“His heart looked like Swiss cheese”: Pediatrician anecdote about teen in Pfizer booster study
In September 2023, then-CDC director Mandy Cohen posted a message on X, promoting COVID boosters and flu vaccines for children 6 months and older.
Children didn’t need the injections. There were scads of clear safety signals — including associated or suspected deaths.
Cohen’s message motivated me to ask a pediatrician I know if I could share a COVID shot story she’d told me soon after it occurred. I remember relaying the information to two researchers, as a helpful anecdote only, soon after I heard it.
The physician saw a teen boy and the boy’s parent during a visit involving heart issues and was informed that the boy was enrolled in a COVID booster-shot trial. Diagnostic imaging of the boy’s heart “looked like Swiss cheese,” per the physician’s retelling. The physician informed the boy’s mother that the boy might not be able to participate in his sport again.
Upon hearing this news, the mom reportedly responded, “At least it’s not COVID.”
The physician said the parent was, in effect, relieved because the parent believed getting COVID would be worse than having the heart issue.1 She (the physician) proceeded to convey the correct information about the very low risk that SARS-CoV-2 infection presented, compared to the diagnosis indicated at the visit.
Like millions of other parents, the mom had received inaccurate CDC-influenced messages about the risks of COVID to teens. Whatever else people want to say or believe about the shots, that much is true.
Post-publication correction: Published iteration mistakenly said getting the COVID shot.