Why Are the Electrocardiogram Requirements (EKG) of Pilots No Longer Normal?
COVID Shots May Have Damaged Pilots' Hearts
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October 24, 2022, the FAA changed the EKG requirements necessary for pilots to fly — but not to make them safer
With no public announcement or explanation, the agency expanded the allowable range for PR, a measure of heart function
Widening this parameter means those with potential heart damage are now allowed to fly commercial aircraft, potentially putting passengers at risk, should they suffer a heart attack or other event while in the air
Evidence suggests that pilots’ worsening heart health is due to adverse effects of COVID-19 shots
An estimated 20% of pilots screened may have suffered heart damage due to COVID-19 shots, and the FAA may have been forced to widen the EKG parameters so pilots could continue to fly
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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires first-class airline pilots to receive an electrocardiogram (EKG) starting at age 35, and continuing annually after age 40.1 EKGs record the heart’s electrical activity to provide a measure of heart health and certain parameters must be met in order for pilots to be deemed fit to fly.
October 24, 2022, the FAA changed the EKG requirements necessary for pilots to fly — but not to make them safer. With no public announcement or explanation, the agency expanded the allowable range for the PR interval, a measure of heart function.2
Widening this parameter means those with potential heart damage, disease or injuries are now allowed to fly commercial aircraft, potentially putting passengers at risk, should they suffer a heart attack or other event while in the air. Why would the FAA make such a drastic and risky move without informing the public?
COVID Shots May Have Damaged Pilots’ Hearts
On an EKG, a normal PR interval measures 0.12 to 0.2 seconds.3 If the PR interval is shorter or longer than this, it can be indicative of a problem. According to Steve Kirsch, executive director of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, the FAA widened the acceptable EKG parameters from a PR max of 0.2 to 0.3, and potentially even higher. He says:4
“They didn’t widen the range by a little. They widened it by a lot. It was done after the vaccine rollout. This is extraordinary. They did it hoping nobody would notice. It worked for a while. Nobody caught it. But you can’t hide these things for long. This is a tacit admission from the U.S. government that the COVID vaccine has damaged the hearts of our pilots. Not just a few pilots. A lot of pilots and a lot of damage.”
Kirsch gives five reasons why he’s confident these widened parameters were necessary due to the widespread heart damage pilots — and the U.S. public — experienced due to COVID-19 shots. According to Kirsch:5
“I believe it is because they knew if they kept the original range, too many pilots would have to be grounded. That would be extremely problematic; commercial aviation in the US would be severely disrupted. And why did they do that quietly without notifying the public or the mainstream media?
I’m pretty sure they won’t tell me, so I’ll speculate: it’s because they didn’t want anyone to know. In other words, the COVID vaccine has seriously injured a lot of pilots and the FAA knows it and said nothing because that would tip off the country that the vaccines are unsafe. And you aren’t allowed to do that.”
Five Clues COVID Shots Are Likely to Blame
Five factors suggest that pilots’ worsening heart health is due to COVID-19 shots, and not COVID-19. As noted by Kirsch, they include:6
- The change in EKG parameters was made quietly. “If it was COVID, you can be public. But the vaccine is supposed to be safe.”
- The timing of the change in October 2022, which is later than it would have been if COVID-19 were to blame. “If it was due to COVID, it would have happened well before now. They can make changes every month.”
- The widespread injuries. “The vaccine creates far more injury to the heart than COVID.” For instance, an Israeli study of adults who did not get a COVID-19 shot but did get COVID-19 found the infection was not associated with myocarditis or pericarditis.7
- Anecdotal reports from cardiologists about heart damage began post-shot.
- Many sudden deaths have been reported post-shot.
Kirsch estimates that 20% of pilots screened may have suffered heart damage due to COVID-19 shots, based on an upcoming study set to be published in The Epoch Times. A Thailand study also revealed “cardiovascular manifestations” including rapid heartbeat (tachycardia), palpitation and myopericarditis in 29.24% of adolescents who’d received an mRNA COVID-19 shot.8
“But kids are indestructible so a 30% injury rate in kids translates into a higher rate for adults,” Kirsch says, adding:9
“Bottom line: The most logical conclusion is that the FAA knows the hearts of our nation’s pilots have been injured by the COVID vaccine that they were coerced into taking, the number of pilots affected is huge, the cardiac damage is extensive, and passenger safety is being compromised by the lowering of the standards to enable pilots to fly.
The right thing would be for the FAA to come clean and admit to the American public that the COVID vaccine has injured 20% or more of the pilots (based on their limited EKG screening), but I doubt that they will ever do that.”
Pilot Has Heart Attack After Shot
In May 2022, The Epoch Times reported the case of Robert Snow, a pilot for American Airlines with 31 years of experience flying commercially and seven years as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force.10 Snow does not have coronary disease, but he suffered a cardiac arrest about six minutes after landing a plane he flew from Denver to Dallas Fort Worth.
According to the news outlet, “He believes that his cardiac arrest is connected to the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine he was forced to take in order to keep his job on November 4, 2021, even though he already had natural immunity from previously contracting the virus.” And he’s not the only one with that suspicion. Snow told The Epoch Times:11
“I would just tell you that there are other pilots out there that have had concerns, not just pilots, also because it was an employee mandate. So we have flight attendants, we have mechanics, we have dispatchers, we have gate agents, you name it.
Of course, for pilots, we consider that a safety-sensitive job so we’re a little bit more concerned from the standpoint of aviation safety; but yes, I have received calls from other pilots and other communications stating that they have concerns but because of the nature of this, they’re afraid to come forward.”
Dr. Peter McCullough is a cardiologist, internist and epidemiologist and the chief scientific officer of The Wellness Company.12 He also is one of the most published cardiologists in America, with over 1,000 publications and 660 citations in the National Library of Medicine, and is a recipient of the Simon Dack Award from the American College of Cardiology and the International Vicenza Award in Critical Care Nephrology for his scholarship and research.
He told The Epoch Times “there is no other explanation” for Snow’s cardiac arrest. “The MRI pattern is consistent. Indeed, it may have been vaccine-induced myocarditis …”13
McCullough also spoke with Joshua Yoder, an airline pilot and cofounder of U.S. Freedom Flyers, which formed to help pilots and other transportation industry employees oppose federal shot mandates.
Yoder’s group has received hundreds of reports from pilots who have suffered adverse events from COVID-19 shots, including chest pains, myocarditis and pericarditis. McCullough told Yoder that if every pilot who’d received a COVID-19 shot received a health screening, about 30% would fail due to shot-induced injuries.14
Doctors Call on FAA to Flag Pilots Who Received COVID Shots
McCullough, along with pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole, Robert Kennedy Jr. and others, sent a letter to the FAA December 15, 2021, calling on the agency to medically flag all pilots who received a COVID-19 shot and, within four weeks, have them undergo thorough medical reexaminations to include:15
- D-Dimer tests to check for blood clotting problems
- Troponin tests to check for Troponin in the blood, which is a protein released when the heart muscle has been damaged
- EKG analysis to check electrical signals that determine cardiac health
- Cardiac MRI
- PULS test to determine heart health
Adding cardiac MRI to pilots’ screening is “critical,” the letter said, explaining:16
“A recent study showed that using only ECG [EKG] results and symptoms to screen patients resulted in a 7.4 underdiagnosing of actual myocarditis, while the PULS test is also critical as a study published … showed that ‘MRNA COVID vaccines dramatically increase … inflammatory markers’ and that the risk of acute coronary syndrome more than doubled in those vaccinated …
… leading the authors to conclude that ‘the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines dramatically increase inflammation … on the endothelium and T cell infiltration of cardiac muscle, and may account for the observations of increased thrombosis, cardiomyopathy, and other vascular events following vaccination.”
Will the US Federal Air Surgeon Investigate?
January 21, 2023, Kirsch spoke with the FAA’s federal air surgeon, Dr. Susan Northrup. She said she was aware of Snow’s case, but no one from the FAA had reached out to investigate the near-miss tragedy. Kirsch also emailed Northrup the names and contact information for several shot-injured pilots. Further, he noted:17
“More importantly, in that email, I also invited her to host a public roundtable at the FAA inviting people on both sides of the ‘safe and effective’ narrative so that the FAA could learn the truth. I just talked to Senator Ron Johnson and I can assure you that he’d be DELIGHTED to help her assemble a roundtable of doctors on both sides of the narrative to brief top FAA officials on the risks of these vaccines.
And I offered to publish her revised statement to the public so we can get the truth out that the vaccines are NOT safe and are disabling pilots. Here’s the kicker. The corruption at the FAA runs deep. Did you know that nobody at the FAA has ever called Bob Snow? How can the FAA investigate this incident without ever even talking to the pilot?”
At this point, Northrup has been duly informed of the very real potential that COVID-19 shots could be making it unsafe for jabbed pilots to fly. But then, she was probably already aware. Her husband, John Hyle, a pilot, refused the jab due to safety concerns. Whether or not a real investigation will happen, however, remains to be seen. Kirsch added:18
“So it’s not just a few ‘anti-vaxxers’ spreading ‘misinformation.’ Susan clearly realizes that intelligent people she clearly respects have legitimate concerns that cause them to refuse to take the shot. The narrative is falling apart.
We need public transparency on all of the things above. And we need it now before lives are lost. We’ve had a couple of close calls. The FAA needs to be proactive about this, not REACTIVE after a crash happens. What do you think will happen next?”
FAA Broke Its Own Rule Letting Pilots Fly After COVID Shots
In its Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners, the FAA states that aviation medical examiners should not issue medical certificates to pilots who’ve taken drugs the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved less than 12 months prior:19
“The FAA generally requires at least one-year of post-marketing experience with a new drug before consideration for aeromedical certification purposes. This observation period allows time for uncommon, but aeromedically significant, adverse effects to manifest themselves.”
Now, the FAA states pilots can resume flying just 48 hours after receiving a COVID-19 shot.20 Leigh Dundas, an attorney who was the primary author of the FAA letter, told The Epoch Times:21
“The Federal Aviation Agency is charged with ensuring the safety of the flying public. Instead, as we speak the FAA, as well as the commercial airline companies, are acting in contravention of their own federal aviation regulations and associated guidance which tells medical examiners to NOT issue medical certifications to pilots using non-FDA approved products.
… The title of the section I’m talking about literally says ‘Do Not Issue — Do Not Fly’ and then instructs medical examiners to ‘not issue’ medical certifications to pilots using products that the FDA ‘approved less than 12 months ago’ …
The pilots are flying with products which are not even recently approved — in violation of the above wording — they are flying with injections in their bodies which were NEVER approved by the FDA at all (as no COVID vaccine which is commercially available in the U.S. has received FDA approval).”
It’s Not Only Pilots Whose Hearts Are Damaged
While the implications of commercial airline pilots flying with shot-induced heart damage raises significant safety concerns, it’s not only pilots who are affected. Any person who received a COVID-19 shot could face similar risks. As Kirsch noted:22
“At a more conservative 20% injury rate, we are looking at 50M Americans with heart damage caused by the jab. As more studies are done, it’s going to be crystal clear why so many people are dying suddenly, especially kids. It’s also going to explain why nursing homes have lost up to 33% of their residents in 12 months where before they were losing only 1 or 2% a year.
… Confidence in the CDC and the medical community should hit rock bottom after it is revealed how extensive the damage caused by these vaccines is. The fact that … the FAA quietly changed their EKG guidance should at least open your mind to the possibility that I might be right. This narrative is going to start falling apart at an accelerated rate.”
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Notes
1 FAA, Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners
2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 22 Substack, Steve Kirsch’s newsletter January 17, 2023
7 J Clin Med. 2022 Apr; 11(8): 2219
8 Trop. Med. Infect. Dis. 2022, 7(8), 196; doi: 10.3390/tropicalmed7080196
10, 11, 13 The Epoch Times May 23, 2022
14 Truth Unmuted April 27, 2022
15, 16 Letter to the FAA From Dr. Peter McCullough, others December 15, 2021, Page 2
17, 18 Substack, Steve Kirsch’s newsletter January 21, 2023
20 FAA, FAQs on Use of COVID-19 Vaccines by Pilots and Air Traffic Controllers
21 The Epoch Times December 28, 2021
