Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
A new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study does not disprove a link between COVID-19 vaccines and sudden deaths among young people, contrary to claims.
The study, published by the CDC’s quasi-journal on April 11, analyzed death certificates from Oregon for people aged 16 to 30 who died between June 2021 and December 2022.
Among people who died with evidence of vaccination, three died within 100 days of a shot, Drs. Juventila Liko and Paul Cieslak with the Oregon Health Authority found.
None of those three deaths could be attributed to messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccination, or shots from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, according to the doctors. Two of the deaths were attributed to underlying conditions while the cause of death for the third was “undetermined.”
“These data do not support an association between receipt of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and sudden cardiac death among previously healthy young persons,” the doctors wrote.
The authors failed to note that a much larger, peer-reviewed study from South Korea confirmed vaccine-induced myocarditis caused eight sudden cardiac deaths (SCDs), all among people younger than 45. Myocarditis is a form of heart inflammation.
The new study “is at odds with a higher quality and peer-reviewed journal article published in the European Heart Journal,” Dr. David McCune, who was not involved with either paper, told The Epoch Times via email. “The study, from Korea, found a small but significant group of patients who had SCD and autopsy evidence consistent with vaccine-induced myocarditis.”
Multiple media outlets published stories on the new study, but none mentioned the South Korean article.
The stories also included false or misleading claims.
U.S. News and World Report’s story said that it was an “incorrect idea that COVID-19 vaccines are linked to death in young people.”
NBC’s article said that the study “debunks widespread misinformation that the mRNA shots were connected to sudden cardiac death in young athletes.”
NBC reporter Berkeley Lovelace Jr. also wrote that “there is no evidence that COVID vaccines cause fatal cardiac arrest or other deadly heart problems in teens and young adults, a CDC report finds.”
“I don’t think that is close to an accurate assessment of the CDC paper or the overall level of knowledge we have about vaccine risk,” Dr. McCune said.
The reporters who wrote the articles for U.S. News and World Report, NBC, The Hill, and Medpage Today did not respond to requests for comment.
Other papers that support a link between deaths among young people and COVID-19 vaccination include a study that analyzed post-vaccination deaths in Qatar and determined there was a “high probability” that eight sudden cardiac deaths, including one person aged 11 to 20, were caused by the vaccination. Some death certificates have also described COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis as a cause of death for sudden deaths, including the certificate for an American college student who died suddenly after receiving a Pfizer shot.
Authorities in the United States acknowledge that the COVID-19 vaccines can cause myocarditis but maintain no deaths have been caused by vaccine-induced myocarditis. They have refused to release autopsies conducted on people who died after COVID-19 vaccination. Several long-term studies have identified heart scarring in people who suffered myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination. Some experts say the scarring may be permanent and could eventually lead to death.
Dr. Ofer Levy, an adviser to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, told NBC that no vaccine has ever been conclusively linked to sudden cardiac death and that the new study “adds to evidence that people don’t drop dead from getting their mRNA COVID vaccines.” Dr. Levy did not respond when asked whether he was aware of the South Korean paper and other literature.
NBC also quoted Dr. Leslie Cooper in promoting the study while failing to note that Dr. Cooper is a consultant for Moderna.
Authors Respond
Asked why they didn’t mention literature that presents evidence of sudden cardiac death among previously healthy young people after vaccination, the authors told The Epoch Times in an email that they had. The studies they included are an Israeli paper that does not mention sudden death; a letter that noted sudden deaths among athletes, regardless of vaccination status, since the vaccines were rolled out; an analysis of 911 calls from Israel; and a case definition for myocarditis that says it can be a cause of sudden death. None of the papers cite autopsy data or other strong evidence that has emerged.
The authors also linked to a 2021 CDC statement and a 2021 CDC presentation, neither of which mention sudden death.
The authors did not say whether they were unaware of the South Korean study or chose not to include it.
The CDC should “not have published their study without acknowledging the international studies that have identified post-mRNA vax-related cardiac death in young people,” Dr. Tracy Hoeg, who was not involved in the research, wrote on the social media platform X.
In the paper, the authors also cited an earlier CDC study that found people who entered a health system were at higher risk of cardiac complications after COVID-19 infection versus after COVID-19 vaccination. The relevance isn’t clear since the COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent infection, and some other studies have found that the risk of myocarditis is higher after vaccination among young people.
Asked why they didn’t cite any of those other studies, the authors referred back to the papers they did cite and said they “also clearly expressed the limitations in the research.”
Limitations of the paper include the small population size, which would make it “less likely” for Oregon to record “a rare event such as sudden cardiac death among adolescents and young adults,” the authors wrote in the study.
“Nevertheless, it is clear that the risk, if any, of cardiac death linked to COVID-19 vaccination is very low, while the risk of dying from COVID-19 is real,” Dr. Cieslak said in a press release issued by the Oregon Health Authority. “We continue to recommend COVID-19 vaccination for all persons 6 months of age and older to prevent COVID-19 and complications, including death.”
The authority didn’t list any data that show the currently available vaccines prevent COVID-19 complications such as death. U.S. regulators cleared them in 2023 without clinical trial efficacy data. Only animal testing data was available for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Novavax shots. Moderna presented antibody data from 50 humans. Observational studies have since provided mixed effectiveness data against infection and hospitalization.
CDC Journal
The CDC published the study in its journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), which only publishes papers after officials shape them to align with the agency’s messaging. The CDC has been relentlessly promotive of the COVID-19 vaccines since they were rolled out.
Previous releases of documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show that CDC officials engage in multiple rounds of editing of papers published in the journal.
The authors of the new paper acknowledged that the paper was edited prior to publication.
“CDC made no edits that altered the conclusions of the study,” they said.
The CDC journal’s editor-in-chief did not respond to a query.
The Epoch Times has filed FOIA requests to ascertain which edits were made, and by whom.
The authors also defended the choice to submit the paper to MMWR, rather than a traditional journal.
“Many times there is a large amount of observational data that is critical for time-sensitive reporting to inform public health practitioners and clinicians. These sorts of time-sensitive publications that might impact the actions of state and county public health leaders have long been published in the CDC’s MMWR,” they said. “In fact, there are numerous examples of CDC’s MMWR being the first source of information during many important historical events, including the beginning of the AIDS pandemic, the discovery of Legionnaires disease, the initial cases of H1N1 in 2009.”
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