The Covid pandemic has been marked by dominant narratives of two main kinds: firstly, what we might call the “Covidians”, who are utterly convinced that Covid was a unique and alarming threat, and that favoured public health measures such as lockdowns, and mass mask and vaccination mandates, were all successful and “science-based” responses to the threat. Generally opposing them are what may similarly be dubbed the “Covidiots”, who are equally utterly convinced that Covid was “just the flu”, and that Covid vaccines in particular are a far more dangerous threat than Covid ever was.
With respect to the latter, a particularly dominant narrative is, to borrow the title of an online documentary, “Died Suddenly”. That is, that Covid vaccines are directly and causally linked to an alarming spike in sudden deaths, usually from acute onset heart problems such as myocarditis, in the young. Increased female infertility is also cited.
Regarding myocarditis, various medical studies concur that there was indeed an increase in myocarditis among the young and male in particular, but that it was miniscule, and almost always transient and easily treated, and thus well within the risk-benefit calculus associated with Covid. Indeed, most publications agree that Covid infection is an even greater risk multiplier.
Many remain not so easily convinced.
Cases of myocarditis soared among U.S. service members in 2021 after the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, a top Pentagon official has confirmed.
There were 275 cases of myocarditis in 2021—a 151 percent spike from the annual average from 2016 to 2020, according to Gilbert Cisneros Jr., undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, who confirmed data revealed by a whistleblower earlier this year.
This is the sort of thing readers should always beware of, when confronted with apparently alarming statistic. “151% increase” sounds scary — but 151% increase on what? Those figures tell us that, from 2016-2020, there were just under 110 cases of myocarditis annually, out of 1.4 million active personnel. That’s a rate of 1 in 12,500. In 2021 (i.e. after mass Covid vaccination), that rate rose to 1 in 5,000.
The COVID-19 vaccines can cause myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation that can lead to mortality, including sudden death. COVID-19 also can cause myocarditis.
This is also true, but over-alarmist. Most cases of myocarditis don’t lead to mortality. 98% of patients hospitalised with myocarditis were discharged after successful treatment.
Data also suggest that, while vaccination in the general population led to a rough doubling of myocarditis cases (more or less in line with the military data), myocarditis after Covid infection was nearly 15 times higher.
However, dominant narratives being what they are, some refuse to accept the data as given, claiming that the data has been tampered with.
Whistleblowers revealed in 2021 that myocarditis, as reflected in the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), had soared to 2,868 percent higher than the average from 2016 to 2020. They downloaded the data in August 2021.
The number of 2021 myocarditis diagnoses, though, had plummeted from 1,239 to 263 when the data was downloaded later, prompting concerns of manipulation.
If the claim of data tampering is correct, that means that the “real” risk was 1 in 500, rather than 1 in 5,000, or, a ten-fold difference.
Military officials said they reviewed the data and found it was “faulty.” They said the data for the years 2016 to 2020 were “corrupted” during a “database maintenance process,” which resulted in the display of only 10 percent of the actual medical encounters for that time period.
Officials told [Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)] in 2022 that the problem had been fixed. The fix significantly changed the records. Instead of a 2,181 percent increase in hypertension in 2021, for instance, the increase was just 1.9 percent. Female infertility, instead of increasing 472 percent, increased 13.2 percent.
The Pentagon says that the difference is due to a lag in data, which meant that numbers for the winter months of 2021 were not included in the original data.
Mr. Cisneros acknowledged that the data given to the senator was incomplete. He said the change stemmed from December 2021 figures not being available when the corrected data was offered. There was a data “lag by about three months,” meaning the data wasn’t available in February 2022, when officials provided Mr. Johnson with the corrected data, Mr. Cisneros said.
Pentagon officials replicated the analyses from the whistleblower and found the data “are similar” to the data the whistleblower sent to Mr. Johnson, Mr. Cisneros said.
The Epoch Times
I guess it comes down to whether you’re willing to believe that the government and bureaucracy would deliberately and systematically lie to the public.
