As with any drug, people must do a cost-benefit analysis, weighing the risk of the disease against the risk from the drug. A new study upped the ante on the COVID-19 vaccine for adolescents.

Dr. Panda reported about a new study on his substack, which suggests that heart damage from the vaccine is very real and potentially permanent in young people. He described it as very worrying in that it found “permanent heart damage in a huge percentage (58%) of young people that had vaccine-induced myocarditis.”

The study, Cardiovascular Assessment up to One Year After COVID-19 Vaccine–Associated Myocarditis, “found 58% of young adolescents diagnosed with COVID-19 vaccine–associated myocarditis had some scarring of the heart muscle that is still visible on CMR imaging one year after the initial diagnosis  —  in other words, 58% had permanent heart damage,” Dr. Panda writes.

In this photo, you can see the arrows point to scarring, which is permanent.

“Once heart muscle cells are damaged by myocarditis, they are replaced by scar tissue. Scar tissue is not as elastic or contractile as healthy heart muscle, so it cannot pump blood as efficiently. This can lead to a number of heart problems, including heart failure, arrhythmias, and sudden cardiac death,” Dr. Panda explained.

“The participants in the study were 40 adolescent patients, mostly male, with a mean age of 15.

“78% of patients were asymptomatic — meaning without the study, the patients or the parents would have no reason to believe they were suffering from heart damage.”

The authors suggest the damage is permanent. They offer several other studies also showing adnormal cardiac MRI findings that have not resolved:

50% of young men who got myocarditis after the vaccine have permanent heart damage is false. Most vaccine-associated myocarditis events have been mild and self-limiting. The lifetime risk of morbidity and mortality following SARS-CoV-2 infection is substantial.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0 https://bmjmedicine.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000373 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9467278/#

However, the studies didn’t look at the longitudinal effects, and the authors in the BMJ article said there should be longitudinal studies, including examination of scarring on MRIs.

The nature article did not mention scarring or scans a year after the event.

In the BMJ article, the authors wrote: Future studies of patients who developed myocarditis after SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination should aim for an extended follow-up period of at least one year. Also, longitudinal evaluation of changes in paraclinical parameters, such as measurement of systolic and diastolic cardiac dysfunction, scarring on cardiac MRI, assessment of heart arrhythmia, and biological markers will be valuable for determining the natural history of myocarditis after vaccination with mRNA vaccines.

The NCBI didn’t look at scarring a year after the event.

Pfizer admits it is a given that the vaccine comes with an increased risk of myocarditis.