Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily writer Art Moore just loves to misrepresent scientific articles to advance conspiracy theories against COVID vaccines. He did it again in a May 12 article:
A new peer-reviewed analysis of data published in the prestigious British scientific journal Nature found a 25% increase in emergency calls for cardiac arrest and other sudden-onset coronary issues among young adults.
The researchers compared data for ages 16 to 39 years old for the same time period in 2019 and 2020, the Epoch Times reported.
Significantly, the researchers concluded the increase in emergency heart issues was associated with COVID-19 vaccination, not with COVID-19 infections.
The team – led by Drs. Christopher Sun of the MIT Sloan School of Management, Eli Jaffe of Israel's National Emergency Medical Services and Retsef Levi of MIT – analyzed data collected by Israel's National Emergency Medical Services between 2019 and 2021.
"An increase of over 25% was detected ... compared with the years 2019–2020," they wrote. "[T]he weekly emergency call counts were significantly associated with the rates of 1st and 2nd vaccine doses administered to this age group [16 to 39] but were not with COVID‐19 infection rates."
The scientists concluded: "While not establishing causal relationships, the findings raise concerns regarding vaccine-induced undetected severe cardiovascular side-effects and underscore the already established causal relationship between vaccines and myocarditis, a frequent cause of unexpected cardiac arrest in young individuals."
Moore omitted a lot from that description -- which he rather lazily lifted from an eight-day-old article at the right-wing Epoch Times, a longtime misinformer about COVID vaccines. Both Moore and the Epoch Times got the journal's name wrong -- the study appeared in Scientific Reports, not Nature, though the journal is hosted on Nature's website. Moore did leave a clue in noting that two of the researchers were associated with the MIT Sloan School of Management and not a medical organization; as a fact-checker pointed out, this was a statistical analysis not a clinical one, meaning that data and not patients were examined. The fact-checker also highlighted other issues with the study:
- The study analyzed EMS call data, meaning that people who went to the hospital by themselves were excluded -- which account for about half of similar cases.
- Vaccine-induced myocarditiscould have been more accurately diagnosed from clinical data instead of the EMS data the study used.
- The EMS data did not distinguish myocarditis cases between those induced by COVID infection or the vaccine.
- The study authors stated that they did not establish "causal relationships" between vaccines and heart problems.
- The authors also stated that an increase in heart problems could have been created by other non-vaccine-related issues, including delay of care due to pandemic fear or lockdowns.
Moore also censored mention of an editor's note added to the study: "Readers are alerted that the conclusions of this article are subject to criticisms that are being considered by the Editors. A further editorial response will follow once all parties have been given an opportunity to respond in full." Instead, Moore hyped "a growing body of scientific and clinical evidence of severe side effects from the COVID-19 vaccines."
