After airing a video of a young athlete unconscious on the field after a cardiac arrest, anti-vaccine crank Del Bigtree asked his viewers, "All of these sports are mandating this vaccine on everybody in order to play, and I can only ask the very simple question, do you The implication is that this is a new phenomenon and that he is encouraging his audience to connect with the COVID vaccines. He can hide behind the idea that he is just asking questions, but the implication is inescapable, and that is all it takes.
Social media allows the creation of mini-documentaries with a specific message supported by the video evidence being presented. These videos may be complete fabrications. An athlete who was lying on the field had a cardiac arrest due to a primary cardiac condition. The video is from the same year as the vaccine, so we can be certain that it was not involved.
This is the reality we are living in. Pictures can be used to support a story. The damage is already done by the time they get debunked as the internet will usually find the source material and expose the fraud. Major news outlets, like Fox News and Newsmax, have been caught red-handed using misleading photos out-of-context. This is combined with opinions that are presented as facts or hiding behind questions.
This misinformation can affect policy. The Ohio Health Committee invited anti-vaccine cranks like Tenpenny to testify in support of a bill that would ban vaccine mandates. She made claims that the COVID vaccines were "magnetize" people, and that there were misleading videos on the internet.
The science of COVID vaccines and Cardiac Effects.
The current COVID vaccines are both safe and effective, and the reported cardiac effects are rare, mild, and Transient. No one would argue that vaccines are free of side effects. There is no medical intervention. The possibility of inflammatory side effects is created by the design of them. Myocarditis or pericarditis is inflammation of the heart or the lining around it.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, myocarditis/pericarditis rates are 12.6 cases per million doses of second-dose mRNA vaccine among individuals 12 to 39 years of age. Patients with myocarditis are usually presented with chest pain 2 to 3 days after a second dose of the vaccine, and have elevated cardiac troponin levels. The test patients had abnormallectrocardiograms and cardiac magnetic resonance was suggestive of myocarditis.
The symptoms were mild in almost every case. This is a rare, mild, and fleeting side effect and not a reason to avoid the vaccine. Risk vs benefit is what we have to consider when considering any medical intervention. The benefits of the vaccines outweigh the small risk of severe COVID. The benefits are more direct. It's more likely that COVID-19 causes myocarditis than the vaccine.
After adjusting for patient and hospital characteristics, patients with COVID-19 had an average risk for myocarditis of 15.7 times that of those without COVID-19.
This is not uncommon with inflammatory vaccine side effects, they are usually less severe and less common than the infections that they prevent. It is a good bet that the vaccine prevents the illness that causes Guillaine Barre Syndrome, if it increases the risk slightly.
These types of illnesses can be either infectious or post-infectious. They are either caused by the inflammation brought about by an active infection or by an auto-immune inflammatory response that follows an infection. The post-infectious auto-immune response can be caused by a self-antigen on the surface of the infecting organisms that looks very similar to a self-antigen on the heart muscle. The immune system starts to target the self-antigen because it looks too much like a viral orbacterial antigen.
This is likely to happen with myocarditis after the vaccinations. Due to genetic variation, rare individuals have cardiac self-antigens that are 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- The vaccine causes inflammation in the heart muscle and causes myocarditis. The inflammatory response is mild and fleeting, so the heart antigen must be a little similar to the spike.
The side effect of myocarditis is rare and mild, and the science about the vaccines is reassuring. Myocarditis is a side effect of the vaccines that prevent COVID, and is a potentially deadly disease. It takes less mental energy to watch a video online and react with fear than to wade through the scientific evidence and make an informed risk vs benefit assessment.
Steven Novella is an academic clinical neurologist at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is the host and producer of the popular weekly science show, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, as well as the author of the daily neuroscience news and opinion website, the Neuro LogicaBlog. The Skeptics Guide to the Universe was published by Dr. Novella, as well as two courses with The Great Courses.
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