Did COVID vaccination hurt the military?

MAHA and RFK Jr’s former organization are planning an action day and film screening at the U.S. Capitol featuring Senator Ron Johnson, Rob Schneider, and Lt. Col. Theresa Long. Lt. Col. Long has claimed that after vaccination, many service members suddenly got sick, everyone’s heart or blood vessels were harmed, tiny blood clots were common, and that the military hid the truth.

The Lieutenant Colonel was right that, in very rare cases, COVID shots can cause myocarditis. Myocarditis is swelling in or near the heart. This has mostly been seen in young men. But COVID infection itself also raises the risk of myocarditis and other heart problems, and the risk after infection is often higher than the risk after vaccination. This is also true in the military.

Her other claims about side effects were based on numbers from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database, or DMED. DMED tracks broad health trends in the military, including hospital visits, clinic visits, reportable diseases, and other medical events. It can help the military watch for injuries, sickness, and health problems that affect their ability to defend the country at home or in other countries.

But DMED puts everyone’s health information together, so it is not a good tool by itself for proving that a vaccine caused one specific person’s medical problem. The database only shows part of the military’s health data, and even the Department of Defense said some built-in searches in DMED are not strong enough to prove that one thing directly caused another.

The Department of Defense later reviewed the data. It found that myocarditis and pericarditis went up a little after vaccination. But it also found that six health problems went down after vaccination, while 14 health problems went up after COVID infection. For most of those problems, the highest rates were in people who had COVID but were not vaccinated.