(CMR) Experts say the risks of getting COVID-19 significantly outweigh the risks of getting vaccinated despite findings by a recent study that COVID vaccines from companies like Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca have been linked to rare occurrences of heart, brain, and blood disorders.
Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, COVID-19 has claimed the lives of nearly seven million people worldwide, with over one million being Americans. Currently, it is estimated that 71% of the global population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Global COVID Vaccine Safety Project, a research arm of the World Health Organization, conducted the study using data from nearly 100 million people across eight countries.
The report examined the adverse effects of the Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca vaccines and found that the vaccines are linked to slight increases in neurological, blood, and heart-related conditions like myocarditis, pericarditis, and Guillan-Barre syndrome.
Out of the more than 99 million people studied, researchers observed only 190 cases of Guillan-Barre Syndrome in people who took the vaccine. However, researchers stressed the association between the vaccines and adverse side effects does not prove the vaccine was the root cause of the illness.
According to a New 4Jax report, Dr. Jonathan Kantor, who is an adjunct scholar at the Penn Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, reviewed the study and believes the vaccines’ benefits still outweigh the risks.
“I think what this study confirmed is pretty much what other smaller studies have said in the past. And that’s the following. Number one, vaccines have risks, I think only a fool would say vaccines don’t have risk,” Kantor said.
Kantor said the new research shouldn’t erode anyone’s trust in the vaccine but instead prompt them to think about their medical condition and their need for protection.
“There’s no such thing as a drug that has an effect without a side effect, so everything has potential risk. The problem is, what is the risk of the thing that you are trying to prevent?” Kantor said.
“And that’s where it comes into play. So, for example, for parents, right, if you’ve got a healthy three-year-old who’s had COVID four times already, well, then I’d say, ‘I don’t know what the benefit is that you’re going to get from getting that vaccine today.’,” he explained,
Kantor said the best scenario depends on the person.
“If you tell me that you’ve got an 84-year-old in a nursing home that somehow came out of a time machine and is now entering the world in 2020 and has never had a COVID vaccine. Well, for that person, I’d say, we really have to think about whether COVID vaccine makes sense for them,” he said.
According to Forbes, some of the findings of the study include:
-Rare cases of myocarditis—inflammation of the heart—were identified in the first, second and third doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines: The highest rate was seen after the second Moderna dose (6.1 times the expected rate of cases), according to the study published in the journal Vaccine.
-Another heart condition called pericarditis had a 6.9-fold increased risk in those who took a third dose of AstraZeneca’s viral-vector vaccine, while a first and fourth dose of Moderna’s vaccine had a 1.7-fold and 2.6-fold increased risk, respectively.
-There was a 2.5-times greater risk of developing the rare autoimmune disorder Guillain-Barre syndrome among those who took AstraZeneca’s vaccine compared to the rate researchers expected, and a 3.2-times greater risk of getting blood clots among the same population.
-There was a 3.8-times greater risk of developing the neurological disorder acute disseminated encephalomyelitis after the Moderna vaccine was administered, and a 2.2-fold increased risk after AstraZeneca’s vaccine, according to the study.
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