You're on the fence on whether to vaccinate your kid because you're scared of myocarditis? Here are 6 rules to reduce that risk: 1. No children below 12 have reported myocarditis. This is for 12-17 children 2. Females have 10x lower risk than males.
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3. Most of the benefit of the vaccines comes with the 1st dose. Most of the myocarditis cost comes with the 2nd dose. Start with the 1st dose and then gather more data.
4. The main pbm comes with shots that are not spaced enough in time. Instead of 2 shots spaced by 2-3 weeks, try spacing them by 2-3 months
5. Moderna appears to protect slightly better from COVID than Pfizer, but has more myocarditis. If myocarditis is stopping you, then just pick Pfizer.
6. More importantly, you have more myocarditis from COVID than from the vaccine, and the COVID one is more acute.
Summary of rules on vaccine myocarditis:
- Kids below 12 and girls have minimal risk
- The 1st dose has minimal risk
- Spacing the doses by 2-3 months nearly eliminates the risk
- Pfizer has less myocarditis than Moderna
- Any vaccine combo has less myocarditis than from COVID
Why you should you vaccinate your kids in 6 words:
Vaccines reduce myocarditis frequency and gravity
And then they reduce deaths, hospitalizations, chronic fatigue syndrome...
Here's a guide with all the details, and what to do if you're on the fence: 🧵
1. Why vaccines reduce frequency & gravity of myocarditis:
Because COVID gives PIMS (Pediatric Inflammatory Multisystem Syndrome) in 1 in 4k infections. 75% of the time that includes myocarditis, so 1 in 5k COVID infections in kids include myocarditis.
That is ~3x-30x more common than myocarditis from the vaccine, depending on your age and gender.
It's also much worse after COVID than after a vaccine. This is what the vaccine does to you:
I only see 2 ways out of COVID: 1. An endemic disease that kills a few hundreds of thousands/million of ppl every year 2. A disease eradicated through global vaccination campaigns
I fear there's no 3. A virus that becomes less lethal over time and blends in like a cold
Note that 1 and 3 are pretty similar. In both cases, the disease is endemic and kills a few people every year. The cold doesn't, but the flu does, at ~0.13% of the sick every year.
But what if it wasn't 0.13%? What if it was 0.4%? Would we accept that? It's the ≠ btw 1 and 3
The reason why think we can get to 3 is because that's what probably happened to the 1918 flu: it's H1N1, and after killing so many ppl, it ended up evolving to kill less so it could spread more.
Everybody is very optimistic about Omicron.
I HOPE they're right.
I FEAR they're prey to a statistical error, Simpson's Paradox:
Simpson's Paradox says that you can see a trend because you're mixing two populations, but when you separate the populations, the trend is the opposite. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%2…
For Omicron, we might be mixing two populations: immune (through vaccinations or natural immunity) vs. naive (ie they have neither).
Why Europeans colonized America before Africa, in two maps and one story:
Map 1:
Northern Africa, bordering the Mediterranean, has been part of the Eurasian cultures for thousands of years.
South of that, it didn't get conquered until the 19th century, while America got conquered 3 centuries earlier despite being farther. Why?
For centuries, there was the Sahara barrier. The distance to cross was just too big. Impossible by foot, and only possible by sea through the Red Sea in the East, on the path to India, because of inhabitable stops on both sides