Small Underpowered Studies Deceive on Risk of COVID-19 Vaccine Cardiac Arrest

Dismissive Declarations, No Mention of Vaccine Status, No Citation of Relevant Papers--All Indicate a Cover-Up

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH

As a cardiologist I am certain that COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis, like all other forms of myocarditis, can lead to cardiac arrest if not properly managed. So manuscripts and editorials by cardiologists indicating there is “no signal” of increased risk of sudden cardiac death must be incorrect and likely are conspiring in an academic cover-up for the COVID-19 vaccine debacle.

Astley C, Petek BJ, Delong RN, et al. Sudden Cardiac Arrest Among Young Competitive Athletes Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic. JAMA Netw Open. 2025;8(2):e2461327. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.61327

Recently, Astley et al published a manuscript reporting the numbers of cardiac arrests among athletes before and after the pandemic. The number of cases was small and there was no mention of COVID-19 vaccination. As an epidemiologist I can tell you this was intentional use of low observed power, that is, the authors did not want to find a signal. To make matters worse, they made no effort to find the vaccination status of these athletes or link the data to the CDC vaccine administration data.