While coercing health care workers for experimental vaccines would not be good, it would not be surprising if health care workers in contact with COVID-19 patients volunteered at significant rates because they are at higher risk of COVID-19 to begin with. That would be because some of them may weigh the risks of the experimental vaccine with the risks of COVID-19 and conclude that the risks of the experimental vaccine are the lower risks for them.
Anyone choosing to volunteer for whatever reason is fine. Forcing people to be guinea pigs is where I draw the line.
Volunteers are needed to test this the ârightâ way.
I donât think any one should get the vaccine in November unless they voluntarily enroll in a vaccine trial. We shouldnât just skip Phase 3.
@Creekland i saw this and thought of you
Penn State doctor says 30-35% of Big Ten athletes positive for COVID-19 had myocarditis symptoms
I canât reference what I was talking about because i know people who are involved in doing research. That is what Iâve been told. That there are and will be ongoing studies
Thatâs the same article we we talking about earlier today. 
Iâm glad word is getting out again for those who may have missed it the first time.
Iâm glad there will be studies, but I wish more effort were being put into it. Until then I suppose just need to glean from the Europeans - which I donât mind TBH, but I wish it were more of a worldwide effort comparing notes. The US seems rather late to the game. I guess that happens when there isnât profit to be made and one has for-profit health care.
At my healthcare facility, if you choose not to take the flu shot each year, you must wear a mask during flu season. I wonder if since everyone is already wearing a mask if that will cause more people to opt out of the flu shot.
Same where my guy is, but at least the flu shot is known to be safe. Effectiveness varies, but safety is known. He hasnât talked about anyone debating whether or not to get that one. Itâs just a given.
Hereâs the actual video of the Penn State doctor saying 30-35% of athletes who test positive have heart inflammation.
. The Washington Post and other news organizations have a follow up:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/09/03/big-ten-coronavirus-myocarditis/
âŠThe comment by Wayne Sebastianelli, the schoolâs director of athletic medicine, came Monday as he spoke to a local school board about high school preparations and precautions. According to a Penn State Health spokesman, Sebastianelli was speaking about âinitial preliminary data that had been verbally shared by a colleague on a forthcoming studyâ and was not aware that it had been published, showing a rate of close to 15 percent among athletes, most of whom had experienced mild or no symptoms. Neither Sebastianelli nor Penn State conducted that study and he apologized for the confusion.
âWhen we looked at our covid-positive athletes, whether they were symptomatic or not, 30 to roughly 35 percent of their heart muscles [are] inflamed,â Sebastianelli said Monday. âAnd we really just donât know what to do with it right now. Itâs still very early in the infection. .ââŠ
So my followup question relating to my kid:
She has had an x ray and a CT of her lungs and her heart was included in the scans. Would the heart inflammation show up on that or is it specifically needing a MRI scan? We have been thinking that her heart was good since nothing showed up on the CT scan.
15% is one in seven. If one in seven elite college athletes who tested positive for covid (most of whom had no or almost no symptoms) developed inflamed hearts, then also weâd expect one in seven regular college students, many of whom will be asymptomatic and undiagnosed, also to develop inflamed hearts.
The problem here is that if you have an inflamed heart, sometimes with exertion your heart stops beating and you drop dead. Dropping dead can be the first symptom. College athletes may be having regular testing for covid, and monitoring if they test positive, but other college students are not.
Itâs amazing to me that anyone with that knowledge is still pushing to play sports. I wonder what lawsuits could come of it if something bad happened - esp since itâs being shared prior to games, etc.
@âSnowball Cityâ
Has your D had a blood test to check for troponins? An elevated level indicated heart muscle damage. D1 reported seeing elevated troponin levels in a fairly large number of her Covid patients in the ER. (Including one who had the highest troponin levels she has ever seen in her career. He ended up on the heart transplant list. He was youngâearly 30s and a marathon runner.)
Unless her heart was specifically imaged, inflammation may not show up on a chest x-ray. She probably needs a EKG and echocardiogram to get definitive results. A heart MRI would work as well.
@WayOutWestMom Those are good questions that I donât know. I will see if she knows. She wasnât seen in person ever - I am trying to remember if she had any blood draws. I know she had the antibodies test which came back positive. I donât know if anything else was looked at. Thanks for the advice.
What do we know about the Nov. 1st vaccine? What company? Trial results? Side effects?
Iâm not confident about it for sure.
Not great news, but good that our understanding is getting better.
CDC told states to prepare to distribute a vaccine in late Oct/early Nov. The document the CDC sent to the states referenced Vaccine A and Vaccine B which are believed to be the Pfizer and Moderna products, which are the farthest along in development. They are both just over half enrolled in their Phase III trials (30,000 target subjects). The AZ/Oxford Phase III trial just started in the US two or so weeks ago.
There is no data from any of those Phase III trials available yet.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/health/covid-19-vaccine-cdc-plans.html
The Russian vaccine has apparently stoked an immune response, including T cells. It uses an adenovirus as a Trojan Horse. People did have side effects like headache and fever. I wonder if this vaccine will increase pressure here in the US.
Thanks for linking that article. It definitely gives me shudders. Hopefully itâs not as bad in survivors.
Most of these things I send to my Covid lad. This one Iâm not sending to him - donât care to frighten him over âmight beâs.â I sent it on to med school boy though.
@WayOutWestMom and othersL
Would the troponins be in her blood currently, given that her covid was in mid March? Her blood draw for antibodies was in July, 5 months after she got sick.
edited to add
I think Creeklandâs kid is much sicker than mine. Mine is able to be on her feet all day and lift heavy things, even if her lungs are painful. But she does take a nap and sleeps during her lunch hour in an out of the way spot.