A top Pentagon official has confirmed data from the U.S. military showing a spike in myocarditis diagnoses in 2021.
According to the Defense Medical Epidemiology (DMED), there were 275 cases of myocarditis in 2021, which represents a 151 percent increase from the annual average from 2016-2020, reports The Epoch Times.
Gilbert Cisneros Jr., undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, pointed to COVID-19 infection, rather than the COVID-19 vaccines, for the increase in cases of myocarditis, which is an inflammation of the heart muscle.
Mr. Cisneros provided the rate of cases per 100,000 person-years, a way to measure risk across a certain period of time. In 2021, the rate was 69.8 among those with prior infection, compared to 21.7 among members who had been vaccinated. […]
No figures were given for members who had been vaccinated but were also infected. The total rate, 20.6, also indicates that some members weren’t included in the subgroup analysis. (The Epoch Times)
Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist, came to a different conclusion, telling The Epoch Times the increase "was most likely due to ill-advised COVID-19 vaccination." He cited an Israeli study that did "not observe an increased incidence of neither pericarditis nor myocarditis in adult patients recovering from COVID-19 infection."
Some other papers have found COVID-19 vaccines increase the risk of myocarditis. COVID-19 has been linked elsewhere to myocarditis, although the vaccines have never prevented infection and have become increasingly ineffective against it.
The military encouraged COVID-19 vaccination after U.S. regulators cleared the vaccines for use in late 2020. Military officials were among the first in the world to raise concerns about myocarditis after vaccination and published an early case series of 22 previously healthy members who suffered myocarditis within four days of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. U.S. officials have since said the vaccines definitely cause myocarditis. (The Epoch Times)
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who has been digging into the DMED’s data integrity issues, questioned the numbers.
"Based on DoD’s explanation of how it made its calculations to support this claim, it is unclear whether or how it accounted for Service members who had a prior COVID-19 infection and received a COVID-19 vaccination," he wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who mandated in 2021 that members of the armed forces get vaccinated.
1. Please explain whether DoD accounted for individuals who had a prior COVID-19infection and received a COVID-19 vaccination when determining that for certain conditions, “new case rate[s] [were] higher among Service members with a prior SARSCoV-2 infection compared to those with a prior COVID-19 vaccination. This suggests that it was more likely to be SARS-CoV-2 infection and not COVID-19 vaccination that was the cause of these increased cases in 2021.”
2. Have any Service members experienced adverse medical conditions associated with the COVID-19 vaccines? If so, how many and what are those conditions? How did DoD make this determination? Has DoD conducted any independent investigation into whether adverse medical conditions are associated with the COVID-19 vaccines? If so, what has DoD found? If not, why not?
Johnson requested the information by Aug. 2.