The Totally Civil Covid Thread. (Closing 31/05)

    Israeli study of almost 200,000 Covid positive cases and 600,000 non positive control cases, all before vaccines were introduced, concluded that Covid infection was not associated with increased myocarditis and pericarditis.


    The Incidence of Myocarditis and Pericarditis in Post COVID-19 Unvaccinated Patients—A Large Population-Based Study
    Myocarditis and pericarditis are potential post-acute cardiac sequelae of COVID-19 infection, arising from adaptive immune responses. We aimed to study the…
    www.mdpi.com


    Post COVID-19 infection was not associated with either myocarditis (aHR 1.08; 95% CI 0.45 to 2.56) or pericarditis (aHR 0.53; 95% CI 0.25 to 1.13). We did not observe an increased incidence of neither pericarditis nor myocarditis in adult patients recovering from COVID-19 infection.


    In other words, the Covid vaccines deserve a special place for causing heart damage. Even the Novavax vaccine may be associated with heart inflammation.

    Quote from Fm1

    Vitamin D deficiency correlates with a reduced number of natural killer cells in intensive care unit (ICU) and non-ICU patients with COVID-19 pneumonia

    Just to note that correlation does imply causation, and we know that many illnesses result in low vitamin D levels. I think there may have been some RCTs testing vit D supplementation in COVID patients that would provide definite info? Or maybe other drugs (ivermectin etc) are reckoned a better bet. We should have international coordination, instead of 4 different trials all looking at ivermectin.

    Quote from Fm1

    Putative roles of vitamin D in modulating immune response and immunopathology associated with COVID-19

    It is definitely a better bet to try to change the immunomodulation that covid does, than to find an antiviral. I agree Vit D has possibilities here - as do a lot of othrer things!

    Quote from Mark U

    BMJ Letter to the Editor from a Swedish doctor:


    https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj.o1197/rr-3


    Summary : The Covid Adenovirus vector vaccines in combination with immunity - stunting lockdowns may be the cause of the surge in childhood hepatitis.

    Blast from the Past (2009)?


    Swine Flu Vaccine Fearmongering
    Fear is a curious thing. It often bears no relation to the actual risk of what we fear. When swine flu first broke out in Mexico, people were understandably…
    sciencebasedmedicine.org


    It don't seem to matter what vaccine it is, there are a whole range of (some perfectly reasonable) concerns. And, very predictable fearmongering from the liked of Joe Mercola and the health food lobby.


    The idea that vaccines, by enhancing specific immune response, do not deliver as broad an immunity as infection is not fearmongering in the case of mRNA or even subunit vaccines. I'd just point out:

    For flu - vaccination has reduced hospital admissions by 75%

    For covid - the real-world evidence is that

    • (even an badly matched mRNA vaccine) delivers reduction in serious disease against omicron
    • Survivor's immunity does not deliver much protection unless the disease was severe - TANSTAAFL
    • Survivor's immunity is.... survivor's immunity. Best to gte some protection before needing to survive.

    Engwall (from 2009) was advocating this idea that vaccines may do more harm than good due to their neglecting T-cell immunity. It is not unreasonable to consider this, just that it seems wrong:


    Cell-mediated immunity neglected in influenza vaccination strategies


    Flu vaccines have greatly reduced deaths from Flu. This is (when you look carefully at the figures) personal protection not just population-wide - where you might increase personal risk of getting the disease if exposed whilst overall decreasing risk by decreasing exposure.


    I'm glad that views like those of Engwall, even if she does seem to generate varied and uniformly anti-vaccine speculation - get exposure in the medical literature as hypotheses to be checked.


    A pity when they get weaponised as antivaxxer propaganda: given they are so highly speculative and not backed by evidence.

    Doesn't seem wrong now after the posts I put up on nk cells or did you forget what I previously posted that you commented on.

    Quote from Fm1

    Doesn't seem wrong now after the posts I put up on nk cells or did you forget what I previously posted that you commented on.

    That makes the (hardly surprising) link between covid and nk cell deficit.


    My point was that the link which is not made causally is that vit D deficiency causes NK cell deficit. And if it did, you would expect Vit D deficiency to make many infections more likely.


    I think the evidence for vit d deficit => get more infections is marginal. I don't rule it out, but have not seen anything other than correlation. Evidence for high vit D levels helping reduce infections is even weaker - like you would not expect it from any of the above.


    Personally I make sure I am not vit D deficient.


    THH

    Vitamin d deficency does make infections more likely, I've posted the studies over and over, you want more. Levels of 20ng/mL which the NIH recommends is far to low. 50ng\mL level in the blood will have large effect on all viral infection outcomes. I posted that study too. And Thomas if your blood level is under 50ng/mL you are probably insufficient.

    U.S. Public Health Agencies Aren't ‘Following the Science,’ Officials Say

    ‘People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.’


    U.S. Public Health Agencies Aren't ‘Following the Science,’ Officials Say
    ‘People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.’
    www.commonsense.news


    The calls and text messages are relentless. On the other end are doctors and scientists at the top levels of the NIH, FDA and CDC. They are variously frustrated, exasperated and alarmed about the direction of the agencies to which they have devoted their careers.


    “It's like a horror movie I'm being forced to watch and I can't close my eyes,” one senior FDA official lamented. “People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.”


    That particular FDA doctor was referring to two recent developments inside the agency. First, how, with no solid clinical data, the agency authorized Covid vaccines for infants and toddlers, including those who already had Covid. And second, the fact that just months before, the FDA bypassed their external experts to authorize booster shots for young children.


    That doctor is hardly alone.

    Quote from Mark U

    BMJ Letter to the Editor from a Swedish doctor:


    https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj.o1197/rr-3


    Summary : The Covid Adenovirus vector vaccines in combination with immunity - stunting lockdowns may be the cause of the surge in childhood hepatitis.

    There have been a number of proposals for what causes this - since there is no correlation with covid vaccination the idea that adenovirus-vector vaccines (which use de-activated adenoviruses that cannot replicate in human cells) spread to children for vaccinated parents cause this is in many ways low probability.


    Here is some background on proposed explanations:

    Science | AAAS


    And, guess what! Covid-19 looks to remain a popular explanation.


    The debate is not academic. It “has everything to do with whether [a] patient stays alive or not,” Jalali said in an interview. If adenovirus is damaging the liver, the powerful antiviral drug cidofovir could be deployed in urgent cases. But if the liver damage results from a sustained immune reaction, immune-suppressing drugs could be lifesaving. You had better not be wrong, Jalali says. “If you mistakenly assume some infectious process is actively causing liver failure, you can’t go near that patient with immune-suppressive drugs,” because they can hobble the body’s ability to fight an active viral infection.

    Petter Brodin, a pediatric immunologist and pediatrician at Imperial College London and Moshe Arditi, a pediatric infectious disease physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, last week published a hypothesis knitting the two viruses together.

    They point out that to date, 18 of 18 cases tested in the United Kingdom harbored adenovirus-41, a strain of adenovirus that infects the gut, and that SARS-CoV-2 has been found to establish gut reservoirs that persist after acute infection. Brodin and Arditi proposed that after adenovirus infects the gut, SARS-CoV-2 might act as a coconspirator. A small section of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that has been shown to prompt a broad, nonspecific activation of T cells might supercharge the immune response to adenovirus, and the rogue immune response might then attack the liver. Such a mechanism, in which a piece of the coronavirus spike protein triggers an immune overreaction, has been implicated in the serious inflammation found in MIS-C.

    Brodin urges clinicians investigating children with the unexplained hepatitis to collect stool samples that could confirm intestinal reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2 and test for a hyperactivated immune system. If the hypothesis is confirmed—and Brodin stresses it has not been—he says immunosuppressive therapy would be appropriate. “[If] it’s an out-of-control activation of the immune system, then you need to be very aggressive in shutting down that immune response.”

    Jalali, for his part, is worried by a preprint, not yet peer reviewed, posted on 14 May by scientists at Case Western Reserve University. The paper suggests the hepatitis cases reported so far are the tip of an iceberg of liver damage in children following COVID-19 infections. The researchers compared the electronic records of 246,000 1- to-10-year-old children who contracted COVID-19 between March 2020 and March 2022 with those of 551,000 children who contracted other respiratory infections in that period. In the months after infection, the COVID-19 infected children were 2.5 times more likely to have elevated levels of enzymes that indicate liver damage, and 3.3 times more likely to have elevated bilirubin, a byproduct of the liver’s breakdown of red blood cells that can cause jaundice. Elevated levels can be a sign of impaired liver function.


    And a recent update:


    Mystery child hepatitis outbreak passes 1,000 recorded cases, says WHO
    In addition to tackling COVID and the monkeypox outbreak, the UN health agency has also been keeping a close eye on the puzzling spread of hepatitis in…
    news.un.org


    Also - some digging on whether the adenoviruses isolated from children with hepatitis bear any relationship to the vaccine adenoviruses:


    Third, the specific adenovirus that has been identified in multiple hepatitis cases in children is human adenovirus type 41. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses a modified type 26 virus. (The AstraZeneca Oxford COVID-19 vaccine, which also uses a viral vector design, is only authorized for adults in places such as the U.K., and uses a chimpanzee adenovirus.)


    In summary - this seems about right for mechanism:


    “The leading hypothesis at present is that the hepatitis is linked to adenovirus,” a U.K. technical report from April 25 reads. “There may be a cofactor causing a normal adenovirus to produce a more severe clinical presentation in young children, such as increased susceptibility due to reduced exposure during the pandemic, prior SARS-CoV-2 or other infection, or a yet undiscovered coinfection or toxin. Alternatively, there may have been emergence of a novel adenovirus strain with altered characteristics.”


    Although we have covid-19 as a possible cofactor, and lockdowns as a cofactor, covid-19 vaccine as a cofactor looks a big stretch and so tenuous I doubt anyone without a predisposition to look for unexpected dangers in vaccines would jump on it.

    WHO: Don’t Use Fluvoxamine for Treatment of COVID-19?


    WHO: Don’t Use Fluvoxamine for Treatment of COVID-19?
    The World Health Organization (WHO) publishes online the “The WHO Therapeutics and COVID-19: living guideline,” which is the global health…
    www.trialsitenews.com


    The World Health Organization (WHO) publishes online the “The WHO Therapeutics and COVID-19: living guideline,” which is the global health organization’s most up-to-date recommendations for the use of therapeutics in the treatment of COVID-19. Most recently, they updated their latest version of living guidelines, now its 10th, which includes 19 recommendations including two new actions including fluvoxamine and colchicine. Even though both showed positive results in major clinical trials, both fluvoxamine and colchicine neither is recommended. WHO only recommends fluvoxamine for the use in clinical trials in patients with non-severe COVID-19 while they don’t recommend colchicine use at all.


    What follows is a brief summary of the updates and a breakdown of what drugs WHO recommends, and some commentary along the way.


    Fluvoxamine

    Despite a significant benefit shown in the TOGETHER trial and studies prior, the evidence is considered “tentative” by organized medicine. TrialSite reported that some authorities and entities have accepted the use of fluvoxamine as a treatment for COVID-19 as well as now, more than likely, many dozens, if not doctors in the low hundreds in North America typically in combination as an off-label regimen for COVID-19.

    What about Colchicine?

    An anti-inflammatory regimen used to treat gout and other conditions has been through a few major clinical trials, including A) CALCORONA and B) PRINCIPLE. In CALCORONA, as reported on by TrialSite the decentralized, large, placebo-controlled, randomized trial treating outpatient settings demonstrated the drug could reduce hospitalization. However, the study didn’t meet its endpoint of reducing hospitalization or death. The study sponsor Montreal Heart Institute declared that their study results showed statistical significance concerning the aforementioned endpoints.

    Actually, as always, the devil lies in the detail. And the OPs summary above shows graphically how antivaxxer propaganda can be started (perfectly innocently) by people posting single studies without appraisal or thorough comparison with other work.


    (1) the comparison here is between in-patient referral for a patient with severe covid symptoms, and out-patient referral for someone without covid. myocarditis and pericarditus diagnosis rates are notoriously variable 9e.g. between countries) and it seems likley referral rate would be different in these two cases.

    (2) The confidence intervals are very wide here - so it is not a sensitive test.


    A better study (because it used self-controlled case study technique) comparing vaccination events and sars-cov-2 infection events can be found here:


    Risks of myocarditis, pericarditis, and cardiac arrhythmias associated with COVID-19 vaccination or SARS-CoV-2 infection - Nature Medicine
    A self-controlled case series using individual-patient-level data from over 38 million people aged 16 years and over, reveals an increased risk of myocarditis…
    www.nature.com


    We found increased risks of myocarditis associated with the first dose of ChAdOx1 and BNT162b2 vaccines and the first and second doses of the mRNA-1273 vaccine over the 1–28 days postvaccination period, and after a SARS-CoV-2 positive test. We estimated an extra two (95% confidence interval (CI) 0, 3), one (95% CI 0, 2) and six (95% CI 2, 8) myocarditis events per 1 million people vaccinated with ChAdOx1, BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273, respectively, in the 28 days following a first dose and an extra ten (95% CI 7, 11) myocarditis events per 1 million vaccinated in the 28 days after a second dose of mRNA-1273. This compares with an extra 40 (95% CI 38, 41) myocarditis events per 1 million patients in the 28 days following a SARS-CoV-2 positive test. We also observed increased risks of pericarditis and cardiac arrhythmias following a positive SARS-CoV-2 test. Similar associations were not observed with any of the COVID-19 vaccines, apart from an increased risk of arrhythmia following a second dose of mRNA-1273. Subgroup analyses by age showed the increased risk of myocarditis associated with the two mRNA vaccines was present only in those younger than 40.


    Sort of the opposite of the OPs (less easy to interpret) study.


    Summary: the mRNA vaccines lead to myocarditis and pericarditis risk - but covid infections lead to a greater risk of these things.


    And, an anecdote - yes covid-unvaccinated children have died of this after COVID infection:


    Portsmouth girl, 15, dies of Covid on day she was due jab
    Jorja Halliday, from Portsmouth, was due to have her coronavirus vaccination on the day she died.
    www.bbc.co.uk


    THH

    In my opinion you might have an argument before omicrom now I think the evidence point to more harm than good in all ages as the severity from omicrom diminishes and breakthrough are the norm with present boosters. And also, there is no such thing as mild myocarditis. It is the scaring of the heart tissue and can lead to tissue tear later in life!

    Quote from Fm1

    And also, there is no such thing as mild myocarditis. It is the scaring of the heart tissue and can lead to tissue tear later in life!

    My understanding is that mild myocarditis resolves completely with no damage or scarring.


    I think you mean that myocarditis can cause scarring.


    Myocarditis: Symptoms and Treatment for Inflammation of the Heart
    Myocarditis is a disease marked by the inflammation of heart muscle. Learn about the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of myocarditis.
    www.healthline.com

    Myocarditis is a disease where the heart muscle, known as the myocardium, becomes inflamed. This muscle contracts and relaxes to pump blood in and out of the heart and to the rest of the body.

    When the myocardium becomes inflamed, its ability to pump blood becomes less effective. This causes problems like an abnormal heartbeat, chest pain, and trouble breathing.

    In extreme cases, it can cause blood clots leading to a heart attack or stroke, damage to the heart, or death.

    Normally, inflammation is your body’s response to a wound or infection. For example, when you cut your finger, the tissue around the cut quickly swells up and turns red. These are classic signs of inflammation, during which the cells of your immune system rush to the site to begin repairs.

    But sometimes the immune system or another cause of inflammation leads to myocarditis.

    Keep reading to learn more about myocarditis, what can cause it, and how it’s diagnosed and treated.

    Quote from Mark U

    What is really rich in the article Jed links to at https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/20…den-Deadly-COVID-Failure/


    is the author saying that Sweden took a "radical course" in not following the strict lockdowns, school closings, mandates and masking that other countries took!

    You are missing the point, which is:


    The Nature report was prompted in part by Sweden’s harrowing death toll. It recently exceeded 18,000 (and the pandemic is not over) while its neighbour Norway recorded but 2,339 deaths. That’s a death rate of more than four times Norway’s and nearly twice Canada’s. Japan, which took airborne transmission seriously, reported 200 deaths per million compared with Sweden’s 1,730.


    Note that Japan did not have strict lockdowns, school closings or mandates. They had voluntary partial lockdowns, and masking. They are now at record infection rates, but the death rate is very low (~30 people per day) because vaccination rates are very high.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    The Nature report was prompted in part by Sweden’s harrowing death toll.

    Where were the deaths? Almost half were In nursing homes. It is well known that Sweden has much larger senior care facilities than other Scandinavian countries, and, like Canada, senior care was abysmal in circumstances where residents and staff were sick with Covid. Sick seniors were hardly even given oxygen. This has very little to do with schools and businesses remaining open, or masking. Other factors were at play, even the timing of people returning to Sweden's from vacation in early 2020. They were hit hard, early.


    But there is Jed, still trying the justify the extreme, prolonged, widespread, radical methods used to combat a ... viral infection. It has put our societies on the brink of potential catastrophe.

    Quote from Fm1

    And also, there is no such thing as mild myocarditis. It is the scaring of the heart tissue and can lead to tissue tear later in life!

    And this doesn't even capture the unseen damage that is done, not to the heart muscle per se but to the nerve cells that are critical to proper heart functioning. The heart even has its own little nervous system, a little brain of sorts.


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    Very glad to see that a fairly new and conservative mainstream news channel in the UK - GBNews - has very recently carried a show about the vaccine injured in the UK and the abysmal way they are treated.


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    GBNews is basically US-style talkshows and inaccuracy come to the UK!


    For example (I guess liked by Mark U):


    A surgeon made several incorrect claims about Covid-19 vaccine on GB News - Full Fact
    Ahmad Malik has misused various different sources to falsely suggest that the vaccines are dangerous.
    fullfact.org


    That is a good link. It also debunks FM1's misleading preprint study (the one with the misleading headline, if you remember):


    As its title suggests, this research did not simply compare vaccinated people with unvaccinated people. It compared vaccinated people with unvaccinated people who had previously tested positive for Covid. In other words, it sought to compare protection from vaccines with protection from prior infection.

    It said: “After adjusting for comorbidities, we found a 27.02-fold risk… for symptomatic breakthrough infection [in vaccinated people] as opposed to symptomatic reinfection [of unvaccinated but previously infected people].” The “eight times higher risk” mentioned by Mr Malik seems to be a reference to a table about hospitalisation risk, which shows vaccinated people being more likely to be admitted to hospital after testing positive for Covid than previously infected but not vaccinated people.

    The paper also says that people who had previously been infected and received one dose of the vaccine were about half as likely to catch Covid, compared with those who had been infected but not vaccinated.

    This research is observational and has some limitations, which mean it may not give an accurate picture of the effects of the vaccines, especially as they might be used in the UK now. In particular, it does not look at the effects of boosters or the Omicron variant.


    Quote from Mark U

    And this doesn't even capture the unseen damage that is done, not to the heart muscle per se but to the nerve cells that are critical to proper heart functioning. The heart even has its own little nervous system, a little brain of sorts.

    While this is very evocative, and perhaps even interesting, it is not an answer to the fact that mild myocarditis is indeed mild, and recovery from it is complete, with no scarring.


    I do agree that not-mild myocarditis, for example the deadly (see my link above) disease that is sometimes induced by COVID infection, is, well, deadly.

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