data1 have revealed that more people are having heart attacks and that more of these people are under 50 years of age. This is remarkable, as this trend seems to have started long before COVID-19.
Your heart is about the size of your fist and beats approximately 100,000 times each day. This small muscle pumps about eight pints of blood through the circulatory system. The heart has three layers: The endocardium is a thin layer that covers the four chambers; the pericardium is a thin layer that surrounds the heart; the myocardium is the muscle in the middle that pumps blood.
Your heart also has a unique electrical system, the function of which is to stimulate the heartbeat. Each of these factors and more must work together to get oxygen and nutrients to your body. When things don’t work right, it’s called heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in men and women.
The rise in heart attacks in young adults began before COVID
In the 2019 study,2 Researchers evaluated 2,097 consecutive patients aged 50 years or younger and admitted with a type 1 myocardial infarction (heart attack). The data revealed that 20.5% of patients were 40 years of age or younger. When data from these patients were compared with older counterparts, they had similar risk profiles with two exceptions. Younger individuals had a higher rate of substance use but a lower rate of hypertension.
The patients were followed for an average of 11.2 years, and the researchers concluded that, despite being approximately 10 years younger and with a lower prevalence of hypertension, “very young myocardial infarction patients had similar outcomes at one year and in the long term compared to those aged 41 to 50 at the time of their index heart attack.”3
In other words, despite the age advantage, their long-term outcomes were the same as those 10 years older. In 20234 An opinion piece in JAMA also identified a growing number of adults age 40 and younger with premature heart attacks. Data shows that the number of heart attacks in this age group has increased by 2% each year. Commentators believe that the increased prevalence is related to cardiovascular risk factors, such as obesity and hypertension.
The authors warn that the data reveal an “urgent need to refocus cardiovascular disease prevention efforts in young adults.” This trend is also being reported outside the medical literature. An article from 20235 in National Geographic points out that there is a growing number of young adults with cardiovascular diseases that lead to heart attacks.
In a confusing juxtaposition of facts, the National Geographic article appears to equate the growing number of athlete deaths from cardiac arrest with the growing number of young adults having heart attacks. The article mentions the cardiac arrest that 18-year-old Bronny James, son of NBA star LeBron James, experienced during basketball practice at the University of Southern California.
The writer then states that cardiac arrest is different, but can be caused by a variety of conditions, including “cardiomyopathy (thickened heart muscle), heart failure, arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats), and, yes, heart attacks.” While it is technically true that a heart attack can trigger cardiac arrest, during which the heart stops beating, it is very rare for highly trained athletes to have health conditions that trigger a heart attack and then cardiac arrest.
The article then goes on to list some of the biggest risk factors for heart disease at a younger age, including “high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and obesity, all of which can obstruct and damage the arteries and blood vessels that carry oxygen-rich blood. the heart.”6 Finally, there are two paragraphs on COVID-19 and heart health, which conclude: “However, it remains unclear why younger adults appear to be more vulnerable to cardiovascular complications of COVID.”
Increase in athlete deaths related to abnormal electrical events
The National Geographic article makes no mention of the thousands who have had heart attacks or myocarditis from the COVID vaccination.7 In June 2021,8 the FDA acknowledged that Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 shots increase the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis.
According to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS),9 as of July 28, 2023, there were 27,343 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis, 20,505 heart attacks, and 35,726 deaths, all related to COVID vaccinations.
A year after the shot was launched, a January 2022 JAMA study10 of 192,405,448 people, concluded “… the risk of myocarditis after receiving mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines increased across multiple age and sex strata and was highest after the second vaccination dose in men adolescents and young men. This risk must be considered in the context of the benefits of vaccination against COVID-19.”
Then, in May 2023,11 a Yale University press release called the more than 27,000 cases of myocarditis reported to VAERS “rare” events. During an interview with Peter Sweden,12 The cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough describes the relationship between myocarditis and abnormal electrical events in the heart that lead to cardiac arrest.
“Here’s the relationship: COVID-19 vaccines cause myocarditis, the FDA and all regulatory agencies agree. Now as a cardiologist, I can tell you that if someone has myocarditis, we can’t let them play sports because the surge of adrenaline will cause cardiac arrest.
Our guidelines before COVID said don’t let someone with myocarditis play sports. So now athletes have been vaccinated, are developing myocarditis, playing sports, and for some unlucky ones, it triggers cardiac death. This is a direct relationship. This is not controversial.”
McCullough also notes that there are two times when there is a natural surge of adrenaline or epinephrine.13 One of them is between 3 and 6 in the morning, which corresponds to the numerous cases of people who have died during their sleep due to sudden cardiac death. The second normal increase is during athletic activity.
Accountability and transparency have been lost
McCullough was interviewed by Children’s Health Defense TV14 in January 2023, right after Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest on the field. At the beginning of the interview, he talks about a recent article15 in which he and his colleague found a significant increase in cardiac arrests after the release of the COVID vaccine.
“I recently published with Dr. [Panagis] Polykretis from Europe, that before the vaccine against COVID-19 the average number of cardiac arrests in all European football and soccer leagues, which are much more players than the NFL, the average number of cardiac arrests was of 29 per year, this is before vaccines.
Vaccines were introduced in 2021 and since then the number of on-field cardiac arrests with professional athletes in Europe is 1,598; 1101 of them have been fatal cases.”
McCullough continues to discuss myocarditis with interviewer Aimee McBride. He notes that in more than half of cases, there is no initial presentation and no symptoms, although scarring is visible on MRI. The scar that forms in the heart is the setting of an abnormal electrical rhythm that can lead to sudden adult death syndrome. In his initial analysis of reproduction,16 McCullough rules out several conditions, including a heart attack.
Commotio cordis is a condition that can trigger cardiac arrest when the sternum (sternum) is hit in the right place. As McCullough describes, football gear protects the sternum, and while this condition is seen 20 to 30 times a year in baseball players, it has not been seen in NFL players, probably in because of the protective equipment they wear.
McCullough and McBride expressed hope that Damar Hamlin’s case would open the floodgates and create a situation where the “silence and gaslighting” about vaccine safety would end because Hamlin’s event was audience on national television, or “the world stage,” as McBride put it. In the past, an athlete’s vaccine history was hushed up, but since the NFL ordered the firing, it was expected that this event would be enough to start an investigation.
Unfortunately, his hope was in vain, as Hamlin announced in April 2023,17 that his condition was caused by commotio cordis, without mentioning his vaccination status in the media, despite NFL statistics that at least 80% of athletes took the shot by July 2021 and that some teams had more of 90% of the players who take the shot.18
In a recent article on Substack,19 McCullough points to two studies, one showing conclusively that COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis can be fatal, and another that found in young adults with MRI-confirmed heart damage, there was 58% residual abnormality in the heart after a year, suggesting that the damage is scarring the heart muscle and may be permanent after a year.
Interestingly, of the 40 adolescents (mostly boys) evaluated, 73% had no cardiac symptoms. Without an evaluation, the parents would not have known the child had heart damage.
VAERS is likely not showing the whole picture
notes by McCullough20 a 1992 study that showed that a coronavirus infection could cause myocarditis in animals. When COVID-19 first appeared in 2020, approximately 30% of the top ten athletes became ill. Big Ten programs instituted testing programs that included EKGs, echocardiograms, MRIs and blood monitoring for cardiac troponin. After finding only six players with myocarditis out of the thousands tested, the testing program was abandoned.
However, once the vaccine was released and myocarditis became a real problem, screening programs were not reinstated.
According to McCullough, none of the NFL and college football organizations are using advanced biomarkers to detect athletes with myocarditis, even after mandating that all athletes receive the vaccine and despite knowing that the FDA and other regulatory agencies have acknowledged that myocarditis is a very real side effect. . McCullough calls this a major misstep in the test.
The VAERS system is supposed to identify vaccines that trigger an abnormal number of side effects or many injections that cause problems. However, as McCullough points out, you must enter detailed information into VAERS with all the information necessary to file a report, including the vaccine lot number.21 He believes this is a major reason for underreporting to VAERS, since without the vaccine card associated with that patient, reporting cannot begin.
Although anyone can make a report to VAERS, a component that critics use to claim that VAERS can contain errors and even false claims, because of the lengthy and complicated submission process, adverse events are notoriously underreported, not over-informed.
Sources and references