They Suffered Myocarditis After COVID-19 Vaccination. Years Later, Some Still Haven't Recovered

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Mr. Warner was diagnosed with myopericarditis after COVID-19 vaccination and was hospitalized. After being discharged, Mr. Warner was bedridden for weeks.

"There's points where I was unable to even get up out of bed without passing out or blacking out," Mr. Warner told The Epoch Times. "It was really eye-opening. I felt like I went from being 28 years old to being 88 years old."

Mr. Warner was diagnosed with myopericarditis and two other conditions—postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and mast cell activation syndrome—that others have also been diagnosed with following COVID-19 vaccination.

Hyperbaric oxygen, which has relieved some of Dr. Hirschfeld's pain, helped bring Mr. Warner's energy levels back up.

But the cyclist, who didn't ride again until February 2022, still struggles with pain, especially when he exercises in the summer.

Mr. Warner utilizes a heart rate monitor, which he became familiar with in his racing career. During a recent ride, Mr. Warner pushed himself, trying his hardest for four minutes. That sent his heart rate up to 189 beats per minute—the highest since the injury.

"I did OK, but then the next few weeks, I had a kind of a lingering chest pain and tightness. And about four days after, it was pretty significant where I was having a hard time sleeping and my heart felt like it was palpitating every once in a while, and then—even more than a week later—I still had a little bit of chest tightness and pain," Mr. Warner said.

"It kind of scared me because it's been well over a year since my last treatment with hyperbaric and I'm still dealing with it. And when I do try to push myself harder, then I have to pay for the next few days to a week. "Back in the day, I would be able to do that with no problem at all."

Doctors who have spoken to Mr. Warner have told him that when his heart becomes stressed, it signals his immune system to attack and inflame it. He tries to keep his heart rate under 160 beats per minute.

14-Year-Old Rushed to Hospital

Aiden Ekanayake woke up in the middle of the night.
"Every breath deeper in was like knives in my chest," Aiden, who is from Georgia, said during a podcast appearance.
It was June 12, 2021, two days after Aiden received a second shot of Pfizer's vaccine. He was 14.

Aiden was able to fall asleep through shallow breathing, but was soon awakened. He went to his mother, who rushed him to the hospital.

Tests revealed abnormalities. Aiden was taken to the acute cardiac unit, where more tests confirmed that the vaccine was the cause. Aiden spent four days in the hospital. After being discharged, he was inactive for more than four months.

"I don't know where they get this 'two days and you're done, you're good.' That's a crock of [expletive]," Emily Ekanayake, Aiden's mother, told The Epoch Times.

Ms. Ekanayake had read early studies from Israel that found an elevated risk for myocarditis among young males who had received the Pfizer vaccine, but concluded with her son that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks. "I was really scared of COVID," Ms. Ekanayake said.

Aiden said he wanted to get vaccinated to help protect himself and his brother, both of whom have asthma.

Aiden's doctor also recommended the shot. Shortly before Aiden was vaccinated, the CDC director said the agency found no safety signal for myocarditis. U.S. officials cleared and recommended the vaccine to virtually all children aged 12 to 15, after initially only making it available to those 16 and older.

Aiden eventually resumed exercise after being cleared by a cardiopulmonary stress test.

The result of the test was "probably more like that of an old man," Ms. Ekanayake said. "His CO2 was low. He wasn't able to run much. He's got a lot of work in that way to go still. But he does like walking.

"I still worry about strenuous activity. I can't help it. I don't know that that will ever go away."

More here:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/they-suffered-myocarditis-after-covid-19-vaccination-years-later-some-still-havent-recovered-5478652

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