There are rumors that going through COVID-19 would be a way to avoid further problems. However, experts say that it is far from a good option, especially in terms of the long-term effects that the disease can produce.
Researcher Cristian Apetrei, a professor of infectious diseases and microbiology at the University of Pittsburgh, explains in a Facebook post why immunization by infection is not as good as vaccination.
Natural immunization produces responses of varying intensity, depending on the intensity of the disease or the state of the immune system, explains the specialist. On the other hand, vaccines are designed to produce the best immune response with the least side effects.
Danger of long-term effects of infection
An example of this is viral hepatitis B: “Insufficient immune response to disease leads to chronicity; The hyper immune response to the disease is also harmful. Immunization with subunit vaccine has solved all these problems “, says Cristian Apetrei, according to adevarul.ro.
About 5.5 million people have died from the global coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic, according to Our World in Data. But at the same time, more than 320 million people have survived the infection. A meta-analysis of specialists at Hershey Medical Center in Pennsylvania, USA, performed on more than 250,000 COVID-19 survivors, found that 54% of them experienced at least one sequelae from infection.
The most common conditions reported include lung imaging abnormalities (62.2%), difficulty concentrating (23.8%), generalized anxiety (29.6%), general functional impairment (44.0%), fatigue / weakness ( 37.5%).
Professor Cristian Apetrei points out that given that “approximately 5% of those infected may have sequelae and up to 80% of those who have been in intensive care have sequelae”, vaccination is a much safer and risk-free option.
The risk of myocarditis is much higher
Perhaps the most common point of conflict regarding COVID-19 vaccines is the risk of myocarditis following immunization, especially among young people. Before the pandemic, the incidence of myocarditis was between one and 10 cases per 100,000 people per year. Rates were highest in men between the ages of 18 and 30. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the risk of myocarditis after COVID-19 infection is much higher, at 146 cases per 100,000.
The risk is higher for men, older adults (over 50) and children under 16. At the same time, a study conducted in Israel shows that the risk of myocarditis after the COVID-19 vaccine is 2.13 cases per 100,000 vaccinated people, which is within the range usually observed in the general population.
The results of this study are confirmed by others in the United States and Israel, which place the overall incidence of post-vaccine myocarditis between 0.3 and 5 cases per 100,000 people, explain two American cardiology professors, Glen Pyle and Jennifer Huang, in a published article in The Conversation.
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