Pfizer Gets Teen Vaccine Approval.

Here's Why Experts Are Comfortable With Myocarditis Numbers
— The signal is real, but the condition is mild, and the benefits outweigh any risks
by Kristina Fiore, Director of Enterprise & Investigative Reporting, MedPage Today | June 24, 2021

The CDC's vaccine advisors concluded on Wednesday that while the risk of myocarditis is real for young people following an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine -- particularly after the second dose -- the benefits far outweigh the risks.

The U.S. isn't the only country to make that call. Not long after Israel announced that 275 myocarditis cases among 5 million vaccinated people were likely tied to Pfizer's shot (mostly in men ages 16 to 30, and especially after the second dose), the country approved vaccinating kids 12 and up.

Here's why experts are reassured by the numbers so far, particularly when it comes to children.

www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/93265

Not suffering potentially severe and/or long-term effects from catching the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Children with long covid
New Sci. 2021 Feb 27; 249(3323): 10–11.
Published online 2021 Mar 3. doi: 10.1016/S0262-4079(21)00303-1

NIH effort seeks to understand MIS-C, range of SARS-CoV-2 effects on children
NIH News Release | March 2, 2021

Brain Vein Clots Less Likely With Vaccine Than With Severe COVID
Study provides a better basis for weighing the relative risks
by Crystal Phend, Contributing Editor, MedPage Today | June 8, 2021

Bell's Palsy More Likely After COVID Infection Than After Vaccine
Two studies evaluate facial nerve palsy after vaccination
by Judy George, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today June 24, 2021

COVID-19 may cause loss of brain tissue; Delta variant fuels steep infection rise in England
Nancy Lapid, Reuters | June 18, 2021

Will kids have long-term effects from the COVID-19 vaccine?
Kim Schive, MIT Medicine | June 8, 2021

The most important point in regards to COVID-19 infections increasing again thanks to the delta variant isn't that it isn't more fatal but that it's more infectious. This is alarming because not only do more patients mean more deaths; but, critically, that it's continuing to give this virus the opportunity to mutate into something far more deadly. Just like we can't get ahead of the flu and it kills tens to hundreds of thousands in any given year, this virus will keep adapting. At some point, we'll get a strain that has a CFR more comparable to SARS-CoV-1. We've already lost over 600,000 Americans in the past year and a half, which is about how many we lose to heart disease in any given year - is that not serious enough to want to stop this pandemic cold by reaching herd immunity?

The references I cited had weren't just "potential", they show hard, significant data (though the loss of brain tissue is still in pre-print and not yet peer-reviewed, as stated upfront in the article and why I cited the AP news article, not the journal article).

Bell's Palsy: www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccine/93274

Tamaki and co-authors searched a large database of records from 41 healthcare organizations from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2020, to determine the rates of Bell's palsy in patients with a COVID-19 diagnosis. Of 348,088 people with COVID-19, 284 had a Bell's palsy diagnosis within 8 weeks of COVID diagnosis, including 153 people with new-onset Bell's palsy.

"The authors translate this to an 8-week incidence of 82 per 100,000 patients with COVID-19," Chang said. "However, if using a crude analysis and assuming a pre-pandemic rate of 40 per 100,000 person-years and no seasonality, Bell's palsy would be expected to naturally occur in only 21 of 348,088 patients during an 8-week period."

As of Feb. 13, 2021, data from 629,523 vaccinated individuals were available, showing 21 cases of Bell's palsy in vaccinated individuals. "This finding is comparable to the 20.3 adjusted expected events among the unvaccinated comparators, thus indicating no increased risk," Chang noted.

Brain Vein Clots: www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccine/92988

Severe COVID-19 has led to a higher rate of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) than COVID-19 vaccination, a study affirmed.

The Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine had a CVST rate of 0.9 per million (99% CI 0.2-2.3 per million) as of April 13, 2021, when the CDC reported six cases out of 6.85 million vaccinated people.

The similar adenovirus-based AstraZeneca vaccine had a rate of 3.6 per million (99% CI 2.7-4.8 per million) by that time in data from the U.K. where it is approved for use, with 77 cases out of 21.2 million vaccinated, Behnood Bikdeli, MD, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

By comparison, background rate in the general U.S. population was 2.4 per million (99% CI 2.1-2.6 per million) based on the Nationwide Inpatient Sample for the months of March and April in 2018, the most recent year on record.

Notably, hospitalized COVID-19 patients had CVST at a rate of 207.1 per million (99% CI 23.3-757.7 per million), with three cases out of 14,483 patients in the Society of Vascular Interventional Neurology's COVID-19 registry.

Food for thought: opinion article
CDC's All-or-Nothing Approach to Teen COVID Vaccination Is All Wrong
— The agency should revisit its latest guidance to maximize benefits and minimize risks
by Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH, Ramin Farzaneh-Far, MD, Wes Pegden, PhD, Venk Murthy, MD, PhD, Amy Beck, MD, MPH June 29, 2021

Last week, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) met to discuss the safety signal of myocarditis among young people who receive mRNA vaccination against COVID-19. This dialogue has been months in the making. Ultimately, the panel continued to endorse a two-dose mRNA strategy for all ages. We are concerned with this recommendation and offer five alternative considerations. But first, let's review how we got to this moment in order to make sense of vaccine-induced myocarditis.

It's National Geographic, but contains tons of links to quality information and provides a good summary and examples of kids who are suffering the symptoms. Yes, it's a minority of patients, but why take the risk that this could be your child, when the effects of the vaccine are even less of a risk? Plus, the fewer vectors for disease transmission, they better for us all.

My business partner's dad died this week of COVID. Cases are increasing in the United States and other countries. If we don't stop this, it is inevitable that there will be a mutation that not only escapes the protection afforded by these vaccines, but is more deadly and transmissable. If we are to avoid another massive wave of deaths and harm to our economy, people need to get vaccinated, and wear masks and continue to social distance in the meantime until they and the area in which they reside reach herd immunity.

Long COVID afflicts kids too. Here's what we know so far.
Many children can also experience lingering symptoms after getting COVID-19. But scientists are struggling for answers, so parents are banding together to find treatments and warn others of the risks.
By Meryl Davids Landau, National Geographic | June 30, 2021

As an 11-year-old in a pre-COVID-19 world, Wednesday Lynch loved being part of a competitive cheer team. She’d gotten good at no-hands cartwheels and back tucks. Wednesday also adored hanging out with friends and riding her bicycle around her Dallas, North Carolina, neighborhood.

All that changed last September, when Wednesday was exposed to COVID-19 while attending virtual school with other socially distanced students at her gym. “A teen in the room didn’t know she had it at the time,” her mom Melissa recalls. Wednesday tested positive soon after.

She experienced many classic COVID-19 symptoms: exhaustion, low oxygen levels, and a loss of smell. Melissa Lynch cared for her daughter at home and after a few weeks the doctor said she could resume her regular activities.

Yet 10 months later she still hasn’t been able to. Every few weeks Wednesday has what her mother calls a wave of illness—three days to a week where she’s so tired she can barely sit up, her heart races, her head pounds, she sometimes spikes a fever, and, in the most recent wave, she had a seizure. Melissa has carted her daughter from doctor to doctor, some of whom were less than helpful; after one physician thought the virus might have damaged Wednesday’s heart, a cardiologist insisted there was nothing wrong.

If doctors are stumped by post-COVID-19 syndrome in adults, it’s becoming increasingly clear that this is even more true when it comes to children.