A new CDC study shows there is no evidence COVID
vaccines cause fatal cardiac arrest or other deadly heart disease
problems in young teens and adults.
The report addresses a common theory among anti vaccination groups.
Joining us now to talk about this and other health
topics today is Doctor Jeff Potoff,
UW Health's Chief Quality Officer.
You know, this is putting to rest some speculation over
the effects of the vaccine.
Can you explain this a little bit better?
Yeah. So I think all of us remember when those
mRNA vaccines first came out,
there were all kinds of claims of horrible things that
they caused.
The. The problem with that is that if you give
millions of people a a vaccine,
you can associate horrible things with people who got in
a vaccine.
But the two may not be related.
It took a couple years,
but researchers look specifically at one claim was that it
would cause the stopping of the heart of young athletes
sudden cardiac death.
And they looked at over 1300 deaths of 16 to
30 year olds and kind of matched that up with
people who had received a vaccine within 100 days of
their death. And really there is just no association between
the mRNA vaccines and sudden cardiac death.
What they do notice amongst folks who are unvaccinated,
about 30 people died of COVID in that time period.
So just really goes to show that it's important to
follow the the data,
the science, the math on these things
and that, you know, sometimes this perceived risk,
it doesn't actually turn out to be true when the
numbers are crunched.
I remember when people started talking about this right after
DeMar Hamlin from the Buffalo Bills collapsed on the field.
I mean, all of us remember that,
right? And they were able to resuscitate him and bring
him back and everything like that.
But that kind of got this whole theory very much
back in the headlines.
Yeah. And I think what's important to do is,
you know, one person who has a sudden cardiac event,
you know, and had a vaccine,
who knows when doesn't mean that that vaccine caused that
event There,
There's coincidence there. But what we really need to look
for is causation research that proves causation or at least
correlation.
You know, we see a lot of people who get
a vaccine.
Something bad's happening. We don't know if it's a vaccine
or not.
But lots of times these horrible stories,
they are horrible stories. They're coincidence,
nothing to do with the vaccine.
Well, Speaking of vaccines and something that,
you know, can be prevented with a vaccine,
measles has been considered eliminated from the US since the
year 2000,
other than a few cases kind of here and there
over the years.
But this latest outbreak of cases is potentially threatening that
elimination status.
Talk to me more about this and kind of how
we got here.
Yeah. So the elimination status for measles doesn't necessarily mean
that there's never a case of measles in the United
States.
But what it really refers to is the ability of
measles to kind of transmit freely in our communities.
And in the year 2000,
we were considered eliminated for measles,
meaning that if someone traveled to a country that had
lots of measles,
came back with measles. You know,
maybe a couple people came down with measles,
but it was really easy to isolate that
as we see lower vaccination rates with the MMR vaccine,
we're getting to a point where measles could come into
a community and it could start to spread.
We might be challenged to stop the spread because we
don't have enough vaccinated people that the measles virus always
has someone else to infect and can lead to larger
and larger outbreaks. If we don't get a little bit
higher vaccination rates with the MMR vaccine,
we'll have to wait and see if that elimination status
gets revoked from the United States.
Doctor, pot off. We always appreciate it.
Thank you. Good to see you.