# What happened to the heart attacks and strokes?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408
**Category:** The Quarantine Zone
**Tags:** covid-quarantine
**Created:** [April 9, 2020, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408 "2020-04-09T06:47:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2020, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408/1 "2020-04-09T06:47:23Z")
According to [this article](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doctors-hospitals-emergency-care-heart-attack-stroke.html?referringSource=articleShare), hospitals are seeing far fewer of them recently than they have any reason to expect.
Between the article itself and the reader comments, the best theories are that people are staying home when they shouldn’t, staying home when they actually should (meaning that we normally waste too much money on treatment of unnecessary stuff), or that people are more relaxed and getting more sleep rather than stressing out about the virus and the economy and getting more heart attacks as we might expect.
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### Author:  [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2020, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408/2 "2020-04-10T05:33:00Z")
I’m too lazy to look up the cites, but recent nearby posts say NYC is seeing many more cardiac arrests, many fewer of which can be resuscitated. Thus many more fatal cardiac events, with many dying at home, not making it as far as a hospital. That could be your explanation.
Yes, I said “many” four times. It was intentional.
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### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2020, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408/3 "2020-04-10T08:51:22Z")
Huh. The article is from the New York Times and they don’t say anything about that except to wonder if maybe that will later prove to be true.
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### Author:  [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2020, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408/4 "2020-04-10T11:05:21Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#):
>
> Huh. The article is from the New York Times and they don’t say anything about that except to wonder if maybe that will later prove to be true.
Yes, that article is about the heart attacks seen in hospitals. I posted [this](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cardiac-calls-911-new-york-city-surge-they-may-really-n1179286) link in another thread - and since EMS no longer transports to the hospital if resuscitation is unsuccessful, hospitals would not see these people.
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### Author:  [@MissTake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MissTake)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2020, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408/5 "2020-04-10T11:52:09Z")
I can sadly confirm people are still dying of heart attacks. In the case I know, he has hospitalized a few weeks ago for a heart attack, released earlier than his primary physician desired due to hospital space and worry of coronavirus exposure, and subsequently died at home within 24 hours of release.
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### Author:  [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2020, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408/6 "2020-04-10T12:05:19Z")
> [@doreen](#):
>
> Yes, that article is about the heart attacks seen in hospitals. I posted [this](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cardiac-calls-911-new-york-city-surge-they-may-really-n1179286) link in another thread - and since EMS no longer transports to the hospital if resuscitation is unsuccessful, hospitals would not see these people.
The article also mentions the same happened in Spain and an online survey of cardiologists from around the country gave a similar impression. So it’s not just about NYC ambulances.
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### Author:  [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2020, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408/7 "2020-04-10T13:09:45Z")
> [@CarnalK](#):
>
> The article also mentions the same happened in Spain and an online survey of cardiologists from around the country gave a similar impression. So it’s not just about NYC ambulances.
It’s not- but I suspect that there are many other places where EMTs don’t transport to the hospital when resuscitation is not successful\* and ER doctors by definition are only going to see those who make it to the hospital. If more people are dying before they get to the hospital, it would account both for hospitals seeing fewer heart attacks and reports that there are in fact _more_ heart attacks.
- In fact, I got the impression that NYC was an outlier regarding the previous practice of almost always transporting.
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### Author:  [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2020, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408/8 "2020-04-10T13:22:54Z")
I’ve heard scattered reports that the virus is actually linked to heart attacks. Can this be? Is it that the virus attacks the heart, or that the breathing issues caused by the virus put the whole body under immense stress leading to heart failure?
Sometime in the next couple of years, statisticians will be able to get all the different sources of data together for some detailed analysis. What they will do is compare the death rate pre-pandemic, mid-pandemic, and post-pandemic. That’s when we will capture not just how many people actually died, but how many died of preventable causes due to the health care system being overwhelmed, how many died due to other peripheral issues relating to the pandemic, and even how many lives were saved – for example, less cars on the road means fewer accidents.
You will not have reliable data like this for at least a year or two after the pandemic ends.
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2020, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408/9 "2020-04-10T13:29:27Z")
> [@RioRico](#):
>
> I’m too lazy to look up the cites, but recent nearby posts say NYC is seeing many more cardiac arrests, many fewer of which can be resuscitated.
[This one](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22235735&postcount=52)?
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### Author:  [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2020, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408/10 "2020-04-10T15:11:22Z")
> [@doreen](#):
>
> Yes, that article is about the heart attacks seen in hospitals. I posted [this](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cardiac-calls-911-new-york-city-surge-they-may-really-n1179286) link in another thread - and since EMS no longer transports to the hospital if resuscitation is unsuccessful, hospitals would not see these people.
Can confirm. I spoke to a local fire chief and he said they usually try to resuscitate on a call, then in the ambulance, and leave it to the hospitals to get it worked out. He indicated that usually they die at the hospital. But the hospitals have told his department not to bring such patients in, and they’re dying at home instead.
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### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2020, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408/11 "2020-04-10T19:17:48Z")
Aren’t the missing strokes even harder to explain?
> [@MissTake](#):
>
> I can sadly confirm people are still dying of heart attacks. In the case I know, he has hospitalized a few weeks ago for a heart attack, released earlier than his primary physician desired due to hospital space and worry of coronavirus exposure, and subsequently died at home within 24 hours of release.
Sorry to hear it. ☹
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### Author:  [@polar\_bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/polar_bear)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2020, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408/12 "2020-04-10T22:18:07Z")
Here in Holland we have had multiple cardiologists and neurologists in talk shows to implore people to go to their GP or hospital when they think something is up.
The last months they have been left doing far less than is normaal and are afraid it will lead to a secondary wave of indirect corona victims. Felt strange to have doctors ask for patients while the IC’s were struggling to deal with the patients.
Verstuurd vanaf mijn moto g(6) met Tapatalk
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### Author:  [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2020, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-heart-attacks-and-strokes/851408/13 "2020-04-10T22:21:49Z")
> [@RioRico](#):
>
> I’m too lazy to look up the cites, but recent nearby posts say…
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#):
>
> [This one](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22235735&postcount=52)?
That looks familiar.
Gargling for “coronavirus heart damage” returns hits like [The mysterious connection between the coronavirus and the heart](https://www.livescience.com/how-coronavirus-affects-heart.html). Doctors report seeing much heart damage in COVID patients even without preexisting conditions.
> [@](#):
>
> “We know that this is not the only virus that affects the heart”… The risk of developing heart attacks, for example, is thought to increase about sixfold when a person is infected with the flu virus, according to a study published in 2018 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
>
> What’s more, during most influenza epidemics, more patients die from heart complications than from pneumonia, according to a review published March 27 in the journal JAMA Cardiology. Viral infections can disrupt blood flow to the heart, cause irregular heartbeats and heart failure, according to the review.
>
> So while it doesn’t “come as a surprise,” that novel coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 can lead to heart damage, it may be occurring more frequently in these patients than it does in people infected with other viruses…