COVID vaccines and cardiac risk
COVID vaccines and cardiac risk
I wrote an article this week for The Atlantic on the pernicious myth that athletes are dropping like flies from COVID vaccines. Most of the anecdotes being presented are misleading, and the statistics proffered are manipulated or fabricated. The vaccines, like all medical interventions, come with some very small risks. That doesn’t mean wild claims have merit.
A few other interesting COVID and vaccine reports:
“I won’t be a guinea pig”: Rethinking public health communication and vaccine hesitancy in the context of COVID-19. “In a context of heightened public concern and significant public attention, it is crucial for communicators to acknowledge that hesitancy is vaccine-specific, and that novel diseases and new vaccines produce specific concerns.” (Vaccine, 2022)
Stability of hybrid versus vaccine immunity against BA.5 infection over 8 months. “This study shows that hybrid immunity following infection with Omicron BA.1 or BA.2 when compared with vaccine-only immunity leads to substantially increased protection against BA.5 reinfection for up to 8 months…imprinting effects are unlikely to negate the overall public health value of booster vaccinations.” (Lancet Infectious Diseases, 2023)
9 Pandemic Narratives We’re Getting Wrong. The Great Barrington Declaration “was a bundle of scientific claims and policy proposals, in other words, which itself is telling. Today you might be inclined to think about the question of mitigation simply at the level of policy, asking what restrictions were necessary or helpful, given a shared base of knowledge about Covid-19. But the debates early on were not just debates over policy trade-offs. They also concerned basic science. And on many of those critical points, those pushing against mitigation measures were wrong.” (New York Times, 2023)
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Ben