The Logic of Risk: Vaccination and Infection
When it comes to heart problems, vaccination and infection are not mutually exclusive. The root cause behind that belief may well be imprecise use of language.
According to a new Thai study, 2.33% of adolescents vaccinated with mRNA vaccines against Covid-19 were diagnosed with damage to the heart muscle. 0.3% were diagnosed with myocarditis. This is about twice the rate found among hospitalized Covid-19 patients according to a 2021 study I picked at random, and about 33 times the rate for patients not diagnosed with Covid-19 according to the same study. And we should keep in mind that only a small percentage of those infected are ever hospitalized, many even get no symptoms.
Despite their really concerning findings, the authors of the Thai study claim that „COVID-19 mRNA vaccination has an extremely favorable outcome and should be recommended for all adolescents.“
In other words, the authors find that more than 2 in 100 vaccinated adolescents get serious heart problems following vaccination, and then move on to conclude this is an „extremely favorable outcome“!
Then, as if in order to take it all the way beyond the edge of reason, they claim the risk of serious heart problems is a 100 times higher* for those who become infected with Covid-19. Now, 100 times 2.33% is 233%, right? So out of every 100 people infected, 233 will get heart injury!
I suggest we let that sink in for a bit…
Yes, 2020 was the year the world went mad. And it still is.
But let’s wave aside the absurdity of those conclusions for a moment and focus on a key error, most certainly not appearing for the first time, the assumption that infection and vaccination are mutually exclusive; that risk of heart problems from infection somehow makes the risk from vaccination irrelevant. The logic tree looks like this:
We read the tree from bottom to top: „IF vaccination against Covid increases the probability of heart problems AND Covid increases it more, THEN it is safer to get vaccinated than not“.
On the surface this looks sound. We may question the second premise, and based on the new study we certainly should. But in the end this doesn’t really matter, for when we dig a bit deeper, we see a third premise is missing; an assumption of what the vaccine does. Let‘s add it:
The missing premise is that vaccination prevents infection. But this is false, for real life data tell us the vaccinated are in fact no less likely to get infected than the unvaccinated, and even more so.
Those two diagrams are examples of visual logical presentation, more precisely, they are so called sufficiency-based logic trees as they show us the premises sufficient to arrive at an unavoidable conclusion. This tool is very useful when analyzing a situation or figuring out underlying problems. Now, let‘s build the full scale sufficiency tree:
Reading from bottom to top, we start at the bottom right side:
IF the concept of vaccine implies protection from infection AND I want to avoid infection, THEN I get vaccinated.
Then we move to the left side:
IF Covid will reach everyone sooner or later AND vaccination does not prevent infection AND I get vaccinated THEN I will get infected, vaccinated or not.
So, despite vaccination, I get infected. Now, let‘s move a level up:
IF I get infected AND both infection and vaccination increase risk of heart problems (by X and Y% respectively), THEN infection increases my risk of heart problems by X%.
So, this is my minimal unavoidable risk. Now, let‘s move to the right side of the tree:
IF I get vaccinated, AND both infection and vaccination increase risk of heart problems (by X and Y% respectively) THEN vaccination increases my risk of heart problems by Y%.
The unavoidable conclusion then, which we see at the top of the tree:
IF the more often I’m exposed to a risky situation increases my combined risk (just like the Russian roulette) AND I’m at an X% risk from infection AND a Y% risk from vaccination, THEN by getting vaccinated my combined risk of heart problems goes from X% to X%+Y% .
The standard answer, when the risk from the vaccines is pointed out, is that Covid infection carries the same or a bigger risk. The tacit assumption is that the vaccines prevent infection. This assumption is erroneous, for real life data already show they don’t, they actually even increase it, and this failure is by now generally admitted, even by the CDC.
So, why do we still assume this? This assumption is to a large extent rooted in a lack of precision in our use of language; we are used to attributing a certain meaning to the word “vaccine”; that a vaccine prevents infection, but those in question here do not.
This lack of precision lies behind the false belief that infection and vaccination are mutually exclusive. It is, in the lingo of visual logical analysis, the critical root cause.
You can read more about logic trees in my book From Symptoms to Causes - Applying the Logical Thinking Process to an Everyday Problem. Those tools were originally developed for solving complex and deep rooted business problems, but I have found them no less useful for decision making in daily life, and for identifying logical errors in general.
After 30 months at, or even beyond the edge of reason, strict and precise logical analysis is invaluable, both for our own thinking and no less as a tool to help us think through complex matters with other people, perhaps even with someone who doesn’t agree with us.
The discrepancy between study findings and authors’ synthesis seems to be getting wider and wider. Another recent example is a new Icelandic study that found the vaccinated to be 42% more likely to become reinfected with Covid than the unvaccinated. This is a large increase, but in their synthesis the authors describe the probability for the vaccinated as “slightly higher”. This, as well as the glaring discrepancy in the Thai study, is most probably not caused by an inability to think logically. It is more likely that somewhere in the tree of causality we might find censorship or self-censorship. The Icelandic study has made waves already, and one can only wonder if the authors are terrified of this? Terrified of never getting published again? Terrified of being branded “anti-vaxxers”? At least, this morning (August 18th) I saw an interview with them on page two in the main Icelandic newspaper where they categorically downplay, in fact deny, their own results.
Those are just two recent examples. In fact we’ve seen this again and again, and the problem is certainly not new. What is behind it? It is important to avoid jumping to conclusions. We must focus on the system as a whole instead of isolated incidents or blaming individuals. Instead we must ask if there is a deep-seated systemic root cause and what it may be? Chances are that rigorous logical analysis might help us identify it.
* Applying the ratio provided by the authors for myocarditis to all heart damage.
The only way they can get these studies published is if they say positive things about the vaccines. It’s great that they realise that people are smart enough to decipher the information and make their own decisions. At least we are getting these sorts of papers published. If they said negative things about the vaccines they would never be published. Sadly, that’s life in the time of COVID.
Thank you for this analysis. The notion of additive effects becomes clear yes, but only once people are aware this is not a simple 'either/or' decision. Yet, we have been given so much false information about vax effectiveness intended to generate simplistically automated decisions.