Beware of this study please

POTS incidence in vaccinated

… study is misleading as far as I can tell. I have reached out to the authors and reviewers to understand where am I at fault. While waiting on their explanation I want to share with you the issue with this study.

For your reference here is the study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-022-00177-8#Sec12

My talks in the interim:

Here is my analysis of the data for the incidence and odds of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS):

Vaccinated cohort: before the vaccination: 0.68% after the vaccination: 0.91% odds: 1.326992288

Infection cohort: before the infection: 3.20% after the infection: 4.86% odds: 1.516290727

If you take the odds ratio (1.51/1.32) then it is about 1.15x. (I believe it is also not statistically significant.)

If you do 4.86/0.91 (see the numbers above for reference) then it is 5x or more. However, it is incorrect to do so because the baseline is way off (3.2% vs. 0.68%). But, this is the calculation the authors used to run the news cycle.

Notice that the infection cohort without exposure is already at 4.7x higher incidence of POTS (3.2/0.68). Hence, the post exposure comparison of the absolute numbers is not correct. Only the odds ratio can be taken as the cohorts are unequal and the incidence of POTS in the infection cohort is way higher. But, they did it anyway. And, got away with it. They should not even have put this study together.

This study has more issues, no stratification according to age, which is a major factor for post infection and post-vaccine outcomes. Post-infection older age is at risk, post-vaccine younger age and women are at risk. (They do say that the gender stratification did not lead to a difference in outcome.)

Why is this study accepted by pro-vaccine and vaccine-hesitant groups so equally and widely?

For vaccine-hesitants or vaccine-injured this study demonstrates that the vaccine injuries occur. Additionally, this study is accepted, published, peer-reviewed, and reported on by mainstream journals and associations. So, it is useful study to prove that vaccine injuries can occur.

For pro vaccine groups it is a useful study because it shows that infection causes 5x more POTS than the vaccine (incorrectly though.)

I may be completely wrong. I am talking with the authors and the reviewers to understand why this calculation (5x more risk in infected) made sense to them. Will update you once I have more discussion.