A recent paper on the incidence and causes of death in NCAA athletes over the past two decades made me Stop and Think about making causal connections from anecdotes.
I appreciate you working at this. However, before you start barking up the wrong tree, you need to look AT the vaccines and their effect, before you can come to the conclusion that the vaccines weren't part of the picture. Your conclusion is rather premature; this is again a poor use of epidemiological research to prove a point before you can reliably make it in any empirical sense. Again again we see this -- it's a bad faith use of statistics. You're extrapolating several levels that you definitely cannot say for sure. Why does everyone insist on doing this? You should be asking more questions, not pretending like you have answers.
The paper itself, when not abused to make your point, has some extremely interesting findings. For instance: Eight cases of death were attributable to myocarditis over the study period (1 case from January 1, 2020, through June 30, 2022), with none attributed to COVID-19 infection.
That's really interesting, way more interesting than any of the points you make. I'll just leave it there for contemplation.
I wrote a paper when I was a fellow about the sudden death in the Air Force over 20 year review that was published in JAMA . We did have four deaths due to myocarditis specifically smallpox . We even had electron micro graphs. I still have a few showing smallpox virus in the heart of the athletes. Over the years, the military has reported outbreaks when they use the particularly nasty batch for the vaccine. They were vaccinating the soldiers day 1 and they would be at risk at day seven when they were doing PT. It is no longer an issue because they do not use live virus. I actually went to the Armed Forces epidemiology board in Washington DC to talk about the risk benefit analysis of continuing to use smallpox vaccinations, knowing this would happen. it was felt that the threat of bioterrorism debilitating our armed forces was greater than the risk of death, which was real from smallpox myocarditis . Overall, there were 17 patients with structural heart disease, including some pretty complex disease that was missed during the screening process. Several people had no overt cause . It worked out to one death for every 5 million hours of exercise. Interestingly, you were far safer to be an Air Force recruit in basic training than to be a young adult driving cars etc. outside of the military. It is extraordinarily safe environment. The history of getting it published was fascinating. I was working at the Armed Forces Institute of pathology during my fellowship when a young adult came in who died suddenly. Dr. Virmani, a well-known cardiac pathologist asked with Dr. Rabinowitz, her partner that it would be nice if we knew the actual incidence of sudden death. I said I knew it was one and 60,000 athletes . They said, how did I know- I said it's how many basic trainees go through a year and we had one death per year they wanted to know if that data was anywhere published. Turns out a secretary had a file of every single death, cardiac and non cardiac with complete autopsies on every airman over 20 years. The military had not wanted it published because even though it was an extremely safe environment, they felt it was bad press. Eventually a Gen who was an internist said to me go ahead it seems like this is good data and the approved publication. What was fascinating was the public health strides over the years and if I had more energy I would write about it. They were seeing lots of young troops, die of infectious disease being put in the barracks. We were actually taught how to do transtracheal aspirations in these young adults to get clean sputum samples to culture out these weird bugs. Eventually, it was a medical resident who suggested giving everyone measles, mumps, etc. vaccines because some of these kids came from areas of the country they were never ever vaccinated Once the vaccination program started a lot of these illnesses resolved. They were seeing heat related deaths. We had a code red and would put people in ice baths. That prompted the red flag criteria which based on the heat temperature index prevented exercise on hot days or started the exercise as we used to say at O dark 30 at three in the morning . It was a very interesting time, but the military medical system eventually made it a very safe environment for these young adults to come and go into training.
Thank you for a very interesting post on a potentially controversial topic.
2 lessons I take from this:
1. Anecdotal evidence is again confirmed as a pretty lousy form of evidence.
2. Being vigilant and skeptical requires a similar degree of vigilance and skepticism regarding one’s own priors.
Great point that this data misses all resuscitated arrests. In fact, Christian Eriksen (also for being non NCAA) and Brony James would NOT have been included in the data set. But it seems there could be a way (albeit far more laborious and no doubt more time and cost intensive) to accrue data on NCAA “SCD and resusitated arrest” in totality by searching the school medical records of all student athletes.
Fully agree with what you wrote. Nevertheless I would appreciate your thoughts on what happened to me earlier this month. The Belgian Fauci wrote on X: "it's a fact that taking a vaccine (10-26-23) will lower your risk of severe myocarditis". I commented that this wasn't proven and that we did not know wether everyone will benefit. After that I was intimidated and harassed for spreading "lies". I asked him to send me the background information on which he made his claim (no answer so far) and even contacted the dean of medicine of his (and mine) university, Paul Herijgers. No answer. Because of several formal complaints against my hospital and myself I decided not to speak about covid (or treatments) ever again: I've learned my lesson. But I'm still curiuos about what you might say about the statement on taking annual boosters to prevent myocarditis...
I appreciate you working at this. However, before you start barking up the wrong tree, you need to look AT the vaccines and their effect, before you can come to the conclusion that the vaccines weren't part of the picture. Your conclusion is rather premature; this is again a poor use of epidemiological research to prove a point before you can reliably make it in any empirical sense. Again again we see this -- it's a bad faith use of statistics. You're extrapolating several levels that you definitely cannot say for sure. Why does everyone insist on doing this? You should be asking more questions, not pretending like you have answers.
The paper itself, when not abused to make your point, has some extremely interesting findings. For instance: Eight cases of death were attributable to myocarditis over the study period (1 case from January 1, 2020, through June 30, 2022), with none attributed to COVID-19 infection.
That's really interesting, way more interesting than any of the points you make. I'll just leave it there for contemplation.
I wrote a paper when I was a fellow about the sudden death in the Air Force over 20 year review that was published in JAMA . We did have four deaths due to myocarditis specifically smallpox . We even had electron micro graphs. I still have a few showing smallpox virus in the heart of the athletes. Over the years, the military has reported outbreaks when they use the particularly nasty batch for the vaccine. They were vaccinating the soldiers day 1 and they would be at risk at day seven when they were doing PT. It is no longer an issue because they do not use live virus. I actually went to the Armed Forces epidemiology board in Washington DC to talk about the risk benefit analysis of continuing to use smallpox vaccinations, knowing this would happen. it was felt that the threat of bioterrorism debilitating our armed forces was greater than the risk of death, which was real from smallpox myocarditis . Overall, there were 17 patients with structural heart disease, including some pretty complex disease that was missed during the screening process. Several people had no overt cause . It worked out to one death for every 5 million hours of exercise. Interestingly, you were far safer to be an Air Force recruit in basic training than to be a young adult driving cars etc. outside of the military. It is extraordinarily safe environment. The history of getting it published was fascinating. I was working at the Armed Forces Institute of pathology during my fellowship when a young adult came in who died suddenly. Dr. Virmani, a well-known cardiac pathologist asked with Dr. Rabinowitz, her partner that it would be nice if we knew the actual incidence of sudden death. I said I knew it was one and 60,000 athletes . They said, how did I know- I said it's how many basic trainees go through a year and we had one death per year they wanted to know if that data was anywhere published. Turns out a secretary had a file of every single death, cardiac and non cardiac with complete autopsies on every airman over 20 years. The military had not wanted it published because even though it was an extremely safe environment, they felt it was bad press. Eventually a Gen who was an internist said to me go ahead it seems like this is good data and the approved publication. What was fascinating was the public health strides over the years and if I had more energy I would write about it. They were seeing lots of young troops, die of infectious disease being put in the barracks. We were actually taught how to do transtracheal aspirations in these young adults to get clean sputum samples to culture out these weird bugs. Eventually, it was a medical resident who suggested giving everyone measles, mumps, etc. vaccines because some of these kids came from areas of the country they were never ever vaccinated Once the vaccination program started a lot of these illnesses resolved. They were seeing heat related deaths. We had a code red and would put people in ice baths. That prompted the red flag criteria which based on the heat temperature index prevented exercise on hot days or started the exercise as we used to say at O dark 30 at three in the morning . It was a very interesting time, but the military medical system eventually made it a very safe environment for these young adults to come and go into training.
Thank you for a very interesting post on a potentially controversial topic.
2 lessons I take from this:
1. Anecdotal evidence is again confirmed as a pretty lousy form of evidence.
2. Being vigilant and skeptical requires a similar degree of vigilance and skepticism regarding one’s own priors.
Great point that this data misses all resuscitated arrests. In fact, Christian Eriksen (also for being non NCAA) and Brony James would NOT have been included in the data set. But it seems there could be a way (albeit far more laborious and no doubt more time and cost intensive) to accrue data on NCAA “SCD and resusitated arrest” in totality by searching the school medical records of all student athletes.
Fully agree with what you wrote. Nevertheless I would appreciate your thoughts on what happened to me earlier this month. The Belgian Fauci wrote on X: "it's a fact that taking a vaccine (10-26-23) will lower your risk of severe myocarditis". I commented that this wasn't proven and that we did not know wether everyone will benefit. After that I was intimidated and harassed for spreading "lies". I asked him to send me the background information on which he made his claim (no answer so far) and even contacted the dean of medicine of his (and mine) university, Paul Herijgers. No answer. Because of several formal complaints against my hospital and myself I decided not to speak about covid (or treatments) ever again: I've learned my lesson. But I'm still curiuos about what you might say about the statement on taking annual boosters to prevent myocarditis...
Excellent interpretation on all accounts!
Dr Elizabeth A Piazza BSP, PharmD, MHA