First some background for 1st time readers. Readers who are regular followers can skip this section and go straight to the Thailand study section. Background: It has long ago been established that the messenger RNA vaccines cause myocarditis, the controversial question now relates to what the actual rate of myocarditis is. The CDC chart below notes a peak myocarditis rate (all boxes shaded in orange are myocarditis rates that are higher than what is expected in the population) in 16-17 year old boy of 75.9 / million (or 1/13,157 ) after dose 2 of the mrna COVID vaccine.
Why are doctors still trying to save this vaccine program, especially when the boosted appear to get recurrent infections? Is it willful blindness, like Dr. McCullough suggests? Since so many doctors (not me, thank God) got the shot, maybe they cannot admit that they probably made a mistake? Most kids are already immune. Are there any studies worldwide that study myocarditis risk in kids who already had immunity vs. those who did not? That would be interesting to know.
Aug 10, 2022·edited Aug 10, 2022Liked by Anish Koka MD (Cardiology)
Well written.
The long terms of these myocarditis injuries are "unknown" but if we read the literature "The mortality rate is up to 20% at 1 year and 50% at 5 years. Despite optimal medical management, overall mortality has not changed in the last 30 years." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459259/
I hope your appeal to get back on Twitter is moving forward, we miss you!
The concerns about vaccine induced myocarditis are well founded and we need more research. Denmark has chosen the best path.
With that said, one must also critique the Thai study with the same thoroughness as other research. Its important because of the 7 cases in 202 boys, 3 clinical and 4 sub clinical; 5 of these had elevated troponins. From their abstract: "Myopericarditis was confirmed in one patient after vaccination. Two patients had suspected pericarditis and four patients had suspected subclinical myocarditis".
However, 2 big problems with this study: 1)their reporting of normal ECG findings as abnormal throws anyone with clinical knowledge into a state of suspicion 2)it is a very small cohort, they could double or expand their sample to 1000 and still have the same number of clinical and subclinical cases.
Hence, we cannot extrapolate this 1% or 3.5% yet to a larger population. We have done the authors a service by critiquing it on Twitter in its pre-print stage. At best, we can say that this contributes to the body of research but no conclusions can be drawn.
I will leave the troponin issue for you to discuss among your fellow cardiologists, I'm no expert there. But I am pretty good at critiquing research.
High school and college vaccine and booster mandates are an issue that could use more attention. Hundreds of colleges, including most top US universities, still mandate vaccine and often booster. The lack of transmission prevention, along with uncertainty about the risks discussed in this article, call into question the ethical basis for mandates.
Maybe some colleges are afraid of liability arising from not following CDC recommendations to the letter, though one wonders why an institution can force a medical procedure that a personal physician could not.
Thank you for this excellent article sharing your knowledge. We are all so curious about the long-term effects, thank you for keeping us up-to-date and explaining things so well. I wonder if children can recover more quickly, more efficiently, since they are still growing? Sort of like their broken bones heal quicker than an adult? That’s probably a silly analogy but it came to mind.
Thank you for this post and thank you for noting the myocarditis issue in military recruits following the small pox vaccine. Let’s see what happens with the Monkeypox vaccines.
The spike protein has been hypothetically implicated as the likely cause but smallpox vaccine does not make spike. The J and J vaccine is not associated with significant myocarditis cases yet that vaccine ultimately makes spike protein similar to mRNA vaccines. If we ever get our act together and acknowledge the problem exists perhaps we will figure out why it’s happening. But that requires a change in our broken and captured bureaucracies.
The FDA knew about myocarditis risks but pushed thru the Pfizer EUA for boys. The CTs were so under powered that they could not pick up this risk. Was this by design? We barreled into a mass vaccination campaign with a vaccine safety system that was inadequate, piecemeal and antiquated. The vanguards of vaccine safety ignored the signals, and down played them. It was the European Medicines Agency that shed light on the problem. Then there is the delay by the FDA in requiring Pfizer to study myocarditis in boys. The entire process has been devoid of accurate clinical monitoring and research in exchange for blind adherence to goals. As a physician and public health epi person I am deeply disappointed in HHS, CDC, FDA, NIH and NIAID.
tests included cardiac biomarkers (troponin-T, creatine kinase-myocardial
band (CK-MB)), ECG, and echocardiography at three clinical visits
(Baseline, Day 3, Day 7 and Day 14 (optional for subjects with cardiac manifestation))
after receiving the second dose of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19
vaccine."
Does this mean that you measured the biomarkers for the baseline after reception of the vaccine and if so what amount of time between vaccination and blood draw did you tolerate?
Why are doctors still trying to save this vaccine program, especially when the boosted appear to get recurrent infections? Is it willful blindness, like Dr. McCullough suggests? Since so many doctors (not me, thank God) got the shot, maybe they cannot admit that they probably made a mistake? Most kids are already immune. Are there any studies worldwide that study myocarditis risk in kids who already had immunity vs. those who did not? That would be interesting to know.
Well written.
The long terms of these myocarditis injuries are "unknown" but if we read the literature "The mortality rate is up to 20% at 1 year and 50% at 5 years. Despite optimal medical management, overall mortality has not changed in the last 30 years." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459259/
I hope your appeal to get back on Twitter is moving forward, we miss you!
The concerns about vaccine induced myocarditis are well founded and we need more research. Denmark has chosen the best path.
With that said, one must also critique the Thai study with the same thoroughness as other research. Its important because of the 7 cases in 202 boys, 3 clinical and 4 sub clinical; 5 of these had elevated troponins. From their abstract: "Myopericarditis was confirmed in one patient after vaccination. Two patients had suspected pericarditis and four patients had suspected subclinical myocarditis".
However, 2 big problems with this study: 1)their reporting of normal ECG findings as abnormal throws anyone with clinical knowledge into a state of suspicion 2)it is a very small cohort, they could double or expand their sample to 1000 and still have the same number of clinical and subclinical cases.
Hence, we cannot extrapolate this 1% or 3.5% yet to a larger population. We have done the authors a service by critiquing it on Twitter in its pre-print stage. At best, we can say that this contributes to the body of research but no conclusions can be drawn.
I will leave the troponin issue for you to discuss among your fellow cardiologists, I'm no expert there. But I am pretty good at critiquing research.
High school and college vaccine and booster mandates are an issue that could use more attention. Hundreds of colleges, including most top US universities, still mandate vaccine and often booster. The lack of transmission prevention, along with uncertainty about the risks discussed in this article, call into question the ethical basis for mandates.
Maybe some colleges are afraid of liability arising from not following CDC recommendations to the letter, though one wonders why an institution can force a medical procedure that a personal physician could not.
Thank you for this excellent article sharing your knowledge. We are all so curious about the long-term effects, thank you for keeping us up-to-date and explaining things so well. I wonder if children can recover more quickly, more efficiently, since they are still growing? Sort of like their broken bones heal quicker than an adult? That’s probably a silly analogy but it came to mind.
Thank you for this post and thank you for noting the myocarditis issue in military recruits following the small pox vaccine. Let’s see what happens with the Monkeypox vaccines.
The spike protein has been hypothetically implicated as the likely cause but smallpox vaccine does not make spike. The J and J vaccine is not associated with significant myocarditis cases yet that vaccine ultimately makes spike protein similar to mRNA vaccines. If we ever get our act together and acknowledge the problem exists perhaps we will figure out why it’s happening. But that requires a change in our broken and captured bureaucracies.
The FDA knew about myocarditis risks but pushed thru the Pfizer EUA for boys. The CTs were so under powered that they could not pick up this risk. Was this by design? We barreled into a mass vaccination campaign with a vaccine safety system that was inadequate, piecemeal and antiquated. The vanguards of vaccine safety ignored the signals, and down played them. It was the European Medicines Agency that shed light on the problem. Then there is the delay by the FDA in requiring Pfizer to study myocarditis in boys. The entire process has been devoid of accurate clinical monitoring and research in exchange for blind adherence to goals. As a physician and public health epi person I am deeply disappointed in HHS, CDC, FDA, NIH and NIAID.
A question on the baseline biomarkers:
In the methods sections you state "Laboratory
tests included cardiac biomarkers (troponin-T, creatine kinase-myocardial
band (CK-MB)), ECG, and echocardiography at three clinical visits
(Baseline, Day 3, Day 7 and Day 14 (optional for subjects with cardiac manifestation))
after receiving the second dose of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19
vaccine."
Does this mean that you measured the biomarkers for the baseline after reception of the vaccine and if so what amount of time between vaccination and blood draw did you tolerate?
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1557126777893437441.html