I try to check what I publish. I hate it, if after publishing, I realise I got something wrong. When writing about health I fear publishing anything that could be untrue. I am not an expert in this field, and am very conscious of my limitations.
Therefore, I am shocked at the blatant flood of false information that pours through social media. How do I know it is false? Well, I check. Sometimes it is so blatantly false that I am flabbergasted. Did the person who posted the false information not notice that it is false?
Recently I saw a post on Twitter (currently being renamed as “X” ) which claimed the result of a new study. The claim was that 1 in 35 of a vaccinated group suffered subsequently from miocarditis (a kind of heart inflammation).
One in thirty five would be a very high rate, far in excess of anything I had seen from other studies. Therefore, I read the study.
As I read through it one sentence jumped out. It said that there were zero confirmed cases of miocarditis.
Zero? How can there be zero, but the person posting the study says 1 in 35 ? No matter how small or large the sample, zero can never be 1 in 35.
Reading more I saw that there were 2 causes of probable myocarditis, and there were 777 persons tested so that would be 1 in 388.
One in three hundred and eighty eight is high enough to make it worth reporting. That is about 10 times higher than any reports I have seen, but oddly both suspected cases were female and the total number is small so the data may not be very reliable.
So where did the 1 in 35 come from? This was a measure of a biochemical marker called troponin which is associated with heart muscle stress. The levels measured were similar to rates measured after a few hours of exercise.
The person who posted the link to the study but with the 1 in 35 get myocarditis false headline, then went on to suggest that myocarditis is a very serious condition that will kill a large portion of the vaccinated population in the next few years. Which if true would also imply that anyone who plays sport is also going to die soon.
Did the person read the study? Do any of those who respond to the post bother to read it? Why do people do this?
This report was later the subject of a YouTube video by a popular British commentator who I regard, these days, as a threat to public health due to a flow of misleading reports.
The absurdity of the claim was later highlighted by a retired research scientist in Australia who knows more than I do on the subject. Fortunately, her analysis is consistent with mine: