If there has been one consistent narrative promoted by the antivaccine movement going back decades, it’s that vaccines are both ineffective and dangerous, which is why the “died suddenly” narrative that has arisen since the release of COVID-19 vaccines, in which the vaccines are supposedly causing healthy young people to drop dead unexpectedly, should not have surprised anyone. Consistent with the “died suddenly” conspiracy theory, historically one common claim that long predates the COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-19 vaccines has been that vaccines kill, in particular that they kill young people, children, and, of course, babies. The first time I encountered this claim was in the context of antivaxxers making the wildly false and implausible argument that “shaken baby syndrome” (now more properly called abusive head trauma) is a “misdiagnosis” for vaccine injury, to the point that antivaxxers even rallied around Alan Yurko, who two decades ago killed his girlfriend’s baby by shaking him and then tried to get off by claiming that the baby had died of vaccine injury. After that, I soon encountered conspiracy theories blaming vaccines for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and then later blaming the HPV vaccine for the sudden deaths of teen girls and young women. Antivaxxers even made a conspiracy pseudo-documentary entitled Sacrificial Virgins: Not for the Greater Good, in case you didn’t get the message.
It’s therefore not surprising that the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines was soon followed by similar conspiracy theories about how the vaccines supposedly kill. Of these, perhaps the most famous is what I like to refer to as the “died suddenly” conspiracy theory, named after a meme and later a conspiracy pseudo-documentary from antivax right wing propagandist Stew Peters called—of course—Died Suddenly. The film is a deceptive mish-mash of fevered conspiracy theories claiming that COVID-19 vaccines have resulted in an epidemic of young people “dying suddenly” that, amusingly, were so bonkers that even some antivaxxers who considered themselves more “reasonable” balked at the film. That, of course, that don’t stop antivaxxers from claiming that sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS), a syndrome known for decades before the pandemic in which people who were seemingly healthy suffer sudden cardiac arrest and death due to an arrhythmia, was in actuality all due to COVID-19 vaccines. (It’s not. It’s usually due to familial heart conduction defects or to unsuspected cardiac anomalies.)
One prominent variant of the “died suddenly” antivax conspiracy theory was the claim that young athletes were apparently dropping like flies, dying in huge numbers, all because they had been required to be vaccinated against COVID-19. So when Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin suffered a horrifying on-field cardiac arrest on national TV, which showed him undergoing CPR, nearly a year ago, antivaxxers falsely blamed the vaccine. When LeBron James’ son Bronny suffered a cardiac arrest during basketball practice, antivaxxers falsely blamed the vaccine. There even arose a conspiracy theory that claimed that COVID-19 vaccines have cause 2,024 cardiac arrests among athletes. When I looked at this claim in detail, I soon discovered that not only was the source obvious antivax astroturf, but a lot of these athletes were retired, had obviously died of causes not related to the vaccine, or had never even been vaccinated.
So, you might ask, is there any evidence to support the claim that vaccines are causing young adults, especially young athletes, to suffer sudden cardiac arrests? In a word, no. For example, six months ago I discussed how the number of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests has remained relatively stable since at least 2019. But what about young athletes? Just this week, a study was published that looked at that very question: Are there more young athletes dying suddenly of cardiac causes since the pandemic and the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. If you know me and my history, I suspect that you’ll know the answer to that question: No.
The study, Sudden Cardiac Death in National Collegiate Athletic Association Athletes: A 20-Year Study, was just published online in Circulation, the official journal of the American Heart Association, and the title tells you exactly what the study is about. Basically, investigators led by Kimberly G. Harmon at the University of Washington tried to determine how many college athletes have “died suddenly” of cardiac causes over the last 20 years and whether the number has increased. Far from finding that more college athletes are “dying suddenly,” they actually found a decrease in the number of such deaths, as well as no increase in the overall number of deaths of college athletes, which means that sudden cardiac death has become a less common cause of death among such young adults. Let’s dig in.
The investigators looked at a time period from July 1, 2002 to June 30, 2022, examining four databases to identify collegiate athletes who had died (National Collegiate Athletic Association resolutions list, Parent Heart Watch database and media reports, National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research database, and insurance claims). All athlete deaths were compiled into one database, with duplicates removed. For multisport athletes, the primary sport was classified as the sporting discipline with competitive season closest in time to their time of death.
Then, investigators tried very hard to determine the cause of death for each athlete who died of sudden cardiac death (SCD) during this 20-year time period:
The cause of each athlete death was determined through a combination of different methods, including review of autopsy and other official documents reporting cause of death, Internet searches for online media reports and obituaries, and e-mails or telephone calls to the next of kin, coaches, athletic trainers, coroners, medical examiners, scholarship foundations, or physicians involved in the case. Demographic characteristics including age, race, sporting discipline, and exertional status at the time of death (ie, exertional, nonexertional, or unknown) also were determined using these methods. If no medical examiner report or cardiac autopsy was available, race was determined by media reports or athlete photographs. A death was considered exertional if SCD occurred during exercise or within 1 hour of exercise cessation. SCD was defined as a sudden unexpected death attributable to a cardiac cause, or a sudden death in a structurally normal heart with no other explanation for death and a history consistent with cardiac-related death that occurred within 1 hour of symptom onset or an unwitnessed death occurring within 24 hours of the person having been alive. Unwitnessed deaths were not categorized as cardiac unless additional information such as autopsy, negative toxicology screen, or other information was available that could verify the death was cardiac.
Athlete deaths were categorized into different groups, including accident, cardiac, cancer, other medical, suicide, homicide, sickle cell trait, sports-related head injury, heatstroke, or unknown. If the cause of death could not be determined accurately, it was designated as unknown.
The authors found a total of 1,102 deaths of college athletes during that time period, of which 143 deaths were determined to have been from SCD. The breakdown of all deaths can be found in this figure:
The first thing that I noted is that, as one would expect from what we know about the causes of death among young people, trauma was by far the most common in this cohort.
Now here’s the graph of the main findings, the incidence of SCD normalized appropriately to athlete-years:
The authors report:
A total of 143 of 1102 cases (13%) were adjudicated to have a definitive or likely cardiac cause of SCD. Among these, 93 (65%) were identified by review of the autopsy, and the other 50 (35%) were identified by other methods, presented in Table 4. A cause of SCD was adjudicated in 118 of 143 cases (83%) reported from any source. Twenty-five of 143 cases (17%) were considered “cardiac unknown,” either in athletes with an exertional death with sudden collapse requiring cardiopulmonary resuscitation and no other clear cause (7 of 25) or among athletes with documentation of a likely SCD but with no autopsy or the autopsy performed did not have enough information to adjudicate a most likely cause of SCD (18 of 25).
The most common postmortem finding was autopsy negative sudden unexplained death (AN-SUD; 23 of 118 [19%]), followed by idiopathic left ventricular hypertrophy/ possible cardiomyopathy (20 of 118 [17%]) and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (15 of 118 [13%]; Figure 3). Causes of SCD among only athletes with an autopsy available for review and adjudication (n=93) are presented in Figure S1. Two of 118 athletes (2%) were adjudicated to have an SCD secondary to hypokalemia, including 1 athlete with hypokalemia related to known bulimia nervosa and 1 athlete with known Gitelman syndrome. Commotio cordis accounted for 2 deaths over the 20-year time period, both occurring in the first 5 years of the study period.
Commotio cordis due to a sudden blow to the chest was, of course, the most likely cause of Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest.
In anticipation of antivaxxers going, “But, but, but…myocarditis!” the authors also reported:
Eight athletes were adjudicated to have myocarditis as a cause of SCD. Of these, only 1 case occurred after the first reported COVID-19 infection in the United States, and this case was giant-cell myocarditis per the local medical team and coroners, a pattern not associated with COVID-19.
There have been a tiny number of case reports of giant cell myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination (one of which was after the J&J vaccine), but no clear evidence that the vaccine causes, but no strong evidence of causation, at least not compared to the risk of other forms of myocarditis reported after the vaccine. One case since the pandemic certainly doesn’t support antivax claims of an epidemic of SCD in athletes (especially due to myocarditis) due to COVID-19 vaccines.
There were some interesting observations, as well, regarding which athletes were more at risk of dying of SCD:
Male athletes had a higher incidence of SCD than female athletes (1:43 348 [95% CI, 1:36 228–1:51 867] versus 1:164 504 athlete-years [95% CI, 1:110 552–1:244 787]), and Black athletes had a higher incidence of SCD than White athletes (1:26 704 [1:20 417–1:34 925] versus 1:74 581 athlete-years [1:60 247–1:92 326]). The IRR for male athletes versus female athletes was 3.79 (95% CI, 2.45–5.88) and 2.79 (95% CI, 1.98–3.94) for Black race versus White race. Among the sporting disciplines with ≥5 cases of SCD, basketball and football had the highest incidence of SCD (1:19 164 and 1:31 743 athlete-years, respectively). When assessing incidence rates stratified by sex, race (Black versus White), NCAA division, and sporting discipline, Division I White male basketball (1:5848 athlete-years [95% CI, 1:2498–1:13 691]) and Division II Black female track and field athletes (1:24 942 athlete-years [95% CI, 1:4404– 1:141 294]) had the highest incidence rates of SCD between the sexes (Table 3). The overall incidence of SCD over a typical athlete’s career was 1:15,921 per 4 athlete-years. When considering a 4-year career, Divison I White male basketball players have an incidence rate of 1:1462 per 4 athlete-years and Divison I Black male basketball players have an incidence rate of 1:1924 per 4 athlete-years. After controlling for sex and race in multivariable logistic regression analysis, athletes participating in basketball were still at increased risk of SCD compared with other sports (odds ratio, 2.75 [95% CI, 1.73–4.34]; Table S2).
The authors note that it is unclear why there were these differences, particularly attributable to race, with Black male athletes playing basketball and Black female athletes competing in track and field being a higher risk than white male basketball players and white female track and field athletes, respectively. It is also interesting to note that 20% of SCD cases occurred among basketball players, who make up only 4% of all college athletes.
The article is, of course, not perfect. It is retrospective, and, as the authors readily concede, there is no mandatory reporting system for athlete deaths. Moreover, there is a paucity of information on genetic testing of athletes who died for mutations known to predispose to SCD due to arrhythmia. The authors also note that there is a lack of data on the number of athletes who suffered sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) but did not die because they were successfully resuscitated, noting that “lack of data on resuscitated SCA may lead to bias in the current study, because some athlete subgroups may be more likely to be resuscitated than others” and that “rates of resuscitated SCA in conjunction with SCD are important for a complete understanding of risk of conditions leading to SCA or SCD in young competitive athletes.”
Finally, the data used in this study is only a subset of data in that only athletes competing at NCAA institutions were included. However, I would note that, if the antivax conspiracy theories about how many many athletes have supposedly “died suddenly” due to COVID-198 vaccines had any germ of truth, one would expect to find an epidemic of NCAA student athletes who “died suddenly.” After all, why would they be immune compared to non-NCAA athletes, high school athletes, and young professional and amateur athletes competing outside of school-organized competitions? They wouldn’t.
And other evidence shows that such athletes are not dying at higher rates of SCD either:
The researchers also note that it’s unclear why the number of deaths of college athletes from SCD has been declining, but in news reports have speculated:
“We don’t know why the rate of cardiac arrest deaths has been going down,” said study co-author Dr. Kimberly Harmon, a professor in the departments of family medicine and orthopedics and sports medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle.
“You could hypothesize that it’s because there are better emergency action plans when there is a cardiac arrest, more people who know CPR and clear access to a defibrillator,” she said. “When someone passes out suddenly, you should think cardiac arrest until evidence shows otherwise.”
The decrease could also be due to more screening, with colleges increasingly requiring athletes be cleared to play with an exam that includes an electrocardiogram (EKG or ECG), which measures the heart’s electrical activity and can detect dangerous heart rhythms.
“The patterns on an EKG can also tell a lot about the shape and size of the heart,” Harmon said. “In athletes, we are primarily looking for electrical or heart muscle disease.”
It’s been shown that screening that includes an EKG will catch between two-thirds and three-quarters of athletes at risk, she said.
Basically, this study is yet another piece of evidence demonstrating that the “died suddenly” narrative by antivaxxers has no basis in evidence. If the vaccine were causing a tsunami of sudden death due to cardiac causes, we would have seen it by now. We have not. If the vaccines were causing huge numbers of athletes to be suffering SCD, we would have hard numbers suggesting this possibility. We do not.he very worst that can be said is that neither the number of out-of-hospital deaths due to cardiac arrest nor the number of athletes suffering SCD is increasing. Indeed, if this study is representative of what is happening, if anything, the incidence of SCD among young athletes is decreasing.
The “died suddenly” narrative is just another example of how, in the age of COVID-19, everything antivax that is old is suddenly new again. Antivaxxers have always claimed that vaccines kill, and most recently that HPV vaccines have been causing the deaths of “sacrificial virgins” due to SCD. There was no evidence that that was the case then, and there is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are killing young athletes (or young people in general) now. It’s yet another case of antivaxxers discovering a sad medical phenomenon about which they had previously been ignorant, being shocked, and concluding that it must be the vaccines causing it.
59 replies on “Yet more evidence that “died suddenly” is not a real thing”
Anti-vaxxers, not content to highlight only athletes, also report on people dying suddenly whilst pursuing other activities, careers and lifestyles whether or not vaccines are known to be involved. Journalists, actors, government officials, business people, outdoor workers of any age and nationality are cited as long as they died and are not yet 80 years old.
see X ( nitter.net) SubStack. Usually with photos-
She was so young and vital!/ He was a father!/ They worked for the city
I seem to remember some died suddenly claims for people who were in their 80s as well.
The only factor that is important to anti-vaxxers is that the item can fit their pre-existing conclusions. It doesn’t matter whether the item is real or not, or even if the items they adopt are internally consistent with each other.
This is one of those examples. A lot of the Died Suddenly examples are people who were never vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine. Some because they died before the vaccines were invented. None of this matters to the anti-vaxxers. Truth, lies, they are all the same. They live in a world of alternative facts.
Media amplification is causing this issue.
I’m sick to the back teeth of this being allowed to spread like a virus.
Any chance this report will be mentioned by the Epoch Times? The people at Epoch certainly could not S.T.F.U. about the “Sudden Adult death Syndrome” narrative.
Just kidding, we all know the answer to that question!
Thanks Orac!
Maybe they will get one of the anti-vaccine commenters to find a way to explain the findings away.
Sure. Each data point is for the school year. So the 2021 data point is for the 2020-2021 school year and is the only point on the graph that could possibly show any correlation to the vaccine. It’s also the school year that shut down many of the sport events.
If the vaccine is causing long term issues that arise sometime years later… We’ll likely see an increase in these numbers for the 2023 , 24, 25 school years, in both lines.
Pray, like me, that your kids got one of the good batches or a saline shot.
The study covered the first 18 months after the start of the vaccine roll out. You would have expected to see a dramatic increase if the claims – made without any evidence at all! – were true. No doubt they will do a follow up to confirm this result.
“Pray, like me, that your kids got one of the good batches or a saline shot.”
I’m sorry, I’m responding to an idiot. Excuse me.
Vaccines do not cause short time problems, only long time ones ? How probably is that ?
The colleges and universities that required vaccinations will also have been closely tracking deaths and causes of death. It’s just not plausible that they’ve all been covering up a huge surge in cardiac mortality.
This seems to be a general feature of lots of conspiracy theories–the adherents just don’t think through the implications.
This I believe is a feature rather than a bug. If you can convince people that the mainstream is lying to them for nefarious reasons and you can be in the secret truth if only you reject the mainstream lies. Once they become sucked into the rabbit hole, there is no way out.
re the ‘mainstream is lying’
So true!
Anti-vaxxers/ denialists/ contrarians spend an inordinate amount of time giving examples of how experts/ governments/ media have been wrong before and how harmful those were.
They have to say this because there is no realistic reason to listen to them otherwise! They have no or little qualifications in the areas they address.
Thus, don’t listen to medical professionals or media researchers but follow some guy who has a mail order degree or studied business/ computers and now sells ‘anti-aging’ elixirs, “educational” videos or subscriptions on SubStack.
Customers buy into fraudsters’ confidence and certainty not reality.
There’s also the fact that they are imputing very high competence – because it’s hard to hide a big development – to institutions that have a history of not being perfectly competent.
Serendipitously, I just heard a 40 minute rant** by a defining example of alt med mendacity and noticed:
— short, declarative sentences, expressing absolute certainty
— highly emotional content stoking anger at elites/ authorities
— the public is being abused by corrupt government/ SBM experts
— cheated by powerful wealthy corporations/ criminals
— they should expect death, illness, poverty – they are helpless
— only the speaker can save them
It’s the psychology of grievance.
** prn.live, 20 minutes in
If Godwin relates to Hitler and Nazis, what relates to Pol Pot?
This campaign against elites, experts and education whilst being instructed by infallible, almighty leaders…..
And even if administrations had tried to cover things up, how would they keep the other students quiet?
The stupidity of people who push these “sudden death” conspiracies is the same level as that of the people who think there is some nebulous group paying doctors and researchers to do coverups.
Fallacies and biases are literally destroying society. Reasoning skills MUST be taught at an early age. It’s not even that anti-vaccine evidence is weak – it’s often nonexistent.
I don’t disagree, but those in the U.S., at least, live in a society where religion is an enshrined right, religious indoctrination is institutionalized and tax exempt and where freedom of speech is so sacrosanct that lies are unimpeachable. It’s built into the society here that some deep lies are not only acceptable, but protected. Reasoning skills will inevitably take a back seat if they lead the reasoner to directly question a sacred truth. Doesn’t really matter how good a school the kids are in if the parents throw their weight into the notion that their church is more important and that certain truths are categorically exempt from reason. A lot of people are starting out from the fundamental background that alternative truths are a real and acceptable thing –it doesn’t even matter which we’re talking about, just that there’s some legitimate alternative truth to hold up as a rallying point. The result is that there will always be noise as long as some crap is exempt and allowed to pass the filter.
Society was built on a crooked foundation a long time ago; I would argue that the current new difficulties come from the speed with which fallacies and biases are able to propagate. That they exist is a much deeper problem.
I learned reasoning adequate to see though most scammy internet stuff in physics grad school in a class on pseudoscience at UT Austin taught by a physics professor (Rory Koker, PhD). It was a good class. (and he still teaches it!) I failed out of grad school in physics but that class stuck with me.
Interestingly (at least, to me) the “Causes of death of college athletes” chart doesn’t show any deaths at all from respiratory infection. Presumably they’re subsumed under “Other medical”.
A very interesting study! Thanks for sharing!
I am curious, is there any publicly available data set that I could peruse that involves sudden deaths amongst a large set of athletes?
Any suggestions?
Thanks
Go to Google.com.
Type in “sudden deaths in young competitive athletes”
Hit Search.
You’re welcome.
Great. Why bother reading studies done by people who know what they’re doing when you can read stuff by an economist who has no training in statistics, no understanding of the underlying medical issues, but does have a history of distorting and flat out lying about covid and related issues simply to feed his conspiracies and get more money from his readers?
Good lord igor, your eagerness to keep your grift going is disgusting.
Start with the paper under discussion. 1102 athlete deaths examined over a 20-year-period, 143 of them being sudden cardiac deaths.
Apparently this isn’t “very interesting” enough for Igor to actually read.
Igor,
I am curious, is there any publicly available evidence that antivaccine activists have EVER been right with their criticism of vaccines? Have there ever been vaccines brought onto the market that turned out to cause significant harm to lots of people in general and children in particular, as signalled and/or predicted by antivaccine activists?
And I don’t mean rare and mild side effects such as myocarditis in adolescents, but real, serious and widespread harm, acknowledged by medical science.
In other words: what drives you people to keep on demonizing vaccines even though you have always been completely wrong about them?
Once you’ve been brainwashed by anti-vaccine propaganda, when you can’t find any evidence, you’ll start making it up.
I am anti-Covid-vaccine. I do not particularly concern myself with “other vaccines”, other than making some occasional reports.
I have limited time on my hands to investigate all vaccines, each of them is as complicated of a story as the Covid vaccines are.
Covid vaccine was a deadly, harmful, and dishonest intervention, made by same people who financed development of the deadly COVID virus.
It is a story of an arsonist-firefighter.
The rest of vaccines – I recommend asking someone else!
Ha ha ha ha. So you have evidence that every pharmaceutical company that produced a vaccine also worked together to create SC2 in the first place? Maybe you’re claiming that America produced ALL the vaccines? Or are you claiming that all the countries that produce vaccines also created the virus? I’m sure we’d all like to hear how Russia, India, China, America, UK and, no doubt, others, all worked together to produce SC2.
Have you even thought about how the drivel that you spout hangs together?
I doubt it.
The code of the COVID vaccine was designed by the NIH (by Kizzmekia Corbett, et al.) and given to Moderna and BioNTech.
Check out “SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccine Design Enabled by Prototype Pathogen Preparedness”, written by Kizzmekia Corbett, Ralph Baric, etc.
NIH also paid for the development of Sars-Cov-2.
@IgorChudov
. Here we show that mRNA-1273 induces potent neutralizing antibody responses to both wild-type (D614) and D614G mutant2 SARS-CoV-2 as well as CD8+ T cell responses, and protects against SARS-CoV-2 infection in the lungs and noses of mice without evidence of immunopathology. mRNA-1273 is currently in a phase III trial to evaluate its efficacy.
Paper was published after the start of pandemic, and about a vaccine design. How it can . How it can be about designing of the virus
And
Within 5 days of the release of the sequence, current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) production of mRNA–LNP encoding the SARS-CoV-2 S(2P) as a transmembrane-anchored protein with the native furin cleavage site (mRNA-1273) was initiated in parallel with preclinical evaluation. This led to a first-in-human phase I clinical trial starting on 16 March 2020, 66 days after the viral sequence was released, and a phase II trial 74 days later on 29 May 2020 (Extended Data Fig. 2).
Authors knew the sequence, too.
NIH paid for development of SARS CoV 2 ? Do you mean Wuhan experiment resulting mouse coronavirus with 80% sequence similalarity with SARS CoV 2
As for giving up, do know term licensing ? (MBA should):
https://www.techtransfer.nih.gov/policy/ctap
No mRNA vaccine, though
Sigh. What has that to do with the OTHER vaccine developers?
This is what you said:
“made by same people who financed development of the deadly COVID virus.”
So, did NIH fund all of the vaccine development in the world?
So you spend all of your “research” time on covid vaccines, yet all you have to show for it is a complete dismissal of all of the studies that show everything you say about them is wrong. What an accomplishment!!
Quote to the contrary. Far from being anti-science, I am pro-good-science, always eager to highlight honest scientific studies and important findings! Such studies often put scientific careers in peril.
That’s odd, you’ve never been pro science here, nor have you ever highlighted any honest studies. It’s a fair bet you don’t do in on your substack — you’d lose all of your subscribers, so where do you do it?
You’re nuts. That doesn’t make any sense.
Well, if you say so … but you don’t happen to have any evidence supporting this rather outlandish claim? And by evidence I don’t mean
Except that instead of the arsonist-firefighter being caught and punished as usually happens, he is fact joined by virtually all scientists and doctors around the world – either that, or all those millions of scientists and doctors are all too stupid to see the truth that you do apparently see …
So it’s pretty simple: those millions of highly educated and often quite idealistic people are all wrong (and/or criminally insane) – or you are wrong. Now which do you think is the most likely option?
There’s a new anti-vax fraudumentary called “Shot Dead” Produce by Teryn “Faithful Freedom” Gregson , who attributes her not vaccinating her children to Dr. Paul Thomas (of course). I’m not posting the link because, well, it’s crap.
There are 3 deaths in this video:
An 18 yo who died of cardiac arrest 112 days after C19 vaccination. Per parents over that time their daughter had sx like sob but didn’t see doctor. Parents report still don’t have autopsy report, which is wrong if true.
A 16 yo who died 5 days after C19 vaccination.
1 day old term infant with diaphragmatic hernia with claim being covid vaccines x 2 in first trimester did it. Infant had fetal HR in 40’s for 8 minutes and offered a c-sec but didn’t do it.
So, this hour of propaganda is on 3 deaths. And propped up with filler by “experts” Peter McCullough (disgraced cardiologist) and James Thorp (a disinforming obgyn). There’s also a nurse, though I didn’t listen to the nurse since nursing boards are now as useless as medical boards when it comes to reigning in incompetency.
McCullough weighs in on the 16 yo’s death, because apparently Peter “let me give you a reference for every bit of nonsense I make up” McCullough is now an expert in post mortem cardiac pathology. Truly McCullough is s legend in his own mind. There is nothing he’s not an expert in.
McCullough claims a “multitude” (you’d think for a guy who craves specificity he could give a number) of deaths in children from c19 vaccines. He claims “we are doing research” to understand why the virus and vaccine kill. Who’s this “we”? This grifter reads papers and twists them to his grift (hey, don’t forget to give to his GiveSendGo to protect him for all the persecution he feigns) . He doesn’t have a lab. He has no academic affiliation. He says the percentage of deaths from the vaccine while small is still a huge number of individuals. Of course anti-vaxxers like him won’t allow that for the ~1500 children that have died from C19 infection, instead almost universally stating the death rate is “effectively zero” in children from C19 infection. I guess “small percentages” only count for his agenda. Despicable.
There is an anti-vax memorial web site for the 16 year old, where the father is pictured with major-league disinformers Simone Gold, McCullough and Ryan Cole because of course they need their pics to look good to their fan base. FYI if you want to read a good piece on how anti-vax leaders/physicians exploit people, read Brandy Zadrozny’s recent NBC f/u piece on the woman in 2009 who had the bizarre gait after flu vaccine (who is now provax after realizing Generation Rescue and the late Dr. Rashid Buttar exploited her story: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/desiree-jennings-flu-shot-anti-vaccine-media-rcna97724 )
Thorp claims he’s seen an increase in fetal malformations these last four years. Well that’s nice, but C19 hasn’t been around 4 years yet. Of course Thorp claims the diaphragmatic hernia (which is the cause of death) is due to C19 vaccination causing….(drum roll please)….inflammation. Thorp ridiculously claims vaccination causes “a billion-fold” increase in spike protein compared to C19 infection.
Thorp then claims fetal demises seen in 2021 were due to C19 vaccination which is ridiculous to claim given the vaccine had only just come out and C19 infection was rampant.
These deaths are all incredibly tragic. I write about them because the victimization of the deceased children’s families by the anti-vaccination movemement makes this even more tragic.
I had a patient a couple years ago with almost every OB risk factor under the sun. In addition to which, she refused to quit smoking. Her initial BMI was like 48 and she gained 2 or 3x as much as she should at ever visit. She wouldn’t go to MFM, was “allergic” to anything we could give her to help, etc.
She disappeared for a month or so, then turned up in the ED for lack of fetal movement. I get called in. Strip is terrible. She’s at 30 weeks so I told her we needed to go to section immediately. She and hubby refuse. Say “gawd” will fix it.
Suffice it to say, she nearly died after what happened in the next couple weeks. Still thinks she did nothing wrong, is still in the community looking for something/someone to blame. These people are out there, unfortunately.
“FYI if you want to read a good piece on how anti-vax leaders/physicians exploit people, read Brandy Zadrozny’s recent NBC f/u piece on the woman in 2009 who had the bizarre gait after flu vaccine (who is now provax after realizing Generation Rescue and the late Dr. Rashid Buttar exploited her story: ”
Great article by Brandy Zadrozny,
Molecular biologist, Dr Dan Wilson, did an hour-long interview with Desiree Jennings (now Desiree Townsend) about 2 months ago on his “Debunk the Funk” YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3g7bPvSniQ
I am going through something like this in my office here in Southern California. Though the 10 freeway fire has been reported as “malicious arson”, some of the folks here are convinced that it was actually started by someone homeless, and that the authorities are too liberal to report the actual truth.
Those researchers simply must have been wrong. Or else there’s a cover-up about the real cause of those deaths. Or else … After all, as a rabid antivaxxer you can’t trust anyone – not even less rabid antivaxxers, but certainly not well-trained researchers. So the first thing to do when ‘research’ like this is published, is sow doubt and uncertainty, and demand that independent data is produced in support of the study’s results – and, of course, in case someone actually comes up with the goods, immediately reject any such independent data for not being the Real Data.
Because vaccines must kill and harm people. Lots of people. What else did antivaxxers scream bloody murder for all those years? They can’t possibly have been wrong all that time, now can they? Of course not. The whole concept of being wrong is alien to their nature, no matter how overwhelming the evidence that they have in fact NEVER been right EVEN ONCE. So if they can’t be wrong, they must be Right, it’s as simple as that.
Just look at the valiant battle against Evil Thimerosal: over 20 years ago, antivaxxers managed to get it removed from childhood vaccines. Victory! Never mind that its removal from vaccines had exactly zero effect on children’s health, which means that it was basically harmless all along. But without ever admitting being wrong (see above), a seamless transition was made from thimerosal to other ingredients such as aluminum as the New Evil in vaccines, 100% certain, for real this time. And of course Kennedy Jr.’s “World Mercury Project” got renamed to the more versatile “Children’s Health Defense”. Smart move, because this way antivaxxers can blame any vaccine they want for any reason they can make up – something that they do with vim and vigour – without running the risk of having their blunders exposed to the world again through an unwisely-chosen name. Because they can’t be wrong, and vaccines simply can’t be good or even harmless.
The real issue I have with these “Died Suddenly” idiots is that they are able to get their comments out to the wider public, especially on MSN Start – where it’s almost impossible to put a scientific language on these posts, but the “media amplification” is just mad. Many subs are using “died suddenly” to get more eyeball and the AI that picks the stories to put on MSN Start loves that.
Someone in power needs to hold Microsoft’s feet to the fire until it stops this sort of media amplification since it’s making our jobs a lot harder.
@ Igor Chudov
I realize that you probably won’t read the following papers and despite Orac, myself, and many others tearing to shreds your stupid, lacking in basic understanding of science, immunology, infectious diseases, etc. comments you will continue to post comments, continuing to make a fool of yourself.
“Sudden deaths were predominantly due to cardiovascular disease (1049 [56%]), but causes also included blunt trauma that caused structural damage (416 [22%]), commotio cordis (65 [3%]), and heat stroke (46 [2%]). Among the 1049 cardiovascular deaths, the highest number of events in
a single year was 76 (2005 and 2006), with an average of 66 deaths per year . . .”
Barry J Maron et al. (2009 Mar 3). Sudden Deaths in Young Competitive Athletes: Analysis of 1866 Deaths in the United States, 1980–2006.
Spencer (2023 Apr 19). No Surge in Athlete Deaths, Contrary to Widespread Anti-Vaccine Claims – FactCheck.org.
All I want is to find some downloadable source of data by year, not pro-vaccine commentary
Let’s see what my igor translation device makes of that: (whir whir, smoke comes out)
Odd — that’s how every one of your posts gets translated igor.
@Igor:
Some years ago, there was a meme circulating. An antivaxxer had got into an argument over vaccines with a relative of hers who was a medical practitioner. Said antivaxxer posted in an antivaxx group asking for good sources to respond to the points her relative made, as she was having some difficulty.
If all the information you’re accessing is pro-vaccine, then maybe you’re in the wrong .
I’m pretty sure you could teach a chimpanzee to pick up a ringing phone but I bet you wouldn’t hire one as a receptionist.
[…] in which COVID-19 vaccines are supposedly causing a wave of sudden death among younger people is not a real thing. Basically, the study showed that sudden cardiac deaths among college athletes, contrary to what […]
@ldw56old
“There’s a lie right there lucas. Your “stories” about the dangers of the covid vaccines are all lies.”
What you mean to say is that just like this suicide under young people, one of which I just witnessed and described here, the experiences of some people I wrote about right after vaccination – women I know well – are just lies?
Defending third party vaccines seems like your religious goal. As for me, I guess I have no interests other then financial products. Which raises the question who will be more likely to lie here? It’s you.
And then, you will not even have noticed me saying much about the dangers of these particular vaccines, have you? You may have the opinion out of stigmatisation and rigidity. I remember I said that since I have no access to data, I cannot come up with proof based on statistics. But since your constant accusations, be so kind what posts to look for.
Plular of anecdotes is not data, even if anecdotes themselves are factual.
That’s obvious, since your anecdotes are as asinine as igor’s, as are your assertions about the covid vaccines and vague, hand-wavy, hints of concern about some others — especially those with quotes from “graduates in medicine”.
Between your conspiracies, your fact-free crap about vaccines, and your circus-level “seer with crystal ball” predictions, and the other BS you toss around, you’ve demonstrated that nothing you say should be taken seriously.
@Aarno Syvänen
“Again us inflation rates:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG?locations=US
13.8 comparable with 3.2 ?”
You’re being one dimensional, Aarno. I have a better idea of determining whether or not inflation is high and focus on my buying power. Example: for years I used to buy 1 kilogram bananas for €0,99 (being the lowest priced ones here @ Albert Heyn); this was before inflation went through the roof since about a year after the pandemic started. At this moment I pay €1,49 for the same product (apart from being tricked with combs of 800 grams now, instead of the usual 1 kg). Next year I expect to pay at least the same, but likely even more. Suppose a year later these bananas cost €1,55. What you’ll be showing me – probably since your government does so – is 4% inflation in the bananas; why the issue, you then say. But since this price increase is a relative young phenomenon, is cumulativ, without a doubt is here to stay and you’re not compensated, I’ll then show you a 56,7% inflation in this good.
Next to this masking of price increase, you tend to forget the effect of seasonal influences; you also don’t seem to realise that it is your government that calculates inflation. What you might do is find out what parameters used to be in these calculations longer ago and what has changed since. Inflation measured the way it used to be done (that’s more like the real inflation you deal with) is seriously higher then your government makes you believe.
It might well be that your parents were more rich at your age than you are now. Where has all the money gone?
Is inflation here to stay? Definately so Aarno, we have cornered ourselves and deal with an absurd debt trap. Since we cannot deploy the necessary policy (mentioned in my previous post) there’s no way out and we’ll keep the inflationary scenario. And worse than that, we’re heading for stagflation.
There’s so much more to say about inflation, some economists even specialised in the subject. Get wise Aarno, inflation will definately strip you financially in case you stay in cash. I warned you for this two years ago and you will have already lost substantial buying power if you didn’t follow up what I told you then is wise: seek for the right assets and diversify well. I guess you don’t work just to have your wealth transferred to the rich. Play their game or loose.
You will notice that inflation is coming down. High interest rates usually do that.
Citing price of a specific product is no way to measure inflatiion. It is just another anecdot.
@JustaTech
““So many youngsters are down-ish. Why is this in your opinion?”
Oh, I don’t know, maybe it’s because the world is literally on fire and the people in charge don’t seem to care and aren’t fixing anything? That’s enough to get anyone down.”
So you think it’s wars going on? We had five years of WW2 over here; even then youngsters didn’t commit suicide amidst the suppression, the risks, the violence, the poverty and often the hunger. So no, it’s not likely that some distant wars make youngsters ending their lives now in non conflict zones.
Since covid we see these problems, likely there’s the correlation? Perhaps these lockdowns weren’t so smart after all and these demonstrators that you disguise were pehaps right. What do you think?
But there’s probably more to it that causes hopelessness. I said I cannot exactly put my finger on it (not even with a background of four years in psychology (consumer behaviour, as part of post specialisation Marketing Management). It is however a negative sensation and lot’s of people experience it, perhaps you too; as if they sense something that makes them fearful and down, but don’t know what it is.
“As to why I say you’re an unreliable narrator – I’m not new here. I’ve seen your misleading and false statements before, and there’s a basic falsehood in your original post. I don’t need anyone else to tell me you’re unreliable, you’ve told me yourself.”
I asked you what lies? You gave no answer. Why you’re being coarse, JustaTech? Is this some fun game of yours? There are no lies, otherwise tell us this time.
Btw, now you talk about “misleading and false statements”, which are not necessarily lies (like f.e. I saw something that appears not be the case can be misleading and false but isn’t a lie). Tell us this time, what are the misleading statements and falsehoods?
Indeed I’ve been saying since I’m here what to expect in the not too distant future and it’s awful. That doesn’t turn out as a lie, it is showing to be more accurate with each month passing – even you now write that “the world is literally on fire”. This wasn’t the situation a couple of years ago when I started mentioning this slow dive into chaos, wars etc. and what unexpected scenario you’ll see next. You may not like that, think I’m nuts, whatever. But what does this have to do with “falsehood”, “unreliable”?
So stop your silly anger if annoyance (LDW56 suffers from this btw and calls anyone a liar he doesn’t like) is perhaps your problem, I’m just a messenger of what I read.
“What’s the BS? No one gives blood at the scene. Blood transfusions happen in hospitals, not on the street. Don’t be absurd.
Take your ghoulish lies and buzz off.”
Stupid reaction, JustaTech. First of all you have to admit that your supposed lie that a youngster just outside here jumped out of a flat building, wasn’t a lie at all (and didn’t I say I don’t lie?). This time it is a detail you attack that in your view cannot be true. Just so you that were right after all, JustaTech?
Well, ask MedicalYeti about this. Perhaps he can imagine there’s a protocol that if someone is internally bleeding (no blood on the street visible btw, another detail to fight about) and does so heavily, an immediate blood transfusion is what can save a person. You’ve seen in that link that a trauma helicopter came to the rescue. On these helicopters (from the VU hospital in this case) there’s always a specialised trauma physician (unfortunately I even met her in the hospital, if it’s her still doing the same job, another detail to fight about) on board. This may well be the reason help was immediatly given? MedicalYeti will read along, when he does not respond, or Orac doesn’t, you know I’m right. Again.
I think you’re making a bit of a fool of yourself, JustaTech.
I think you’re looking for things to justify your own idiotic rants.
Gonna look pretty foolish if it came to light that the death was due to an accident, drugs, abuse, bullying, depression over a failed relationship or death of a close acquaintance or murder or……
Much easier to assume a death is due to whatever confirms your current rant.
And that, Lucas, is why you are unreliable. I don’t think you’ll ever understand that.
1) Wrong post for this comment, Lucas.
2) I never said that I thought that your story about someone’s horrible and traumatic death was a lie. I said the details were a lie, which made me doubt the whole thing (which I brought up specifically because you claimed that the details made it more believable).
You think very highly of yourself, but here you are, continuing this ghoulish line of “argument” – have some respect for the dead and leave this poor person out of your pro-infectious disease stance.
@JustaTech
1) Wrong post for this comment, Lucas.
I told you this and the why, didn’t I? Buggy software perhaps.
2) I never said that I thought that your story about someone’s horrible and traumatic death was a lie. I said the details were a lie, which made me doubt the whole thing (which I brought up specifically because you claimed that the details made it more believable).
“Would you believe the story?” Your words. And this story was about “someone’s death” just outside the appartment where I was, not exactly about some detail, otherwise you’d have said just that.
“You think very highly of yourself,
What’s the relevance?
“but here you are, continuing this ghoulish line of “argument”” – have some respect for the dead and leave this poor person out of your pro-infectious disease stance.”
Another conclusion; it’s not certain if the person is dead or not. A jump from the seventh floor (window was still open) will be deadly, but it isn’t sure.
“Have some respect”; I agree with your opinion if it was someone we know or if I’d not be serious. The anonimity makes this case similar to a death due to covid or the vaccine, which is being discussed here as well.
Many of such suicides will somehow relate to what has happened since the pandemic and its lockdowns. Apparently we don’t really know and don’t seem to care what’s causing the excess in suicides.
Anyway, let’s not continue here.
“SOME of such suicides will somehow relate to what has happened since the pandemic and its lockdowns”
FTFY
[…] Yet more evidence that “died suddenly” is not a real thing […]