The Yeah Science Report #1

Trying a new feature that rounds up some science links I’ve found over the last few weeks. We’ll see how it goes.

1. World’s largest fish breeding grounds found under the Antarctic ice

Scientists have found a huge breeding colony of fish under the ice of the Weddell Sea in the Antarctic. The fish are icefish, a species known for being the only known vertebrates to lack hemoglobin in their blood as adults.

2. This map of distant galaxies could help untangle the mystery of dark energy

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) released a 3D map of the universe, the most detailed map of the cosmos ever created. It shows about 7.5 million galaxies and stretches up to 10 billion light-years away. The DESI team hope to extend that reach to cover 35 million galaxies.

3. A paper on the risks of myocarditis, pericarditis, and cardiac arrhythmias associated with COVID-19 vaccination or SARS-CoV-2 infection

(I want to preface this by saying this isn’t an advocation for not getting the vaccine but it’s important to understand the possible effects if they relate to you and for you to ultimately make that final decision based on that evidence rather than psuedoscience or harmful misinformation.)

This is the largest study to date of acute cardiac outcomes after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination or infection, the first to compare the risk of cardiac events between different vaccine products and SARS-CoV2 infection and the first to investigate the association between cardiac events and the ChAdOx1 vaccine.

Our findings are relevant to the public, clinicians and policy makers. First, there was an increase in the risk of myocarditis within a week of receiving the first dose of both adenovirus and mRNA vaccines, and a higher increased risk after the second dose of both mRNA vaccines. In contrast, we found no evidence of an increase in the risk of pericarditis or cardiac arrhythmias following vaccination, except in the 1–28 days following a second dose of the mRNA-1273 vaccine. Second, in the same population, there was a greater risk of myocarditis, pericarditis and cardiac arrhythmia following SARS-CoV-2 infection. Third, the increased risk of myocarditis after vaccination was higher in persons aged under 40 years. We estimated extra myocarditis events to be between 1 and 10 per million persons in the month following vaccination, which was substantially lower than the 40 extra events per million persons observed following SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Just the three today. Join me next time for more, hopefully!