Norway: Continued increase in cardiac medication use among young people after the Covid vaccine rollout
I repost this note due to many new English-speaking subscribers. Norwegian version here.
New statistics from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health on the use of cardiac medication (class C, heart and circulatory system) among young people, 15-44 years old, shows an increase of over 20 percent from 2020 to 2024, illustrated in the graph (the y-axis is the number of users per 1000). The increase began in 2021 and coincided with the Covid vaccine rollout to the younger population from the summer of that year.
The increase has continued in subsequent years, and the trend does not appear to abate. There was no increase in 2020, which aligns with an Israeli study that found no association between myocarditis and Covid infection before the vaccine rollout.
As early as April 2021, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) suspected that the Covid vaccine could cause heart problems, but Pfizer/Biontechs – although the vaccine had not even been tested against the spread of infection – still decided to approve it for children, 12 years and older.
I have previously pointed out that young people who refused the Covid vaccine made the best choice. I still believe that, and the graph supports my position.
Definitely something that should be followed up and studied, but there's an obvious potential confounding variable here, and that is that there was a massive digitalization push during the pandemic in Norwegian public health. I don't recall the exact details, but I seem to remember that some system for the doctors or similar became standard or mandatory during this phase, so there will have been an increase in the registration of many things. A control for that would be to see if there also are increases in the registered prevalence of other similar things.