Have COVID mRNA vaccines caused heart problems and strokes?

Once more, the facts soundly refute this tweeter’s claim.

Research shows that COVID infection, not the COVID mRNA vaccine is responsible for increasing the risk of serious cardiac events. COVID vaccines actually protect against serious cardiac events and stroke in people who have had previous COVID infections.

So how does this tweet get it so wrong?

Chalk this one up to mistaking anecdotal experience for scientific fact. The tweeted article features a British cardiologist who started to suspect that mRNA vaccines caused unexpected cardiac arrests, heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, and heart failure after his father suffered cardiac arrest.

This unfortunate event highlights the dangers of using emotionally charged anecdotal experience to come to supposedly scientific conclusions. The cardiologist claimed to know his father’s lifestyle and health, but he was his father’s son, not his father’s doctor. This cardiologist also didn’t mention and may not have been aware of any past COVID infections his father may have experienced.

Based on his limited knowledge of his father’s health condition, this cardiologist decided that vaccines increase the risk of adverse serious cardiac events. This is the problem with using anecdotes alone, unsupported by any scientific research, to draw conclusions and rule out other possible causes of these cardiac events.

This cardiologist never considered that a COVID infection—and not a COVID vaccine—might have weakened his father’s heart.