Oregon doctors are keeping an eye out for instances of myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — in people who have been inoculated with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.
The Oregon Health Authority last week sent out a message to doctors and hospitals to report cases of heart inflammation in people who recently had been vaccinated. OHA said there had been at least six such cases in the state.
This is not an Oregon-specific investigation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated on May 17 that there had been “relatively few” reports of myocarditis cropping up around the country among people who had been vaccinated in the preceding days, “predominantly in adolescents and young adults [and] more often in males than females.”
“Most cases,” it added, “appear to be mild.”
Symptoms of myocarditis include chest pain and shortness of breath. Severe cardiac damage is possible from myocarditis.
It should be noted that COVID-19 sometimes causes heart inflammation.
Reports of these post-vaccine cases of myocarditis have led to social-media speculation about how common myocarditis is in those who just got vaccinated, along with rumors of a cover-up.
“You will hear about Long COVID,” wrote one person on Twitter, referring to symptoms from the disease that linger. “You will not hear about Long Vaccine. Kids who are not at risk of C19 are getting coerced, liability-free experimental jabs and getting myocarditis. This is where doing things for ‘the collective good’ goes dark.”
Wrote another Twitter user: “Will cause myocarditis in kids. Don’t promote this poison.”
The CDC has not determined a causal relationship between the vaccines and heart inflammation, stating that the rates of myocarditis for the recently vaccinated “have not differed from expected baseline rates.”
In the U.S., there have been a few dozen reported cases of heart inflammation occurring shortly after vaccination. There are about 132 million Americans who have been fully vaccinated and some 289 million doses administered so far, though teenagers have only recently begun receiving inoculations.
Dr. Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and a noted vaccine scientist at Baylor University, wrote on Twitter that medical experts are “sorting out if there’s any relationship to the vaccine at all, or it’s due to breakthrough COVID-19, or vaccination on top of previous COVID, or the vaccine itself, or if it’s myocarditis from other intercurrent viral infections such as enteroviruses occurring in warmer months.”
New York pulmonologist Dr. Hugh Cassiere also has pointed to Hotez’s latter hypothesis, noting that various viruses, including the common cold, can cause myocarditis. He told NBC News that, with millions of people beginning to return to normal activities after getting vaccinated, it would make sense to see instances of heart inflammation tick up.
“Now that people are taking their masks off, we’re transmitting more virus,” Cassiere said.
That said, the CDC’s safety group said it decided that the incidence of myocarditis in people recently vaccinated should be examined further as a precaution.
— Douglas Perry