Article content
The hard part about vaccines is that you have to convince people to get them when they are healthy. Reports of side effects shake people’s confidence. That’s why many parents are worried about vaccinating their children after hearing about a link between the Pfizer vaccine and myocarditis in young men. What most news reports failed to mention, though, is how rare and mild these cases actually were.
Myocarditis literally means inflammation of the heart muscle. It is not a common condition, nor is it rare. In any given year, there are four to six cases per 100,000 people. It can be caused by many different things, but it is often due to a viral infection that causes swelling and inflammation of the heart. Most cases resolve and heart function often returns to normal. A small number of people are left with long-term cardiac dysfunction.