IDENTITY ALL THE WAY DOWN:

[T]he covidiot ecosystem on the right--and, to some extent, in "anti-woke" and "cultural dissident" circles that don't always explicitly identify as right-wing--continues to flourish. Most recently, it's been manifesting itself in the rather fanciful notion that people didn't "suddenly" die of heart attacks and strokes before "the jab" came along.

Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin's collapse of a heart attack during a January 2 football game quickly set off a storm of "it was the vax that done it" speculation, with medical luminaries like Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk chiming in:

Last Wednesday, Bari Weiss's website, the Free Press, which has generally been a platform for mild skepticism toward "establishment" COVID opinion, ran a piece by skeptics-lite Dr. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist, and Dr. John Mandrola, a cardiologist, debunking the #DiedSuddenly scare--but also asserting that the reason for the scaremongering and conspiracy theories was the supposed lack of candor on the part of medical authorities and governments. Prasad and Mandrola conclude:

People feel that their medical leaders are withholding basic facts, denying reality, disregarding new information, or worse, causing them harm.

When people feel this way, they will look to other sources--even outlandish ones--that make them feel heard. Because of the continuing failures of our public health officials to discharge their duties properly, it is deeply unfortunate but also understandable that many Americans are turning to Twitter instead of the CDC.

There is not one word of criticism here for people, some of them fairly mainstream, who peddle the "outlandish" stuff. Meanwhile, Prasad and Mandrola, who believe that COVID-19 vaccines are generally efficacious and life-saving but have contraindications for some demographics such as young men--who are at low risk of serious COVID but at somewhat elevated risk of myocarditis after receiving mRNA vaccine shots, especially Moderna ones--have their own issues with "disregarding new information." They link to their own May 2021 Stat News article as proof that "the evidence for the assertion that a Covid-19 infection is a big heart risk for young people is unconvincing." But they forget to mention a February 2022 study published in Nature Medicine showing that, as Nature magazine summed up, "Even a mild case of COVID-19 can increase a person's risk of cardiovascular problems for at least a year after diagnosis." People who had recovered from COVID-19 had "substantially higher" rates of heart failure, stroke, and a number of other conditions--even people under 65 who had no risk factors such as obesity or diabetes.

Tweet   @brothersjudd