[conspire] A cardiac correction

[Deirdre Saoirse Moen]

So I have made a point elsewhere, and I am pretty sure here (sorry, I’ve slept since then) about the first death in California and the autopsy showing a heart rupture as a part of the covid death.

It turns out that this occurs in about 10% of heart attack deaths per the following paper. I have read a fair number of autopsies, but I’ve tended to focus on virology ones and they haven’t been heart attacks for the most part.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8354804

My apologies for being somewhat more freaked out by that than was warranted. Also, I did note this at the time but didn’t really want to go into an even longer explanation: cardiac rupture means rupture into the epicardial area, not into the chest cavity per se. So it’s not as gruesomely messy as it might sound at first.

I’d remembered going through heart anatomy a few years ago when I took some exercise physiology classes and wanted to understand the autopsy report, best as a lay person could.

Rick couldn’t remember if I’d linked to the Santa Clara county autopsy report either, so here’s the news article which reports about it, and it links to the full autopsy for the curious.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Exclusive-Autopsy-report-of-first-known-15226422.php

It’s easy for me to have overinterpreted in part because the headline encourages that thinking: "Coronavirus caused heart to rupture in nation’s first known victim, autopsy shows.” I apparently wasn’t able to read the report with sufficient neutrality, and I’m usually pretty cautious about that. I blame being over tired and out of my depth.

Deirdre