Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto )

A prominent anti-vaccine activist, Joseph Mercola, yesterday lost a lawsuit attempting to force YouTube to provide access to videos that were removed from the platform after YouTube banned his channels.

Mercola had tried to argue that YouTube owed him more than $75,000 in damages for breaching its own user contract and denying him access to his videos. However, in an order dismissing Mercola's complaint, US magistrate judge Laurel Beeler wrote that according to the contract Mercola signed, YouTube was "under no obligation to host" Mercola's content after terminating his channel in 2021 "for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines by posting medical misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines."

"The court found no breach because 'there is no provision in the Terms of Service that requires YouTube to maintain particular content' or be a 'storage site for users’ content,'" Beeler wrote.

Enlarge / Heart scan. (credit: Getty | BSIP )

The mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines have proven remarkably safe and effective against the deadly pandemic. But, like all medical interventions, they have some risks. One is that a very small number of vaccinated people develop inflammation of and around their heart—conditions called myocarditis, pericarditis, or the combination of the two, myopericarditis. These side effects mostly strike males in their teens and early 20s, most often after a second vaccine dose. Luckily, the conditions are usually mild and resolve on their own.

With the rarity and mildness of these conditions, studies have concluded, and experts agree that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks—male teens and young adults should get vaccinated. In fact, they're significantly more likely to develop myocarditis or pericarditis from a COVID-19 infection than from a COVID-19 vaccination. According to a large 2022 study led by researchers at Harvard University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the group at highest risk of myocarditis and pericarditis after vaccination—males aged 12 to 17—saw 35.9 cases per 100,000 (0.0359 percent) after a second vaccine dose, while the rate was nearly double after a COVID-19 infection in the same age group, with 64.9 cases per 100,000 (0.0649 percent)

Still, the conditions are a bit of a puzzle. Why do a small few get this complication after vaccination? Why does it seem to solely affect the heart? How does the damage occur? And what does it all mean for the many other mRNA-based vaccines now being developed?

Enlarge / Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo speaks at a press conference in Rockledge, Florida, on August 3, 2022. (credit: Getty | SOPA Images )

At the height of the pandemic, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis repeatedly promoted COVID-19 vaccines , saying correctly that "they're safe, they're effective," and they "are saving lives." With hundreds of millions of shots given worldwide at this point, the extensive international data on the vaccines' safety and efficacy have strongly and consistently backed DeSantis' statements. The vaccines are estimated to have saved over 14 million lives in 185 countries just in the pandemic's first two years .

But amid growing rumors of a 2024 presidential bid, DeSantis reversed his stance on the life-saving shots, abruptly questioning their efficacy and making unfounded claims about their safety. In December, his about-face culminated in a call for a grand jury to investigate any alleged " crimes and wrongdoing " related to the vaccines.

Though the swing appears more aimed at scoring political points than protecting Floridians' health, DeSantis' hand-picked surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, has hewed closely to the governor's anti-vaccine rhetoric and health misinformation. Since his appointment as Florida's top doctor in late 2021, Ladapo has made false claims about vaccines, encouraged vaccine hesitancy, opposed masks, downplayed the health effects of COVID-19, and promoted ineffective COVID-19 treatments, such as ivermectin .

Enlarge / Moderna pharmaceutical and biotechnology company's CEO Stephane Bancel speaks during a session of the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos on January 18, 2023. (credit: Getty | Fabrice COFFRINI )

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel on Monday pushed back on criticism of the company's plans to raise the price of its mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines by 400 percent, arguing that the billions of dollars in federal funding the company received played little role in the vaccine's development.

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal Health Forum , Bancel suggested that the vaccine's development is thanks to private investors and that the federal funding merely hastened development that would have occurred regardless. The comments came in response to a question of whether the company has a "moral obligation" to give back to the taxpayers who helped develop the life-saving immunization—presumably by not dramatically hiking the vaccine's price as it moves from federal distribution to the commercial market this year.

While the government most recently paid $26 per dose for Moderna's updated booster dose, the company is planning to raise the price of its shots to $110 to $130 per dose .