This is a really interesting paper that provides reassuring evidence supporting the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, but it has been distorted by some actors with truly malignant misinformation to claim things it absolutely does not say, so let's clarify 🧵
In a nutshell, this paper profiled individuals who received mRNA vaccines, those who developed myocarditis, and those with autoimmune diseases to see if vaccination associated with the development of autoantibodies. Autoantibodies are antibodies directed against...
self-antigens (also known as autoantigens). In less technical terms, the work tried to see whether there was a meaningful risk in these groups of mRNA vaccines making the immune system target the body, as opposed to SARS-CoV-2's spike protein.
The fundamental misconception being put forth is that autoantibodies alone are enough to infer the presence of autoimmune disease. This is categorically incorrect and speaks to a profound lack of knowledge about the immune system.
An autoimmune disease is defined by the fact that it is a DISEASE. It must create some kind of meaningful physiological disturbance (screenshots from Mackay and Rose's The Autoimmune Diseases 6th edition). Autoreactivity (reactivity to self) does not an autoimmune disease make.
@enirenberg There are many forms of autoreactivity that are part of healthy physiology - from housekeeping natural abs to regulatory T cells.
