FDA I assume they did rigourous testing

kikokikokiko 5y ago
Children with no commorbidities have NO reason to get exposed to the risk of taking the vacine. Yes, it's a small risk, but ANY vaccine must be a cost benefit weighted decision. Rabies is a 100% lethal disease, but that is not a valid reason for everyone to get vaccinated for it, the risks of vaccinating everyone in this case outweigh the risk that a randomly selected person would eventually die from rabies. This whole discussion is so stupid, from the beggining everyone could see the stats and see who was at real risk or not from this disease.
- Sparkle-san 5y ago
  Children are still susceptible to long-term complications from getting covid. Like you said, it's a cost benefit decision, but there's real risks associated with children getting covid that seem to be going unacknowledged given that, unlike rabies, millions are going to be infected with covid.
  - EricE 5y ago
    - Sparkle-san 5y ago
      Yes, that's one end of the cost benefit analysis and on the other end the 6,400 cases of MIS-C in children who got covid in the US. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#mis-national-surveillance https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#mis-national-surve...
    - kingsloi 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Health_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Health_Defense
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      > Tell this mom that the infinitesimal chance that her child would have from COID side affects was worth it for the problems she is now facing That's an awful way to analyze risk. If you have a one in a million risk of something, and you trade it for a different but nearly-identical one in a million risk for the same thing, and then get the bad outcome, you did not make the wrong choice. Let alone if you traded for a lower risk. Every step you take, you trade out trillions of potential futures. You are always, always creating new risks and destroying old risks. A decision like getting vaccinated is easy to point at and say "oh I shouldn't have done it" but you could just as realistically say "if I hadn't eaten tuna seven weeks ago these problems wouldn't have happened". You do not get to compare the outcome of a specific case, only knowable in hindsight, with the "infinitesimal risk" of the alternative.
      - twofornone 5y ago
        The point is that people need to stop presuming that these vaccines are without risks of their own. This is proven false and the true risk is still uncertain. Officials are only recently acknowledging for example that vaccines can influence monthly cycles - that was just a cooky conspiracy a few months ago. Data collection regarding adverse events was laughably inadequate based on testimony over Pfizer's clinical trial protocol, and their data is still not available for review by anyone other than the FDA, which is known to suffer from regulatory capture. Rosy claims about the vaccines have been repeatedly walked back...the safety of these vaccines is likely overstated.
- phlipski 5y ago
  Rabies doesn't spread like covid...
  - EricE 5y ago
    COVID isn't deadly like rabies either. Indeed COVID is turning out to be less deadly than the flu for the vast majority of people, especially the more recent variants. While being far more virulent they are also far less likely to make one seriously ill, let alone kill.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      Over 800,000 people have died in the US alone, more than any other event in US history.
      - Nemrod67 5y ago
        2M people die every year in the USA, is that more than any other event in History? such lunacy
        robflynn 5y ago
        They clearly mean from one specific event. What one event in the USA has lead to 2 million deaths? You're combining all deaths and treating it as if it were the same thing.
        JacobThreeThree 5y ago
        >You're combining all deaths and treating it as if it were the same thing. Couldn't that be applied to deaths from other diseases? Why wouldn't all influenza deaths be considered one event by this standard?
        robflynn 5y ago
        No? Are we in an influenza pandemic or epidemic right now? Again, we're talking about events here. There have been six of them in the last 140 years with respect to influenza. The Spanish Flu pandemic killed 675k (in the USA, like 50 mil worldwide or something wild like that.)
benmmurphy 5y ago
it's worth the OP trying to find data on how much risk covid presents to their children and what the risks of the vaccine are. the UK has this risk calculator for COVID in adults: https://qcovid.org/ https://qcovid.org/ . I'm not sure if there is anything similar for children. probably, the risk of the vaccine or covid is so low for children it doesn't really matter what you do.
mizzack 5y ago
> Since it was approved for children by the FDA I assume they did rigourous testing Reminder that the two most senior FDA vaccine oversight officials resigned in protest before the age 5-11 EUA was approved. Reminder that the previous FDA commissioner currently sits on Pfizer's board. Reminder that regulatory capture of the FCC, SEC, and other govt. agencies is popularly accepted as fact, but somehow the FDA is immune to that criticism.
- standardUser 5y ago
  OK, now do that for the 50 or so other national health agencies that have independently approved these vaccines. Or did you forget that these vaccines have been reviewed and approved by thousands of qualified staff all over the world?
  - collias 5y ago
    Reminder that many European countries do not suggest the vaccine for children, and some have even banned it in the case of Moderna.
    - standardUser 5y ago
      The EU has approved Pfizer for children 5 and over. Moderna is still being reviewed for younger children. Exact guidelines may vary by country. Overall, Pfizer has been approved in 137 countries and Modern in 85.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - phillc73 5y ago
        One EU country where the guidelines vary is Sweden, who are specifically not recommending COVID vaccines for 5-12 year old children.[1] [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-decides-against-recommending-covid-vaccines-kids-aged-5-12-2022-01-27/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-decides-against-...
umvi 5y ago
> Since it was approved for children by the FDA I assume they did rigorous testing I wouldn't make this assumption, especially in light of the the conditions under which it was approved (extreme political pressure, rushed/bleeding edge data, etc.) It's probably fine, but my kids aren't going to be first in line because they are in the control group (https://xkcd.com/2576/ https://xkcd.com/2576/).

thurn 5y ago

The overwhelming conclusion I've drawn from this pandemic is that it's ultimately about people's level of trust in their own ability to analyze data vs trust in authority figures. There have been so many examples of 'vaccines cause harm!' articles that fundamentally misunderstand basic statistical concepts like selection bias or simpson's paradox (see the covid-datascience.com blog for lots more of these). Is your prior on 'I will not make a significant analytic error' higher than 'the FDA analyzed the available data correctly'?

kenjackson 5y ago
And your trust in the government. If your prior on the government is that they aren't to be trusted then it doesn't matter how good of a job the FDB did in analyzing the data -- you aren't going to believe what they release to the public. I think this is the bigger issue. Most people I know who say, "I'll do my own research" are the same people who asked me what kind of computer to buy. And they know a lot more about technology than medicine. But its they don't trust the government.
rimliu 5y ago
Look where big bosses from FDA ended up.
steveylang 5y ago
In reality, few people have the time or want to make the effort to comb through and analyze original sources. So most of us rely to varying extent on who we trust and consider to have accurate opinions or assessments. One huge problem with COVID has been the emergence of essentially propaganda pieces masquerading as detailed, rigorous analysis. These give people a false sense of confidence- "Hey I've done my research!" when in reality you can google for 20 minutes and come up with impressive looking links for whatever view you are already predisposed to believe. I'm sure these existed before, but COVID has taken things to another level.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > , few people have the time or want to make the effort to comb through and analyze original sources. I mean, unless it's your profession, you're not. At best, you're reading an article (with summarized data that you hope was aggregated correctly) in a journal. To the best of my knowledge, the raw datasets that those are based on are rarely shared.

logic_beats_pro 5y ago

Really tough to tell because there's a lack of data. Parents aren't vaccinating their young children because they have the strongest immune systems and it's unnecessary. Here are CDC submitted reports of myo/pericarditis seen so far broken out by age: https://openvaers.com/covid-data/myo-pericarditis https://openvaers.com/covid-data/myo-pericarditis So take from that what you will. And if this is your first time encountering VAERS, the reports actually submitted are estimated to be between 1 and 10% of total adverse effects experienced. If you're into reading studies, here are some that are largely unknown: https://www.rwmalonemd.com/heart-blood-clotting https://www.rwmalonemd.com/heart-blood-clotting Good luck!

veilrap 5y ago
This is somewhat misleading information. VAERS is an open database, it can be easily submitted to by anyone, it's not a good source of truth and may contain statistical bias. Parent's ARE vaccinating their children, millions of kids age 5-11 have had the vaccine: https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-tracker https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-trac... Depending on the state, the total % vaccinated in that age group varies between ~20-50%.
- TrevorJ 5y ago
  >VAERS is an open database, it can be easily submitted to by anyone, it's not a good source of truth and may contain statistical bias. This is 100% true, but it leaves out some context. Prior to covid, it was thought that vaccine side effects were statistically underreported by a significant amount in VAERS. For the signal we are seeing in VAERS to be totally spurious seems highly unlikely, given this fact. It's also worth noting that effects which have a significant time-delay are unlikely to be captured. All this is to say: yes the data are noisy, but we'd need to erase/explain away the numbers by at least an order of magnitude to erase the spike we are seeing, and that seems like a tall order. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK232983/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK232983/
  - throwawayboise 5y ago

salemh 5y ago

naasking 5y ago

Myocarditis risk stratified by gender, age group, vaccine and infection: https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-myocarditis-stratified https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-myoca... Males under 40 roughly have the highest risk from multiple Moderna doses, followed by infection, followed by two Astra doses, followed by two Pfizer doses. I expect two COVID infections would increase the risk like it seems to do with the vaccines.

eitland 5y ago
This is very interesting to me if true, both because - I thought the risk from getting an infection would be much higher than any vaccine combination (but here multiple Moderna doses seems to increase the risk even more) - again, if this is true it still validates the rest of my reasoning: except for multiple doses of Moderna any other combination of mainstream vaccines seems to be safer than actually getting the infection (I note that there is a lot of uncertainty which is why I use "seems to be" instead of "is".)
- chris_va 5y ago
  The "risk from getting an infection" includes many other side effects besides myocarditis, I would not evaluate the risks from an unvaccinated viral infection (which can cause 100 other things besides myocarditis) vs the risk from vaccination (or vaccination + viral infection, which the most likely long term outcome) on the myocarditis axis alone.
  - naasking 5y ago
    Yes that's fair, but the risk profile from the vaccine is also not just relegated to myocarditis, that's just what's been getting attention. It will probably be years before we have an accurate risk assessment of both infection and vaccines. Given the availability of vaccines, it still makes sense to be choosier if you're in a potentially vulnerable population, which is what the paper suggests.
- synquid 5y ago

EricE 5y ago

sfteus 5y ago
Important to note that Children's Health Defense is a highly suspect organization. Rated "conspiracy-pseudoscience"[1], described as "one of the main sources of misinformation on vaccines"[2], with numerous articles describing their fake health posts on social media[3][4] and shady leadership[5][6]. Not saying everything from that site should be discarded, but should definitely be taken with a grain of salt. ----- [1]: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/childrens-health-defense/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/childrens-health-defense/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Health_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Health_Defense [3]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/social-media-hosted-lot-fake-health-news-year-here-s-n1107466 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/social-media-hosted-lot... [4]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/11/15/majority-anti-vaccine-ads-facebook-were-funded-by-two-groups/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/11/15/majority-an... [5]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-robert-f-kennedy-jr-distorted-vaccine-science1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-robert-f-kenn... [6]: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-health-pseudoscience/anti-vaccine-propaganda-robert-f-kennedy-jr https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-health-pseudoscie...

angryasian 5y ago

your kids will be fine either way, but they are far more likely to catch and spread without being vaccinated.

sfteus 5y ago

I can't find much besides models for < 16 unfortunately. However, for 16-40, Patone, et al[1] estimates that myocarditis incidence is around 2/mil for AstraZeneca, 1/mil for Pfizer per does, and 6/mil for Moderna first dose, 10/mil for the second, compared to 40/mil for an active infection. Singer, el al[2] (pre-print) states that males < 20 are roughly 6x less likely to develop myocarditis from vaccination compared to an infection. The AMA[3] also has some info on both myocarditis and MIS-C. 95% of those who developed MIS-C were unvaccinated, and up to 40% required some sort of respiratory or cardiovascular life support (compare to 0% of those vaccinated). Also states ages 12-15 appear less likely to develop myocarditis than the 16 - ~40 range. Everything I've read so far is that myocarditis from vaccination usually resolves fairly quickly. ----- [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0.pdf [2]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998v... [3]: https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/population-care/unvaccinated-kids-much-higher-risk-severe-mis-c-outcomes https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/population-care/unv...

ALittleLight 5y ago
Do these papers differentiate infection with and without vaccination? Meaning, if an unvaxxed person has X myocarditis risk from the vaccine, and Y from infection, what is the myocarditis risk of infection after vaccination?
- sfteus 5y ago
  I haven't seen anything comparing the two yet, but I would be interested in seeing that. I'll note that in general, I have seen studies indicating that the risk of both MIS-C (linked in GP) and long-covid[1][2] are decreased when comparing vaccinated/unvaccinated post active infection. I've also seen reports that those unvaccinated who experience long-covid sometimes see reduced / cleared symptoms after subsequent vaccination.[3] We also know that antibody titer levels seem to be correlated with a reduction in infection, which is why when those begin to fall off we see more breakthrough infections. And finally we know that building long term T and B cells tends to see a quicker, more effective immune response, both of which should be created post-vaccination. Given that, I would speculate that vaccination is likely to reduce overall proliferation of cell infection (including directly infecting cardiac tissue via the ACE2 receptors) via having more free-floating antibodies in your system, and is likely to reduce the overall immune-mediated inflammatory response to the virus as it can respond more quickly before the virus has had a chance to proliferate as much. Both of these (reduced inflammation, reduced cell infection) should reduce the risk of myocarditis as a result of infection. And I would speculate that that tracks with other observed reduction of symptoms of infection (MIS-C, long-covid). Again, speculation on my part; I would definitely want to see studies to confirm or refute that. ----- [1]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00460-6/fulltext#seccestitle10 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... [2]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.05.22268800v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.05.22268800v... [3]: https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/vaccines-long-covid https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/vaccines-long-covid

rossnordby 5y ago

I'm not aware of any great data on myopericarditis for very young people, and not as many have been vaccinated, so I extrapolate from older age groups: Of 3 482 295 individuals vaccinated with BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech), 48 developed myocarditis or myopericarditis within 28 days from the vaccination date compared with unvaccinated individuals (adjusted hazard ratio 1.34 (95% confidence interval 0.90 to 2.00); absolute rate 1.4 per 100 000 vaccinated individuals within 28 days of vaccination (95% confidence interval 1.0 to 1.8)). -https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068665 https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068665 Among more than 2.5 million vaccinated HCO members who were 16 years of age or older, 54 cases met the criteria for myocarditis. The estimated incidence per 100,000 persons who had received at least one dose of vaccine was 2.13 cases (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.56 to 2.70). The highest incidence of myocarditis (10.69 cases per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 6.93 to 14.46) was reported in male patients between the ages of 16 and 29 years. A total of 76% of cases of myocarditis were described as mild and 22% as intermediate; 1 case was associated with cardiogenic shock. After a median follow-up of 83 days after the onset of myocarditis, 1 patient had been readmitted to the hospital, and 1 had died of an unknown cause after discharge. -https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110737 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110737 So vaccine-related myopericarditis looks rare and mild. Effectively, and possibly literally, no one dies as a result. I actually ended up with a probable case after my second dose, but it was extremely mild (no functional impairment, just periodic discomfort for some months). I suspect most cases are something similar- not fun, but not spooky. I'm not a doctor nor do I have any relevant specialty, but I'm reasonably sure that reducing incidence of MIS-C or other rare severe outcomes of covid is a net win in younger people.

andai 5y ago
I saw a comment here recently with data that showed the rates for myocarditis for both covid and vaccinations respectively, I recall the chance of developing myocarditis after vaccination being 4x lower than after getting covid. Assuming that's right (perhaps someone more knowledgeable can provide a source), this seems to imply that vaccination reduces the risk of developing myocarditis by 4x, assuming everyone will eventually be infected. I'm also curious what effect age has on the risk in both cases, ie. if the same ratio holds for young people.

rhino369 5y ago

I was going to wait until all of the first world health bureaucracies cleared it. But now my kids had covid (before they were approved even in the US) and it wasn't a big deal. So I'm not going to get them shots until the natural immunity is proven to fade, which may be never.

neuronic 5y ago

Just one more point as food for thought: One more thing to consider is that the virus is also able to cause myocarditis, especially if you don't rest long enough even if feeling fine. In fact, the virus can potentially cause additional complications even with mild symptoms. There are also things we don't really understand yet with post-viral syndromes which affects many people (disclaimer: Epstein-Barr / Mono messed me up, personally). This isn't unique to SARS-CoV-2 either, it's a more general viral infection thing and can happen just as well with influenza. With Omicron, it's also very likely that people will get it sooner or later - vaccinated or not. Granted, most myocarditis goes unnoticed and recovers very well with a bit of rest.

jpeloquin 5y ago

> I am trying to get good data to determine if vaccination is risky or not. Rather than giving you a list of work that you may suspect of being curated, I will show you how to quickly find what you're looking for. One of the great things about the National Library of Medicine is that a human looks at each and every paper and assigns standardized semantic tags to it. These are called "MeSH terms" and you can filter the entire library by them. You mentioned interest in myocarditis, and the following would be an appropriate search query in pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov for this topic: myocarditis[mh] AND vaccines[majr] AND COVID https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=myocarditis%5Bmh%5D+AND+vaccines%5Bmajr%5D+AND+COVID&sort=pubdate https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=myocarditis%5Bmh%5D+AN... The "mh" selects articles that were tagged with that MeSH term. The "majr" selects articles that were tagged with that MeSH term and were mainly about that term. In this case, the structured query drills down from thousands of potential results to 61 results, which is manageable to triage manually. Edit: Here's how you can figure out wish MeSH terms exist: https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search

ceejayoz 5y ago
> In this case, the structured query drills down from thousands of potential results to 61 results, which is manageable to triage manually. If, of course, you have the domain knowledge required to do so.
- edmundsauto 5y ago
  You would probably need some basic domain knowledge to interpret medical publications in peer reviewed journals. I'm not saying they are the same expertise, just that "requiring expertise" as a prerequisite is pretty reasonable.

throwaway5752 5y ago

Ask your pediatrician. If you don't trust that they know better, get a new pediatrician. I'm not being glib, this person has made it through a grueling education of their undergrad, med school, and residency. They are well acquainted with hard sciences and research. If you don't trust them on their area of expertise, then that is the problem. Anecdotally, every doctor I know has gotten their own children vaccinated as soon as it was available (or enrolled them in clinical trials, to get it earlier).

eximius 5y ago

What data do you want? The all-mortality risk for vaccinated individuals is lower than unvaccinated. Unless your children have special circumstances, the answer is to vaccinate. The risk rates for myocarditis 1) extremely low to be caused by the vaccine 2) lower than the risk of P(Myocarditis | COVID)*P(COVID). That is, the risk of catching COVID AND developing Myocarditis is higher than developing it from the vaccine.

thehappypm 5y ago
This is a great example of misleading statistics! This comment is saying that vaccinated people are more likely to die than the unvaccinated. Sounds like a lie, but nope! It’s true. Why? The unvaccinated population is much, much younger and healthier than the vaccinated. 95% of the above-80 cohort is vaccinated. Essentially nobody under 5 is. This is called a confounding variable, and is used to spread fake news.
- eximius 5y ago
  > This comment is saying that vaccinated people are more likely to die than the unvaccinated. That's definitely not what I was saying. I'm curious which part have you that impression?

Herodotus38 5y ago

Two of my three children are in the vaccination age range (edit the 5-10 range that was the most recent change) and I did a dive in the primary data as I was worried about the risks/benefits of myocarditis vs risk of severe COVID (we had also had COVID in April 2020, but I was the only one tested positive because at that time only healthcare workers could get a test if you weren't hospitalized). I hope this resource helps you, it helped convince me that the benefits outweighed the risks: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-11-2-3/04-COVID-Oster-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-...

twic 5y ago

This is the latest advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation which summarises and synthesises the evidence: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jcvi-update-on-advice-for-covid-19-vaccination-of-children-and-young-people/jcvi-statement-on-covid-19-vaccination-of-children-and-young-people-22-december-2021 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jcvi-update-on-ad...