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Diagnosis of Post-COVID-19 Vaccination Myocarditis Click here.
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COVID-19 postvaccination myocarditis: Prevalence
Terminology
According to commonly adopted convention: term “myocarditis” is now used to refer to myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis. In general, myocarditis means - the inflammation of the heart muscle and traditionally name pericarditis was used to distinguish states in which it was believed that only pericardium was involved. However, due to the fact that typically pericarditis will always include some degree of inflammation of myocardium - use of term myocarditis was expanded.
Early Concerns
Soon after COVID-19 vaccines roll-out, the informal reports about case of Myocarditis started to flood the internet. In addition to the anecdotal accounts of personal experiences by patients and physicians, many social media users have been sharing variety of scientific studies dealing with post-vaccination myocarditis. This internet chatter has been met with the expected criticism by the mainstream mass media and the notorious “fact-checkers”. This denial continued despite mounting evidence as can bee seen from the fact-check report about the press release of the Florida state’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo from 10/7/22.
Official Reports of Post-Vaccination Myocarditis
Two sources are cited by most mainstream medicine publications as the confirmation of the claims that Myocarditis occur more frequently in vaccinated patients than in no vaccinated population. Those reports are:
“Use of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine After Reports of Myocarditis Among Vaccine Recipients: Update from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices; June 2021”
Based upon those two reports, the mainstream medicine has conceded that post-vaccination myocarditis (including pericarditis) has been reported to occur especially in male adolescents and young adults after administration of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines: Pfizer’s BNT162b2 and Moderna’s mRNA-127. Moreover, according to the published in June, 2022 FDA Briefing Document on Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine the recipients of the Novavax NVX-CoV2373 vaccine- have also suffered from myocarditis during the phase III trials.
Notably similar pattern of cases has NOT been reported following receipt of Janssen/Johnson & Johnson adenovector COVID-19 vaccine.
However, in addition to the above 3 sources which are most commonly quoted - there are numerous other PubMed listed publications in reputable journals reporting that the post-market vaccine-safety surveillance systems in multiple countries have implicated clear association between receiving the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine and cases of myocarditis. Following are just few examples of such publications:
World Health Organization. COVID-19 subcommittee of the WHO Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) reviews cases of mild myocarditis reported with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. Accessed November 11, 2021. https://www.who.int/news/item/26-05-2021-gacvs-myocarditis-reported-with-covid-19-mrna-vaccines
Mevorach D, Anis E, Cedar N, et al. Myocarditis after BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine against Covid-19 in Israel. N Engl J Med. 2021;385(23):2140-2149. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2109730
Witberg G, Barda N, Hoss S, et al. Myocarditis after covid-19 vaccination in a large health care organization. N Engl J Med. 2021;385(23):2132-2139. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2110737
UK Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. Coronavirus vaccine—weekly summary of Yellow Card reporting. Accessed November 28, 2021. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions/coronavirus-vaccine-summary-of-yellow-card-reporting
Klein NP, Lewis N, Goddard K, et al. Surveillance for adverse events after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination. JAMA. 2021;326(14):1390-1399. doi:10.1001/jama.2021.15072
Lai FTT, Li X, Peng K, Huang L, Ip P, Tong X, Chui CSL, Wan EYF, Wong CKH, Chan EWY, Siu DCW, Wong ICK. Carditis After COVID-19 Vaccination With a Messenger RNA Vaccine and an Inactivated Virus Vaccine : A Case-Control Study. Ann Intern Med. 2022 Mar;175(3):362-370. doi: 10.7326/M21-3700.
According to several studies listed below, the risk of post-vaccination myocarditis appears to be more pronounced with Moderna’s mRNA-1273 than with Pfizer’s mRNAL BNT162b2 vaccines:
Husby A, Hansen JV, Fosbøl E, Thiesson EM, Madsen M, Thomsen RW, Sørensen HT, Andersen M, Wohlfahrt J, Gislason G, Torp-Pedersen C, Køber L, Hviid A. SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and myocarditis or myopericarditis: population based cohort study. BMJ. 2021 Dec 16;375:e068665. doi: 10.1136/bmj-2021-068665. PMID: 34916207; PMCID: PMC8683843.
Karlstad Ø, Hovi P, Husby A, Härkänen T, Selmer RM, Pihlström N, Hansen JV, Nohynek H, Gunnes N, Sundström A, Wohlfahrt J, Nieminen TA, Grünewald M, Gulseth HL, Hviid A, Ljung R. SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination and Myocarditis in a Nordic Cohort Study of 23 Million Residents. JAMA Cardiol. 2022 Jun 1;7(6):600-612. doi: 10.1001/jamacardio.2022.0583. PMID: 35442390; PMCID: PMC9021987.
Public Health Ontario: Myocarditis and Pericarditis after COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines 1st Revision: March 2022.
Le Vu S, Bertrand M, Jabagi MJ, Botton J, Drouin J, Baricault B, Weill A, Dray-Spira R, Zureik M. Age and sex-specific risks of myocarditis and pericarditis following Covid-19 messenger RNA vaccines. Nat Commun. 2022 Jun 25;13(1):3633. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-31401-5. PMID: 35752614; PMCID: PMC9233673.
In the past, large pharmacovigilance database such as Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) was considered to be reliable and useful by the Officialdom scientists - as it is well evidenced by the past publications. However, after the COVID-19 Pandemic and introduction of the controversial mRNA vaccines, many mainstream scientists have suddenly changed their minds regarding the reliability of systems such as VAERS. This sudden change of heart is exemplified by the publications in which mainstream scientists started to accuse “antivaccine activists” of scaring the public by the misuse of databases like VAERS. Suddenly, the medical mainstream has deemed those databases to be very unreliable and overflooding with the unverified misleading reports.
However, despite those disdains towards VAERS - a mainstream medical journal JAMA has published an in-depth study of VAERS data. According to this paper among over 192 million people who had received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccination between December 2020 and August 2021 - there were 1626 cases that met the definition of developing myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccinations.
The majority of these cases took place after the second dose. The median age of patients was 21 years, and 82% affected patients were males.
The estimated rate among males by age group was:
12 to 15 years old – 70.7 cases per million doses of BNT162b2
16 to 17 years old – 105.9 cases per million doses of BNT162b2
18 to 24 years old – 52.4 to 56.3 cases per million doses BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273.
Among females of the same age groups, the estimated case rates ranged from 6.4 to 11 cases per million doses.
The number of events observed exceeded the expected baseline rate among males aged 18 to 49 years and females aged 19 to 29 years.
Dispute about the Severity of Myocarditis
The high rate of post-vaccination myocarditis is hard to deny under the circumstances of the abundance of data which simply cannot be hidden anymore. To counteract this inconvenient reality, the narrative was developed according to which - while the post-vaccination myocarditis does occur - its severity is low. This is followed by the well known deceptive argument that even if such post-vaccination myocarditis is severe - the COVID-19 infection related myocarditis would be even more severe. That reasoning is supposed to justify the risk of vaccinations. Such an argument is made by Karlstadt et al. and by Block et al.
There are additional studies which claim that the cases that have been reported are mostly assessed to be “mild”. According to them most patients who presented for care with post vaccine myocarditis responded well to medical treatment and had rapid symptom improvement. Although the methods in which the severity of myocarditis is assessed are not very clear. Among such reports are the already mentioned above papers:
Witberg G, Barda N, Hoss S, et al. Myocarditis after covid-19 vaccination in a large health care organization. N Engl J Med. 2021;385(23):2132-2139. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2110737
Mevorach D, Anis E, Cedar N, et al. Myocarditis after BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine against Covid-19 in Israel. N Engl J Med. 2021;385(23):2140-2149. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2109730
“Use of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine After Reports of Myocarditis Among Vaccine Recipients: Update from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices; June 2021”
However, to be fair - there have been also reports of fulminant myocarditis in some patients shortly after they had received an mRNA vaccine. Astonishingly the mainstream commenters claim that the causal relationship between the vaccine and such presentation is difficult to establish.
For this reason, the mainstream medicine position on the matter of post-vaccination myocarditis is that: given the infrequency and the mild nature of the myocarditis and pericarditis cases, the benefits of vaccination greatly exceed the small increased risk.
Conclusions
The denial of the reality of high rate and severity of post-vaccination myocarditis - by the mainstream medicine is pervasive. The dissonance between the reported data and the conclusions drawn from them is staggering. Therefore, any physician should consider the possibility of the overt and/or subclinical myocarditis in all but especially adolescents and young adults who are receiving an mRNA vaccine. This should be particularly kept in mind for any situations in which a patient would develop new chest pain, shortness of breath, or palpitations following COVID-19 vaccination.