Emergency medicine doctor and frequent contributor to the New York Times, Jeremy Faust, MD, called postvaccine myocarditis "self-limited troponinemia." CDC director Rochelle Walensky, MD, recently described postvaccine myocarditis in young people as "mild."
I disagree; calling myocarditis mild reminds me of the saying about minor surgery. Minor surgery is surgery on someone else; mild myocarditis is something that happens to other folks' kids.
Humans have only one heart; inflaming it at a young age is not a small thing. University of Michigan cardiologist Venk Murthy, MD, a specialist in imaging, rebutted the "mild" framing with comments on Twitter: "people with myocarditis are usually counseled to limit activity, placed on 1 or more meds and are at lifetime increased risk of cardiac complications. This can have profound consequences."
As an electrophysiologist, I see the complications of myocarditis: heart failure and ventricular arrythmia due to scar. Availability bias notwithstanding, heart rhythm doctors feel the asymmetry of myocarditis risk. Although it is true that most myocarditis resolves without issue, it is also true that sometimes it does not.
...Regular people are not emotionless robots who decide using odds ratios. Most people do not calculate risk, they feel risk. People have special circumstances and make judgments relative to their benefit-harm situation. To persuade people with charts and statistics belies an understanding of clinical practice.
For example, let's say the parents (or grandparents) of a teenager have pre-existing conditions. These special circumstances tip the balance, and the parents decide to vaccinate the adolescent. Contrast that with, say, young parents who have no risk factors. This family feels less risk from the virus, and they might feel more regret if their child developed myocarditis. They want to see more data before making the decision. Both scenarios depict rational decision-making. It's how medical decisions should be made: with judgment and benefit-harm balances and considerations of special circumstances.