Largest COVID-19 study finds link between vaccine & heart, brain disorders

The latest COVID-19 vaccine study is providing answers to one of the most asked questions since the vaccines were introduced: How will this impact my health?

Global COVID Vaccine Safety Project conducted the study with the collection of data from nearly 100 million people across eight countries.

Since the pandemic began in March 2020, nearly seven million people have died across the globe from COVID-19, including more than one million Americans. It’s estimated that 71% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The report specifically looked at the adverse effects of the Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines and found the following:

• The study links vaccines to slight increases in neurological, blood and heart-related conditions like myocarditis, pericarditis and Guillan-Barre syndrome.

• For instance, out of the more than 99 million people studied, researchers observed only 190 cases of Guillan-Barre Syndrome (in people who took the vaccine)

• Researchers stressed the association between the vaccines and adverse side effects does not prove the vaccine was the root cause of the illness.

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Elizabeth Foster wonders if the COVID-19 vaccination she took in 2020 has anything to do with the decline she said she’s experiencing in her health.

“I’m going through a lot of mental and physical things now and it wasn’t like that before,” she said.

Dr. Jonathan Kantor, who is an adjunct scholar at the Penn Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, reviewed the study and believes the vaccines’ benefits still outweigh the risks.

“I think what this study confirmed is pretty much what other smaller studies have said in the past. And that’s the following. Number one, vaccines have risks, I think only a fool would say vaccines don’t have risk,” Kantor said.

Kantor said the new research shouldn’t erode anyone’s trust in the vaccine, but instead prompt them to think about their medical condition and their need for protection.

“There’s no such thing as a drug that has an effect without a side effect, so everything has potential risk. The problem is what is the risk of the thing that you are trying to prevent?” Kantor said. “And that’s where it comes into play. So for example, for parents, right, if you’ve got a healthy three-year-old, who’s had COVID, four times already, well, then I’d say, ‘I don’t know what the benefit is that you’re going to get from getting that vaccine today.’”

But Kantor said the best scenario depends on the person.

“If you tell me that you’ve got an 84-year-old in a nursing home, that somehow came out of a time machine, and is now entering the world in 2020 and has never had a COVID vaccine. Well, for that person, I’d say, we really have to think about whether COVID vaccine makes sense for them,” he said.