One of the many questions that people still have about the Covid-19 vaccines is how they affect the heart.

We know the effects of Covid itself on that organ. In the opening two years of the pandemic, about 90,000 more people died in the United States due to cardiovascular disease than would have been expected in that same time frame. True, most of these deaths were in group of people most vulnerable to Covid: people aged 65 and older. But there was also a distinct, steep rise in heart-related deaths among people aged 25 to 44.

The explanation as to why Covid affects the heart is more a theory at this point, but cardiologists believe it has to do with widespread inflammation in the body produced by the virus, as the New York Times reported in September.