In context, the CDC’s latest numbers about post-vax myocarditis represent a significant departure from last year’s narrative pushed by health bureaucrats and the media.
hen reports first surfaced in 2021 that some cases of myocarditis — the inflammation of the heart muscle, potentially leading to blood clots and heart attack or stroke — were potentially associated with the Covid-19 vaccine, the corporate media and its fact-checkers were quick to label them as misinformation, saying the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh its small risks.
A year later, though, the media can no longer deny that what they called misinformation actually has data to back it up. As Matt Shapiro detailed in his Substack post on the matter, “Last year’s misinformation on vaccine-associated myocarditis in young men is this year’s well-established fact.”
According to Vaccine Safety Datalink surveillance data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted in 2022, within a week of receiving the “Dose 2 Primary Series” of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, there were 14 verified cases of myocarditis or pericarditis among the 102,091 males aged 16-17 who got the shot. Among the nearly 206,000 12-15-year-old males who received the same series, 31 cases were confirmed within a week.
These numbers might seem small or meaningless, but in context, they represent a significant departure from last year’s conventional wisdom pushed by health bureaucrats and parroted by the media: In 2021, the CDC’s reported rates of myocarditis during the 0-7 day “risk period” following vaccination were significantly lower compared to recent numbers.
For instance, in August last year, the CDC reported 42.6 per million cases and 71.5 per million cases for 12-15 and 16-17-year-old males, respectively, but now the health agency admits those incidence rates are actually 150.5 per million for the younger group and 137.1 per million for the older. Among 16- and 17-year-old males, the incidence rate jumps to a whopping 188 per million following the first booster, with 9 of the 47,874 developing heart inflammation in...