Heart specialist sees many more cases of heart inflammation since COVID vaccine roll out
https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-joe-wang
You would think that the scientific community, public officials, and every media outlet in the world would be discussing a new peer-reviewed article entitled, “Increased emergency cardiovascular events among under 40 population in Israel during vaccine rollout and third COVID-19 wave.” Why? Because the results of this study are nothing short of astounding.
This data analysis was published on April 28, 2022 in the multidisciplinary British scientific journal Nature. Nature is one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world.
The research was co-authored by Drs. Christopher Sun, Ph.D, a postdoctoral fellow with Healthcare System Engineering at Massachusetts General Hospital and with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management; Eli Jaffe, Ph.D., who is affiliated with Israel’s National Emergency Medical Services, and one of Israel’s leading authority in the field of emergency medicine and medical management; and Retsef Levi, Ph.D., the J. Spencer Standish (1945) Professor of Operations Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Their team analyzed data collected by Israel’s National Emergency Medical Services between 2019 and 2021. They found that there was an over 25 percent increase in emergency calls about cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome—an umbrella term used for coronary problems associated with sudden-onset reduced blood flow to the heart, according to the Mayo Clinic– for young adults, ages 16 to 39 years old, compared to the same time period in both 2019 and 2020.
Furthermore, the researchers discovered that this increase in emergency heart issues was associated with COVID-19 vaccination but not with COVID-19 infections.
They explain:
“An increase of over 25% was detected …compared with the years 2019–2020. [T]he weekly emergency call counts were significantly associated with the rates of 1st and 2nd vaccine doses administered to this age group [16 to 39] but were not with COVID‐19 infection rates. While not establishing causal relationships, the findings raise concerns regarding vaccine‐induced undetected severe cardiovascular side‐effects and underscore the already established causal relationship between vaccines and myocarditis, a frequent cause of unexpected cardiac arrest in young individuals.”
More Cause for Concern
As the three scientists themselves point out, this new peer-reviewed science dovetails with a growing body of scientific and clinical evidence that shows myriad side effects—some of which are extremely severe—from COVID-19 vaccines themselves.
The scientific community has started to document the side effects. For instance, in June of 2021 an international team of sixteen scientists published a research letter noting the temporal relationship between the onset of acute myocarditis in eight adult men, between the ages of 21 and 56.
These scientists, writing in the journal Circulation, underscored that “…the real incidence of acute myocarditis after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination … appears to be extremely rare,” given the millions of people who had been vaccinated seemingly without incident. Still, they wrote, “providers should be vigilant for myocarditis after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination, and further research is required to understand the long-term cardiovascular risks.”
The link between inflammation of the heart (myocarditis) and inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart (pericarditis) was further explored in a detailed article published in the British Medical Journal that same month: “Covid-19: Should we be worried about reports of myocarditis and pericarditis after mRNA vaccines?”
That article quoted Dr. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco, who expressed deep reservations about giving COVID-19 vaccines to young people, given the early reports of heart damage.
“There is a clear and large safety signal in young men and a clear but small signal in young women as well,” Prasad said. Given the risk of cardiac damage, Prasad said, the safest way forward would be to suspend all vaccination in children under eighteen and give only one vaccine dose to men under 25.
More recently, in February 2022, three scientists (a researcher based in Germany, a physicist also based in Germany, and an independent data and pattern scientist based in the Netherlands) published a letter to the editor in the journal Clinical and Translational Discovery, “The risk-benefit ration of Covid-19 vaccines: Publication policy by reattraction does nothing to improve it.”
This letter also analyzed data from Israel. The data is disturbing. These scientists concluded that “as we vaccinate 100 000 persons, we might save five lives but risk two to four deaths”.
Among other things, they pointed out that the CDC’s own passive reporting system, VAERS, which is now showing several very concerning signals—as of April 22, 2022, 27,532 deaths post-vaccination have been reported, as well as 14,096 heart attacks, and 39,639 cases of myocarditis/pericarditis—is known for underestimating both deaths and adverse effects from vaccines.
Who are the people behind these numbers? The young people who were eager to get vaccinated so they could theoretically be protected against COVID-19 and also theoretically protect others but instead lost their lives or had their health severely compromised as a result of vaccine-induced myocarditis?
Benjamin Goodman, 32, Dies 14 Hours After J&J Vaccine
One of those people is Benjamin Gordon Goodman, a successful and enterprising young man who was working in the television industry but had decided to go back to school to get an MBA. About a week after Goodman turned 32, he went to a Walgreens in Chelsea for his COVID-19 vaccine. He chose to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine so he would only need one shot.
According to Goodman’s stepmother, Pamela Everett Goodman, a little after 4:00 p.m. that day Goodman texted them a photograph of his vaccination card. He also texted he had a horrible headache, which had come on almost instantly. He went back to his apartment, thinking he could sleep off the side effects. But that night, around 1:00 a.m., he spiked a very high fever. At 3:00 a.m. his fiancé woke up to him having a seizure. She called 911.
Emergency Medical Technicians tried to restart his heart. They brought Goodman to Mount Sinai Hospital. He was pronounced dead at 6:05 a.m. on March 14, 2021. Goodman had been eager to buy a plane ticket to visit Vanderbilt, one of several prestigious graduate MBA programs that accepted him. His family thought they would soon be planning a wedding. Instead, they found themselves planning their son’s funeral.
The immediate cause of death listed on his death certificate: “Dilated Cardiomyopathy.” Other significant conditions contributing to death: “Febrile Reaction Following Covid-19 Vaccination.”
CDC Stays Silent, Provides Inaccurate Information to the Public
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the nation’s “health protection agency.” According to their website, the CDC “saves lives and protects people from health threats.” To accomplish that mission, the CDC “conducts critical science and provides health information that protects our nation against expensive and dangerous health threats, and responds when these arise.”
However, when it comes to severe adverse events following the COVID-19 vaccines, however, the CDC has greatly downplayed the risks.
When accessed by The Epoch Times, the public material on their website about vaccine-induced myocarditis had not been updated since November 12, 2021. That information, already six months out of date, mentions that cases of myocarditis reported to VAERS “have occurred,” especially in adolescent men and young adults. The CDC details that myocarditis has been seen “more often” with the second dose, and “usually within a week of vaccination.”
At the same time, according to the CDC, “Most patients with myocarditis or pericarditis who received care responded well to medicine and rest and felt better quickly.”
Perhaps even more misleading, there is no mention of any kind of heart attacks, acute coronary syndrome, myocarditis or pericarditis by the CDC in their web article, “Possible Side Effects After Getting a COVID-19 Vaccine.” This article, too, is grossly out of date.
Last updated on January 12, 2022, the side effects that the CDC mention include only pain, redness, and swelling “on the arm where you got the shot,” and tiredness, headache, muscle pain, chills, fever, and nausea “throughout the rest of your body.” Handouts available in PDF form that are shared with people considering the vaccine also make no mention of heart damage.
While the cardiac safety signals are worrisome, especially for adolescents and young adults, it is heartening that more and more scientists have started to carefully analyze the data, publish their findings, and voice concerns about possible side effects of these COVID-19 vaccines. It is only when people are armed with accurate medical information—both positive and negative—that trust in public health authorities and the vaccine schedules they recommend can be restored.
Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning science journalist and frequent contributor to The Epoch Times.
Joe Wang, Ph.D., was a lead scientist for Sanofi Pasteur’s SARS vaccine project in 2003. He’s now the president of New Tang Dynasty TV (Canada), a media partner of The Epoch Times.
References
[1] Sun, C.L.F., Jaffe, E. & Levi, R. Increased emergency cardiovascular events among under-40 population in Israel during vaccine rollout and third COVID-19 wave. Sci Rep12, 6978 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-10928-z
[2] “Acute coronary syndrome,” Mayo Clinic, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/acute-coronary-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20352136. Accessed 5/4/2022.
[3] Larson KF, Ammirati E, Adler ED, Cooper LT Jr, Hong KN, Saponara G, Couri D, Cereda A, Procopio A, Cavalotti C, Oliva F, Sanna T, Ciconte VA, Onyango G, Holmes DR, Borgeson DD. Myocarditis After BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 Vaccination. Circulation. 2021 Aug 10;144(6):506-508. doi: 10.1161/CIRCULATION AHA.121.055913. Epub 2021 Jun 16. PMID: 34133884; PMCID: PMC8340725.
[4] “Covid-19: Should we be worried about reports of myocarditis and pericarditis after mRNA vaccines?” BMJ 2021; 373: n1635 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n1635 (Published 24 June 2021).
[5] “The risk-benefit ratio of Covid-19 vaccines: Publication policy by retraction does nothing to improve it,” Harald Walach, Rainer J. Klement, Wouter Aukema, 25 February 2022. https://doi.org/10.1002/ctd2.35
[6] VAERS COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Reports, OpenVaers.com, https://openvaers.com/covid-data. Accessed on 5/4/2022.
[7] Lazarus, R., Klompas, M., Campion, F. X., McNabb, S. J., Hou, X., Daniel, J., Haney, G., DeMaria, A., Lenert, L., & Platt, R. (2009). Electronic Support for Public Health: validated case finding and reporting for notifiable diseases using electronic medical data. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association: JAMIA, 16(1), 18–24. https://doi.org/10.1197/jamia.M2848.
[8] https://www.cdc.gov/about/organization/mission.htm. Accessed 5/4/2022.
[9] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/myocarditis.html. Accessed 5/4/2022.
[10] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/expect/after.html. Accessed 5/4/2022.
