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Quote:They Suffered Myocarditis After COVID-19 Vaccination. Years Later, Some Still Haven't Recovered.
(Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)
By Zachary Stieber, Lia Onely
|
Sep 20, 2023
Updated:
Sep 21, 2023
Under pressure from the military and his mother, Jacob Cohen was feeling increasingly cornered.
Mr. Cohen did not want to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. He knew the shots had not been available for long. He was worried about their safety.
While Mr. Cohen initially resisted receiving a shot, he faced restrictions such as being forced to remain on base while vaccinated soldiers left. He was also pressured by military commanders, who scheduled a vaccination appointment for him and contacted his mother as part of a multipronged campaign.
"They told me, 'Come on. It's your mother. She's crying. She's worried. What wouldn't you do for her?'" Mr. Cohen, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym because of concern about repercussions for going public, told The Epoch Times.
"I didn't want to take the vaccine. I didn't believe in it," he said. But he wanted to appease his mother. "I would do anything for her."
Mr. Cohen received his first shot, manufactured by Pfizer, on Sept. 22, 2021. He was 21.
Two weeks later, he was awakened by a sharp pain at 3 a.m.
"I felt like my heart was trying to get out of my chest," Mr. Cohen said.
The soldier has felt pain before. "I never felt something like this," he said.
Mr. Cohen went with a friend to the hospital, where he was placed in quarantine because he wasn't fully vaccinated. Thirty minutes ticked by.
"I felt like it was the first time in my life I actually started seeing flashbacks of things that I did in my life—I felt like I was truly dying," Mr. Cohen said.
U.S. Army soldiers prepare Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines at the Miami Dade College North Campus in North Miami on March 9, 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Doctors finally came in and ran tests. They diagnosed Mr. Cohen with perimyocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle and the tissue around the heart.
They said Mr. Cohen was lucky. If he had come just a little later, he would have needed open heart surgery.
He spent three days in the hospital, taking medication and pills. When he was discharged, he was told not to engage in any physical activity for at least six months. He also needed to report for regular checkups and take a pill every day.
Six months after leaving the hospital, Mr. Cohen's cardiac MRI showed concerning results. His heart still hadn't recovered.
Doctors gave him more pills.
"They told me maybe I will need them for the rest of my life," Mr. Cohen said.
The military marked him as unable to serve for the rest of his life, and released him.
To this day, he suffers.
"I've been feeling, I'm not sure if it's trauma or something, but it feels sometimes like a sting there, a short sharp pain," Mr. Cohen said.
He's also unable to do all he used to do before.
"I was training. I was playing soccer. I did a lot of physical things, which now I can't afford ... to do anymore," Mr. Cohen said.
'Continued Pain'
Dr. Adam Hirschfeld was among the first people to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in the United States
The orthopedic surgeon was motivated by a desire to prevent his patients from becoming sick.
"I didn't want to put any of my patients at risk," Dr. Hirschfeld told The Epoch Times.
He received a Moderna primary series, composed of two doses, in January 2021. He was 36.
Three days after the second shot, Dr. Hirschfeld felt discomfort in his chest and numbness in his left arm.
A cardiac MRI confirmed evidence of heart inflammation. Dr. Hirschfeld was prescribed medicine and discharged two days later.
Dr. Hirschfeld has since undergone about a dozen electrocardiograms, another half a dozen echocardiograms, and a follow-up cardiac MRI.
"I went from being completely healthy—no issues, no medications—to seeing 10 different doctors in the blink of an eye," Dr. Hirschfeld said.
The follow-up MRI, conducted about 18 months after the vaccinations, showed normal cardiac function.
But Dr. Hirschfeld still experiences pain.
"I have continued chest pain on the right side, and then I have neuropathic type pains in my neck and shoulder areas," he told The Epoch Times. "I have it when I wake up, and it's there when I go to sleep."
The suffering affects the doctor physically and mentally.
"Having chest pain every day for two and a half years is very disconcerting," he said.
Pfizer and Moderna didn't respond to requests for comment.
Shots Cleared; Cases Appear
Mr. Cohen lives in Israel. Dr. Hirschfeld lives in the United States.
The first myocarditis cases after COVID-19 vaccination were reported in those countries in January 2021. Only a few weeks had elapsed since authorities cleared and recommended the shots for large portions of the population, including many young, healthy people.
A man receives the first dose of a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in Meitar, Israel, on March 9, 2021. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
At first, authorities hid reports of myocarditis from the public. Israel first acknowledged there was a likely link between the shots and the inflammation. The United States finally followed in June 2021, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said there was a "likely association."
Even after the association was made public, officials and many experts claimed that the myocarditis cases were mild. Most patients were hospitalized, authorities acknowledged, but they said patients could expect to recover without treatment and with rest.
The myocarditis is "rare but mild," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC's director at the time, said on "Good Morning America" on June 24, 2021.
Dr. Walensky said the cases were "self-limited," or didn't require treatment to resolve.
Then-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky speaks to reporters at a COVID-19 mass vaccination site at Hynes Convention Center in Boston on March 30, 2021. (Erin Clark-Pool/Getty Images)
Dr. Jeremy Faust, editor-in-chief of MedPage Today and a teacher at Harvard Medical School, on Twitter two days later described the cases as "self-limited troponinemia," or elevated troponin levels that would resolve on their own. Troponin is a protein in the heart that's a marker of heart injury.
Those claims were already wrong at the time, based on case reports alone.
A previously healthy 24-year-old man in Massachusetts, for example, experienced chest pain so serious that he went to an emergency department, doctors reported on May 18, 2021. He was eventually discharged with a prescription for a beta-blocker and anti-inflammatory drugs and told not to engage in strenuous activity for three months.
Another early case involved a previously healthy 16-year-old boy in California who experienced "stabbing chest pain" and went to the emergency department for help. He described the pain as 6 to 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. The symptoms prompted doctors to admit him to intensive care. He spent six days in the hospital before being discharged.
Like many early case reports, no follow-up data were reported, making it impossible to say that the cases had fully resolved.
"Unless you've experienced it individually, you can't tell somebody that their case was mild," Dr. Hirschfeld said. "If you have elevated troponin, that's your cardiac muscle breaking down.
"That's something that's permanent. And so to tell me that my cardiac muscle breaking down is mild is pretty insulting."
Signs of persistent symptoms appeared in the literature before long. U.S. military researchers, for instance, stated on June 29, 2021, that seven of 23 patients continued to have chest discomfort weeks or even months later. Dire outcomes were known even earlier. Two deaths were reported to U.S. authorities in February 2021, while another two were reported in Israel in the spring. Both of the Israelis who died were previously young and healthy.
Professional Biker Affected
Kyle Warner was a professional mountain bike racer when he received his first COVID-19 vaccine in May 2021. He completed a primary series the following month.
Mr. Warner, who lives in the western United States, teaches older people and wanted to protect them from COVID-19. The CDC and others promoted the idea that the vaccines curbed or even prevented transmission based on observational data.
"The sentiment was these are safe and effective. If you get them, you don't need to wear a mask anymore, and you can't transmit COVID or catch COVID," Mr. Warner told The Epoch Times. "I spend quite a bit of time around older people and help them learn.
"I wasn't necessarily afraid of COVID myself. Not that I did respect it, but I wasn't worried it was going to kill me," he added. "But I was worried about getting someone else sick, especially when I'm with our older clients."
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“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” - Voltaire
Silence those who disagree and you will never realize you are wrong.
No one rules if no one obeys
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” - Voltaire