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Sudden Death and the Evaluation of Risk
My wife’s father died suddenly a few weeks ago. He was 83, in robust good health. His mind was as sharp as ever. Physically, he was in better shape than when I first met him, then in his mid-40s.
When he retired ~25 years ago, he made a conscious effort to take off extra weight that had accumulated over the years, and had been diligent about keeping it off. He was extremely active in his parish church, had walked at least two miles/day, and when not visiting grandchildren in far-off places, had worked in the extensive gardens at his house for hours every day.
At least as of a few years ago, he was still painting the exterior of his two-story house on a regular schedule, climbing ladders and contorting into positions to get the job done that gave his wife palpitations. He came from hardy Irish/German farming stock in Western Maryland. His father and two of his four siblings lived into their 90s, and up until about a month ago, we saw no reason he would not do the same.
What changed?
One Saturday, he did some chores and mowed the lawn—normal Saturday. Sunday morning at Mass, he felt faint and weak. He went to the hospital, was misdiagnosed with a minor infection and was sent home. He kept feeling worse and returned to the hospital later that day, and was admitted. Within a day or so, his blood was attacking itself and multiple internal organs were shutting down. The staff were giving him blood transfusions, and getting ready to start him on dialysis. By Thursday morning, he was dead.
Less than five days from feeling fine to gone.
Here’s what’s important to know: Three days before feeling faint, he had received a COVID booster shot. One of my wife’s sisters is a doctor and one is a physician’s assistant, and they both believe the booster shot triggered the events that led to his death. They are not anti-vaxxers. They were both very pro-vaccination during the 2021 vaccine debates, and I think they still believe the vaccinations were a net positive.
A possibly related story: the day after my father-in-law’s funeral, as we were making the more than 800-mile drive home, my wife’s phone lit up with a text stream about a woman she works with. The woman in question was in her late 50s and had an underlying heart condition. She had gone to the cardiologist a month or so prior and everything checked out great.
The day of my father-in-law’s funeral, she went to the hospital with congestive heart failure. Two days before that, she had received a COVID booster. No one at the largest hospital in the second largest city in the southeast US asked anything about her COVID vaccination/booster status. Within a week of entering the hospital, she also died.
The sudden deterioration in health could be coincidental timing in one or both cases. Or, there could be something seriously bad going on.
How will we ever know? Apparently, hospitals aren’t even curious about the possible connection between COVID boosters and negative health outcomes.
When the vaccine was being deployed, governments and pharmaceutical companies were aligned in wanting to motivate the population to get vaccinated. The distinction between “dying with COVID” and “dying from COVID” was blurred or obliterated. For a long time, anyone who tested positive for COVID and had died for any reason was counted in the “died of COVID” statistics.
Where is the daily ticker on people dying suddenly after receiving the COVID boosters? Governments and pharmaceutical companies are not incentivized to publicize this information—or even to look into it any deeper. I don’t think there will be a ticker. There will be anecdotes. Many anecdotes become data, if looked at in the right way.
Whatever your views of COVID vaccines at the time they were first introduced, please think about what level of risk the current strains of COVID pose to most people. (To me, it seems minimal. You may see it differently or may have different risk factors. That’s OK.)
Then think about what level of risk may be posed by continuing the COVID vaccination and frequent booster regime that is still promoted by our government, and pushed by many companies on their employees.
I’m not telling you what to do. I’m just sharing some anecdotes.
I will add this: If you or someone you love gets a COVID vaccine or booster and shortly thereafter falls ill, take it seriously. If he goes to the hospital, make sure the health providers know he was recently vaxxed or boosted. There may be no treatment available to save him, but knowledge could at least shut down some diagnostic dead ends and limit the additional suffering caused by unnecessary procedures.
Published in Family
I am very sorry for the death of your father in law. He sounds a treasured member of the family. It’s a real blow and a sad time for your family.
Thank you for taking the time and being willing to disclose the circumstances of his death. I take your information very seriously and believe your concerns and outrage to be credible. When someone close to us becomes seriously ill it’s hard to keep a clear head communicating with medical professionals. There are plenty of (anecdotal) examples of people struggling with the circumstances they find in emergency health situations. Your comments (anecdotes) may help another family ask important questions and push to provide timely pertinent information to the medical side. It seems lots of people are becoming a lot more aware of the changes in medical care. I’m sorry you had to face it first hand.
To others who might read this: On behalf of children of grown up parents – don’t keep secrets from your kids. You’re not bothering them. It might make a real difference to care in the ER if one of them is able to speak knowledgeably to the ER doc about a parent’s current health events (like a vaccination or change in meds.) We are now the grown up parents. We remember being in the ER with a parent and wanting to be better advocates. So we have had that talk with our son and promised.
Although daughter urging us to get the boosters before she comes for Tgiving my regular doc said no big deal given the mild symptoms of most folks getting Covid and daughter had it twice. Easy decision after reading this. Did get a flu shot. So will tell her I had a shot and everything ok
First, I am very sorry for your Father-in-Law’s death. Regardless of his age, your description of him makes his death seem untimely. There is another post on the member feed that gets into a discussion relevant to yours. It is shocking how in an age of nearly instantaneous global information exchange, there is so much ability for a relatively few persons to keep information from public view. Of course, in the cases you describe, we have no idea what caused the sudden deaths. We only have the anecdotal coincidence. But, personally, I gave up on these shots when I was told to get a booster less than 4 months after my two “vaccination” shots. At that point, I realized something was not right about our medical system, especially regarding COVID-19. There is more information now available, and, as such, there are alternate points of view in the public domain. But when science is politicized, it takes much longer for truth to be discovered.
It reminds me of the day there was an obviously sick deer in the field next to us. It was just staggering around and this was when ‘wasting disease’ was getting a lot of publicity. I called the Animal warden who came and shot the deer.
I asked the warden if there had been an increase in reports of wasting disease and he said “no”.
The real shock came when I asked if they would test the deer, the answer was they had no mechanism to do that!
Obviously, if they aren’t taking the data, they have no reports of a problem. I think its the same with Covid side effects.
I am saddened to hear this story of a lost life in your family.
I’m 85 and in good general health as I have always been. I have two medical issues that arose from sources not related to my recent, say last 30 years, of personal behavior. I had a bi-modal aortic valve, a congenital abnormality (tri-modal is normal), for which I have had two open-heart surgeries related to valve-replacement so I’ve been on cardio-related drugs since then. I recently was diagnose with cancer in my lower left mandible (jawbone) for which I had surgery and 35 targeted radiation treatments. That may be related to when I smoked for a period of 25 years which I quit in 1977. We won’t evaluate that result until January.
I feel great, walk 3 to 4 miles regularly each day (I miss sometimes). When I visited the cardiologist earlier this month all vital signs were good including all the cholesterol readings being in acceptable ranges for the first time in 30 years.
I think I have a very strong and effective immune system that has help me avoid common illnesses during my lifetime. I grew up in the 1940s in a house with no indoor plumbing situated on a dirt road with a dirt yard, near a creek where I swam regularly, and I did all my play or leisure activities outside because the house was barely big enough to live in. I experienced all the childhood diseases for which they get shots today, I had a smallpox vaccination to start public school and I took an oral polio vaccine when I entered the Army in 1961. I’ve taken some flu shots but not every year.
I had grave suspicions regarding the Covid vaccines based initially simply on the fact that the government approved it on an emergency basis skipping the required protocols for normal approvals. Those suspicions have grown and now include suspicions of deliberate action by government and corporate officials to keep negative information from the public and institutional actions across all economic sectors to support that.
If I went into questions I have about motivations I will be a conspiracy theorist.
I have had no Covid shots and I don’t plan to take any
Working from memory here, not actual links to the stories themselves, and not wanting to discount your ideas on this subject or the risks from the vaccine: I just want to point out that the reason Moderna and Pfizer had the second dose so soon after the first (four, five, or six months, depending on where they were in this research and in rolling out the vaccine at the start of its being available) was that in their initial clinical trials, they found that the size of the dose they thought they needed to stimulate the production of antibodies was too high for patients and those high doses caused side effects (I don’t remember what they were). At that point, just before they rolled it out to the general public, they divided the initially prescribed dose into two doses. In fact, my pharmacist said the first “booster” was exactly the same as the initial vaccine. It was a true “booster” in the sense that word is usually used.
I am not saying it’s safe for everyone, but there was a legitimate reason for there being two doses and for the doses being so close together.
Also, Moderna and Pfizer were measuring efficacy based on only one metric originally: Were antibodies produced in response to the administration of the vaccine? That’s a standard medical practice in immunology. They did see patients’ producing antibodies in response to the vaccines.
I’m just trying to clarify what people saw happening at that time.
Stay well, Bob!
Thanks, Marci, but I was referring to the booster after the first two shots which I had in March. I was being told to take a booster by the end of June. The reason I was told to take a booster by the end of June, was because people who had had both shots already were still getting Covid, and transmitting it. My wife and I both got Covid six months later in January 2022. I took therapeutics and my wife took nothing. Both of us were sick for about a week.
Right. I remember that. :) :) Okay. :)
The stories surrounding the “Suddenly Died” events are not simply tragic, but statistically overwhelming.
My condolences to you on the unexpected loss of you father-in-law. And to your wife on the death of her father.
On edit: my dad was still robust at age 83. He lived to be 90. I hate how younger people think that when someone dies due to a medical induced trauma, that the person would have lived on for only a few more months anyway.
Here’s my experience: My small business has been experiencing a major reversal in its fortunes. Business trends come & go, so this is not shocking.
What has been a shock was finding out “why” this is happening.
We had an unexpected growth bump throughout 2020 & 2021. People were bored from being at home. Even when jobs were back up & running, people were no longer commuting to work. Apparently many folks decided to buy books to keep occupied, and the only problems were keeping our titles in stock. (Supply side problems were awful in 2021.)
To bolster sales, I spent one full day in October calling customers we had not heard from since Dec 2020.
Out of a list of 23 ph numbers belonging to usually robust clients, 8 were disconnected. Eight were answered by a machine.
But out of the seven people I talked with, 4 had quit their jobs due to vaccine injuries.
I don’t mean to imply that 4 out of every 23 people are now vax injured. The way I constructed the list made it rather likely that some people would be ill or disabled. But all from one single cause?
The statistic I am comfortable with is that out of our normal base of 750 customers, 4 are injured from participating in the COV vax program.
Yesterday on FB, a friend posted his experiences with his business being in a slump. He sees his customers face to face. So many people in his town report “I don’t get over to your store any more as now I am my mom’s care giver. She has had severe rheumatoid arthritis, which hit her hard immediately after her getting boosted.”
Or he hears that another customer died, again immediately after another jab.
He has seen his business affected in about the same 35 to 40% loss of profit that ours is experiencing.
But it is all just a total coincidence, right?
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Condolences to you and your family. My wife and I made the decision to take the first two shots. My son and daughter-in-law decided they would not have their two children get vaccinated.
My wife and I made the decision that we would not get multiple booster shots after the first two shots. We still see people that are wearing masks. We still see ads on TV advocating multiple booster shots. We are not going to do that.
Sounds like my theory of immunity: “Eat Dirt, Be Healthy”
this does it. If the daughter presses me will show this comment. Well done. Think risk of dying from Covid or Covid boosters now less than getting behead by Hamas.
First off, my condolences on your family’s loss. Second, it is not anti-vax to recognize vaccine complications and more than it is anti-medication to talk about severe side effects. If you get a flu shot or tetanus shot, they list the complications on an info sheet, and there are some people who absolutely should not get vaccines. This is established medicine, and has been for some time.
The lack of curiosity on the part of public health professionals is inexcusable, even if they fully believe the vaccine is amazing. (They have the data – VAERS followed up with me after all my shots) Covering up evidence is an extremely short term strategy – it will be found out, and you will lose trust from the public and medical professionals. However, this does not surprise me.
Right now, the COVID-19 vaccine is entirely a political question. It’s a statement of what side you are on, meaning that an actual answer is far off. Consider that the medical professionals in the story had to clarify that they are not tossing out tetanus shots and MMR before raising questions on a suspicious death. It’s crazy.
I had heard something rather interesting – there was a study suggesting that the vaccine has worse side effects when improperly injected (into blood as opposed to below skin).
And who caused this? Medical regulators colluding with big Pharma coupled with medical institutions and medical insurers who no longer have any ability to act independently.
But that’s just on everyone’s mind because of the recent Covid. the same conditions exist across almost every field-education, energy, housing, banking, etc.
I am very sorry to hear of the deaths in your family.
My immune system has been very good to me for 85+ years, so I opted not to interfere with it by taking a new, rushed-to-market shot that I worried might affect my body’s defenses by modifying its DNA. I trust science, by do not blindly accept the proclamations of scientists, especially when work for the government and when they speak on subjects outside their particular expertise (i.e., Anthony Fauci).
Since moving to an independent retirement community, I have made it a strict practice of sanitizing my hands every time I return to my apartment. I haven’t had a cold or flu since 1997, and I credit this to simply exercising common-sense hygiene.
In 2020, my wife’s Vitamin D level was low. She started taking supplements and her test results became normal. In December, she got COVID. She had two bad nights and then improved rapidly. She lost her sense of taste and smell for about seven weeks. We decided to not get the vaccine and have been in excellent health since then.
I’m sorry to hear of your loss.
My husband JY had a stroke in Feb of this year. (He’s mostly recovered)
He was in the hospital for five days receiving nothing short of extraordinary care. Since then there have been more doc visits with neurologists and cardiologists and GPS than I can count.
NOT ONCE has he been asked about his Covid or Covid vax status.
Which has convinced me to not believe one word I hear about anything. IE: strokes and / or heart attacks more or less likely with a Covid infection Vs the vax.
They’re not asking the questions because they don’t want to know.
I took the first two doses of the Pfizer Covid vaccination when they first came out, I think three months apart (or was it six, I don’t remember). One week after my second dose, I developed a severe headache on ten consecutive days. For some people that might not be unusual, but previous to that I rarely had headaches in my entire life. It might happen perhaps once in a year or every two years. Following that ten-day episode, I began getting regular severe headaches every two or three days for the entire next year. Luckily for me, Ibuprofin clears them up right away. After that year it has been slowly going away to where I now get the headaches every two or three weeks and they are usually lessened in severity when I do get them, requiring a smaller dose of Ibuprofin to eradicate.
I had a regular physical checkup with my doctor after the first year of headaches, but he did not conjecture any causal relationship to the vaccine, and besides, it wasn’t a big problem any more by the time I got to see him. I have no idea if they are connected to the Covid vaccine or not. I did report my headaches to to some government database for vaccine side-effects but I have never heard of anybody else reacting to the vaccine that way.
I’ve developed a chronic headache problem that’s driving me nuts lately (I blame Biden :) ). But my daughter told me about a new product put out by the Excedrin company called Head Care. It’s a vascular system supplement, not a pain reliever. I take it every other day for now, and I may take it every day soon since it seems to be working. I’ve wondered about the vaccine too as the possible cause, and I remember the initial research on the virus suggesting that it was actually a circulatory inflammatory virus, not respiratory. If ibuprofen is working on your headache, it sounds like an inflammation of some sort. At any rate, I wouldn’t rule out lasting effects from the vaccine even though in theory it disappears from the human body within six months–there’s a long explanation as to why I would think that.
But you might try this new supplement. It’s for the brain vascular system.
No, Carol Joy, they are not “statistically overwhelming.” Because there are NO actual statistics, just anecdotes.
We can all discuss why there are no studies to produce the needed statistics – lack of interest, lack of will, fell intent, etc., etc. But the fact remains that there are no reliable statistics on these events.
@caroljoy
https://johnmandrola.substack.com/p/sudden-cardiac-death-in-college-athletes?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=314127&post_id=138989877&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=9bg2k&utm_medium=email
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna124209
Thanks, I may look for this Excedrin product. Regular aspirin doesn’t work so well on my headaches.
Thanks, @mimac
This study showed that the rate of cardiac arrests in young male athletes has declined, including the years of COVID vaccine.
The author at the first link stated, (emphasis mine)
“What I took from this study is to remain vigilant about making causal connections without proper data. Gosh, it seemed like a lot of media reports…….the lack of any signal of increased sudden cardiac death among NCAA athletes is reassuring. It argues against the idea that mRNA vaccines was causing excess cardiac deaths in young athletes……….. this study again confirms that anecdotes don’t always sum to evidence. And it is wise to make note of how easy it is for our brains to find causal connections.”
Sometime in late 2021 my Sister-in-law, who is obese, became quite ill with COVID. She went to the emergency room of the hospital where she lives in Lees Summit, Missouri (outside Kansas City). I called my Doctor to assist, as she didn’t have an advocate. He graciously got involved and called the head nurse at that hospital, who fortunately was an acquaintance of his, and managed to get my SIL clearance for the infusion of Monoclonal antibodies. It turned her around and she became well within days.
A few days later I happened to be in my Doctor’s office just visiting. I asked him what strain of COVID-19 did my SIL have. He didn’t know but picked up the phone and called the hospital where she was treated, asked for the head of infectious diseases, got them on the phone immediately (he had his phone on speaker so I could hear the conversation), and asked if they had that information. Their answer was that they do not test for COVID variants. We were both surprised, so he called the same department at the hospital where he does most of his work. They gave the same answer. So next he called the head of the same department at KU Med Center, one of the largest organizations in the Midwest. I was amazed at how quickly they answered the phone for him at every one of these hospitals. KU Med responded exactly the same. They don’t test for variants. So who does, he asks. That is done by the State government but who and how, nobody knew.
And yet, new variants are constantly popping up spurring government cries for citizens to take another booster for the newest devil within us. It’s all very curious.
In cases like this, all that is needed is:
https://johnmandrola.substack.com/p/sudden-cardiac-death-in-college-athletes
The rest is about tracking your activity, what ads to show you…
That is a terrible story and sorry for your loss – but very important to know and thank you for sharing it. The “vax” industry is still bombarding the airwaves………
I’ve developed a personal view that I will no longer go to a medical official for anything without a recommendation from a trusted family member of friend. I think there is a big difference between those medical practitioners with life/work experience in the field versus the latest entrants. That generally means I’m looking for someone in their fifties over someone in their thirties. I’ve had couple of interactions with younger practitioners but could hardly get them to look away from their computer and see who they were talking to.
Thanks to all for condolences and good wishes. Bob, I have reached a very similar conclusion about doctors. Twenty years ago I generally assumed practicing doctors were smart, competent, and working in the best interest of their patients. I have too much personal and secondhand experience to believe that about any one of them now, unless I have a recommendation from someone I trust.
Seems like a good statistician and researcher could mine the DOD health database and shed some light on this. Over a million mostly young active duty personnel sharing a common health record keeping system. Compare the months before covid with the covid months pre vaccine and the post vaccine rollout months (making all the needed detail adjustments). Look for things like myocardititis, sudden death and whatever else is attributed to the vaccine. My guess it would show the vaccine had a modest negative impact on that younger cohort. Maybe its been done and for whatever reason we don’t know about it.
Skipped the last booster this fall and came down with covid this week on Monday and its almost gone on Thursday. Similar to a mild flu. Because my age and damaged heart I called the doc. Because of my mild symptoms he recommended treating the symptoms and against Paxlovid. My wife did get the booster and came down with covid symptoms on Wednesday night. Too early to tell but hard to see how the booster made a difference.