Last week the Wall Street Journal ran with a headline: Are vaccines fuelling new Covid variants? It would have been unthinkable last year. Back then, it was a pandemic of the evil un-vaccinated.

Tonight Consultant cardiologist Assem Malhotra has a double page spread in the UK Telegraph warning… "the jab can rapidly speed up the development of heart disease". In his twitter feed he's very excited: "Do they have proof? YES MORE THAN ENOUGH! "We've finally broken British mainstream news".  That tweet has now been seen by 2.1 million people. Obviously other people are excited too.

But steel yourself, the mainstream press is 3 years behind the news and the first journalists putting their heads over the parapet are making sure risky sentences are buried six feet deep in qualifiers. The risk of myocarditis is small they say, people recover fast (except for the ones that died), the vaccines are still useful,  Covid causes myocarditis too, etc etc, ad nauseum.

Critics claim Covid jabs are causing heart problems – do they have any proof?

Sarah Knapton, Telegraph

While there have always been anti-vaxxers, this new concern is drawing in people from outside usual conspiracy theory circles

The feature starts with a long introduction assuring us that Dr Malhotra is an expert who used to believe in the vaccines. What's new is that he is not made out to be a crazy man.

Dr Malhotra is right to say that heart deaths have increased alarmingly in the last few years. According to the British Heart Foundation there have been around 30,000 more deaths than expected involving heart disease since the pandemic began – more than 230 additional deaths over expected rates each week.

While Dr Malhotra acknowledges that other causes are a factor, he remains convinced that vaccines are also playing a role. He cites Pfizer's own trial data, which showed there were four cardiac arrests in those who took the vaccine compared with just one in the placebo group.