Earlier this month, former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson of Breitbart said, regarding side effects from the COVID vaccines, that “the data are showing many more such events than are reported with flu shots.”
Ron Paul’s “Institute for Peace and Prosperity” picked up Berenson’s reporting, confirming it was backed by data from a federal reporting system that health officials use to track and study “adverse events” associated with vaccines, ranging from mild side effects to serious health problems.
Severe allergic reactions to COVID-19 vaccines were occurring at a rate of 11.1 per million vaccinations, compared to 1.3 per 1 million with flu shots, according to Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
According to a 14 December report on the website Medical News Today, “It is important to note there is no drug – not even the most common painkiller – that is entirely free from side effects.”
The medical site says data collected so far showed some 2.7 percent of those who received a COVID-19 vaccine reported a “Health Impact Event,” which means a person is “Unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work and/or required care from a doctor or health care professional.”
CDC VAERS Data
The CDC compiles adverse vaccine reaction data via a reporting system called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The VAERS website contains the disclaimer that it “often lacks details and sometimes can have information that contains errors.” Still, as of mid-January, 55 persons were listed in the database as having died from the vaccine.
So far, the pharmaceutical giants haven’t responded to requests for comment on the reported deaths. One involved Gregory Michael, a healthy 56-year-old obstetrician in Florida who received the Pfizer vaccine. After reportedly feeling unwell, he was admitted to an intensive care unit with thrombocytopenia, a blood condition. He succumbed to the illness, which was attributed to a reaction from the vaccine.
The data so far regarding the BioNTech vaccine, which had been approved first in the U.K. and U.S of “very common side effects that may affect more than one in ten people, include:
- pain at the injection site
- tiredness
- headache
- muscle pain
- chills
- joint pain
- fever
Common side effects, which may affect up to one in ten people, are:
- injection site swelling
- redness at the injection site
- nausea
A more serious concern is the severe reaction to the vaccines by those with significant allergies. On 6 January, USA Today reported, “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said early safety monitoring has detected 21 cases of anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction, after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.”
The article added,
“In 86% of the cases, symptoms began within 30 minutes of vaccination, and 81% of them occurred in people with a history of allergies or allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis events. Most of the patients who reported having this severe allergic reaction – 90% – were women.”
It was also noted that while flu vaccines can cause problems with allergy sufferers, the issue is far more prevalent and serious with the COVID vaccines.
On 20 December, after the first vaccines were administered in the U.K., CBS reported, “British health officials have warned that people with a history of ‘significant’ allergic reactions to vaccines, medicine, or food should not be given Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.”
California Pausing Vaccine
Yesterday, Forbes reported another problem with allergic reactions to the Moderna vaccine:
“California’s state epidemiologist urged Covid-19 vaccine providers Sunday to pause distribution of one Moderna vaccine lot while the manufacturer and federal government investigate a ‘higher than usual’ number of allergic reactions.”
The state said it was urging providers to use other vaccines and pause distribution of the Moderna lot “out of an extreme abundance of caution” while the manufacturer, the CDC, and the FDA review the vaccine lot “and related medical information.”
While much rarer, there is medical concern about a potential link between the COVID vaccines and facial paralysis. On 17 December, Web MD published an article stating,
“The FDA issued a staff report on Tuesday that recommends monitoring people who take the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for potential cases of Bell’s palsy, or facial paralysis.
The report said 4 of 30,000 participants in the Moderna clinical trial had Bell’s palsy, including 3 participants who received the vaccine instead of the placebo. Similarly, 4 out of 43,000 participants in the Pfizer clinical trial had Bell’s palsy, and all 4 received the vaccine.
The paralysis occurred between 22 days and 32 days after the shot, the FDA staff said. Two of the Bell’s palsy cases in the Moderna trial have resolved.”
At least 13 Israelis have reportedly suffered facial paralysis after being administered the Pfizer vaccine. This comes a month after the FDA saw similar issues in the U.S. but denied they were tied to the vaccine.
This past Saturday, Microsoft News published the article, “EUA [Emergency Use Authorization] may be revised in case vaccine shows safety issues.” The FDA director-general, Eric Domingo, said in an interview the EUA requires revision depending on the results of an investigation into the deaths of 23 Norwegians who died after being injected with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
All 23 of those who died within days of getting the vaccine were nursing home residents. The article stated that depending on the outcome of the investigation, the vaccine may not be recommended for the elderly.
TRENDPOST: As reported, the COVID-19 vaccines in circulation only went through a few months of trial period before released under the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). Typically, vaccine trials last at least a year if not longer.
Given that the COVID-19 vaccines were approved under Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA, Dr. Charlie Weller, Head of Vaccines at Wellcome Trust in London, made clear, “As vaccine rollout is just beginning, many unanswered questions remain. Ongoing monitoring will help us identify any consistent patterns of adverse events.”
This was a more polite way of stating what the head of the infectious disease unit at Samson Assuta Ashdod Hospital told the Jerusalem Post in November: “There is a race to get the public vaccinated, so we are willing to take more risks.
It’s also important to understand the distinction between “efficacy” and “effectiveness” when evaluating vaccines.
The Medical News Today article states, “Despite news outlets frequently using them interchangeably, efficacy refers to how a vaccine performs under ideal lab conditions, such as those in a clinical trial. In contrast, effectiveness refers to how it performs in the real world.”
In any vaccine trial, those accepted as volunteers are healthier and younger than the population at large. And they cannot report any chronic health conditions. (While volunteers are younger, they are rarely very young children or women who are pregnant.)
So, while the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine reported 95 percent efficacy during its trial, the Oxford/AstraZeneca 70 percent, and the Moderna 94 percent, their effectiveness will likely be much lower. The CDC website report states that flu vaccines, for example, are “effective” between 40-60 percent of the time, depending on the year.
As the Medical New Today article makes apparent, it is expected that when a vaccine is released, its “effectiveness” will be lower when administered to the general population. The effectiveness is significantly influenced by the preexisting health of those getting the vaccine in the general public. Since the general population, particularly in the U.S., has epidemic levels of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other conditions that suppress the immune system, long-term adverse effects from the vaccine may be quite different than those of the healthy volunteers in the short clinical trials.
TRENDPOST: Despite the U.K. government admission in the 25 November data that death rates had dropped so significantly it no longer saw the need to keep publishing COVID-19 fatality data, Yahoo Finance published this on 15 January:
“November’s slump in output came as most of the U.K. returned to lockdown to control the spread of COVID-19. Non-essential businesses were shut in England between 5 November and 2 December, while similar restrictions were in place across the rest of Britain.”