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I just now notified hundreds of people at the CDC why they aren’t able to find any vaccine-related deaths

By Steve Kirsch | August 14, 2022

I just sent the email below to nearly 300 people at the CDC who are known to be involved in the COVID vaccine program.

I pointed out that existing autopsy protocols cannot find vaccine deaths and asked why isn’t the CDC notifying medical examiner and pathologists how to find COVID vaccine-related deaths?

Do you think I’ll hear back? Do you think they will do anything differently?

Here is the full text of the email:

I wanted to make sure everyone who is involved in the COVID vaccination program understands exactly why the CDC isn’t finding any vaccine associated deaths.

The short answer is because they aren’t looking for them properly even though the methodology to do so is in plain sight. That methodology is ignored. This is why the pathologists find nothing.

A simple analogy: if the PCR test were run with just 5 cycles, we’d never find any COVID virus. We’re basically doing the same thing with the tests we do post-vaccine: we didn’t change the tests to FIND the vaccine.

This is unethical.

I wanted to make sure everyone who works at the CDC is aware of this.

At the very least, the CDC needs to publicly acknowledge this clear failing.

As I said recently on Fox News, hundreds of thousands of Americans have been killed by the COVID vaccines.

I’ve posted the summary of the backup data here.

People who were skeptical of my numbers found that document very convincing.

Fox News REFUSED to look at my data or discuss it. Why not? Because they are paid not to challenge the narrative. Over $1B is being paid out to promote the vaccines and ignore anything that goes against the narrative.

Even worse, nobody will go on camera to try to refute any of this. Why not?

The reason the CDC finds no deaths is because they aren’t looking for them with tools that will find the deaths.

How can Burkhardt and Bhakdi find 93% vaccine-caused deaths when the coroners found nothing IN THE EXACT SAME TISSUE SAMPLES?

You need to run specialized tests to determine an association with the vaccine. The standard tests run by medical examiners are NEVER going to find an association. That was clear in their paper and it was independently validated by Dr. Ryan Cole who is a very experienced board certified pathologist.

The question you all should be asking is:

Why isn’t the CDC requiring that for anyone who dies 30 days after getting a vaccine an autopsy protocol that can find an association with the vaccine using the necessary specialized tests?

Such a protocol already exists and it is proven it works. See this article.

Dr. Cole points out that YOU NEED SPECIALIZED TESTS to find the association.

How many pathologists are doing these tests in America? Just one as far as he knows.

I am absolutely baffled as to why the CDC has never done any of these tests and why nobody has talked to Dr. Cole.

Do you know why? Can you tell me?

While there may be a better protocol, this protocol is proven to detect vaccine involvement in 93% of the cases studied. These are all tissue samples from people dying shortly after vaccination where the medical examiners were unable to find any association.

If this protocol is insufficient, where is the CDC document explaining why and proposing a better one that finds more association?

If the CDC has been doing adequate tests, where is the documentation of that?

It seems pretty clear to me that the CDC isn’t finding vaccine-caused deaths because they refuse to look.

They can even go back to the autopsy tissue samples they already have and re-stain them to see how many were missed in the initial analysis as documented in the Rosenblum paper in Lancet.

The Rosenblum paper should have reported that none of the autopsies used stains that were necessary to show an association. But this was never mentioned. Shouldn’t that paper be corrected?

I tried to talk to the authors, but Martha Sharan at the CDC ignored every email and phone call I left for her.

Is this how science is done? By not allowing anyone to challenge your work?

My article also explains very clearly why doctors are not finding vaccine-related deaths. The interview with Gina Doane makes it clear her dad died from the vaccine yet the doctor in charge refused to even consider this as a possibility even though NONE of his other explanations fit, and the vaccine hypothesis fit perfectly. That’s not how science works. This is corruption. You don’t need a medical degree to figure it out. It’s all in the video.

But that second video shows you first hand how doctors are looking the other way.

I hope you will find the two videos and the content of the post eye opening. One commenter wrote: ” One of the best and most revealing pieces of research on the net….very telling. Thank you.”

It’s well worth your time. I’ve written over 700 articles on the COVID vaccines and the content presented in these two interviews are the most important interviews for everyone at the CDC to watch because it shows you how 1) the tests are inadequate and 2) even with overwhelming evidence, the doctors are deliberately NOT acknowledging vaccine death.

If you want to chat, I can be reached at <redacted>.

-steve

Am I flogging a dead horse?

No. I’m just putting hundreds of people at the CDC on the record as having been notified of what is going on.

And who knows. Maybe ONE person is honest.

The CDC has backed off their earlier “guidance” and have removed things from their website that were untrue.

August 14, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

Keira Bell: My Story

After a landmark court ruling in December, the name “Keira Bell” was cited worldwide, admiringly by some, with hostility by others. (Photo: Paul Cooper/​Shutterstock)
By Keira Bell | April 7, 2021

From the earliest days, my home life was unhappy. My parents—a white Englishwoman and a black American who got together while he was in Britain with the U.S. Air Force—divorced when I was about 5. My mother, who was on welfare, descended into alcoholism and mental illness. Although my father remained in England, he was emotionally distant to me and my younger sister.

I was a classic tomboy, which was one of the healthier parts of my early life in Letchworth, a town of about 30,000 people, an hour outside London. Early in childhood, I was accepted by the boys—I dressed in typically boy clothing and was athletic. I never had an issue with my gender; it wasn’t on my mind.

(Courtesy: Keira Bell)

Then puberty hit, and everything changed for the worse. A lot of teenagers, especially girls, have a hard time with puberty, but I didn’t know this. I thought I was the only one who hated how my hips and breasts were growing. Then my periods started, and they were disabling. I was often in pain and drained of energy.

Also, I could no longer pass as “one of the boys,” so lost my community of male friends. But I didn’t feel I really belonged with the girls either. My mother’s alcoholism had gotten so bad that I didn’t want to bring friends home. Eventually, I had no friends to invite. I became more alienated and solitary. I had been moving a lot too, and I had to start over at different schools, which compounded my problems.

By the time I was 14, I was severely depressed and had given up: I stopped going to school; I stopped going outside. I just stayed in my room, avoiding my mother, playing video games, getting lost in my favorite music, and surfing the internet.

Something else was happening: I became attracted to girls. I had never had a positive association with the term “lesbian” or the idea that two girls could be in a relationship. This made me wonder if there was something inherently wrong with me. Around this time, out of the blue, my mother asked if I wanted to be a boy, something that hadn’t even crossed my mind. I then found some websites about females transitioning to male. Shortly after, I moved in with my father and his then-partner. She asked me the same question my mother had. I told her that I thought I was a boy and that I wanted to become one.

As I look back, I see how everything led me to conclude it would be best if I stopped becoming a woman. My thinking was that, if I took hormones, I’d grow taller and wouldn’t look much different from biological men.

I began seeing a psychologist through the National Health Service, or NHS. When I was 15—because I kept insisting that I wanted to be a boy—I was referred to the Gender Identity Development Service, at the Tavistock and Portman clinic in London. There, I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, which is psychological distress because of a mismatch between your biological sex and your perceived gender identity.

By the time I got to the Tavistock, I was adamant that I needed to transition. It was the kind of brash assertion that’s typical of teenagers. What was really going on was that I was a girl insecure in my body who had experienced parental abandonment, felt alienated from my peers, suffered from anxiety and depression, and struggled with my sexual orientation.

After a series of superficial conversations with social workers, I was put on puberty blockers at age 16. A year later, I was receiving testosterone shots. When 20, I had a double mastectomy. By then, I appeared to have a more masculine build, as well as a man’s voice, a man’s beard, and a man’s name: Quincy, after Quincy Jones.

(Courtesy: Keira Bell)

But the further my transition went, the more I realized that I wasn’t a man, and never would be. We are told these days that when someone presents with gender dysphoria, this reflects a person’s “real” or “true” self, that the desire to change genders is set. But this was not the case for me. As I matured, I recognized that gender dysphoria was a symptom of my overall misery, not its cause.

Five years after beginning my medical transition to becoming male, I began the process of detransitioning. A lot of trans men talk about how you can’t cry with a high dose of testosterone in your body, and this affected me too: I couldn’t release my emotions. One of the first signs that I was becoming Keira again was that—thankfully, at last—I was able to cry. And I had a lot to cry about.

The consequences of what happened to me have been profound: possible infertility, loss of my breasts and inability to breastfeed, atrophied genitals, a permanently changed voice, facial hair. When I was seen at the Tavistock clinic, I had so many issues that it was comforting to think I really had only one that needed solving: I was a male in a female body. But it was the job of the professionals to consider all my co-morbidities, not just to affirm my naïve hope that everything could be solved with hormones and surgery.

Last year, I became a claimant against the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in a judicial-review case, which allows petitioners in Britain to bring action against a public body they deem to have violated its legal duties. Few judicial reviews get anywhere; only a fraction obtain a full hearing. But ours did, with a panel of three High Court judges considering whether youths under treatment at the clinic could meaningfully consent to such medical interventions.

Bell in January 2020, after she brought legal action against the clinic. (Photo: Sam Tobin/PA Wire)

My team argued that the Tavistock had failed to protect young patients who sought its services, and that—instead of careful, individualized treatment—the clinic had conducted what amounted to uncontrolled experiments on us. Last December, we won a unanimous verdict. The judges expressed serious doubts that the clinic’s youngest patients could understand the implications of what amounted to experimental treatment with life-altering outcomes.

In their ruling, the judges repeatedly expressed surprise at what had been going on at the Tavistock, particularly its failure to gather basic data on its patients. They noted the lack of evidence for putting children as young as 10 years old on drugs to block puberty, a treatment that is almost universally followed by cross-sex hormones, which must be taken for life to maintain the transition. They also had concerns about the lack of follow-up data, given “the experimental nature of the treatment and the profound impact that it has.”

Notably, a growing wave of girls has been seeking treatment for gender dysphoria. In 2009-10, 77 children were referred to the Gender Identity Development Service, 52% of whom were boys. That ratio started to reverse a few years later as the overall number of referrals soared. In England in 2018-19, 624 boys were referred and 1,740 girls, or 74% of the total. Over half of referrals were for those aged 14 or under; some were as young as 3 years old. The court noted the practitioners at the Tavistock did not put forward “any clinical explanation” for the dramatic rise in girls, and expressed surprise at its failure to collate data on the age of patients when they began puberty blockers.

The ruling does not completely prevent a minor from beginning a medical transition. But the judges recommended that doctors consider getting court permission before starting such treatment for those 16 to 17; they concluded it was “very doubtful” that patients aged 14 and 15 could have sufficient understanding of the consequences of the treatment to give consent; and that it was “highly unlikely” for those aged 13 and under.

In response, the NHS said that the Tavistock had “immediately suspended new referrals for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the under-16s, which in future will only be permitted where a court specifically authorizes it.” The Tavistock appealed the ruling, and the court will hear its appeal in June.

The puberty blockers that I received at 16 were designed to stop my sexual maturation: The idea was that this would give me a “pause” to think about whether I wanted to continue to a further gender transition. This so-called “pause” put me into what felt like menopause, with hot flushes, night sweats, and brain fog. All this made it more difficult to think clearly about what I should do.

By the end of a year of this treatment, when I was presented with the option of moving on to testosterone, I jumped at it—I wanted to feel like a young man, not an old woman. I was eager for the shots to start, and the changes this would bring. At first, the testosterone gave me a big boost in confidence. One of the earliest effects was that my voice dropped, which made me feel more commanding.

Over the next couple of years, my voice deepened further, my beard came in, and my fat redistributed. I continued to wear my breast binder every day, especially now that I was completely passing as male, but it was painful and obstructed my breathing. By the time I was 20, I was being treated at the adult clinic. The testosterone and the binder affected the appearance of my breasts, and I hated them even more. I also wanted to align my face and my body, so got a referral for a double mastectomy.

My relationship with my parents continued to be difficult. I was no longer speaking to my mother. My father had kicked me out of his apartment shortly after I turned 17, and I went to live in a youth hostel. He and I were still in touch, though he was adamantly opposed to my transition. Reluctantly, he took me for the surgery. I was a legal adult when it took place, and I don’t relieve myself of responsibility. But I had been put on a pathway—puberty blockers to testosterone to surgery—when I was a troubled teen. As a result of the surgery, there’s nerve damage to my chest, and I don’t have sensation the way I used to. If I am able to have children, I will never breastfeed them.

Around the end of that first year post-surgery, something started happening: My brain was maturing. I thought about how I’d gotten where I was, and gave myself questions to contemplate. A big one was: “What makes me a man?”

I started realizing how many flaws there had been in my thought process, and how they had interacted with claims about gender that are increasingly found in the larger culture and that have been adopted at the Tavistock. I remembered my idea as a 14-year-old, that hormones and surgery would turn me into someone who appeared to be a man. Now, I was that person. But I recognized that I was very physically different from men. Living as a trans man helped me acknowledge that I was still a woman.

I also started to see what I was living out was based on stereotypes, that I was trying to assume the narrow identity of “masculine guy.” It was all making less and less sense. I was also concerned about the effect my transition would have on my ability to find a sexual partner.

Then there was the fact that no one really knew the long-term effects of the treatment. For instance, the puberty blockers and testosterone caused me to have to deal with vaginal atrophy, a thinning and fragility of the vaginal walls that normally occurs after menopause. I started feeling really bad about myself again.

I decided to stop, cold turkey. When I was due for my next testosterone shot, I canceled the appointment.

After I came to this decision, I found a subreddit for detransitioners. The number of people on it started rising, as if all these young women had come to a collective realization of the medical scandal we had been a part of. It was a place we could talk about our experiences and support each other. I felt liberated.

What happened to me is happening across the Western world. Little of my case was a surprise to those paying attention to the Tavistock whistle-blowers who in recent years have spoken out in alarm to the media, sometimes anonymously. Some have left the service because of these concerns. But the transgender issue is now highly political and wrapped up in questions of identity politics. It can be perilous to raise questions or doubts about young people’s medical gender transitions. Some who have done so have been vilified and had their careers threatened.

At the Tavistock, practitioners provide “gender affirmative care”—in practice, this means that when children and teens declare a desire to transition, their assertions are typically accepted as conclusive. Affirmative care is being adopted as a model in many places. In 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement on the treatment of young people who identify as transgender and gender diverse that advocated for “gender-affirmative care.”

But former Tavistock practitioners have cited varied problems suffered by the kids who sought help, such as sexual abuse, trauma, parental abandonment, homophobia in the family or at school, depression, anxiety, being on the autism spectrum, having ADHD. These profound issues, and how they might be tied up with feelings of dysphoria, have often been ignored in favor of making transition the all-purpose solution.

As the High Court found, much of the clinic’s treatment is not even based on solid evidence. At the time our case was accepted, the NHS was asserting that the effects of puberty blockers are “fully reversible.” But recently, the NHS reversed itself, acknowledging “that ‘little is known about the long-term side-effects’ on a teenager’s body or brain.” That didn’t stop them from prescribing these drugs to people like me.

Dr. Christopher Gillberg, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Gothenburg University in Sweden and a specialist in autism, was an expert witness for our case. Gillberg said in his court statement that over his 45 years of treating children with autism, it was rare to have patients with gender dysphoria—but their numbers started exploding in 2013, and most were biological girls. Gillberg told the court that what was happening at the Tavistock was a “live experiment” on children and adolescents.

Parents who are reluctant or even alarmed about starting their children on a medical transition may be warned, “Would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son?” (Or vice versa.) I had suicidal thoughts as a teen. Suicidal thoughts indicate serious mental health problems that need assessment and proper care. When I told them at the Tavistock about these thoughts, that became another reason to put me on hormones quickly to improve my well-being. But after the court ruling, the Tavistock released an internal study of a group of 44 patients who had started taking puberty blockers at ages 12 to 15. It said that this treatment had failed to improve the mental state of patients, having “no significant effect on their psychological function, thoughts of self-harm, or body image.” Additionally, of those 44 patients, 43 went on to cross-sex hormones. This suggests blocking puberty isn’t providing a pause. It is giving a push.

Before beginning on testosterone, I was asked if I wanted children, or if I wanted to consider freezing my eggs because of the possibility that transition would make me infertile. As a teenager, I couldn’t imagine having kids, and the procedure wouldn’t have been covered by the NHS. I said I was fine if I couldn’t, and I didn’t need to freeze my eggs. But now as a young adult, I see that I didn’t truly understand back then the implications of infertility. Having children is a basic right, and I don’t know if that has been taken from me.

As part of its defense, the Tavistock put forth statements from a few young trans people who are happy with their care. One is S, a 13-year-old trans boy who got puberty blockers from a private provider because the waiting list at the Gender Identity Development Service was so long. S told the court that he had “no idea what me in the future is going to think” about being able to have children and that since he has never been in “a romantic relationship,” the idea of one is not “on my radar at the moment.”

Lots of teenagers, when contemplating future sexual relationships, feel baffled and even disturbed at the thought.  Those same people, when adults, often feel very differently. I know, because this happened to me. I’d never been in a sexual relationship at the time of my transition, so I didn’t truly understand what the transition would mean sexually.

S’s statement demonstrates how difficult it is for minors to give consent for procedures they can’t yet understand. As the judges wrote, “There is no age-appropriate way to explain to many of these children what losing their fertility or full sexual function may mean to them in later years.”

Bell speaking to the media after the court ruling last December. (Photo: Sam Tobin/PA Wire)

Today, at 24, I’m in my first serious relationship. My partner is very supportive of everything I do, and I am the same for her. She has a large group of female friends who accept me; it’s been very healing. For now, I don’t speak to either of my parents or have a relationship with them.

I still get taken for male sometimes. I expect that, and I’m not angry about it. I know that I will live with that for the rest of my life. What I am angry about is how my body was changed at such a young age. People want to know if I’m going to have reconstructive surgery of my breasts or do other things to make me look more female. But I haven’t fully processed the surgery I had to remove my breasts. For now, I want to avoid more such surgical procedures.

When I joined the case, I didn’t realize how big it would become. What has happened since the ruling has been a rollercoaster. Many people have thanked me. I have also been attacked online. If you’re someone who regrets transitioning and decides to speak out about your experiences, you’re considered a bigot. You may be told that you’re trying to take away trans rights, that children know what’s best for themselves and their bodies, and that you’re ruining kids’ lives.

But I am focused on what is best for distressed young people. A lot of girls are transitioning because they’re in pain, whether it’s from mental-health disorders, or life trauma, or other reasons. I know what it’s like to get caught up in dreaming that transitioning will fix all of this.

Although sharing my story has been cathartic, I still struggle, and have yet to receive appropriate therapy. As I go on with my life, I plan to continue to be an activist on behalf of this cause. I want the message of cases like mine to help protect other kids from taking a mistaken path. This year, I helped create the first Detrans Awareness Day, on March 12.  I hope that, in years to come, this day can be a beacon to empower others.

I do not believe in rigid gender expression. People should be comfortable and feel accepted if they explore different ways of presenting themselves. As I said in my statement after the ruling, this means stopping the homophobia, the misogyny, and the bullying of those who are different.

I also call on professionals and clinicians to create better mental health services and models to help those dealing with gender dysphoria. I do not want any other young person who is distressed, confused, and lonely as I was to be driven to conclude transition is the only possible answer.

I was an unhappy girl who needed help. Instead, I was treated like an experiment.

August 14, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

Justice Department Accused of Taking Attorney-Client Material at Mar-a-Lago

By Jonathan Turley | August 14, 2022

Fox News is reporting that the FBI seized boxes containing attorney-client privileged and potentially executive privileged material during its raid Mar-a-Lago. When the raid occurred, I noted that the legal team had likely marked material as privileged at the residence and that the collection could create an immediate conflict over such material. Now, sources are telling Fox that the Justice Department not only took attorney-client material but has refused Trump requests for a special master to review the records.

The request for a special master would seem reasonable, particularly given the sweeping language used in the warrant. It is hard to see what material could not be gathered under this warrant.

Attachment B of the warrant has this provision:

“Any physical documents with classification markings, along with any containers/boxes (including any other contents) in which such documents are located, as well as any other containers/boxes that are collectively stored or found together with the aforementioned documents and containers/boxes; b.. Information, including communications in any form, regarding the retrieval, storage, or transmission of national defense information or classified material”

Thus, the agents could not only take an entire box if it contained a single document with classification markings of any kind but could then take all boxes around that box.

It is not surprising that dozens of boxes were seized.

Given that sweeping language (and the various lawsuits and investigations facing Trump), it would seem reasonable to request a special magistrate. That is why the reported refusal is so concerning. What is the harm from such a review? The material is now under lock and key. There is no approaching deadline in court or referenced grand jury.

Moreover, many have accused the Justice Department of using this search as a pretext. While saying that they were seeking potential national security information, critics have alleged that the real purpose was to gather evidence that could be used against Trump in a prosecution over his role in January 6th riot. I have noted that such a pretext would be deeply disturbing given the documented history of Justice Department officials misleading or lying to courts in prior Trump-related investigations.  The continuation of such subterfuge could be disclosed in a later oversight investigation.

The use of a special master could have helped quell such claims of a pretextual search. Conversely, the denial of such a protective measure would fuel even greater concerns.

The refusal to take this protective measures is almost as troubling as the sweeping language in the search warrant itself. We need to see the affidavit that led to this search warrant. I am not going to assume that the search was unwarranted until I see that evidence. However, in the interim, Attorney General Merrick Garland could have allowed accommodations for this review to assure not just the Trump team but the public that the search was not a pretext for seeking other evidence like January 6th-related material.

August 14, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | 1 Comment

Did the BBC unwittingly reveal the true proportion of unvaccinated as at least 20%

Norman Fenton | August 12, 2022

In the BBC2 documentary “Unvaccinated” it was claimed that only 8% of the UK adult population is unvaccinated.

This is the ONS figure and we challenged this: https://www.normanfenton.com/post/bbc…

But for the programme itself the BBC commissoned a large survey which, we show, revealed that 26% were unvacinated.

To understand why it is so critical to get an accurate estimate of the proportion of unvaccinated see this 2 minute accompanying video: https://youtu.be/8It4qI9yhzQ

August 14, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , | 1 Comment

A Drought In Germany Gets The Media Overexcited

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | August 14, 2022

There is a drought in Germany, and naturally the media has gone into hyperdrive to link it to global warming:

Drought hits Germany’s Rhine River: ‘We have 30cm of water left’

This report is all over the media, and all with virtually the same wording, suggesting a carefully coordinated, manufactured story, almost certainly from one of the well funded, climate misinformation organisations.

The BBC headline is grossly misleading, as the 30cm is the water under the boat; As Captain Kempl comments, the river depth is actually 1.5m.

The river gauge measurement of 42cm at Kaub is also widely reported, but is equally misleading, as this measurement is taken near the river bank, rather than at the deepest part of the stream.

In none of the dozens of reports I have read is there any actual historical data to compare against this event, whether rainfall or water level data. We are told this is the lowest water level since 2018, as if this means anything at all. There is no evidence presented to show that this drought is in any way unprecedented, or that droughts are becoming more extreme; merely this claim that appears in most of the articles:

“HGK and other shipping companies are preparing for a “new normal” in which low water levels become more common as global warming makes droughts more severe, sapping water along the length of the Rhine from the Swiss Alps to the North Sea.

“There’s no denying climate change and the industry is adjusting to it,”

However, annual rainfall trends at Mainz, which is just upstream of Kalb, show that while recent years have been drier than the 1980s and 90s, they are no drier than the 1950s. We also see exactly the same trends with April to September rainfall:

And finally, WUWT offers an insight to some of the megadroughts in Germany in the past, notably in 1540.

There is therefore nothing to suggest that this is not just another weather event.

August 14, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Measuring the extent of the Myocarditis Iceberg?

Safety lessons from smallpox vaccination

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | August 14, 2022

In 2015 a team of researchers employed by the medical services of the US military published a peer-reviewed paper on the incidence of myocarditis and pericarditis after smallpox vaccination (SPX) and vaccination with an inactivated trivalent influenza vaccine (TIV).

Despite being published 7 years ago before anyone had heard of “covid”, the findings in this study could have very significant implications for the Covid-19 mRNA injections.

In this study, the researchers found that:

  1. When active surveillance systems are used, significantly more myocarditis cases were identified than in earlier studies which had relied on more passive reporting.
  2. The incidence of cases of possible myocarditis without symptoms – detected by testing all subjects vaccinated regardless of symptoms – was far higher than the cases in which subjects developed symptoms such that they would seek medical help.

Given these observations, it seems highly likely that the incidence rates of myocarditis following Covid vaccination have to date been severely underestimated.

The background to the study was that the US military rolled out a limited program of SPX following a perceived threat that smallpox might be used as a weapon in a bioterrorism incident. By the time of the paper’s publication, >2m doses had been administered, but the US had 290m doses in reserve to use for the general population if required. Concerns had been raised about a possible risk of myocarditis after this vaccination. This study sought to quantify these risks.

Key aspects of the study design:

  • Subjects were selected from previously healthy military personnel presenting for either SPX (1081 subjects) or TIV (189 subjects). A battery of baseline tests were performed and these were repeated either once or twice 5-8 days after vaccination and  / or 9-28 after vaccination.
  • The notable difference between this and other studies assessing myocarditis and pericarditis rates was that the assessments were performed on all subjects and they included measurements of cardiac troponin levels (a protein which is released by damaged heart muscle cells) and ECG, in an attempt to detect possible “subclinical” cases of myocarditis – ie those which did not result in symptoms and so ordinarily would not gain the attention of healthcare systems.
  • Clinical myocarditis and pericarditis were determined according to published epidemiological case definitions that require the development of new onset cardiac symptoms soon after vaccine exposure, and each case was confirmed by an independent adjudicator.
  • Possible subclinical myocarditis and pericarditis were diagnosed whenever troponin levels rose by or to a certain level[1], or by ECG changes respectively, in the absence of symptoms.
  • Incidence rates were compared to background incidence rates calculated from a 2002 study among 1,390,352 service members (no exposure to any vaccines).

Key results:

  • Subjects receiving SPX were predominantly young (mean 23 years) and male (88%), those in the TIV cohort were more evenly balanced (54% male) and older (mean 36 years)
  • 8.8% of the SPX recipients reported severe cardiac symptoms (defined as >3 out of 10 on a visual scale for at least 2 days).The most frequently reported cardiac symptoms were chest pain and dyspnea on exertion.
  • Despite no significant differences in pre-vaccine health self-assessment between the cohorts and fewer reported physical limitations in the SPX cohort, there was a significantly higher incidence of new onset cardiac symptom(s) post-SPX (10.6%) compared to the older post-TIV cohort (2.6%), p<0.001. These differences remained 4-5 fold higher in the SPX cohort after adjusting for group differences in age, sex, weight, race, smoking, and physical limitations, and also when symptoms were limited to consideration of those above 3 out of 10 on the visual scale.
  • The incidence rate of clinical myocarditis / pericarditis after SPX was 5 cases out of 1081 (4 were myocarditis and one pericarditis), equating to 463 per 100,000, which was >200 x background expected rates.
  • The incidence of possible subclinical myocarditis / pericarditis after SPX was 2868 per 100,000, or nearly 3%, which was 6 x the rate of clinical myocarditis.[2] This could not be compared to an expected background rate as this had never been measured before in this way.
  • No cases of either clinical or subclinical myocarditis were detected after TIV.

Implications.

Before going on to discuss the implications of this study for the Covid-era, it must be emphasised that “full recovery” from myocarditis is a misleading term: whilst the patients may initially become symptom-free, all should ideally receive regular cardiological follow-up to detect cardiomyopathy and / or arrhythmias later in life, and there is a significantly raised risk of cardiac morbidity and mortality.

Moreover, in several case series, for example this one published in JAMA, “Late Gadolinium Enhancement” on cardiac MRI[3] indicative of long term heart damage was found in the majority of clinical myocarditis cases which underwent detailed investigation. This finding is not consistent with mRNA-induced myocarditis having a more benign course than other forms, as was originally hoped.

For the above reasons, it is important to try to accurately capture all possible cases of myocarditis, both for the individuals concerned (so they can receive proper follow-up) and for calculating the extent of any added risks from vaccination.

In respect of the accurate detection of myocarditis cases, this study raises several important concerns relevant to the Covid injections:

Passive surveillance misses many cases.

Before this study, the rate of clinically diagnosed myocarditis / pericarditis had been previously estimated to be 16.1 cases per 100,000 in a cohort of US service members receiving smallpox vaccination, nearly 7.5-fold higher than the expected background rate of 2.16 per 100,000 observed among comparable unvaccinated service members.

The rate of clinical myocarditis observed in this SPX study was approximately 28 times higher than the previous estimate, at 463 per 100,000 – several hundred times the expected background rate. The higher incidence rate detected is almost certainly due to the active surveillance systems in place, where cases were pro-actively sought out and participants and their physicians made aware of their possibility.

As the authors state:

Prior to the present study, the incidence of myocarditis / pericarditis following smallpox vaccination was estimated from passive surveillance registries and population databases, with an inherent bias towards underestimation of disease incidence.

Myocarditis cases may be easily dismissed as musculoskeletal in origin.

Myocarditis is usually self-limiting in its acute phase, improving with self-treatment by a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug such as ibuprofen. It could quite easily be confused with “expected” aches and pains following injection, or with musculoskeletal injury, and this would be more frequent in the young, especially if active in sport.

The authors make the point that:

“3 of the 5 clinical cases would not have sought medical care without study interventions including enhanced education and surveillance.”

With the Covid mRNA injections, not only have we experienced a lack of active surveillance and a reliance on passive adverse event reporting, but there has been an atmosphere of discouragement of reporting. Many physicians have reported censure by hospitals or other health authorities for even discussing a possible vaccine origin for adverse events, and even subjects themselves have received opprobrium online after questioning the origin of their symptoms.

Hence, whatever factors the authors noted in 2015 in relation to underreporting of myocarditis following SPX are likely to be even more in evidence now for the Covid vaccines.

Because of this, there must be a very significant possibility that the actual numbers of clinical myocarditis cases caused by the mRNA injections have to date been very significantly underestimated.

The frequency of subclinical cases may dwarf the clinical cases.

This was actually the first study to attempt to detect possible subclinical cases of myocarditis (ie those without discernible symptoms) following vaccination.  It is highly likely that, just as there is a spectrum of outcomes with symptomatic cases, such that a proportion have zero long-term problems, so with the subclinical cases an unknown proportion may well go on to have cardiac problems. Given that heart cells are irreplaceable and that scar tissue in the heart can disrupt electrical conduction the degree of concern about heart damage must be much more than with, say, damage to the skin, which can self-repair and still perform its primary function.

The actual proportion of subclinical cases which go on to manifest in cardiac disease later in life is unknown, however the authors selected a threshold for the measured troponin levels by which to define a subclinical case which is known to be associated with an increased risk of adverse outcomes. In the paper cited by the authors in support of their chosen troponin criterion it had been concluded that:

“In the general population, cTnT [troponin – protein released from heart damage] elevation is rare in subjects without CHF, LVH, CKD, or DM, [Congestive Heart Failure, Left Ventricular Hypertrophy, Chronic Kidney Disease or Diabetes Mellitus] suggesting that the upper limit of normal for the immunoassay should be <0.01 μg/L. Even minimally increased cTnT may represent subclinical cardiac injury and have important clinical implications, a hypothesis that should be tested in longitudinal outcome studies.”

*Definitions in [ ]  with bold added by this author

The rate of possible subclinical myocarditis detected after SPX (3% of subjects) was 6 x the rate of symptomatic myocarditis.  That these findings are or might be significant rather than chance fluctuations is supported by the fact that zero such cases were detected in the TIV cohort.

Moreover, the authors point out that even this may be an underestimate (bold added):

“While assumptions about benign troponin release from the myocardium have been made, there is a growing body of literature suggesting that even in generally healthy populations with no known cardiac disease risk, small elevations in troponin (stratified below the levels measured by the assay in this study) are associated with increased risk of all cause and cardiovascular mortality. Therefore, the rate of reported elevations in this study may actually be an underestimate of the true incidence of vaccine related subclinical myocarditis.“

There seem no reasons to suggest that possible subclinical myocarditis might not also be occurring after Covid injections, and also at higher rates than clinical cases.  In fact, given the use of active surveillance for clinical cases employed in the SPX study, it is likely that the ratio between possible subclinical and reported clinical myocarditis cases for the Covid vaccines may in fact be higher than the 6-fold seen after SPX, because of the significant underreporting of clinical cases after Covid vaccines for the reasons mentioned above.

It should be stressed that little is known about the long-term prognosis of myocarditis / pericarditis, whether infective in origin or otherwise. No follow-up to the Engler et al paper (now 7 years old) measuring cardiac status in either the clinical or possible subclinical cases has been published to date.

A 2005 paper reported a well-conducted follow-up study of 67 cases detected following smallpox vaccination of 540k military personnel and found normalisation of echocardiography, ECG, and functional status (measured by ECG exercise-testing) in all subjects including those who initially had depressed cardiac function.  This is encouraging, although the median follow-up period was just a few months and none were followed for more than one year after the myocarditis; hence concerns must remain regarding cardiac function in later life, especially in those in whom cardiac reserve falls secondary to other cardiac pathology such as coronary artery disease.

Concluding remarks

The authors conclude their paper with this warning:

Our study identified a rate of myocarditis/pericarditis following SPX immunization that is significantly higher than previously described, and highlights the challenges of post-licensure vaccine safety surveillance to identify adverse events that are not well understood or previously unrecognized.

Applying the incidence described in this study to a SPX immunization program that has delivered over 2 million doses, largely to young, healthy primary vaccinees, there are potentially thousands of vaccine associated cases, many undiagnosed because of self-medication or lack of provider awareness].

In our study, 3 of the 5 clinical cases would not have sought medical care without study interventions including enhanced education and surveillance. The recognition of potential adverse events following immunization requires accurate diagnosis of new onset clinical symptoms.

Our study reinforces the need, as part of all post-vaccine (and potentially new drug related) adverse events surveillance, to include specific standardized inquiry about new onset cardiac symptoms and to highlight the value of dynamic pre to post immunization cardiac troponin increases as a potential biomarker of risk in future safety surveillance studies.

Two million doses of SPX sounds a large number, but it is sobering to consider where we are today in respect of our understanding of the association of the Covid vaccines to myocarditis, having rolled out several billion doses, a program which is now continuing with 3rd or even 4th doses (whereas the incidence studies published to date have been based on 2 doses only).

It is accepted now that there is a definite association between mRNA vaccination and myocarditis, yet the precise rates of increased risks reported vary hugely between different studies, which probably reflect vastly different methodologies between investigators and countries according to prevailing local reporting standards and customs.

Moreover, initial claims that myocarditis risk might be higher after Covid infection compared to vaccination have not held up to scrutiny. The latest study – based on a large (~200k) cohort of adults in Israel – found no increase in the incidence of pericarditis or myocarditis in adult patients recovering from COVID-19.

In addition to the high, yet underreported, rates of clinical myocarditis, there remains a distinct possibility that there may have been very large numbers of subclinical myocarditis cases caused by Covid vaccines, the long-term outcomes for which are uncertain.

Approximately 3% of those receiving a single SPX vaccination met the criteria for having developed possible subclinical myocarditis, and given that billions have now received Covid mRNA products (many multiple times), if the frequency is similar to SPX the number of such cases following mRNA injections could well be in the millions.

Despite these worrying data, we have inexplicably witnessed the rollout of multiple booster doses, including in many countries to young adults and even children, despite there having been:

  • No active surveillance for myocarditis, only passive reporting
  • No prospective studies of troponin levels (which would be relatively simple to perform).
  • No standardised inquiries about new onset cardiac symptoms

One could be forgiven for thinking that the reason for this is that those who have relentlessly pushed this program into younger and younger people at little to no risk from Covid, simply do not want to know, and prefer to maintain a degree of “plausible deniability”.

Footnotes:

  1.  For subclinical myocarditis, the criteria for diagnosis were: the development of any one of the following: a) elevated post-vaccine levels of cTnT ≥ 0.02 ng/ml with pre-vaccine cTnT levels <0.01 ng/ml; or b) a post-vaccine cTnT level of 0.02 ng/ml greater than the pre-vaccine level based on the imprecision profiles of the assay.
  2. The absolute subclinical cTnT elevations post SPX vaccine ranged from 0.02 to 0.24 ng/ml with the majority (n = 28, 90.3%) ranging from 0.02 to 0.07 ng/ml
  3. This is a radiological feature seen on cardiac imaging which is indicative of myocardial damage consistent with a high risk of poor long-term prognosis.

August 14, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment