Heart attack rise in young people
Yes, there’s been a rise in heart attacks in the young. I’ve yet to see a really good analysis of why, and I don’t plan to sit on a hot stove till I do. But one shouldn’t minimize the effects of COVID itself:
Los Angeles County paramedic Romeo Robles told TODAY in the Feb. 9 segment that upticks in COVID-19 would often lead to more 911 calls related to heart issues in his community.
“Surprisingly, people my age … we would find them in cardiac arrest, and it was all predicted by these waves,” he said.
Cheng called the connection “more than coincidental, that is for sure.” Explaining why, she pointed out that COVID-19 can greatly impact the cardiovascular system.
“It appears to be able to increase the stickiness of the blood and increase … the likelihood of blood clot formation,” Cheng said. “It seems to stir up inflammation in the blood vessels.
I only am able to read the abstract of the study, so it’s hard to say how rigorous it was. But if it’s anything like most of its kind, my guess is “not very rigorous at all.”
COVID isn’t the only contagious illness that can cause cardiovascular problems; even the flu can so so, for example. I’d like a study on cardiovascular problems that clearly distinguishes between the effects of vaccination and those of COVID itself, and that also makes previous decades-long trends in heart attack incidence clear. In addition, any study involving vaccines also has to deal with the fact that people who have been vaccinated tend to include a higher proportion of the most vulnerable populations: the elderly, the already-infirm, and those with cadiovascular risk factors such as obesity or prior heart defects. That must be corrected for or a study of the vaccinated is worthless.
Then there’s the whole issue of reporting relative risk in a population already at low risk, such as young people and cardiovascular problems. For example, a 30% increase in something that isn’t common to begin with tends to sound a lot worse than it is. For example, if something adverse happens to 1 in 1000 and its incidence increases by 30%, that means it then happens to 1.3 in 1000.
As for the issue of longer trends that began before COVID; see this (from March of 2019):
WASHINGTON (Mar 07, 2019) – Even though fewer heart attacks are occurring in the U.S.—in large part due to the use of medications like statins and a decline in smoking—these events are steadily rising in very young adults. New data not only validate this trend but also reveal that more heart attacks are striking those under age 40, according to research being presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 68th Annual Scientific Session.
The study, which is the first to compare young (41-50 years old) to very young (40 or younger) heart attack survivors, found that among patients who suffer a heart attack at a young age overall, 1 in 5 is 40 or younger. Moreover, during the 16-year study period (2000 to 2016), the proportion of very young people having a heart attack has been increasing, rising by 2 percent each year for the last 10 years.
“It used to be incredibly rare to see anyone under age 40 come in with a heart attack—and some of these people are now in their 20s and early 30s,” said Ron Blankstein, MD, a preventive cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, associate professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston and the study’s senior author. “Based on what we are seeing, it seems that we are moving in the wrong direction.”…
In a related study, Blankstein and his team found that 1 in 5 patients who suffer a heart attack at a young age overall—defined as younger than 50 years of age—also have diabetes. Data show that if someone has diabetes they are more likely to die and have repeat events than heart attack survivors without diabetes. Not only is diabetes one of the strongest risk factors for having a heart attack, it also predicts future events in young people who have previously had a heart attack.
Type 2 diabetes has been on the rise in young people for decades, and it may be a strong factor in what’s going on.
I’m not too impressed with the possibility that this is from COVID-19 infections directly, since it has been long demonstrated that young people without serious health problems are at extremely low risk from the disease. And, while some who comment here no doubt will blame the shots, there are so many complicating factors coming from lockdowns, reduced exercise, drug use, diabetes, and other factors, that it’s going to be hard to sort this out.
Don’t want to be an alarmist, but I just noticed this (a few days after the fact, albeit):
‘DHS Warns Millions Of iPhone Users To Change Settings Over “Zero-Day Spyware” ‘—
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/dhs-warns-millions-iphone-users-change-settings-over-zero-day-spyware
Opening graf:
“An agency within the Department of Homeland Security has warned owners of Apple products of a security vulnerability which affects iPhones, iPads and MacOS devices….”
As I understand it a simple update should be enough to protect your iPhone (or other device).
This is a very good interview with David Zweig that touches on this issue in relation to Covid as well as a few others.
https://www.clayandbuck.com/david-zweig-on-the-remarkable-connection-between-free-speech-and-bodily-autonomy-at-universities/
My own personal opinion is their is a combination of anger and cynicism directed at lying, duplicitous public health officials combined with a huge dose of looking for some things that have always been there.
This applies not only to Covid but to factory fires, train derailments and countless other things that people are suddenly focused on.
Connected to this is this video from the Critical Drinker about ‘Woke’ and it’s presence in entertainment. He makes an important point that too many people are starting to see ‘wokeness’ in everything even when it’s not there and they are weakening their arguments by doing this.
I think the same is happening with Covid response critics. They are approaching ‘when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail’ territory and need to be careful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhRC6PQbCDo
I will note — a couple decades ago, I went to the ER with severe back spasms, and one thing they did was an EKG, because sometimes people misinterpret heart pains as back pains. It wasn’t anything directly, but they saw something that didn’t look right, so they did a test of my heart’s “ejection fraction”, e.g., how much of the blood was flowing through my heart, and it was relatively low, about 40%, when normal is (IIRC) about 55-75%.
It wasn’t a serious issue, as I wasn’t ill with it (and I didn’t have any insurance at that point, so they weren’t looking to treat it because it wasn’t a major issue), but they did suggest I get it checked again at some future point to see if it had recovered. A year or so later, I had a job and health insurance, so I had it checked again, and it was more normal.
According to those I talked to about it, there was no directly discernible cause, but apparently a virus can affect your heart function. And Covid, is, of course, a virus, so the idea that it can affect your heart function does not seem surprising as an idea, to me. Doesn’t mean to expect that from a virus, but it can happen with at least some viruses.
It might be the treatment, but it might be the virus itself that does this.
Mind you, I have no medical background, so I could be pulling this out of my nether regions, but I don’t think so. Perhaps someone with a background in some aspect of cardiology can be more exacting.
This seems related.
Strahan asked Hamlin to what doctors attributed his cardiac arrest:
“You’re 24, in peak physical condition … how did doctors describe what happened to you?”
Hamlin responded with an “ummm” and then paused for several seconds. “That’s something I’m going to stay away from.”
I can’t imagine why he’d respond that way if they told him: “commotio cordis”, so it would seem that whatever they told him, it wasn’t that.
Skip the science, take two anecdotes, and go directly to panic!
Time will tell.
Thanks again neo.
I know we are all supposed to care about truth and stuff but there’s a decent argument to be made that you can’t let yourself be imprisoned by honesty if your opponent is allowed to lie with impunity. The people and institutions that misled us through the pandemic are deserving of a massive backlash and I’m not sure how much time and effort we should spend protecting them from the full, hysterical force of that backlash.
Mike
om,
Well, I would say we have become a society driven by anecdote at this point.
Something happens somewhere to someone on social media then let’s pass a law or at the least fire someone somewhere for doing something that led to the outrage of the day.
It is important to determine what area of the heart is damaged, as the heart is a complex organ . A heart attack generally refers to ischemia of heart muscle caused by clogged arteries which supply an area of the heart muscle. Myocarditis involves the heart muscle usually diffusely often from a viral infection or postpartum. Dysrythmia problems affect the conduction pathways such as Lyme disease. Not all sudden deaths are heart attacks. Sudden deaths in young people should have autopsies as well as drug screens. Families should demand an autopsy for the true cause. Also don’t forget about pulmonary embolism
MBunge, 4:57 p.m., no, I’m not going to make myself into a liar just because the bad guys are liars.
One of the worst traits of the left is how they ALWAYS overreach. Everything is racist or sexist or homophobic or transphobic or in the Covid sense Grandma killing. Everything. And it never ends.
Now, it is starting to happen more and more on the right with Covid and woke topics where every problem related to these issues is the worst thing ever for far too many people on the right.
This garbage is bad enough where it is really happening but exaggerating it doesn’t help the fight it hinders it most of the time.
And this isn’t some ‘muh principles’ argument I am talking about effective tactics for fighting these things.
Curt Thomson:
I don’t think your conclusion is warranted. There are plenty of reasons why he wouldn’t want to talk about it that have little to do with what doctors may or may not have told him.
Here’s what I initially wrote on the subject of what probably happened to him. And here’s more.
neo,
Potential lawsuits would top the list.
OBloodyHell:
There is no question that viruses can cause heart problems, and COVID is one such virus.
Grifffin:
Precisely.
“no, I’m not going to make myself into a liar just because the bad guys are liars.”
“And this isn’t some ‘muh principles’ argument I am talking about effective tactics for fighting these things.”
It’s less about lying and more about not saving people from themselves. If the government, medical authorities, and the media are allowed to behave the way they did during the pandemic and suffer no consequences from it…why won’t they be even worse during the next crisis? If being reasonable gets you nowhere, there comes a point where you have to stop being reasonable.
Mike
When medicine is politicized, you can’t trust your own doctor much less medical reporting. The cognitive delete and their stenographers are the real enemy.
“The truth will out.” W. Shakesspeare (some dead white guy)
“What is truth?” John 18:38
“I am the way the truth and the life.” John 14:6
Seems that truth is kind of important.
“The truth will out.” W. Shakesspeare (some dead white guy)
“What is truth?” John 18:38
“I am the way and the truth and the life.” John 14:6
Seems that truth is kind of important.
Skip the science, take two anecdotes, and go directly to panic!
Time will tell.
Numbers far higher than an anecdote makes it no longer an anecdote
They don’t know what is causing an increase of heart attacks but they know it is not the jab. So don’t ask if it was the jab because they know it is not it. No evidence required.
It’s on the people making the claim (in this case that COVID vaccine is causing this) to prove that is the case not on the people saying the opposite to prove a negative.
The same works for masks. It is on the pro maskers to prove they work not on anti maskers to prove they don’t.
The problem is for the heart issue it is very hard to decipher what it is really going on because there are so many variables from the vax to the actual COVID to missed doctor appts to anxiety from lockdowns and overall societal chaos. It will likely never be proven (see my above link to David Zweig interview last five minutes is on this).
Correlation does not equal causation but it does require investigation.
(working on the scansion)
How about COVID as a phenomenon? I don’t think there is much pushback against the notion that the jab causes at least SOME heart issues. Covid as well. So there are two issues new since the election, roughly speaking.
Adding the mitigation efforts and their effects, all well described elsewhere.
If all are applied to the jab, that would be a heavy load. If you want to take some of the load off the jab, you might want to talk about mitigation efforts–oops, until you recall your signature is on them.
Or you could try to sell that the increase is from other, possibly unrelated issues, but certainly not related to COVID as either a disease or a Major Thing including jabs. Nope. No connection. Not sure how that would sell, and selling whichever is the point, here.
Time will tell.
Way back in the old timey days there were many diseases that had many known causes, which later proved not to be so. Good thing we are so much wiser now and know so much. Dr. Hubris is the name.
Neo wrote:
“I only am able to read the abstract of the study, so it’s hard to say how rigorous it was. But if it’s anything like most of its kind, my guess is ‘not very rigorous at all.’ ”
______________________________________________________________
If anybody’s curious, the full text of the paper is available at National Library of Medicine, PubMed. I skimmed the paper, but didn’t read it closely, so can’t offer an opinion.
Here’s the URL:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9839603/
Here’s the citation:
Yeo YH, Wang M, He X, Lv F, Zhang Y, Zu J, Li M, Jiao Y, Ebinger JE, Patel JK, Cheng S, Ji F. Excess risk for acute myocardial infarction mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic. J Med Virol. 2023 Jan;95(1):e28187. doi: 10.1002/jmv.28187. Epub 2022 Oct 7. PMID: 36176195; PMCID: PMC9839603.
After an aircraft accident, there’s always an accident investigation to determine the cause and to see if we can learn how to avoid having such an accident in the future. This has made aviation very safe over the years. It’s far safer to fly in a modern airliner than to drive to the airport.
It’s apparent to me that there is no such examination of what went wrong and/or right during the pandemic. Thus, we are going to repeat our mistakes in the future.
In aviation, a lot of accidents are caused by human error. People make mistakes. Many of those can be eliminated by examining them and learning better procedures, practices, and habits. It’s embarrassing to commit a mistake and have an accident, but humans have advanced by examining those mistakes and trying to do better in the future. Unfortunately, our health bureaucracies aren’t doing this. They know, or should know, their protocols for handling Coivid weren’t anywhere near optimum. They should admit that and do the investigation to provide a path to better results next time. Because there will be a next t time.
When bureaucrats fail, there’s no accountability. There needs to be accountability. Reduction in pay, losing your job, or at least a letter of reprimand in their record should occur. We’ve lost our faith in our bureaucrats, our elected leaders, our MSM, and even many of our major corporations because no one wants to be accountable.
From all I’ve read about Covid, it is not just a respiratory disease, but more of a vascular disease that can cause all kinds of complications to kidneys, the heart, the legs, and more. Some people are more naturally resistant to the disease than others. My sister-in-law, age 90, is in a nursing home where she caught Covid early on. It was like a mild cold for her. Others in that nursing home died. Why? People on the cruise ships – some didn’t catch it from their infected cabin-mates. Why?
There are so many unanswered questions. Why not therapeutics? Why are some ethnic groups more heavily affected? Should the vaccine be given to under 60 people? Are vaccinated and boosted people catching more Covid than the unvaccinated? Is the mRNA vax safe in the long term? Why is the Vaccine still being pushed when it has been so ineffective? Is Vitamin D3 helpful? And many more.
I hope some fearless doctors will try to do the investigation to answer some of these questions.
I’d add this to the slowly accumulating research-based evidence that something amiss is about (via what mechanism remains unclear).
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/cardiology/covid-19-surges-linked-with-spike-in-heart-attacks-cedars-sinai-finds.html
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/02/15/30-more-young-people-dying-from-heart-attacks-n531026
If these incidents have been on the rise for 10 years, then it’s neither Covid nor the vaccine. The mention of diabetes sounds more plausible. It would also be interesting to know what percentage of the victims were overweight.
It’s fair to say we don’t know, and it will be difficult (though not impossible) to sort out the causes given that most young people have both been vaccinated and have had Covid. But there is probably enough variation to get some idea if it is seriously studied.
But given that we don’t know, the clear implication is that young people should not be getting the vaccines, since the benefits to them, given the low risk from getting Covid (and lack of evidence that the shots mitigate the heart issues), are minimal.
Griffin, it used to be FDA policy to collect and report adverse effects from vaccinations and other medical interventions. It is from this process it was detected that Vioxx, the pain reliever pill, increased the risk of heart attack.
We read of government medical panels in other countries raising concerns about mRNA injections. But in the USA the government position is the jabs are safe! Yet Americans are not acting as if they believe the jabs are safe – vaccine take up has plummeted and a growing number of people are asking questions.
How about we drop all dogma and assess the data without prejudice? That would be the scientific approach.
Here is a summary of the Vioxx investigation. What happened to an FDA that was concerned with public health and not being corporate salesmen? Do note that even with Vioxx the FDA did not discover the problem!
https://www.npr.org/2007/11/10/5470430/timeline-the-rise-and-fall-of-vioxx
vaccine take up has plummeted and a growing number of people are asking questions.
The vaccines aren’t that effective and the current strains are much less virulent than those in circulation two years ago. Also, the karenwaffe have given up trying to enforce mandates on the civilian population.
Neo, I had read your commentary but thought linking to his comments to Michael Strahan would be worth pointing to at this time and in this thread. No conclusion intended.
“Seems that truth is kind of important.”
Look who is sitting in the White House and look who is the junior U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania. And you might want to look at the latest poll numbers on how many Americans believe Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.
Mike
MBunge
There are so many information warfare campaigns being run through the media it is almost not possible for the average person to determine what truth is. After the performance of the medical-political complex who do you trust? What is disinformation? What is truth?
‘What is disinformation? What is truth?’
As long as the political and media establishment is indifferent to that confusion, nothing is going to change. I mean, the New York Times today is almost more of a lifestyle brand than a news agency and most major journalism outlets are currently staffed by people who think they can say anything they want, true or false, because they’re good people while others must never be allowed to say anything, true or false, because THEY are the bad people.
Mike
Increased heart attacks among the young are probably related to increased obesity among the young. I would guess that if you adjust for the underlying long-term trend, you will find a very weak current effect, and that there is nowhere near enough data to distinguish the effects of (i) the COVID virus, (ii) the COVID vaccine, (iii) missing doctor visits due to COVID isolation, (iv) poor treatment due to sporadically overcrowded hospitals, and (v) everything else you can think of. Try not to become obese or to cease regular doctor visits (along with regular social interaction and occasional glasses of wine), that’s my advice.
}}} When bureaucrats fail, there’s no accountability. There needs to be accountability.
Ahh, there’s your mistake. The entire purpose of a bureaucracy is to dodge accountability. 😀
Bunge:
What is truth? One can choose to lie for expediency or advantage, or …. Your choice.
In re the discussion of truth, accountability, bureaucratic malevolence, and reasonable responses:
What do we do about this?
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/02/16/biden-administration-refusing-to-help-in-east-palestine-disaster-n531229
“Governor Mike DeWine dropped a truth bomb a few hours ago: he has been in contact with FEMA every day since the disaster in East Palestine unfolded, and the Biden Administration is refusing assistance.”
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
@ MBunge > “If being reasonable gets you nowhere, there comes a point where you have to stop being reasonable.”
Like Kate, and others, I don’t intend to stoop to the level that the Left operates at as their Standard Procedure, but there are other people who do not have those scruples, and they are not happy.
Mark Steyn’s Maxim is similar:
“If the political culture forbids respectable politicians from raising certain issues, then the electorate will turn to unrespectable ones.”
@ Griffin > “This is a very good interview with David Zweig that touches on this issue in relation to Covid as well as a few others.”
Excellent post, thank you.
I took the time to go to Zweig’s Substack for the article under discussion.
https://davidzweig.substack.com/p/the-remarkable-connection-between
“The Remarkable Connection Between Free Speech and Bodily Autonomy at Universities”
He correlated the FIRE free speech rankings of 200 universities with their Covid vax mandates, and found it to be 1 to 1 (low ranking for freedom to low bodily autonomy).
That’s quite literally unheard of in social science research.
Even strong positive correlations will almost never be exactly one (perfect correspondence of the two independent variables).
Of course, they aren’t really independent (finding the underlying common factor is the point of computing the statistic): as Zweig points out, both the antipathy to free speech and the embrace of Covid fear-factor procedures stem from the Left’s tribal approach of “my way or the highway” to everything.
Both are signals for membership, not principles.
IOW, if membership requires dumping some hitherto acclaimed principle (such as free speech by antiwar activists or “My body, my choice” by abortion activists), then that’s what happens. (Although they will continue to claim that privilege for themselves, just not for YOU.*)
We saw that in WWII when the Communist Party in the US went from “Hitler good” to “Hitler bad” when Germany broke their agreements with Stalin; when feminists went from “sexual harassment bad” to “meh” when Bill Clinton was the abuser; and countless cases since then.
Hence the common proverb on the Right:
“If liberals didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all.”
It looks like double principles, but it’s really not, as some pundit pointed out: their only principle is what advances their agenda today.
* Remarks continued at the Open Thread, to get out of the way of the medical conversation.
Disease analysis would be easier if we were j bred dats livjng on the same chow, in a mass colony, in the same environment. Actually we have different genetjcs, live in different communities and have very different medical conditions. Ote that tbe plural of anecdotes is not data, but anecdotes is where the analysis starts.
Hypothesis: “Excess deaths”, mostly from heart attacks and strokes, will occur in individuals who have a COVID infection, even a minor one, and also have anti-COVID antibodies from a prior infection or from vaccination. The COVID virus will “cluster” in vascular tissues that are rich in the ACE2 enzyme/receptor. Immunological attack on those virus clusters are likely to cause inflammation and blood clotting which will present as a stroke, or heart attack.
This virus is nasty.
Proposed Therapy: Zinc ( and possibly Quercetin), Lisinopril (blocks vascular constriction), verify or supplement Vitamin D levels (controls inflammation). All “excess deaths” should be autopsied and blood levels of COVID antibodies, markers if inflammation and clotting, illegal drug levels, glucose levels, and body weight recorded. Medicalz records and vaccination history should be preserved.
I read that there is a Lisinopril/Aspirin study under way.
Collecting data will take time. There was little time during the initial COVID surge. Now we have time. The questions brought up in the comments can be answered.
Funky keyboard and new glasses. …if we were in bred rats…..
The obesity, etc, theory doesn’t work, because the class where heart attacks has spiked most sharply is that of young healthy males in top shape. It seems like not a week goes by without some top level athlete in one field or another either collapsing or dying suddenly, often after significant physical exercise. We weren’t having this happen two years ago, or earlier. Just wasn’t happening. Just really this last year. Moreover, the spike is greatest with young males, from maybe 15-30, a class that traditionally didn’t see heart attacks, and now does, and a class that, still, is the most physically fit. Went to a grandson’s HS graduation last year, and it was the girls graduating who seemed to have put on the most weight, compared to my daughter’s HS graduation 13 years ago. Yet, it’s the boys who seemingly are having the heart attack spike.
“…and the Biden Administration is refusing assistance…”
Oh, COME ON, MAN! GIVE ME A BREAK!! (to quote our MOST POPULAR presidential winner EVUH! with his most quotable and endearing ejaculations.)
Did the State of Ohio swing for Decent Joe? Tell me true, now…
(Besides, “Biden” wants to hide this thing, not publicize it!!)
Ergo President Fentanyl, KING of KINGS…of COVERUPS and CRIME—and “his” corrupt media enablers—gotta do what they gotta do…i.e., gotta NOT do what they gotta NOT do.
QED.
(“Look on my Works…and despair!” indeed…)
Can one get a heart attack from laughing too hard??
(Askin’ for a friend…)
Anyway, here’s the latest gobbledygook on Balloongate from “POTUS”…
“Biden: Three Recent Shot Down Objects Likely ‘Tied to Private Companies,’ Not China”—
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/02/biden-three-recent-shot-down-objects-likely-tied-to-private-companies-not-china/
H/T Instapundit.
Well, he sure has me convinced…that aside from being bonkers “he” is TOTALLY desperate.
And I hope he convinced China as well. Maybe they’ll stop busting a gut about their balloons being shot down.
(OTOH maybe China, always a principled champion of the private sector, is absolutely OUTRAGED that Mr. “Big Guy” would stoop so low as to shoot down a privately owned balloon just going about its business collecting weather data…)
Related:
“NFL Players’ Association Urged To Screen for Heart Issues Over Vaccine Side Effects”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/nfl-players-association-urged-screen-heart-issues-over-vaccine-side-effects
Hamlin….
I think that most here have seen my vaccine theory. One big problem with Neo’s COVID-19 theory is disaggregating deaths from the virus and the vaccines. We are at the point right now, that those catching the virus are more likely to have been Vaxed than not. This is obviously true in absolute terms since the majority of people in this country have been Vaxed, but appears to also be true in relative terms, esp starting in 2022, after Omicron pushed out Delta (throughout December of 2021). Throughout the first 9-10 months of 2022, the antibodies generated by the mRNA vaccines were essentially 100% wrongly targeted. They targeted the Wuhan spike proteins, and Omicron variant had mutated around them. That seems to have been when efficacy of the vaccines in preventing catching the virus collapsed. Then, the bivalent vaccines, that included mRNA for producing Omicron spikes, along with Wuhan spikes, were introduced. Unfortunately, they apparently haven’t helped apparent efficacy of the vaccines much in preventing reinfection of the virus.
The problem is, in my mind, that no attempt has been made to separate Vaxed from those who have had the virus in these studies that our government and our elites supporting it. We do know that hearts of some (esp young) myocarditis and pericarditis victims are full of (esp Wuhan variant) spike proteins, presumably from the vaccines. And we know that the mRNA often persists for several months after injection, generating spike proteins. (Plenty of studies showing that). That is why it is a serious methodological problem to look at just those who have had the virus and a heart attack without also looking at whether or not, and how recently they have been Vaxed, because if Vaxing can cause heart attacks, then you don’t know whether the cause of the heart attack was the virus or the vaccine, esp since so many had both.
My personal theory (as a cynic) is that this methodological problem was intentional, at least at some of oversight. The money for the studies (Govt and pharmaceutical companies) mostly comes from sources that have a pro-vaccine stake, and, for one reason or another, desperately don’t want to have the mRNA vaccines to be the cause of the heart attacks. Note that the results of the FDA mandated study of myocarditis and heart inflammation after the third jab by Pfizer that were due at the end of 2022, have now been pushed out to May/June of 2023. That study was supposed to have been completed by June of 2022 (with the results due 6 months later). It appears that Pfizer requested the 5+ months extension, and the FDA granted it. They have apparently not yet responded to the FOIA request asking why they granted the extension. Part of why my cynicism kicked here is that the FDA had earlier granted Pfizer’s earlier request to delay release of the underlying regulatory data for their vaccine for 75 years. This was overridden by a federal judge, and that data showed that serious side effects were known, at the time of original approval, by Pfizer, and reported to the FDA.
I think we have a society-wide problem dealing with numbers. For example, there are 320 million people in the United States. Even 1000 deaths is a little more than three ten thousandths of one percent. Human beings are very good a picking out patterns on a small scale. When the numbers get that big, I think we have a strong tendancy to see things that aren’t there, especially when emotions become involved.
Mathematicians and most scientists are supposed to be trained to filter out that bias, but those professions have destroyed their credibility in recent years by, more-or-less, endulging their own bias to affect politics.
So I think we’re just adrift. I’ve certainly had a number of young and healthy people in my life suddenly drop dead over the past few years. Is it a trend? It seems like it. Is it due to COVID or COVID vaccines? Maybe. Is it because of increased obesity? Perhaps probably. I don’t have the expertise or the time to crunch the numbers myself, though, so I have little hope of ever knowing for sure.
“One can choose to lie for expediency or advantage, or …. Your choice.“
One can also choose to massage one’s sense of moral superiority while everyone around them dies, instead of doing something to save them.
Life is messy. Do you know how much Nazi memorabilia and other stolen property was shipped home from Europe by WWII soldiers? It was a lot. How much time and energy should the US military have taken away from actually winning the war to police such looting? How many German soldiers do you think were killed AFTER they surrendered by GIs who just watched their buddies die? How much effort should have gone into prosecuting them?
As has already been mentioned, if you won’t do what needs to be done to save society, then it will either collapse or the public will turn to someone who WILL do it.
Mike
What a tome from Bunge.
If you choose you lie to combat falsity and evil you are more than halfway into their camp. Ever heard of ends justifying means?
The truth will out.
Don’t be a Bunge.
“Ever heard of ends justifying means?“
Hey, does anyone else notice that I’m talking about practical examples of things that have happened and are happening in the real world and om is…not?
And that I’m proposing a possible solution, fight fire with fire, that may be dangerous but at least offers a possibility of success while om is seemingly proposing we keep doing things THAT HAVE OBJECTIVELY FAILED because…reasons?
Try this. Let’s say there’s a economic and societal implosion over the next year and both om and I decide to run for political office. Who are the voters going to turn to for leadership, the guy willing to offer some kind of solution or the guy who tells them they should continue to suffer rather than compromise their “values?”
Mike
Ever heard of ends justifying means?
Who was it who said “If the end doesn’t justify the means, what does?”
Oh noes, as expected, Bunge deploys the dreaded all caps.
Art Deco, try answering your own question. Life is short.
Dont be a Bunge.
It is the vaccines, not that anyone will ever admit it who has all the data required to prove it. And the data do exist, but are carefully made non-public with HIPPA objections.
Just for fun on a Friday.
}}} It seems like not a week goes by without some top level athlete in one field or another either collapsing or dying suddenly, often after significant physical exercise. We weren’t having this happen two years ago, or earlier
Nope, Sorry, Bruce. You are making a “cluster extension” on far too small a data set. You know, we had four major hurricanes strike the USA in 2005.. CLEARLY it was a harbinger of things to come.
Except it didn’t. In actual fact, the subsequent decade+ was THE LONGEST period since reliable records have been available (ca 1820) of no class-3 or above hurricanes striking the US coast from Texas to Maine. The previous record ran from about 1860 to 1869.
Gamblers make this mistake, too. A cluster of something happens, so clearly it’s going to happen again.
This event is hardly new or unheard of, it’s a part and parcel, though, of our fear-mongering merdia. And our hypersensitivity to any risk or “apparently unexpected danger”.
https://www.insider.com/sports-stars-who-cardiac-arrest-on-field-like-damar-hamlin-2023-1
Money Quote:
“Detroit Lion Chuck Hughes had a fatal heart attack on the field in 1971, the only NFL player to die while playing.”
and:
[Hamlin] Getting hit in the chest with enough force can also disrupt the heartbeat, a condition called commotio cordis, which is also rare but can be caused by an object like a hockey puck or baseball, or contact with another player.
Indications are that commotio cordis was the cause of his issues.
Now, I’m not saying that nothing is going on. I’m only saying, this is not even valid evidence at this point of anything unusual going on. It’s just a cluster of incidents, probably also exacerbated by the merdia’s fear mongering and ambulance chasing antics.
}}} Proposed Therapy: Zinc ( and possibly Quercetin), Lisinopril (blocks vascular constriction), verify or supplement Vitamin D levels (controls inflammation).
Indeed. My doc also advises a full B-complex as well as vitamin C.
I will note that some people have issues with lisinopril in that it is known to cause inadvertent gagging for no clear reason. Yeah. If you’re taking lisinopril and have noticed you just start gagging for no reason you can tell, that may well be the cause.
They switched me to carvedilol in its place, and the gagging stopped. It does the same thing as lisinopril does, for high blood pressure. No idea if it helps with covid or other things, though.
OBloodyHell, one of my doctors, in mid-2020, recommended, for all adults, a daily multi-vitamin, a daily b-complex, and 2000 IU of Vitamin D.
“Indications are that commotio cordis was the cause of his issues.”
I’m skeptical of this. Have his doctors said anything? Commotio cordis is indeed rare, but it’s almost unheard of in adults (thicker chest walls than children), and involves a projectile, not a more diffuse impact like a football tackle. See this study, for example:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199508103330602
And while it’s usually fatal without immediate CPR or defibrillation, a survivor recovers quickly and can return to normal activity. The fact that Hamlin was hospitalized for more than a week also casts doubt on it being commotio cordis. The Pronger incident looks more like it, as he was hit in the chest by a puck, a rare case of someone over the age of 20.
“What’s more, the risk of developing long COVID, including heart problems, increases with each COVID-19 infection an individual has, Al-Aly pointed out. As a result, Latino and Black communities, which have higher rates of reinfection, are especially high risk for heart problems post-COVID, Cheng said.”
Now why would someone repeatedly get COVID-19? Normally, after you catch a virus, your immune system develops Natural Immunity to the virus. You may catch it again, but it tends to be much more benign, since your immune system can more quickly recognize the viral attack, are crank up the antibodies to fight it. We know one probable reason that this isn’t happening here as much as expected – the mRNA vaccines.
Very probably two different, somewhat related problems here with the mRNA vaccines. First, and foremost, the vaccines cause the immune system to recognize the Wuhan spike proteins as pathogens. That’s what vaccines are inevitably designed to do, though rarely to only two of a virus’ proteins. Then, on the second jab, the lymph nodes, then the rest of the body, via the circulatory system are deluged by these Wuhan spike proteins, generated by the vaccine’s mRNA. A problem arises though when the immune system encounters the entire SARS-2 virus. Through a phenomenon sometimes called Original Antigenic Sin, the level of immune memory of the later related viral parts tend to be reduced. So, instead of developing a robust Natural Immunity to the virus, those who had the mRNA vaccines first, appear to develop a much less robust immunity to the whole virus, as compared to the 2 Wuhan spike proteins. Not surprisingly, given the strength of the immune reaction to those two Wuhan spike proteins, the virus then mutated around the vaccines, by changing the spike proteins enough that they aren’t as robustly challenged by the immune system. This was the Omicron variant, that pushed out Delta in December of 2021. And it very much looks like every time someone is Vaxed with the Wuhan variant spike producing mRNA, their Natural Immunity is reduced.
The interrelated problem appears to be that the putative goal of these vaccines is to get your antibodies up, and keep them up as long as possible. That is done by using slow degrading mRNA that evades killer T Cells by having switched out many, if not most, of the Uridines, for Pseudouridines. Normal mRNA doesn’t survive long outside cells. This mRNA does, being routinely detected months after injection. So, what you end up with is an immune system reacting so strongly to the Wuhan spike proteins from the vaccines, generating massive numbers of antibodies to fend off what appears to the immune system to be a massive attack, and few resources left to fight the actual virus – the same reason that old, well contained viruses, like the one causing Shingles, can break out in the vaccinated. The immune system, quite naturally, believes that the primary threat is the Wuhan spike proteins, and not the virus itself, or other viruses.
Not to really rehash this, but the article blithely ignores the contribution that the vaccines might, and probably do, provide to reinfection, and just focuses on the virus itself. The two have to be disaggregated. Ignoring that issue ignores the elephant in the tent, and appears to me, at this late date, to be mis, if not disinformation.
“Nope, Sorry, Bruce. You are making a “cluster extension” on far too small a data set. You know, we had four major hurricanes strike the USA in 2005.. CLEARLY it was a harbinger of things to come.”
I don’t doubt that that is a possibility. It is possible that elite athletes falling over dead, or just ending up in the hospital, from heart attacks, often on the field, in the midst of play, has always happened. It sure doesn’t feel that way to me, but then your complaint is essentially that feelings don’t count here.
And your “commotio cordis” quote appears, to me to be a red herring. It does happen, but does so very rarely, and has essentially nothing to do with this discussion. There is no reason to believe that the frequency has increased, and almost none of the other elite athletes being struck down in their prime were struck in the chest just before collapsing.
Getting back to the discussion – the discussion is about the statistical spike in heart attacks that, in particular, seems to affect young males, from maybe 15-30, when they are in their prime of health. (And to Neo – it isn’t caused by Type 2 Diabetes. That wouldn’t have caused the spike, that increase would have been much slower, and have had very different demographics). This is a demographic that just didn’t get heart attacks, at any significant frequency. Just didn’t happen. The spike in heart attacks in this demographic is real. Actuaries have been repotting it for awhile now. It’s key to their business to spot these things – if they miss trends like this, they go out of business. Very different motivation to that of many of the researchers, who, if anything, probably have a financial interest to ignore this sort of thing. Because of the timing, we know that it is almost assuredly tied somehow to COVID-19. For me, that means that the spike is very likely a consequence of the virus itself, the vaccines, or the shut down.
Bruce Hayden:
What you assert as a fact is not a fact. Provide a link to actual statistics if you think it’s the case. I wrote a post on the subject already and could find no evidence of it. Your views are subject to confirmation bias.
Type 2 diabetes, by the way, has been increasing in children and young people. The exact demographic you’re talking about. Type 2 diabetes used to be seen almost entirely in older adults. Not so anymore. And there has been a particularly steep rise in Type 2 diabetes in young people during the COVID pandemic. See this.
And of course Type 2 diabetes probably isn’t the entire answer. But it seems to be a major contributor.
Plus, you yourself write that some of the increase in heart problems in young people may be from the COVID virus itself. That conforms to what I wrote in the post when I quoted some of the researchers.
I wonder if you even followed the links in my post. One of them documents a rise in heart attacks in young people prior to COVID and the COVID vaccine. Heart attacks in this group were rare and remain rare. The “spike” doesn’t mean they are at all common. But they have been rising for a long time, and some of the factors such as diabetes also rose steeply during the COVID pandemic which means that we would expect a somewhat steeper rise during COVID times that isn’t necessarily directly, primarily, and certainly not totally linked to COVID or the vaccine.
And plenty of people have gotten COVID more than once who have never been vaccinated. In addition, “getting COVID more than once” can merely mean (often does mean) “testing positive more than once.” It’s not the same thing.
}}} Human beings are very good a picking out patterns on a small scale. When the numbers get that big, I think we have a strong tendancy to see things that aren’t there, especially when emotions become involved.
Hell, they don’t have to be that big. One of our primary successes as a species is our pattern-matching ability. That ability is also prone to see patterns where none exist, which is how and why people believe in ridiculous things like numerology, astrology, tarot, and the like.
Isaac Asimov had a wonderful little article in one of his nonfiction collections where he used a bunch of numbers to push through a proposition… all of it blatantly made up of obviously tattered cloth. It all “fit a pattern”. But there was no cause-and-effect chain to justify the conclusion. It was all just numbers connected in…. a pattern. And that is why some men go to church, write down the hymn numbers, and then use those numbers to play the “numbers game”.
Without serious training, humans have a hard time qualitatively evaluating the reliability of a pattern. That’s a large part of the benefit of hard sciences and math training. They teach you to be more rigorous about the patterns you validate and trust.
Even if you never ever ever actually used the science or math you learned, the skills in analyzing the patterns you observe and learning how to trust them is quite invaluable. And it is the lack of teaching them, of teaching “critical thinking skills”, which is endangering our whole society.
Jimmy:
Your information is incorrect.
Commotio cordis can be caused by a blow to the chest. See this. NFL football blows can be very very powerful. In addition, here’s information about the recovery period:
It can take days for the process to be complete, and then the person is often kept for days afterwards. I described the process already here.
People noticing all these rare events that had probably always been happening at some low level is kind of like when people get a new car and suddenly they see that model and color everywhere. They were always there you just weren’t looking for them at the same hyper level you now are.
In spite of all the drama, there does seem to be some evidence starting to come out that points to the vaccine as being problematic. Dr. John Campbell has been a voice of reason throughout this pandemic, and his more-or-less daily videos have been pretty impeccable when it comes to including citations that allow the listener to follow up. He has managed to avoid the YouTube censors all the way through, quite an achievement. But of late, his tone has become first gently satirical and now more openly critical of the public health establishment’s shortcomings in taking the high road on transparency and focus in the public interest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZhzWzoPB3M
neo, we’ll have to agree to disagree, but your link provides no support for the idea that a football tackle can cause commotio cordis.
There is simply no way that a tackle in football resembles this, except perhaps a direct helmet spear (which this was not), and no way that such a hit would happen at 40 mph and a 90-degree angle. Hamlin’s hit looked like a pretty common hard collision that happens many times each game.
That site also says that cardiac arrest occurs “immediately” on impact. Hamlin was able to get up on his feet after the play and only a few seconds later collapsed. That’s not so definitive, perhaps, but the other info strikes me as clear cut.
They will dance around the head of the pin to say it’s not the obvious.
While heart problems might not only be the only suddenly dead cause.
Hardly a day goes by not reading a under 30yo dropping dead out of the blue.
There has always been a very small amount of young people who suddenly died for seemingly no reason. But there always was a reason.
The difference is that unless you knew the person or they were in your town you likely never heard about it as opposed to now when practically every one gets widely reported.
Skip:
Do you understand the difference between an increase in the reporting of a phenomenon and an actual increase in the phenomenon itself?
Jimmy:
My link proves that your contention that people are not hospitalized for commotio cordis, as Hamlin was, is wrong. Hamlin received a typical protocol for adults.
The link also says a blow to the chest can cause it under certain circumstances. The reports of what happened to Hamlin were not just of a tackle, but of a blow to the chest. That’s why I mentioned commotio cordis at the outset. Where they get this 40-MPH business is not clear, but I have read many reports indicating that it was a hard blow to the chest and that this could cause it. Commotio cordis is quite rare and poorly understood, in part because of its rarity.
More here about its connection to football and chest blows:
In addition, the link indicates it doesn’t always cause full cardiac arrest immediately.
Bunge:
But back to truth and falsity, and political aspirations.
The question is not whether to tenaciously fight the left and their lies but which tools to use in the fight, truths and facts, or lies. Just because lies come easy doesn’t mean they are the best weapons.
Truth will out.
A twelve year old boy at football practice in Newark collapsed and died. No contact.
None of the adults on scene were trained in CPR.
Richard Aubrey:
That is very sad.
It has been going on for a long long time, though. One of the possibilities is that the child had an undetected heart defect of some sort. When I was in high school (or junior high; I forget which), a student died running. The same was the case for a student in my ex-husband’s high school. No one knew why either event happened.
neo
The reporting issue is hard to deny. As has been said about one or another medication, one way to create a shortage is to talk about a shortage. Also, see toilet paper about three years ago.
I’m not sure “sad” fits what I’m thinking about people around kids who don’t know CPR. Or organizations who don’t require it as a condition of coaching or some other functions.
I’m doing some leg work for our church–CPR and AED training for staff, ushers, and others interested. Been a while since we did that. The organizations offering certifying training are COMPETING FOR THE BUSINESS.
How the….excuse me…do you not do that?
If Type 2 Diabetes were important, then the US mortality would stand out, alone, in international comparison. It doesn’t.
“I’ve yet to see a really good analysis of why [increased heart problems], and I don’t plan to sit on a hot stove till I do. But one shouldn’t minimize the effects of COVID itself….”
Except, clearly, Covid19 has been rapidly mutating, and generally, over time, less virulent. Thus, caution about underestimating the recent pandemic disease is easier to overplay than under-play.
Doing so, overestimating deaths by Covid19, has been admitted as fact by health officials. Their lying became State policy.
Our hostess is showing rarely seen poor judgement here, I believe. The onus and suspicions against officials and their stats is thoroughly justified — not the opposite.
TJ:
Apparently you haven’t read – or haven’t understood, or haven’t remembered – my many posts on the fact that the government has earned our distrust.
That does not mean I trust the mostly uninformed and statistics-ignorant analyses of the anti-vac anti-government crowd. Two wrongs don’t mean that one is right.
I have analyzed COVID in hundreds of posts and so far have been vindicated on just about everything I’ve said, right from the start.
TJ:
You write: “If Type 2 Diabetes were important, then the US mortality would stand out, alone, in international comparison. It doesn’t.”
Oh really? Really? It always helps to actually do some research on what you’re saying. For example, there’s this:
Same phenomenon as in the US.
How about in Asia?:
Type 2 diabetes is rising in children globally:
More:
I could go on and on and on. The point is that – apparently unbeknownst to you – it is a global phenomenon that’s been going on for quite a few years. It’s also been rising in adults, too.