Yes, but it is rare. And getting COVID is worse. It too can cause myocarditis as well as many other conditions. I've bolded below the parts that need to be emphasized. The headline can be misleading.
One rare but real risk of the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines is myocarditis...
Vaccine-associated myocarditis occurs in about one in every 140,000 vaccinees after a first dose and rises to one in 32,000 after a second dose. For reasons that aren’t clear, incidence peaks among male vaccinees age 30 or below, at one in 16,750 vaccinees.
Fortunately, most of these cases end well, Wu said, with full heart function retained or restored. Recovery is typically swift.
“It’s not a heart attack in the traditional sense,” he said. “There’s no blockage of blood vessels as found in most common heart attacks. When symptoms are mild and the inflammation hasn’t caused structural damage to the heart, we just observe these patients to make sure they recover.”
However, Wu noted, if the inflammation is severe the resulting heart injury can be quite debilitating, leading to hospitalizations; ICU admissions for critically ill patients; and deaths, albeit rarely.
“But COVID’s worse,” he added. A case of COVID-19 is about 10 times as likely to induce myocarditis as an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination, Wu said. That’s in addition to all the other trouble it causes. |
