Was CJ Harris Cause of Death the COVID Vaccine? What We Know, What We Don't

Some social media users floated the idea that former American Idol contestant CJ Harris died because of the COVID vaccine, even though the cause of death is yet to be confirmed.

The singer died at the age of 31 on Sunday in Jasper, Alabama, the Deadline reported. The county's coroner, Joey Vick, said that Harris arrived at the Walker Baptist Medical Center suffering from health distress. He died shortly after CPR was performed on him.

Harris' family members told TMZ that he died of a heart attack. Meanwhile, an autopsy has been done, but more tests are needed to identify the cause of the singer's death, AL reported.

The former singing contestant attended an American Idol audition for the first time in 2010, and he also auditioned for The X-Factor and The Voice. In 2014, he auditioned again for American Idol in Salt Lake City when he was working at a restaurant and had a footing in indie music, according to the Deadline.

Though the cause of Harris' death is to be determined, a few conservatives on Twitter suggested that the death is related to the COVID vaccine. Harris' vaccination status is unclear and it is also unknown whether or not he has been previously infected with the virus.

"All these young people dying of heart problems and we got grown ass adults acting like it isn't the vaccine. The weirdos think the climate is doing this. RIP brother, society failed you. #cjharris" Prince Carlton, author of Black Masculinity: The 40 Lessons, tweeted on Monday.

Meanwhile, Carmine Sabia, a conservative pundit, wrote "Stop pretending that this is a coincidence. American Idol contestant CJ Harris dies at age 31."

New safety concerns about Pfizer and Bio-N-Tech's COVID-19 vaccine were recently reported, but health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated on Friday that the shots are still safe, WMUR9 reported.

The CDC identified a possible connection between Pfizer's bivalent booster shots and ischemic strokes in people who are 65 years and older. However, health officials said that an investigation revealed that it is "very unlikely" that the shots pose any clinical risks of such strokes.

"We have to remember that the risk of COVID still far outweighs any potential concerns of vaccines, especially when you're over the age of 65," said Dr. John Brownstein, the chief innovation officer at Boston Children's Hospital, according to WMUR9. "The risk of severe consequences of COVID and death are still greater. When if you have not had that updated booster and the data is very clear, showing the value of that updated booster."

Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and a vaccine and infectious diseases expert, told Newsweek on Friday that there have been rare cases of myocarditis and pericarditis following COVID-19 vaccinations. myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle and pericarditis is inflammation of the membrane that surrounds the heart. However, Offit said, the vaccine doesn't appear to "affect heart vessels."

"The greatest risk is in young males within a week of the second dose," he said. "Booster dosing also is associated with risk but a lesser risk."

The FDA authorized bivalent vaccine boosters to protect against the COVID-19 variant Omicron. The agency authorized formulations of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines for use as a single booster dose.

In December, Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital, told The Guardian that the pandemic is not over and recommended taking the bivalent booster.

"Well, it's certainly not [over]," said Hotez. "We're still in 200-300 deaths per day. [Covid-19] is still the third or fourth leading cause of death in the United States. It's definitely the wrong message to give, given the fact that we're desperately trying to persuade the American people to take this [bivalent] booster."

However, wrote on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine that the updated versions of the vaccines for the omicron variant were "underwhelming" and don't show that they're any better than the original shots.

"Bivalent boosters resulted in levels of neutralizing antibodies against BA.1 that were only 1.5 to 1.75 times as high as those achieved with monovalent boosters. Previous experience with the companies' vaccines suggested that this difference was unlikely to be clinically significant," Offit wrote.

The vaccine and infectious disease expert said that boosters should be best "reserved" for people at high risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19 and advised against giving booster shots to young healthy individuals.

"In the meantime, I believe we should stop trying to prevent all symptomatic infections in healthy, young people by boosting them with vaccines containing mRNA from strains that might disappear a few months later," he said.

Newsweek reached out to vaccine and infectious disease experts at Johns Hopkins University and Walker County coroner Joey Vick for comment.

Update 1/19/23, 11:38 a.m. ET: This story has been updated with comment from Dr. Paul Offit.