Social media posts misrepresent myocarditis risks

CLAIM: Patients who have myocarditis have a very high chance of dying within 10 years. “This is what we are doing to our CHILDREN for political statement.” The post included an image from the text of a scientific paper that reads: “Non-fulminant active myocarditis has a mortality rate of 25% to 56% within 3 to 10 years, owing to progressive heart failure and sudden cardiac death.” Another Facebook post first circulated on Monday falsely claimed that myocarditis “is literally a slowly progressing death,” and that deaths would “come years later at an extremely high mortality rate of a quarter to half of all cases.” But pediatric cardiologists The Associated Press spoke with said the claims were false and distorted the scientific literature. Dr. Matthew Oster, a pediatric cardiologist studying myocarditis with the CDC COVID-19 vaccine task force, said in an email to the AP that the posts were a “misinterpretation” based on data from a decades-old study that “is not applicable to those with myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccine for a number of reasons.” The data quoted by one of the posts was referencing in part a 1995 study that only included patients with significant heart failure, Oster said, adding that the average age in that study was 42. “The quotation that individuals with non-fulminant active myocarditis have a mortality rate of 26% to 56% within three to 10 years is drawn from hospitalized people with heart failure and cardiomyopathy, who are the sickest percentile of people with myocarditis,” Cooper said in reference to the data quoted in the post. “The vaccine has only existed for one year,” said Cooper, who added that while no direct data exists to support or refute the claim that individuals would die years after developing myocarditis from the vaccine, “any reasonable interpretation of historical data does not support that conclusion.” “We know that in children and adults, most cases are relatively mild, and resolve without any long term consequence,” he said.