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I'm very skeptical about their numbers. Some time in 2021 there was a story about COVID vaccines and heart issues here on HN. The comments filled up with peopl

I'm very skeptical about their numbers. Some time in 2021 there was a story about COVID vaccines and heart issues here on HN. The comments filled up with people saying that ever since they'd got their shots they were experiencing new heart-related symptoms they'd never had previously like permanently racing heartbeats, palpitations/fluttering, inability to do exercise and more. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to re-find that discussion. I also have a good friend who works in IT who had a heart attack in the weeks after his shots, but he refused to believe that's what happened and never went in to get diagnosed (the symptoms were an exact match however). Some rough calculations indicate the numbers affected by this kind of (hopefully) low level heart damage seem much higher than claimed. They say of the "hundreds of millions" of shots there are only 1000 cases of diagnosed heart damage from the vaccines. Call it 1000/100,000,000 or one in a million. There are approx 5M readers of Hacker News per month, so far less per day. Of those only a tiny handful have accounts and post comments. If their numbers are right then there should be ~no HN commenters with post-vaccine heart problems but this thread filled up with people posting their own experiences of such a thing. Then there's also the other health problems. My gfs friends who took it have been complaining that they seem to get sick with colds/fluey things way more frequently since the shots, I heard similar complaints from a couple of old coworkers. One of those girls complaining of frequent sickness also reported disrupted menstruation but the doctors have ignored it all because as far as they are concerned, the vaccines are 'perfectly safe'.

n4r9 4y ago
Is it possibly this discussion? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27463732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27463732 There are people talking about heart palpitations or pains, yard to say if that's enough to say they had myocarditis though.
- thatswrong0 4y ago
  I posted in that thread - saw a cardiologist and they confirmed it. In retrospect, it was probably the worst illness I've ever had, being completely out of commission for a month at age 29, where even doing simple things like rolling over in bed would cause my heart rate to spike and cause me to be short of breath. Couldn't do anything but lay there. Luckily a scan confirmed no long term damage. For some reason still decided to get the third booster.. and I still ended up getting COVID twice (very mild both times). Don't think I'll be getting any more COVID vaccines.
  - n4r9 4y ago
    That sounds really rough; I'm glad you're feeling better.
thinkmcfly 4y ago
Do you have any evidence
gjsman-1000 4y ago
I, anecdotally, can report the same. Anecdotally, it seems doctors are drowning in too much paperwork already to be bothered filing reports, as well as suffering from denial that this could be an issue (also preventing filing a report).
rozap 4y ago
Me too. A few days after the latest booster I had some really weird heart palpitations while resting, and I was feeling dizzy with chest/shoulder pain after some moderate exercise. I've stopped exercising which sucks, but will ease back into it. But there's a history of arrhythmia in my family (heart issue killed my dad at a young age), so that's probably a big risk factor, and I'm in the "young male" risk group. I don't know if I should keep getting boosters or risk a potentially worse outcome from covid, which I haven't had yet, though I've been very exposed to.
- nradov 4y ago
  Unless you've been getting weekly PCR tests since the beginning of the pandemic, there's no way to reliably know that you haven't been infected. Many people experience asymptomatic infections.
yonaguska 4y ago
I wish I could find it, but google is insistent on working against me here, but I remember reading from one of Pfizer's data dumps that children in the vaccinated group of their studies were at an increased risk of other respiratory infections compared to the control group. Anecdotally, some, not all, but some of my triple vaccinated friends are getting sick constantly and they've said that every time they catch covid, it gets worse. This is just a few people out of several that I know, so it doesn't mean much if anything.
- CadmiumYellow 4y ago
  Do you have any idea if this effect was found for the non-mRNA vaccines as well? I had the Johnson & Johnson vaccine with no boosters and I've been getting an unusual number of colds this year, though I assumed it was due to life returning to normal with a backlog of viruses I hadn't been exposed to in 2020-2021. I did get covid twice after being vaccinated though and both cases were very mild with the second being almost asymptomatic. The two days after the vaccine were the sickest I've been in a decade but it seems it did its job re: making covid milder.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    Officially the increased sickness effect doesn't exist at all. We only have these sorts of anecdotes and vaccines can only be discussed occasionally on HN, and not at all on most other forums, so notes can only be compared rarely. Unofficially the effect does exist and goes by various names: OAS, Hoskins Effect, immune imprinting. It can be seen in some of the vaccine effectiveness data back when it was being collected by places like the UK, where vaccinated people were getting COVID at 4x the rate of unvaccinated by the time they stopped reporting (and the rate was worsening with time). It can also be seen in the boosters trial data where they had to switch the definition of success to antibody production, because the boosters were not actually reducing infection incidence e.g. the bivalent boosters were tested on all of 8 mice and all 8 got COVID when exposed so effectiveness is zero, but that didn't stop them being approved on the basis that they caused production of antibodies (to the variant targeted by the OG vaccine, not Omicron). OAS unfortunately can be caused by any vaccine tech. It's not mRNA specific. The antibodies you produce are for the older extinct variants that the vaccine trained you for, not the current variants. The body doesn't recognize that there's a difference.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Ario5 4y ago
As someone who experienced heart attack like symptoms as an under 30 year old, did go into the hospital and got a pericarditis[1] diagnosis, I think that describing your friends unknown heart condition as a heart attack is unnecessary fear mongering considering similar symptoms can present themselves as a much less severe condition. Both the Vaccine and Covid are known have a low chance of causing heart issues. [1]https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pericarditis/symptoms-causes/syc-20352510#:~:text=Pericarditis%20is%20swelling%20and%20irritation,and%20goes%20away%20without%20treatment https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pericarditis/....
- origin_path 4y ago
  I'm not a doctor, so maybe there's some deep difference between something that has the same symptoms as a heart attack and a heart attack. Regardless of what exactly it was, it freaked him out, it freaked me out too and I'm glad there doesn't seem to have been a recurrence (or if there was he chose not to tell me, knowing that I'd tell him again to see a specialist). "Both the Vaccine and Covid are known have a low chance of causing heart issues." It is 'known' by people who are deeply conflicted by their own pushing of the shots and could thus never admit it, if their policies had led to immune or heart damage. Nothing much can be said about vaccine safety given that the public health and research system are clearly terrified of doing or saying anything that might reduce compliance with their policies.
nonethewiser 4y ago
> I'm very skeptical about their numbers. Well the study is funded by the vaccine makers. So we can toss it out before it's even conducted. Same goes for anything done by parties who have equated taking the vaccine with moral righteousness. If there are serious health risks it will only be found by a skeptic with a lot of perseverance.
Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
I think the fact that it's much easier to get diagnosed with covid than to get diagnosed with vaccine illness is working against us here. You can test for covid pretty accurately and cheaply. Then, if someone starts having symptoms, we can say it is covid. There is unfortunately no PCR test for vaccine illness. So if you have symptoms of it it's hard to say that it's the vaccine because there is no unique indicator we can test for.

n4r9 4y ago

Is it possibly this discussion? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27463732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27463732 There are people talking about heart palpitations or pains, yard to say if that's enough to say they had myocarditis though.

thatswrong0 4y ago
I posted in that thread - saw a cardiologist and they confirmed it. In retrospect, it was probably the worst illness I've ever had, being completely out of commission for a month at age 29, where even doing simple things like rolling over in bed would cause my heart rate to spike and cause me to be short of breath. Couldn't do anything but lay there. Luckily a scan confirmed no long term damage. For some reason still decided to get the third booster.. and I still ended up getting COVID twice (very mild both times). Don't think I'll be getting any more COVID vaccines.
- n4r9 4y ago
  That sounds really rough; I'm glad you're feeling better.

thinkmcfly 4y ago

Do you have any evidence

gjsman-1000 4y ago

I, anecdotally, can report the same. Anecdotally, it seems doctors are drowning in too much paperwork already to be bothered filing reports, as well as suffering from denial that this could be an issue (also preventing filing a report).

rozap 4y ago

Me too. A few days after the latest booster I had some really weird heart palpitations while resting, and I was feeling dizzy with chest/shoulder pain after some moderate exercise. I've stopped exercising which sucks, but will ease back into it. But there's a history of arrhythmia in my family (heart issue killed my dad at a young age), so that's probably a big risk factor, and I'm in the "young male" risk group. I don't know if I should keep getting boosters or risk a potentially worse outcome from covid, which I haven't had yet, though I've been very exposed to.

nradov 4y ago
Unless you've been getting weekly PCR tests since the beginning of the pandemic, there's no way to reliably know that you haven't been infected. Many people experience asymptomatic infections.

yonaguska 4y ago

I wish I could find it, but google is insistent on working against me here, but I remember reading from one of Pfizer's data dumps that children in the vaccinated group of their studies were at an increased risk of other respiratory infections compared to the control group. Anecdotally, some, not all, but some of my triple vaccinated friends are getting sick constantly and they've said that every time they catch covid, it gets worse. This is just a few people out of several that I know, so it doesn't mean much if anything.

CadmiumYellow 4y ago
Do you have any idea if this effect was found for the non-mRNA vaccines as well? I had the Johnson & Johnson vaccine with no boosters and I've been getting an unusual number of colds this year, though I assumed it was due to life returning to normal with a backlog of viruses I hadn't been exposed to in 2020-2021. I did get covid twice after being vaccinated though and both cases were very mild with the second being almost asymptomatic. The two days after the vaccine were the sickest I've been in a decade but it seems it did its job re: making covid milder.
- origin_path 4y ago
  Officially the increased sickness effect doesn't exist at all. We only have these sorts of anecdotes and vaccines can only be discussed occasionally on HN, and not at all on most other forums, so notes can only be compared rarely. Unofficially the effect does exist and goes by various names: OAS, Hoskins Effect, immune imprinting. It can be seen in some of the vaccine effectiveness data back when it was being collected by places like the UK, where vaccinated people were getting COVID at 4x the rate of unvaccinated by the time they stopped reporting (and the rate was worsening with time). It can also be seen in the boosters trial data where they had to switch the definition of success to antibody production, because the boosters were not actually reducing infection incidence e.g. the bivalent boosters were tested on all of 8 mice and all 8 got COVID when exposed so effectiveness is zero, but that didn't stop them being approved on the basis that they caused production of antibodies (to the variant targeted by the OG vaccine, not Omicron). OAS unfortunately can be caused by any vaccine tech. It's not mRNA specific. The antibodies you produce are for the older extinct variants that the vaccine trained you for, not the current variants. The body doesn't recognize that there's a difference.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Ario5 4y ago

As someone who experienced heart attack like symptoms as an under 30 year old, did go into the hospital and got a pericarditis[1] diagnosis, I think that describing your friends unknown heart condition as a heart attack is unnecessary fear mongering considering similar symptoms can present themselves as a much less severe condition. Both the Vaccine and Covid are known have a low chance of causing heart issues. [1]https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pericarditis/symptoms-causes/syc-20352510#:~:text=Pericarditis%20is%20swelling%20and%20irritation,and%20goes%20away%20without%20treatment https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pericarditis/....

origin_path 4y ago
I'm not a doctor, so maybe there's some deep difference between something that has the same symptoms as a heart attack and a heart attack. Regardless of what exactly it was, it freaked him out, it freaked me out too and I'm glad there doesn't seem to have been a recurrence (or if there was he chose not to tell me, knowing that I'd tell him again to see a specialist). "Both the Vaccine and Covid are known have a low chance of causing heart issues." It is 'known' by people who are deeply conflicted by their own pushing of the shots and could thus never admit it, if their policies had led to immune or heart damage. Nothing much can be said about vaccine safety given that the public health and research system are clearly terrified of doing or saying anything that might reduce compliance with their policies.

nonethewiser 4y ago

> I'm very skeptical about their numbers. Well the study is funded by the vaccine makers. So we can toss it out before it's even conducted. Same goes for anything done by parties who have equated taking the vaccine with moral righteousness. If there are serious health risks it will only be found by a skeptic with a lot of perseverance.

Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago

I think the fact that it's much easier to get diagnosed with covid than to get diagnosed with vaccine illness is working against us here. You can test for covid pretty accurately and cheaply. Then, if someone starts having symptoms, we can say it is covid. There is unfortunately no PCR test for vaccine illness. So if you have symptoms of it it's hard to say that it's the vaccine because there is no unique indicator we can test for.