Did “Died Suddenly” just die suddenly as a conspiracy theory?

One of the more pernicious and—let’s just say it—downright ridiculous conspiracy theories to have emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic is the “died suddenly” conspiracy theory. The basic idea is that young, healthy people all over the world have “died suddenly” as a result of sudden cardiac death caused by—you guessed it!—COVID-19 vaccines. The “died suddenly” conspiracy theory takes many forms, such as blaming the sudden on-field cardiac arrest of an elite athlete like Damar Hamlin on vaccines to conspiracy “documentaries” positing a wave of death due to the vaccines, to embalmers misleadingly claiming that they’re seeing more clots than ever, to anti vaxxers swooping down on the families of those who died suddenly to blame their deaths on vaccines, a phenomenon for which the term “ghouling” was coined. Antivaxxers are even branching out with the “died suddenly” conspiracy theory to blame a wave of deaths of zoo animals on COVID-19 vaccines, because why limit your anti vax conspiracy mongering just to humans?

In any event, I decided to look at some actual evidence this week, as a study whose results are completely inconsistent with COVID-19 vaccines causing people to “die suddenly” due to cardiac causes. Why now? After all, the “died suddenly” conspiracy theory is just a variation on what antivaxxers have been doing for a very long time for childhood vaccines and HPV vaccines. What caught my eye this week and reminded me that I needed to write about this study, which was released over a week ago, was the reaction of antivaxxers to the death of Canadian folk legend Gordon Lightfoot on Monday at the age of 83.

By way of a bit of background, let me just say that I love Gordon Lightfoot’s music and have been a fan since I was a child in the early 1970s, when my mother (also a fan) introduced me to his music. Now let’s take a look at what Mark Crispin Miller felt obligated to write yesterday after hearing about Gordon Lightfoot’s passing a few days before, Gordon Lightfoot probably would be alive today, despite his age, if he had not been “vaccinated.” The blurb informs us:

And many others too might be alive, if he did not join in the “vaccination” propaganda pushed by so many musicians all around the world. (If only he had thought to question it instead…)

The hilarious and telling thing about Miller’s including Gordon Lightfoot in his “died suddenly” narrative is this:

We decided early on, when we started this project early last year, to use a cut-off date of 75, figuring that, since sudden deaths are likelier at so advanced an age, we should err more on the side of caution in such cases, for the sake of greater credibility.

But wait, you say: Lightfoot was 84, which is a pretty ripe old age to reach before dying. Also, those of us who are fans know that he has suffered a number of health issues over the years, including emergency surgery for a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm in 2002, after which:

The graveness of Lightfoot’s illness stems from an aneurysm he suffered in 2002. The singer fell into a coma for six weeks and, even though he recovered and returned to performing, he then suffered a stroke four years later onstage. Still, Lightfoot continues touring; playing five cities in five nights, in his words, like a hockey team.

So it is established from this history that Gordon Lightfoot had significant and serious vascular disease dating back at least 21 years, which caused him to develop an aortic aneurysm that almost killed him as well as to suffer a minor stroke onstage a few years later. In addition, Lightfoot spent decades of his life battling alcohol and addiction, although he had been sober since the 1980s. In any event, while it is true that Lightfoot had managed to tour prodigiously in the 2000s and in 2012 reported in an interview that he generally hit the gym six days a week, it is also true that in April he had to cancel an upcoming tour due to “health-related issues.” It is also true he had been hospitalized at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto, which is where he died.

So how does Miller justify including Lightfoot, an octogenarian, in his “died suddenly” list? Obviously, it was because he needed more fodder:

But we soon became more flexible, since it’s no less suspicious when somebody rich and famous, in his/her 80’s or even 90’s, just drops dead—with no cause reported, and without having been unwell, and was known to have been “vaccinated”—than when someone younger dies that way. So it was, of course, with both Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, both of whom, old as they were (96, 99), could have lived still longer lives; so it was with Ramsey Clark, dead (suddenly) at 93, though very fit up til the end; and so it was with Paul Sorvino, who “died suddenly” at 83, and who—despite vague claims, in “our free press,” about recent “health problems”—had been working non-stop, with several projects going, when he just up and died, just like so many others. (Sorvino, BTW, was one of a few dozen departed movie people who, at this year’s Oscars jamboree, were left out of the “In Memoriam” segment, which—just like the year before—would have been too long, and maybe called attention to what’s going on, if they’d included all those who ought to have mentioned there.)

I like the conspiracy theory about how the Oscars had left Paul Sorvino out not because of an oversight, but rather because it had tried to cull the list of celebrities who had died over the last year in order to hide how huge a number it was. Top-notch crank conspiracy mongering, there, Mark! Also, why Sorvino? Why didn’t “they” decide to “suppress” the news of the deaths of less famous celebrities in the annual Oscar In Memoriam tribute? Inquiring minds want to know!

Basically, there is no evidence that Gordon Lightfoot died because he was first vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine over two years prior to his death. We don’t know when Gordon Lightfoot got his boosters, but it’s reasonable to assume that it was at least several months ago, when the bivalent vaccine first came out. In any event, blaming his death on COVID-19 vaccines is even more of a stretch than the usual “died suddenly” anecdote, in which the time between vaccination and death is usually at least a lot less than several months or aren’t octogenarian folk singers with a long history of cardiovascular disease.

As much as antivaxxers stretch to blame sudden cardiac deaths on vaccines—they’ve even gone so far as to coin a term “sudden adult death syndrome” (SADS), which is a misnomer for a long-known condition with the same acronym known prepandemic as sudden arrhythmic death syndrome—there is just no good evidence that vaccines are killing people this way. In fact, just the opposite. For example, here is the study I mentioned at the beginning of the post that was announced in a press release late last week that found no association between out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and COVID-19 vaccination. If you want the Cliffs Notes version, the press release is perfectly fine, but I know my readers. They want the actual study, which was published in an official journal of the American Heart Association, Circulation, and entitled No Association Between Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest and COVID-19 Vaccination.

The study comes out of the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute and Alfred Health in Australia. In it, investigators led by cardiologist and researcher Dr. Liz Paratz asked the question: Was there a wave of sudden cardiac deaths in young people, especially associated with myocarditis, that could be correlated to vaccination against COVID-19. For this sort of study, Australia has a great resource, a database of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) cases known as the EndUCD registry, which investigates all OHCAs aged 1–50 years in Victoria. The other great things about this database are that it is large and very granular in the clinical detail available about all the cases recorded.

To address their questions, the authors looked at cases from three time periods:

• Immediately before the pandemic (April 2019–Feb 2020)
• During the pandemic but preceding vaccine availability (March 2020–January 2021)
• a third period correlating to both COVID-19 presence in the community and vaccine availability (Feb 2021–March 2022)

These time periods were compared against age-specific vaccination and COVID-19 rates for Victorians aged 1–50 years on a monthly basis. There were two outcomes examined:

• The primary outcome was comparison of the defined time periods against OHCA rates, unascertained OHCA or OHCA due to myocarditis.
• The secondary outcome was causes of young sudden death within 30 days of COVID-19 vaccination, with reference to age-matched normative Australian data.

The bottom line was this:

Within the study population of 4 490 483 people, 4 166 442 people were 5 to 50 years of age and therefore eligible for vaccination during the 3-year time period; during this time they received a total of 8 776 089 vaccinations. From February 2021 to June 2021, the BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccines were administered in a 50:50 ratio nationally. From June 2021 to September 2021, the BNT162b2 vaccine was the only vaccine recommended for this study population; from September 2021 onward, both the BNT162b2 and mRNA1273 vaccines were available.

A total of 2242 people experienced OHCA during the study period (unascertained OHCA, 223; myocarditis causing OHCA, 13). No variation was seen in median monthly rates of OHCA (P=0.7481), rates of myocarditis causing OHCA (P=0.7378), or unascertained OHCA (P=0.2323) according to the defined time periods (Figure [A]).

Translation: There was no difference seen in the rates of OHCA, myocarditis causing OHCA, or unascertaine OHCA (OHCA for which the cause was never found) during the time periods.

But, just to be sure, the investigators did this analysis:

Thirty-eight people (median age, 44.6 years; 63.2% male; 2.6% with a history of cardiac pathology) experienced sudden death within 30 days of their COVID-19 vaccination and were referred for forensic assessment (vaccine types: BNT162b2, 22; ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, 9; mRNA-1273, 2; and vaccination type not documented, 5). No difference was seen in underlying causes of sudden death compared with previously published age-matched data (P=0.235; Figure [B].

For those of you who like data presented visually:

And, for those who like their conclusions very clear:

Our statewide analysis of OHCA in young people did not demonstrate increased rates of overall OHCA, myocarditis causing OHCA, or unascertained OHCA during the COVID-19 pandemic or after the introduction of nationally mandated COVID-19 vaccination. Causes of death in young people experiencing fatal OHCA within 30 days of their COVID-19 vaccination were consistent with prepandemic causative profiles.

Our registry captures the entire denominator of cardiac arrest in young people occurring within a population of 4.2 million people, with widespread COVID-19 vaccination occurring throughout the population in time period 3. Although COVID-19 vaccination (and COVID-19 itself) have been associated with cardiac complications such as myocarditis and pericarditis,5 most of these episodes have been reported to be mild in the acute phase. It is reassuring to see in our data that rates of myocarditis causing OHCA or, indeed, overall rates of OHCA in young people, showed no signal for any relationship with the introduction of widespread COVID-19 vaccination or community rates of COVID-19 infection.

The authors do note that this is an ecological study, with all the limitations of such a study design. The investigators didn’t look at patient-level data other than the forensic analyses of the cause of death of the 38 people who “died suddenly” within 30 days of COVID-19 vaccination, but that analysis failed to find any evidence of the causes of death being any different than pre-pandemic.I also like to point out that a common problem with an ecological study designs is that it will find a correlation that isn’t real or a much larger correlation than actually exists. That being said, these data are not definitive or the final word on the subject, but they do represent pretty strong evidence that, at the very minimum, COVID-19 vaccines are not causing a wave of people under 50 “dying suddenly.” I’d be willing to bet that they aren’t causing a wave of people over 50 to “die suddenly” either, but this study did not address people over 50.

I’ll conclude with an even more ridiculous example of “died suddenly” from Dr. Paul “we want them infected” Alexander. I include it because it’s a local story from the Detroit area (where I live) that’s been getting a lot of play. In brief, last week a middle school student intervened when a school bus driver became ill to take control of the bus and bring it to a safe stop. There is, of course, video, and the story made national news. He was honored on Wednesday for his heroism, as was announced earlier this week:

The Macomb County middle school student who stopped his school bus after the driver passed out will be honored by the Warren Consolidated Schools Board of Education.

Seventh-grade student Dylan Reeves will be honored for his heroic efforts Wednesday (May 3) at 31300 Anita Drive during the board meeting at 7:30 p.m. at the WCS Administration Building.

On Wednesday (April 26), students were heading home from Carter Middle School when the bus driver lost consciousness about a mile and a half down Masonic between Schoenherr and Hayes roads.

Reeves, 13, noticed the female bus driver began losing consciousness as she started veering into oncoming traffic, causing him to act swiftly by taking the wheel and slowly stopping the bus while instructing his classmates to call 911.

Dillon Reeves’ name appears to be misspelled in this account. It’s Dillon.

Cool kid, as you can see from an interview with him:

“I was just thinking just to do the right thing,” he said. “I just got up and did what’s right.”

Reeves, a seventh grader at Carter Middle School, said he saw the driver shaking and lose consciousness in the mirror, so he got up and safely stopped the bus, which had 60 people on it.

“Honestly, I didn’t really drive it. I just took over the steering wheel and stopped it before hitting a car of course because it was really close,” he said. “If I wasn’t there, I just know that It would have just been like a complete disaster.”

Once Reeves brought the bus to a stop, he yelled for others to call 911.

“I was more worried about the rest of the students on the bus, especially the bus driver,” he said.

Reeves said it was a lot to go through, but he wanted to make sure he did what was right when he saw the driver in distress.

This is what you hope kids learn. There are a lot of adults who wouldn’t have known what to do, but this 13-year old did!

Leave it to Dr. Alexander to take an uplifting story like this about the quick thinking of a 13-year-old who took charge and averted a disaster that could have resulted in the injury and deaths of his fellow students in a traffic crash and turn it into antivax disinformation:

Was this vaccine-induced myocarditis with the bus driver? What? Linked to the shot in any way? Would we be ever told the truth? Information is emerging yet as I praise Dillon as a hero and boy is he one, we have to ask questions. What is being spun to us? Once I learn more, will update. Please update me once you know more.

Dr. Alexander can’t help but also turn his crank fight with Dr. Robert “I am the inventor of mRNA vaccines” Malone (who didn’t invent mRNA vaccines) and Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó, who arguably did up to 11:

Was this bus driver vaccinated? More than likely 100% to be driving that bus. Malone and Karikó and Weissman, what say you? As inventors of the core key ingredient of the mRNA technology gene injections. What say others like you who did this with your fraud untested unsafe mRNA technology? What in God’s name were you thinking? Did you ever test it for safety before you unleashed it? Is this only always about money to you people? Fame? Nobels? Why did you do this? Malone has now said para “these vaccines are not completely or properly safe”, after it was rolled out and after he knew about the lack of safety and huge risks. But that aside, that time delay in warning the world, can Dr. Malone tell us about the safety of the mRNA technology he worked on in the past and he invented and that is in the final vaccine today? Where is the safety data? Was any safety testing done with regards to the mRNA technology itself? On its own or in combination with the lipid-nano particle complex? On the nano technology itself? When he wrote the Research Gate paper I think in 2020 (? as to exact date), what did he then know about the harms of mRNA technology he invented in terms of any use in any human vaccines? Can he be open, transparent, explicit please.

I told you that this was utterly ridiculous. Nothing was reported about if or when the bus driver had been vaccinated. From the news reports, it sounds to me as though she might have had a seizure of some sort. But of course it had to be the vaccine, and of course Dr. Alexander has to claim that Reeves saved the bus driver and his fellow students on the bus from possible injury and death because the vaccine took out the bus driver. The level of conspiracy mongering here is just to over-the-top that I have to wonder if Dr. Alexander is lying.

Whether spread by liars, true believers, or grifters, though, the “died suddenly” conspiracy theory is one of the more ridiculous ones that I’ve ever encountered. Unfortunately, in the middle of the pandemic, it can be persuasive. I asked if “died suddenly” had died suddenly as a conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, I think you know the answer to that question. As is the case with all conspiracy theories, “died suddenly” is immune to data, evidence, science, and reason.