As someone whose heart was damaged by Rheumatic Fever, this looks fairly similar between what we’re seeing with Covid and Covid Vaccinations (heart inflammation)- immune response going after the body’s own proteins:
According to the CDC (as of August 18th) there are at least 742 cases of myocarditis and myopericarditis associated with vaccination, potentially upwards of ~1,300 [1].
For males age 16-17 the reporting rate of myopericarditis after 2 doses of Pfizer is 71.5 per 1 million doses administered (0.0071%) [1].
For males aged 18-24 the reporting rate after 2 doses of Pfizer or Moderna is ~37 per 1 million doses (0.0037%).
Are these numbers higher or lower than what we’d expect to see in terms of myocarditis and myopericarditis cases resulting from infection with COVID-19?
I’m genuinely curious as I haven’t been able to find a good comparison on my own but I have read that damage to heart tissue is a potential long-term complication resulting from natural infection.
Great question, I'm only aware of one paper that somewhat answers that question in a limited sub-population (college athletes). To truly answer that question we would need perform cardiac magnetic resonance imaging on a large population-representative sample. If anyone is aware of such a study please do share.
> Representing 13 universities, cardiovascular testing was performed in 1597 athletes (964 men [60.4%]). Thirty-seven (including 27 men) were diagnosed with COVID-19 myocarditis (overall 2.3%; range per program, 0%-7.6%); 9 had clinical myocarditis and 28 had subclinical myocarditis. If cardiac testing was based on cardiac symptoms alone, only 5 athletes would have been detected (detected prevalence, 0.31%). Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging for all athletes yielded a 7.4-fold increase in detection of myocarditis (clinical and subclinical). Follow-up CMR imaging performed in 27 (73.0%) demonstrated resolution of T2 elevation in all (100%) and late gadolinium enhancement in 11 (40.7%).
That remind me of why antibiotics are used to treat Strep-Throat/Scarlet Fever. The antibiotics do not make a significant impact in the time it takes for one to recover from the bacteria. If I recall correctly, I think antibiotics speed up recovery by a day or two (someone correct me if I am wrong).
However, antibiotics are used to help prevent one from getting Rheumatic Fever from the bacteria.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1905712/