The Shimabukuro team strikes again
Don't worry folks, myocarditis is no big deal!
This article is about team Shimabukuro’s recently published (September 21, 2022) article in The Lancet entitled: “Outcomes at least 90 days since onset of myocarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in adolescents and young adults in the USA: a follow-up surveillance study”.1 This study is also outlined in this report. They maintain that most of the youngsters aged 12-29 who reported myocarditis adverse events to VAERS following COVID-19 injections are doing just swell 3 months post injection. Well, sort of.
Among just about everything in this report, I had a hard time figuring out what the 90 days criteria was, to be honest. They selected individuals from VAERS filed between Jan 12, to Nov 5, 2021, “aged 12–29 years at the time of mRNA COVID-19 vaccination and for whom the time to myocarditis symptom onset was more than 90 days since vaccination”. So does this mean they used the cohort of VAERS reports for myocarditis that were filed after 90 days had passed since injection? Which injection? They write:
Survey participation of patients with myocarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination reported to VAERS at least 90 days since symptom onset.
I believe that the 90 days post injection criteria was based on the phone calls that they made to individuals who had successfully filed a VAERS report for myocarditis in the relevant age group and timeframe. I therefore assume that the 90 days since symptom onset referred to 90 days from the day that the VAERS report was filed. Thus, if an individual filed a myocarditis report to VAERS 3 days following dose 1, then they qualified for this study if they were 93 days, or more, out from filing this report. It’s odd how there is no mention of any other injections that may have been given in that timeframe, however. It is important to mention that “of the eligible patients with myocarditis who filed a report to VAERS that were included in this follow-up evaluation, 33% declined to participate or were unreachable.” So their final numbers were very small. Their conclusions were the following:
In summary, after at least 90 days since onset of myocarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination, 81% of patients were considered recovered by their health-care provider.
Oh but by the way, of the individuals included in the study who had health-care provider follow-up, 26% were prescribed daily medication related to myocarditis. Hmm. Doesn’t sound so resolved to me. Also, “of the individuals who completed the quality-of-life portion of the patient survey, 2% reported problems with self-care, 5% with mobility, 20% with performing usual activities, 30% with pain, and 46% with depression. Half with sustained depression. Is this what the health-care providers refer to as ‘recovered’? Depressed and medicated following an-injection induced cardiac event in youth?
I did the following in order to try to reproduce their results:
I counted the number individuals who filed a myocarditis2 adverse event report in the VAERS domestic data set: there were 5,727 (0.7%) reports as of September 23, 2022.
Of this subset, I counted the 12-29 year olds: there are 2,241 (39% of total myocarditis reports).
Of this subset, I counted the reports that fell within the January 12 and November 5, 2021 timeframe: there were 1,655 (74% of total myocarditis reports made for 12-19 year olds).
Of this subset, I counted the reports filed within 90 days, and without: there were 1,576 (95% of 12-29 year old reports of myocarditis made in the Jan 12 -Nov 5, 2021 timeframe) and 31 (1.9% of 12-29 year old reports of myocarditis made in the Jan 12 -Nov 5, 2021 timeframe), respectively.
According to Figure 1 in the article, the authors claimed to have found “989 reports on VAERS of myocarditis or myopericarditis after COVID-19 vaccination in patients aged 12-29 years who met the CDC case definition”.3 This does not match my results from a query of VAERS reports of myocarditis for 12-29 year olds in 2021. The number of reports is 1,655, as previously noted. That’s twice as many reports as they report. I am not sure how to explain this but needless to say, I have never - and I mean not once after having really tried - been able to reproduce the numbers reported by Shimabukuro or Su as per these myocarditis summary reports made by the CDC.4 5 6 7 It is possible that due to the CDC case report of myocarditis classification, that the 666 (no this is not a joke) remaining individuals were omitted from the study.
Also according to Figure 1, the authors claimed that the percentage of individuals in their study cohort of youngsters that met the CDC case definition of myocarditis who were at least 90 days post-myocarditis onset, was 85%. So I interpret this to mean that of the 989 original individuals who reported, 836 made it to 90 days post onset. Ultimately, they ended up having 519 individuals in their study whereby 261 were considered ‘fully recovered’ and 268 were ‘cleared’ for all physical activity.
On the subject of choosing 90 days post injection for recovery assessment, I thought it would be interesting to check out how many VAERS reports for myocarditis were filed within 90 days of injection. It is very clear to see in VAERS that of the 12-29 year olds who reported myocarditis in the respective timeframe (Jan 12 - Nov 5, 2021), 95% of them reported within 90 days of injection and of these 95%, only 32% were reported to have recovered. 60% of all individuals were reported as not recovered (36%) or unknown status (24%).
50% of our 12-29 year old individuals filed myocarditis reports within 48 hours following first injection while 57% of individuals filed reports within 48 hours following second or third injections.
97.3% of reports were made within 90 days of first injection; 98.6% of reports were made within 90 days of second injection and 100% of reports were made within 90 days of third injection. Incredibly, 91% of all reports were filed and in the VAERS system by day 5 following the second injection. That’s as high as the anaphylaxis reporting rate. If that’s not evidence of causation, by the way, I don’t know what is.
I decided to assess the outcomes of the 1,655 reports from my query by investigating whether or not these individuals ended up in the hospital, ER or dead. I also looked at the recovered status as indicated in the VAERS data by the variable “RECOVD” for which one could either be recovered, not recovered or have unknown status. You might have noticed this mentioned above.
0.36% of our subset of individuals aged 12-29 years old who filed myocarditis reports within the respective timeframe, died. 82% were hospitalized or ended up in an Emergency Room. Of the young individuals who were hospitalized with myocarditis, the average number of days spent in hospital was 3, with the maximum number of days at 60.
In our subset, only 32% were reported to have recovered. This is verbatim from VAERS so even if we do not consider that the 24% of individuals with unknown status had all recovered, which is highly unlikely, this still only covers 56% of the individuals. So how is it possible that the Shimabukuro team reported that:
Most (81%) patients for whom a follow-up health-care provider survey was completed were considered recovered from myocarditis, and most self-reported overall good health on the EQ-5D-5L. Readmissions to hospital were uncommon, and no deaths were identified during the follow-up period.
It does not add up. Maybe I need a crash-course in EQ-5D-5Lage and how to effectively lie with statistics.
The thing about this follow-up study is that besides the 6 listed self-proclaimed limitations, we cannot lose sight of the fact that there is an elevated risk of myocarditis in young individuals in the context of these shots. Indeed it is revealing that the authors discovered “the absence of clear clinical practice guidelines for the outpatient follow-up of myocarditis” “as no standard level of care was provided”, but even still, how and why are we at this point? There is a clear and evident solution and that is a cessation of administration of these products into healthy young humans.
Given that most, if not all, young individuals aged 12-29 have already had COVID-19, and that the mortality rate for this age group is nil, and that these shots have been proven to be entirely ineffective at reducing transmission or hospitalization, it is my very strong opinion that there is zero need for any risk to be taken by healthy humans in the context of these shots. Zero. No subsequent follow-up studies required. Period.
The Shimabukuros do ultimately insist on holding fast to their outdated and false mantra that “vaccination remains the most effective way of preventing morbidity and mortality from COVID-19”.
I challenge them now and likely always will: the authors are simply wrong in their assessment.
Preventative treatments are by far superior pathways out of any so-called pandemic related to COVID-19 and just as an after-thought, Ivermectin and Chloroquine do not induce myocarditis.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(22)00244-9/fulltext
strings_myocarditis <- c("Myocarditis", "Pericarditis", "Autoimmune myocarditis", "Endocarditis", "Carditis", "Viral pericarditis", "Endocarditis bacterial", "Pericarditis constrictive", "Endocarditis noninfective", "Eosinophilic myocarditis", "Myocardial necrosis marker increased", "Myocardial rupture", "Myocardial ischaemia", "Pericarditis constrictive", "Eosinophilic myocarditis", "Viral myocarditis", "Viral endocarditis", "carditis", "Myopericarditis")
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7027e2.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2022-06-22-23/03-covid-shimabukuro-508.pdf
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2022-07-19/03-COVID-Shimabukuro-508.pdf
https://www.fda.gov/media/159228/download
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-08-30/03-COVID-Su-508.pdf
Whatever circle of hell Shimabukuro is destined for, it's Fauci-adjacent.
What does “recovered” mean? And who are the health care providers who think everything is fine (as long as you lie down before you hurt yourself)? Are they as competent as the CDC? My understanding is that EKG evidence of heart distress post vacs is very high even if symptoms are sub-clinical and that will not go away. How many young people who died on the playing fields were even diagnosed with anything prior to the sudden heart attack? Zero. Most important point is giving shots and side effects to young people who had NO risk of hospitalization or death. And what does it mean to die from the disease when hospitalization is cause of death? I’m a broken record, I know. One year ago I got the boot at work for refusing the shots, but was 70 at the time, COVID recovered in 3 days (plus a week of afternoon naps). For me no NI exemption. A 46y colleague who stayed on died a day before the shot#2 deadline. I believe he got his shot that day but cannot prove it. Whenever he got it, he was at work smiling and greeting people in the hallway all the way through the Friday before his sudden death on the weekend. He was rail thin, energetic, 20y PhD veteran of hi tech. If I ever get more details this will be a good SAD example of healthy relatively young person with zero risk from the disease. Job leveraged to take the shot in violation of the EUA terms. I cheated, took “retirement.” Mel Brooks can make one more movie “Alive and Loving It.”