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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Yesterday’s conspiracy theory is today’s quiet admission

Bare link post: The Federalist covers the latest CDC admission about the vaccine: the myocarditis risk among the young and healthy is larger than official sources claimed.

Along with the recent addition of Ivermectin to the list of possible effective treatments, I believe this vindicates the front-line doctors and makes mass murderers of the censors, as well-intentioned as those who smashed sparrows for Mao.

Taking the federalist (please don't link to political/general news websites about science/study stuff, they're universally terrible sources) at their word for the moment - "[...] within a week of receiving the “Dose 2 Primary Series” of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, there were 14 verified cases of myocarditis or pericarditis among the 102,091 males aged 16-17 who got the shot. Among the nearly 206,000 12-15-year-old males [...] 31 cases were confirmed within a week". This comes out to a rate of 1.3/10k for 16-17 and 1.5/10k for 12-15. Using a relatively recent table of the age distribution for approximate numbers, and just multiplying that number by the 10-19 population, and just assuming they all got vaccinated, gives 3135 cases of (using their claims) vaccine-induced myocarditis or pericarditis.

From another study - In COVID-19 mRNA-vaccine-associated myocarditis, >90% of patients will functionally completely recover, usually after a chest pain syndrome (see Supplementary information). To date, only eight deaths owing to COVID-19 mRNA-vaccine-associated myocarditis have been reported (>99% survival) (see Supplementary information)." (1-.99) * 3135 = 35 deaths. Which is less than the number of covid deaths in the '5-18' age group (which i'm guessing is mostly the 10-19 age group) - 910 - by quite a bit. The supplementary information was just a list of case reports or studies, and the ones that include fatalities were: (i may not be interpreting this correctly fyi) were "27yo male with trisomy 21", "22yo male with fatal outcome, from Korea", "351 cases (8 fatal", "62yo female with fatal outcome", "42yo male (fatal)", "Case series of 136; one fatal; rate 150/million after 2nd dose in 16-19yo males, in Israel", "70yo female with fatal outcome", "18 post vaccine deaths ... 1 myocarditis", etc, and a many more studies with no deaths. I'm not sure where precisely they got 99% from given the SI is just a big list of references but if you add up all of the studies they present, 99% seems accurate. There are also a bunch of studies evaluating risk/benefit for covid vaccines for adolescents, most claiming it's worth it but a few claiming it is not. (in practice, i'm not sure it matters either way, given the very low risk of both covid harm and myocarditis harm. also, covid itself causes myocarditis, probably at a similar rate to the vaccine in young people, but idk). There's also a funny withdrawn article, "Case series of 32 patients in Canada. Although case series was clinically valid, initial estimate of rate was inflated by using denominator of 30,000 instead of 800,000".

It also has "By contrast, the incidence of COVID-19-associated cardiac injury or myocarditis is estimated to be 100 times higher (1,000–1,400 per 100,000 people with COVID-19) than that of COVID-19 mRNA-vaccine-related myocarditis7. Moreover, in contrast to the overall mild presentation and good outcome of vaccine-associated myocarditis, COVID-19 is associated with a major risk of cardiovascular complications8. Among patients with COVID-19, 10% of outpatients and 40% of hospitalized patients have clinically significant myocardial injury, mostly in the absence of clinically significant coronary artery disease8. Advanced age and pre-existing comorbidities (obesity, diabetes mellitus, hypertension or renal dysfunction) are the main predisposing factors for cardiovascular complications in patients with COVID-19".

For people under 20 specifically - for myocarditis from covid infections - here we get "Results: For the 12-17-year-old male cohort, 6/6,846 (0.09%) patients developed myocarditis overall, with an adjusted rate per million of 450 cases (Wilson score interval 206 - 982). For the 12-15 and 16-19 male age groups, the adjusted rates per million were 601 (257 - 1,406) and 561 (240 - 1,313).". This is higher than even your estimate of 1.5/10k. Now, this is comparing 'covid cases' to 'covid vaccination recipients' - which obviously aren't the same, if only 1 in 100 adolescents ever got covid (or, if they all got covid but only the severe cases were counted as 'cases'), that'd mean the vaccine was worse (again assuming those numbers are fine). But they probably are given the large-scale testing etc.

I haven't triple-checked all the math estimate stuff and very likely one or more of them is wrong. But this isn't "mass murder". Healthcare has plenty of disgusting parts - giving obese people pills mildly improving QALYs while they're fattened by well advertised corn, wheat, sugar, and oil paste, unnecessary surgeries, spending tens of thousands on cancer treatments that extend life by like a month, or not at all, pumping all sorts of treatments into barely alive old people to prolong their painful, pointless end, etc. This isn't one, afaict, the effectiveness of vaccines compared to their cost (one shot per year vs one pill per day?) is an outlier for most of medicine.

Thank you for putting numbers to what I was thinking.