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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on April 11 released a new study claiming the findings showed no link between COVID-19 vaccination and sudden cardiac death in young people.

Mainstream news outlets, including NBC and Forbes, picked up on the CDC’s analysis, erroneously reporting that it showed there is “no evidence” that COVID-19 vaccines are linked to fatal heart problems in young people.

Meanwhile, critics — including Brian Hooker, Ph.D., Children’s Health Defense (CHD) chief scientific officer, and Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist —  said the CDC’s study was flawed, and that its authors failed to mention many prior studies documenting a link between COVID-19 vaccination and cardiac problems.

“This study disproves nothing,” Hooker told The Defender. “There are myriad studies showing the link between COVID-19 vaccination and cardiac sequelae — this is just CDC’s Band-Aid to cover all of the good science with a poorly thought out and deceptive study.”

McCullough told The Defender, “As a cardiologist, I do not find this study reassuring.”

Numerous X, formerly Twitter, users ridiculed the CDC report and NBC’s coverage of it. Shenandoah Writer, a legal analyst and educator, tweeted:

TraumaNurse chimed in with:

Study counts only 3 deaths in vaccinated, says none caused by vaccine

The study — published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) — came from Oregon public health authorities’ analysis of roughly 1,300 death certificates of Oregon residents ages 16-30 who died from a heart condition or unknown reasons between June 1, 2021, and Dec. 31, 2022.

According to the CDC, MMWR is often called “the voice of CDC” and is the agency’s “primary vehicle for scientific publication of timely, reliable, authoritative, accurate, objective, and useful public health information and recommendations.”

Forty deaths occurred among people who received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine and only three occurred within 100 days after vaccination, the authors said.

The authors examined the death certificate data to determine what coroners listed as the cause(s) of death.

Of the three deaths that occurred within 100 days of COVID-19 vaccination, two were attributed to chronic underlying conditions. The cause of death for the third was undetermined, they said.

Meanwhile, they said 30 deaths were attributed to COVID-19 infection.

“These data do not support an association between receipt of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and sudden cardiac death among previously healthy young persons,” they wrote in their report, adding that “COVID-19 vaccination is recommended for all persons aged ≥6 months to prevent COVID-19 and complications, including death.”

Multiple flaws underreport fatal cardiac events in the vaccinated

Hooker and McCullough described multiple flaws in the study authors’ methodology.

For example, the authors should have looked at the death certificate data for people who died more than 100 days after they got a COVID-19 shot — a limitation the study’s authors also acknowledged.

“One simply cannot rule out cardiac deaths that occur over 100 days since vaccine administration,” Hooker said, “Underlying issues caused by COVID-19 vaccination could cause cardiac deaths after the 100-day cut-off that the study authors arbitrarily chose.”

McCullough agreed. “We are seeing deaths occur after vaccines due to inferred, accumulating spike protein and myocarditis long after 100 days.”

The authors of the CDC report also overlooked the fact that coroners hesitated to note anything about vaccination on the death certificates, Hooker said. So it’s not surprising they didn’t find death certificate records showing COVID-19 vaccination contributed to the person’s death.

Again, McCullough agreed. “Medical examiners and attending physicians do not link drugs or vaccines to death certificates in routine practice.”

Meanwhile, coroners commonly listed COVID-19 as a cause of death, so it’s not surprising that 30 of the death certificates attributed death to getting the virus.

“In other words,” Hooker said, the CDC is “grossly undercounting the rate of cardiac death after vaccination, which — based on its own numbers — eclipses the number of COVID-19 deaths reported in Oregon during the same time period. This would be a joke if it wasn’t such a tragic lie.”

The authors also did no comparison of the incidence of cardiac death before and after the rollout of the vaccine, Hooker added.

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Researchers left out key search terms for cardiac events

McCullough said many cases of cardiac arrest in vaccinated individuals are attributed to “coronary artery disease” or “heart disease” — yet “these were terms left out of the analysis.”

McCullough called the study “underpowered,” meaning it didn’t look at a large enough sample size to accurately detect cases of fatal myocarditis in the general population.

“This flawed death certificate study does not reassure the broad medical practice community or the large population of vaccinated who are getting more jittery by the day as sudden deaths occur years after the last injection,” McCullough said.

He offered this advice to the CDC if the agency wants to report accurate numbers:

“The CDC should merge the vaccine administration data with the national death index, and not put any filters on the analysis so researchers can then begin the process of clinical adjudication of COVID-19 vaccine deaths.”

What about research showing link between COVID vaccines and fatal cardiac events?

The CDC report didn’t cite the numerous studies linking COVID-19 vaccination and subsequent fatal myocarditis, Hooker and McCullough said.

Tracy Beth Høeg, M.D., Ph.D., pointed this out, too.

In an X post responding to NBC News’ touting of the report, Høeg said the CDC and NBC News “seem oddly unaware” of a “better and larger” nationwide study done in Korea.

This large peer-reviewed study, published in the prestigious European Heart Journal, attributed 21 deaths in people under 45 to vaccine-related myocarditis — eight of which were sudden cardiac deaths.

And a recent peer-reviewed study showed the mortality rate from COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis is 2.9%, McCullough said.

Heather Ray, a science and research analyst with CHD, said she found it “heartbreaking” to see the CDC report “making its rounds in the mainstream media — while many ethical peer-reviewed independent studies that show an increase in cardiac-related injuries and deaths in adolescents and young adults have received zero media coverage.”

“This gives the public a false sense of security and covers up the truth while our children and young adults are dying at an unprecedented rate,” Ray told The Defender.

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Authors have long history of receiving CDC money

Ray also noted the study authors — Drs. Juventila Liko and Paul Cieslak — have a long history of receiving CDC funding for their research.

According to the U.S. national research database PubMed Central, 47 of the 55 publications Cieslak co-authored were funded by the CDC. Similarly, the CDC funded 7 of the 9 studies in which Liko was an author.

Cieslak previously worked as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer for the CDC’s Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases branch before joining the Oregon Health Authority.

The Defender asked the study authors why, in their report, they didn’t mention Korea’s nationwide study, which showed a clear link between COVID-19 vaccination and sudden cardiac deaths.

The Defender also asked what the authors would like to tell people who may distrust the CDC and thus suspect the CDC edited its report to befavorable to the CDC’s promotion of COVID-19 vaccines.

The authors did not respond by our publication deadline.