Sudden Deaths in the Young: What Is the Real Cause?

This article first appeared in Kannada in the Vishwavani daily on 6 July 2025. ಈ ಲೇಖನವನ್ನು ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಓದಿ

A video arrives on the phone. Someone young, dancing at a wedding or working out at the gym, suddenly collapses. Within minutes it has been forwarded to a thousand other phones, and with it travels a single explanation: the COVID-19 vaccine.

The feeling that sudden deaths among young people, especially heart-related deaths, are on the rise is now widespread. Many are convinced the vaccine is to blame. In this article, I want to look carefully at what actually lies behind these deaths.

Are these sudden deaths something new? Did they happen before and are simply more frequent now? Or do they only seem more frequent because we notice them more? If they really have increased, why? If we are merely noticing them more, why is that? And what is the truth?

Before we get to any of these, let us take up the biggest question on everyone’s mind: the vaccine. Many social media influencers insist that the COVID-19 vaccine is behind the sudden deaths of young people. Many who hear them believe it, without ever looking at the scientific evidence. So what does the evidence say?

Is There a Link Between COVID-19 Vaccines and Sudden Deaths?

This question has been studied in India and abroad, many times over. The studies were published in medical journals, but for one reason or another, they rarely made it into the newspapers and channels that ordinary people read and watch. Of the hundreds that exist, let us look at two important ones.

The largest such study in India was supported by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), carried out between October 2021 and March 2023, and published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research (IJMR) in 2023. It asked a simple question: is the COVID-19 vaccine linked to sudden, unexplained deaths in people aged 18 to 45? Researchers from 47 major hospitals across India took part.

They studied 729 young people who had died suddenly of unexplained causes, and compared them with 2,916 living people of the same age, sex and neighbourhood. This kind of study is called a case-control study. The families and the controls were interviewed in detail, and the records were examined.

Now look further afield. In England, researchers examined the health records of about 46 million adults between December 2020 and January 2022, and compared the rates of heart attack, stroke and blood clots before and after vaccination.

The study did find a small number of rare problems, and it reported them openly: inflammation of the heart (myocarditis) after the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and an unusual kind of blood clot after the AstraZeneca vaccine. These were very rare, and they did not outweigh the overall benefit.

More studies are still under way. Science is a continuous process, and our understanding grows with time and with more data.

Then Why Do People Doubt the Vaccine?

During the pandemic, the information given to the public was confusing, all over the world. Rules kept changing as the situation changed, and many people read this as “these people don’t know what they are doing”. When their questions went unanswered, governments and institutions began to look suspicious.

The vaccines themselves arrived in record time, within a year of the pandemic beginning. It was a remarkable scientific achievement. Yet instead of celebrating it, some dismissed it as a hasty approval driven by business interests.

The side effects of the vaccine were rare. But because even these rare side effects were not always discussed openly, people began to feel that “something is being hidden”. Most people do not hate science. They simply stop trusting those who do not explain things clearly.

On social media, the story of one person’s death, or one person’s experience, carried far more weight than reliable figures published in medical journals. On top of this, anti-vaccine groups and individuals kept spreading misleading videos and conspiracy theories. Some deliberately spread fear, and made people suspicious of the very doctors, scientists and institutions that had recommended the vaccines. Seeing such messages shared again and again, some began to blame the vaccine.

There is one more reason. When a young person died, the full picture of his or her health was rarely known to the public. Family history of heart disease, habits such as smoking, drinking or drug use, and lifestyle in general were never discussed openly. To raise them at the time of a death would have seemed disrespectful. So the one thing everyone did know about, the vaccine, filled the gap.

Some people feel that doctors and scientists defend the vaccines only to protect their own reputation, and that of the vaccines they once recommended. But doctors did not recommend vaccines out of loyalty. They recommended them because the vaccines were shown to save lives during the pandemic, and because doctors themselves were facing the pandemic head on. They did not only advise the vaccine. They took it themselves.

Doctors and scientists are bound by public and professional honesty. If new risks from vaccines are ever found, it is doctors who will raise the alarm.

Understanding the real causes, and advising people on the basis of evidence, is our duty.

So What Is Behind the Sudden Deaths We Keep Hearing About?

There are several reasons. Some are as old as medicine itself, some are relatively new, and many have to do with the way we live.

1. Anything That Happens Anywhere, Everyone Now Knows

Sudden deaths in young people are not new. Some are born with heart defects. Others have hidden conditions that can make the heart stop without warning. These deaths happened earlier too, but they rarely made the news.

Today, and especially since the pandemic, such events are captured on mobile phones and spread across the state and across the world within minutes. They are frightening to watch. Many TV channels and newspapers now pick up their stories from social media. And when a death is linked to the vaccine, with no medical basis at all, the emotion alone is enough to make it go viral.

2. Heart Problems Are Easier to Detect Now

Doctors now have many more ways of assessing the heart. Blood tests, ECGs and heart scans are more widely and easily available than before.

Post-mortem examinations can also detect much more. In the past, when someone died suddenly, the cause often remained unknown. Today, a post-mortem can tell precisely whether it was a heart attack or something else. Because we can diagnose so much better, both in life and after death, deaths from heart disease are being identified and recorded far more accurately.

3. COVID-19 Infection Itself Harms the Heart

Most people seem to have forgotten this. Long before any vaccine was given, in the first wave of September 2020, thousands of people died of heart complications during COVID-19 infection. My own father was one of them.

The virus itself has a serious effect on the heart. It can inflame the heart muscle, damage blood vessels, make the blood clot more easily and cause other complications. The risk of heart attack and stroke remains higher for a long time after the infection has passed. Even in young people whose infection was mild, or who had no symptoms at all, such hidden changes in the heart can lead to sudden trouble during heavy exercise or stress.

4. Our Changed Lifestyle

How much can one say about the poor lifestyle so common among young people today? You may well feel that we doctors keep repeating what you already know. But look at the list:

All of these take a toll on our health, especially on the heart and blood vessels. They lead to obesity, belly fat, high blood pressure and diabetes, which in turn raise the risk of heart disease and liver disease.

So What Is the Truth? And What Should We Do Now?

No medical treatment is 100 percent effective, but almost all of them do the work of saving lives. COVID-19 vaccines are no different. The studies we have now show clearly that vaccines have reduced deaths, not increased them. They played a major part in bringing the pandemic under control quickly.

We should not waste our time chasing doubts that are not true, or going over baseless accusations again and again. What we need to focus on now is how to protect the health of our young people, and how to prevent these sudden deaths.

If we want to prevent these tragedies before they happen, let us begin today: build health literacy, and with it, trust and responsibility. Let us start walking towards health, from today itself.