WSJ - Encouraging Signs re: COVID and Myocarditis
Semi-OT, I suppose, but there is an article in today's WSJ about a study of professional athletes that had COVID and heart complications. The signs are encouraging. In the early days of COVID there was reason to be concerned about inflammation in and around the heart due to COVID, largely because the data available was coming from patients that had been hospitalized with COVID. Newer data obtained from professional athletes indicate that mild cases of COVID may present minimal increased risk of myocarditis or pericarditis.
The findings suggest that long-term heart complications in non-severe Covid cases are unlikely—and that sports leagues are still likely to continue with cardiac screenings during the pandemic.
Good news for both athletes and (probably) non-athletes that have mild cases of COVID. I still think the B1G made the reasonable decision to require additional time for athletes to undergo cardiac tests before returning to action (sounds like pro leagues have similar protocols), but this is an encouraging sign nonetheless.
Link (paywalled/WSJ): https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-heart-complications-myocarditis-exercise-study-sports-11614871544?st=bxefjeglme8w057&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
COVID sucks but this is encouraging news
No debating that point.
But good news about Covid most certainly does not suck. Thank you OP - that's encouraging.
get outta here with your reasonable, measured takes
And with the quality OP...
Let's see how long that reasonable, measured approach survives throughout the threads below.
“The messages of the study are that safe return to sport is possible on an organizational level if systematic and careful screening is performed,” said Dr. Engel, who has worked with the NBA on cardiac screenings for years.
Some places do "systematic and careful" better than others but the B1G is generally going to be on the better side. Other conferences and leagues... who knows.
*Former Wild goaltender Alex Stalock just came back from his bout with myocarditis stemming from Covid.
(*he was just claimed off waivers by Edmonton.)
Minnesota's first-round draft pick Marco Rossi, however, has not been so lucky. He's been on the shelf in Austria with this same "upper body injury" ever since the WJCs.
Mo Bamba has also been out indefinitely.
The findings suggest that long-term heart complications in non-severe Covid cases are unlikely
This is what pretty much everyone in the medical community has been saying. There was a crazy game of telephone going on last summer with the news media going alarmist based on skimpy evidence.
Fear sells newspapers. And it draws eyeballs to websites and television. Unfortunately it can prohibit significant discussions about important topics.
The problem with that is the wrong information then gets coded into the DNA of the country. It becomes anathema to present reasoned opposition. For example, there are homeopathic treatments that are curing covid (and other viruses for that matter) in a matter of days. My daughter went from a mild sore throat Friday morning to full-blown covid symptoms, including complete loss of taste/smell, in a matter of hours. She started treatment on Saturday and was much better Sunday and felt completely healthy on Monday. By Tuesday she was completely without symptoms but still required to quarantine until next Monday. I've read research from epidemiologists who are treating patients who's next step is a respirator and sending them home 2 days later.
These treatments are both preventative and curative.
It would be nice to have a place where these discussions could happen and current best practices constantly reviewed and updated/improved.
You know what would be nice? If people didn't draw crazy conclusions from anecdotal evidence.
Maybe if people thought critically and didn't just believe the first thing they read or the thing that they had a personal experience with or the thing that confirms their biases, then maybe those discussions could happen.
The anecdotal evidence confirms the myriad of studies that I've read, you know, the research that goes against the fallacies now encoded in our countries' DNA. But keep following the herd like a mindless sheep while I continue to protect the health of me and mine.
The same can be said of stupidity.
This. And frankly we had a majority of this board going chicken little on every physician (me included) who shared this sentiment last summer. One reason I've stayed off mgoblog. The trust in the medical community has never been worse unfortunately.
Since when though? Myocarditis was a big concern last summer (and earlier) when there wasn’t much data because of how new covid was. Maybe I’ve just missed it, but I haven’t heard it brought up as a super pressing concern lately.
Is your point that we should have ignored what little evidence existed at the time because it painted a bleaker picture than what we know now? That’s the whole point of science - the more we learn the better we understand what’s actually going on, and can adjust accordingly.
The argument - that people should just ignore what little evidence is available at a given time because it might ultimately turn out to be wrong - is kinda silly, no?
Strawman: “ignore “ is not the same thing as ridiculously overreact, fearfully neg bomb anybody that says anything positive, and that went on for months here.
Xm last week (about covid/political posts): ‘stop, stop, there’s no place for that here’
Xm this week (responding to a political post): you people are sheep, afraid little sheep.
How do you reconcile being the biggest fucking hypocrite on this board?
I feel like he reconciles by being the best fucking poster on this board.
His post was not about politics. A big problem round here is that people have made COVID political, and if you disagree with the majority opinion here, you are accused of being political and violating rules.
Not speaking of moderation and bans here largely deciding that one political "side" is fine to espouse, while the other "side" is an infraction of the rules. I am glad that a respected poster has spoken their mind.
Cool, now we know how you justify his hypocrisy. Hoping to hear from the horse’s mouth now
Some might say that trying to suppress someone else's views while putting forth your own might just be a heavy dose of hypocrisy as well.
Reading comprehension isn’t exactly your strong suit, eh? I never once said that he can’t/shouldn’t express his opinion. He did and does that - over and over - and yet still thinks it’s ok for him to tell others not to do the same. My complaint is the hypocrisy inherent in that double standard - he, and you and everyone else can go ahead and say what they feel. Just don’t hold yourself to a different standard as anyone else
hear! hear!
A picture is worth 1000 words…
i think you see dead people. there wasn't the slightest whisper of politics in my post, and then you made another strawman in this one. i feel sorry for that self-victimization, seriously. it has to be a very tough cross to bear.
I think you know exactly what you’re doing - the same shit we argued about last week. “Politics are and should be avoided at all costs on this board . . . Except when i have something to say about them” seems to be your motto.
And while you 100% are a hypocrite, you’re not stupid, so pretending your statements that ‘fear sells’ and bitching about ‘ridiculous overreactions’ to covid are not political - well, it rings a little hollow.
Im not, and don’t pretend to be a victim - I will call out bullshit and hypocrisy here and elsewhere though. You can feel free to keep crying about it.
first, you are the only one doing the 'crying', which is including wild accusations and foul language. that seems like crying to a simple person like me. maybe i'm not the only one who thinks that given the negs you've accumulated to this point. no politics were intended, others seem to agree, maybe you could reassess or is your decision final and your omniscience not to be questioned?
second, while i agree that being a hypocrite is bad (and we all suffer from it to some degree or another), i would love to have a discussion about what world view you have that makes being a hypocrite wrong or bad. i know this isn't the time or place so we won't get to kick this question around, but i will speculate that you are a moral relativist and it is very interesting when a moral relativist takes a hard stance on any moral position. again though, even if i'm right, it'll have to wait for another place/time/forum.
go blue. beat state.
The news of late on COVID (long-term effects, vaccine availability, vaccine efficacy against non-variants and variants, how long immunity lasts, etc) is generally more good than bad.
And that is good.
I am alarmed at how a significant chunk of people always focus on the bad versus the good. We, as a society, seem more inclined to jump at shadows now than we were 10-20 years ago. We, as a society, are more fearful now than we were 10-20 years ago. I'm not sure why, but I think that is true.
I don't think it's true that people are more likely to become fearful from any given piece of information. Our lizard brains haven't devolved. Technology has just made it possible to 1) find out really quickly what effectively puts people in fight or flight and then 2) bombard them with that information from every angle.
Also, I just found out about the Fairness Doctrine that was repealed in 1987. Not a coincidence that divisiveness and fear mongering has spread like wildfire since then. Seems like a really logical rule to balance the need for an independent of press while also protecting from the exploitation of our lizard brains.
Not necessarily you Nittany, but I tend to think there is a great deal of binary thinking and tge idea that people are either pessimistic or optimistic follows that pattern. I assume that I would fit in your pessimistic category. I would wholeheartedly agree that I was pessimistic in the sense that I thought Covid would be a big health problem, but I think I was fairly optimistic in my belief that we had the know how to solve that problem. My biggest frustration continues to be that I think we had more significant health and economic ramifications than were necessary because people on both sides were dug in. I feel like people who don’t believe that we can and should do better are the real pessimists.
Oh, there absolutely is a rise in "binary thinking" in the World right now. In that I fully agree.
There has been a distinct lack of nuance in the mainstream CoronaVirus discussion. I had come to the opinion of "bad but not even close to a existential threat to mankind" by early March --- but there are still way too many people who think "not bad at all!" or "existential threat to mankind!" It's neither. And it's been clear for a year that it's neither.
You & I agree in one aspect --- from a vaccine POV, I ALWAYS was optimistic that "we had the know how to solve that problem."
The reporting wasn't great but I also remember there being less delineation about the outcome between the severity of cases as well as a clear definition of what is a non-severe vs. severe case. There are a number of athletes who got what turned out to be reasonably severe cases of COVID who haven't quite recovered and may have long-term issues with myocarditis and the rest. At the time we didn't know, and while people in the medical profession would say it's unlikely there wasn't a wealth of knowledge or studies about the disease with athletes and younger people. Now they've been able to do some longer studies and it's returned encouraging numbers. But while the media may have overreacted with some skimpy evidence, the people who countered with "there's nothing to see here, you're all overreacting" were basing that on similarly skimpy evidence and educated guesses. Those are fine and all but considering thousands of people were dying each day from COVID the concerns were founded.
The point for me is more if there is no evidence either way why are we always assuming the worst? And why is anyone who refuses to accept the worst case scenario based on nothing an evil asshole who's trying to kill everyone?
See the current discussion on what happens post vaccination for a more current manifestation of this problem.
Your first question is a great question - ultimately, it is a philosophical question.
Another philosophical question I've heard posited before is this --- "if you could live in any era in history, when would you choose to live and why?"
To me, the answer is obvious. RIGHT NOW, THIS ONE. I fundamentally believe that, on the whole, this era is better than any era in the past, and I believe that our future is bright.
The world certainly isn't perfect. But I fundamentally believe that, on the whole, the human race HAS made progress and WILL continue to do so.
I think the % of folks who would disagree with me, however, has been growing over the last 10-20 years, and I think that % is higher than it's ever been.
I don't understand those folks' pessimism. But it does exist. It puzzles me.
I don't think people are assuming the worse as much as saying that people who claim "it's probably nothing" don't bear the risk of being wrong. Caution, in most cases, doesn't cost you nearly as much as being wrong, and so after hearing repeatedly that "it's not worse than the flu" and "it only affects really old people and those with co-morbidities" and everything else, people rightfully got spooked. I don't think people who made those statements are evil assholes, but I swear if you go through those threads even here you kept seeing the same people punt the goalposts down the line in terms of expected number of deaths, infection rates, etc. whenever their "it's not going to be as bad as X" proclamations were shown to be wrong. I'll admit I was wrong and assumed more lingering effects would be here for people who had myocarditis, and I'm extremely happy to be wrong on that front. But I've not seen many people who were wrong along the way about the severity have similar mea culpas.
Similarly, you comment about the current discussion about post vaccinations falls into the same pattern. I think the country needs to have a real discussion about how it opens up as more people get vaccinated, but oftentimes this discussion only looks at the perspective from the speaker, the "I'm safe, so why should I still be inconvenienced" approach. Most of the real debate I've seen is about limiting mass gatherings somewhat and pushing for continued mask usage when possible as the rollout continues. I do think we've been slow to recognize who needs vaccines quickest (for example, many states haven't prioritized teachers, food/retail service workers, etc.). I'm not going to get into some long-winded discussion here, but only point out that there are going to be millions of people who don't have the vaccine for any number of reasons (age, health conditions, allergies, etc.) and we should be mindful of that, and that pulling a Texas YOLO approach (and then seemingly setting up excuses via some dog-whistling comments the governor said recently) isn't necessarily going to work or is the best plan.
You are one of my favorite "voices of reason" on the entire MGoBoard, bronxblue.
Thank you for the clarity you once again brought to a thread that had somewhat devolved into the same old same old.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with caution when dealing with a dangerous and potentially devastating unknown, as this novel virus largely still is.
My dear departed Mom (she doubled as a mom and a registered nurse) often preached "an ounce of prevention is waaayy more than a pound of cure". I think she was on to something there.
Caution doesn't cost you as much as being wrong? What caution is warranted given the following?
The coronavirus is technically a cold virus. COVID-19 is the eleventh coronavirus found in humans. We know a lot about the coronavirus family. According to the WHO, 50% of the COVID-19 deaths last spring were people over 80 and 50% had 3 or more co-morbidities. 5-year old children are 9 times more likely to die from the seasonal flu than from COVID-19 according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins. As stated by the CDC, mask recommendations are based on mannequins and puff tests while data based on actual viral transmission and humans is inconclusive. No one with the recommended level of vitamin D has died of COVID-19. 4 of 5 people that get the virus and recover had insufficient levels of vitamin D before treatment.
inspiring. can you please cite your sources with links, etc. that type of summary should be front page news.
Since I'm on my phone I don't know if this chart will properly link when I paste it:
...but there has been and somewhat still is plenty of reason for caution.
600,000+ excess deaths in this country over the last 12 months isn't just a number---it's 600,000 individual human beings who have passed, so many of them isolated from family, alone & hooked up to tubes, etc., and unable to find comfort while taking their final breaths. And their families and loved ones who have suffered those individual losses and the consequences of those losses.
(edit: that link attempt failed, let's try this one):
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count
Success-a working link!
Yes vitamin D does help. But was the data that seems to confirm vitamin D's place in anti-covid weaponry out there a year ago? Were other methods of prevention, of treatment, of therapy, etc. available then?
Let's get the vaccine fully available and administered, not just in our nation but everywhere. As we proceed towards that goal we can gradually return to normal. Until then please mask up and socially distance. The LIVES you save may be your own, your lived ones, your neighbors,...
Good news. Fingers crossed.
It is clear that most commenters (here) have either not actually read the study this article is based upon or have no understanding of its implications. The risks and benefits of the group in this study go in every direction-as they do for about everyone else. Just go to the study...go to the "limitations" and then on to the "conclusions"...and be advised that it states straight out that the conclusions are inconclusive. The subjects in this study are an elite, exclusive group-in every way. Some of the learnings here apply to the general population-many do not. And as has been everything about this novel coronavirus, the learnings remain an on-going process. Stay informed as best you can because the learnings will continue. I get my second shot a week from tomorrow. That's all.
That's encouraging about the long-term implications for mild cases. I do think as a general course the conference should keep up the heart monitoring for athletes because it's a good practice and might identify other possible issues early on.
Kind of a cool moment in pro sports here. Study came about through cooperation of MLB, MLS, NBA, NFL, NHL, and the WNBA. I think I got all of them.
Our knowledge level right now about "long Covid-19" (e.g., persistent symptoms of fatigue, dyspnea etc. without easily identifiable "organ injuries/dysfunction") is similar to our knowledge of myocarditis in Spring 2020.
It exists but the frequency is unclear and time will bring a lot more clarity.