Nature published a comprehensive study this week on cardiovascular risk including a total of over 11 million patients that has made a few headlines. The aim was to identify the cause of increased cardiac pathology. It should have been a very simple study comparing four groups:
- Not infected and never vaccinated
- Not infected and vaccinated
- Infected but not vaccinated
- Infected and vaccinated
It is hard to believe the authors did not look at these groups, but whatever was found when comparing them remains a mystery.
Instead, the following groups were compared:
- Not infected and never vaccinated data from 2017
- Not infected, including vaccinated and not vaccinated
- Infected but not vaccinated
- Infected with vaccinated people included but using modelled adjustments
When studies with huge datasets use modelling and fail to share data prior to their adjustments alarm bells should start ringing. Therefore, I took a deeper dive to see what else was questionable.
There were serious biases in the paper which need addressing but first let’s look at the critical question of myocarditis (heart inflammation).
Because of the known risk of myocarditis from vaccination it is worth looking particularly closely at the data presented on this. Oddly, for the issue of the day, the data on myocarditis was all hidden in the supplementary appendix to the paper.
