FDA Dumps More Pfizer Documents: Why Were So Many Adverse Events Reported as ‘Unrelated’ to Vaccine?
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 17, 2022
The latest release of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine documents raises questions about how frequently adverse events experienced by clinical trial participants were reported as “unrelated” to the vaccine.
The 80,000-page document cache released May 2 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) includes an extensive set of Case Report Forms (CRFs) from Pfizer trials conducted at various locations in the U.S.
The documents also include the “third interim report” from BioNTech’s trials conducted in Germany (accompanied by a synopsis of this report and a database of adverse events from this particular set of trials).
The FDA released the documents, which pertain to the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the vaccine, as part of a court-ordered disclosure schedule stemming from an expedited Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in August 2021.
Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, a group of doctors and public health professionals, submitted the FOIA request.
Adverse events during Pfizer vaccine trials in the U.S. usually reported as ‘unrelated’ to vaccination
Pfizer conducted a series of vaccine trials at various locations in the U.S., including the New York University Langone Health Center, Rochester Clinical Research and Rochester General Hospital (Rochester, New York) and the J. Lewis Research, Inc. Foothill Family Clinic (Salt Lake City, Utah).
The Pfizer documents released this month by the FDA included a series of CRFs for patients who suffered some type of adverse event during their participation in the COVID-19 vaccine trials.
As the documents reveal, despite the occurrence of a wide range of symptoms, including serious cardiovascular events, almost none were identified as being “related” to the vaccine.
Such serious yet “unrelated” adverse events included:
- Acute asthma exacerbation
- Aortic aneurysm (listed as a pre-existing condition)
- Appendicitis (requiring hospitalization)
- Atrial defibrillation
- Cardiac arrest and acute respiratory failure, requiring hospitalization, sustained by a patient who then was “lost” (could not be located for continued participation in the trial)
- Chest pain (requiring hospitalization, later listed as cardiac ischemia)
- Coronary artery occlusion (listed as both serious and life-threatening)
- Injuries sustained from a fall
- Intermittent non-cardiac chest pain (requiring hospitalization)
- Left breast cancer (listed as a pre-existing occult malignancy)
- Neuritis (peripheral nerve Injury), listed as “unrelated” to the vaccine but related to the blood draw during vaccination
- Pulmonary embolism and bilateral deep venous thrombosis
- Respiratory failure (requiring hospitalization)
- Right ureteropelvic junction obstruction (requiring hospitalization, listed as congenital)
- Small bowel obstruction, listed as “unplanned,” and a panic attack
Of the CRFs found in the documents released this month, only one adverse event is clearly specified as being related to the vaccination: a participant who suffered from psoriatic arthritis, with no prior history of the condition.
In addition, several CRFs indicated exposure during pregnancy (see here and here), or during a partner’s pregnancy (see here and here). However, the documents provided do not appear to have provided any follow-ups regarding any outcomes or potential adverse events for the participants, their partners or their newborn babies once born.
In some instances, while the CRFs claimed the adverse events suffered by patients were not related to the vaccine, their cause was unspecified, simply indicated as “other,” while in another case, a participant’s “unplanned” small bowel obstruction and panic attacks were listed as being unrelated to the vaccination despite no relevant medical history pertaining to the SAEs (severe adverse events) in question.
Did Pfizer hide critical information from regulators?
It is difficult to draw concrete conclusions about any specific case from the data provided by CRFs and vaccine trial summaries.
However, what raises eyebrows is the very large number of adverse events — often serious and often requiring the hospitalization of the patients involved — that were determined to be “unrelated” to the administration of the COVID vaccine.
Previously released Pfizer documents also included discrepancies in the recording of adverse events.
According to investigative journalist Sonia Elijah, these discrepancies include:
- Trial participants were entered into the “healthy population” but were, in actuality, far from healthy.
- SAE numbers were left blank.
- Barcodes were missing from samples collected from trial participants.
- The second vaccine dose was administered outside the three-week protocol window.
- New health problems were dismissed as “unrelated” to the vaccination.
- A remarkable number of patients with an observation period of exactly the same duration — 30 minutes, with very little variety in observation times and raising questions as to whether patients were adequately observed or were put at risk.
- Oddities pertaining to the start and end dates of SAEs – for instance, a “healthy” diabetic suffered a “serious” heart attack on October 27, 2020, but the “end” date for this SAE is listed as the very next day, even though the patient was diagnosed with pneumonia that same day.
- Impossible dating: in the aforementioned example of the patient who sustained a heart attack and pneumonia, the individual in question later died, but the date of death is indicated as the day before the patient was recorded as having gone to a “COVID ill” visit.
- Unblinded teams, who were aware of which patients received the actual vaccine or a placebo, were responsible for reviewing adverse event reports, potentially leading to pressure to downplay COVID-related events in the vaccinated, or to indicate that adverse events were related to the vaccine.
- Other adverse events were indicated as “not serious” despite extensive hospital stays, of up to at least 26 days in the case of one patient who suffered a fall which was classified as “not serious,” yet facial lacerations sustained as a result of the fall were attributed to hypotension (low blood pressure).
Many of these practices seem to appear in the trial-related documents released this month.
Medical and scientific experts who spoke to The Defender expressed similar concerns about what this month’s tranche of documents reveals, and addressed cases of “disappearing” adverse events.
Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, remarked:
“I’m most concerned about ‘disappearing’ patients. One cannot conduct a valid trial and simply omit the results that they don’t like!
“With the stories about Maddie de Garay and Augusto Roux surfacing, I have to wonder how many other participants were dropped in order to hide vaccine adverse events/effects.
“If you look at the data in VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System], COVID-19 vaccines are the most dangerous ever introduced into the population.”
Dr. Madhava Setty, a board-certified anesthesiologist and senior science editor for The Defender, said:
“The ‘unrelated’ label the investigators use to divert attention from AEs [adverse events] is a powerful point that stands on its own. We haven’t pushed back on this enough.
“Equivalently, we can say that the meager and short-lived benefit of these shots is also ‘unrelated’ using their ‘standards.’ On what grounds can they say that their product is preventing infection (which it isn’t anymore), or death (marginally)?
“They cannot have it both ways. They cannot claim a benefit through short-term outcomes while denying that side effects of any kind are related to their product.
“That’s the whole point of doing a trial. You cannot prove causation, only statistically significant correlation.”
Setty provided further context for his remarks in an April 2022 article for The Defender and in a March 2022 presentation, in which he discussed the number of these adverse events and how Pfizer swept them away (timestamp 24:00).
In Setty‘s view:
“There’s a high likelihood of malfeasance going on. [Pfizer whistleblower] Brook Jackson says the PIs [principal investigators] were unblinded. If true, it would make it very easy for the investigators to bump up the AEs in the placebo group while ignoring some of the AEs in the vaccine group.
“Pfizer claims that 0.5% of placebo recipients suffered a serious adverse event compared to 0.6% in the vaccine group. This is how these events were obscured.”
The extant body of evidence indicates Pfizer “is hiding critical information from regulators,” Setty said:
“The clincher is in the memorandum to the VRBPAC [Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee] (Table 2, efficacy populations), where they show us that five times more people in the vaccine group were pulled out of the trial than the placebo within seven days of their second shot for ‘important protocol deviations.’
“In a trial that big the chances that could have happened coincidentally is infinitesimally small (less than 1 in 100,000).
“Moreover, months later, the same thing happened in the pediatric trial (Table 12). This time, six times more children were pulled from the trial after their second dose.
“There are, of course, procedural differences when administering a placebo versus the mRNA vaccine, but why didn’t it happen after the first dose as well?
“Mathematically, that is about as close as you can get to eliminating any ‘shadow of doubt.’ With a formal allegation by a trial coordinator that states the same thing [referring to whistleblower Brook Jackson], we can be assured Pfizer is hiding critical information from regulators.”
BioNTech trials in Germany claim few adverse events ‘related’ to vaccine
The BioNTech trial in Germany tested various dosages of two COVID-19 vaccine formulas, labeled BNT162b1 and BNT162b2 — the latter granted EUA by the FDA.
The latest cache of Pfizer documents suggests a pattern, similar to the one in the U.S. trials, of not reporting adverse events as related to the vaccine.
According to the third interim report, dated March 20, 2021, among trial participants who were administered the BNT162b2 candidate vaccine granted EUA in the U.S.:
- 87% of younger participants reported solicited local reactions, and 88% reported solicited systemic reactions, with 10% reporting solicited systemic reactions of Grade 3 or higher.
- 87% of younger participants experienced “mild” solicited local reactions, and 35% experienced “moderate” solicited local reactions.
- 88% of younger participants experienced “mild” solicited systemic reactions, and 38% experienced “moderate” solicited systemic reactions. As stated in the report:
“The most frequently reported solicited systemic reactions of any severity were fatigue (n=40, 67%), followed by headache (n=32, 53%), malaise (n=24, 40%), and myalgia (n=23, 38%). The remaining symptom terms were less frequent.
“For nausea, headache, fatigue, myalgia, chills, arthralgia and malaise each symptom was assessed as severe in <10% of participants.”
- 43% of younger participants reported a total of 51 unsolicited TEAEs (treatment-emergent adverse events, referring to conditions not present prior to treatment or that worsened in intensity after treatment) within 28 days of the first or second dose, nine of which were deemed to be “related” to the vaccination. One participant in this category sustained a TEAE assessed as Grade 3 or higher, but “which was assessed as not related by the investigator.”
- TEAEs among younger participants included hypoaesthesia, lymphadenopathy, heart palpitations, external ear inflammation, blepharitis, toothache, non-cardiac chest pain, cestode infection, oral herpes, tonsillitis, neck pain, insomnia, anosmia and dysmenorrhea.
- No unsolicited treatment-emergent serious adverse events (TESAEs) or deaths were reported among younger participants, but one discontinued participation due to moderate nasopharyngitis.
- One younger participant “discontinued due to a moderate AE (nasopharyngitis).”
- 86% of older participants reported solicited local reactions, with 6% reporting solicited local reactions of Grade 3 or higher, 78% reporting “mild” solicited local reactions and 36% reporting “moderate” solicited local reactions.
- 72% of older participants reported solicited systemic reactions, with 11% of these participants sustaining solicited systemic reactions of Grade 3 or higher, 69% sustaining “mild” solicited reactions and 36% sustaining “moderate” solicited reactions.
- 33% of older participants reported a total of 20 unsolicited TEAEs, four of which were determined to be “related” to the vaccination. Among older participants, 8% reported a TESAE of Grade 3 or higher, with “one event assessed as related by the investigator.”
- One older participant was reported to have sustained a “not related TESAE” (an ankle fracture).
- TESAEs among older participants included back pain, chest pain, facial injury, increased lipase, increased amylase, muscle spasms, musculoskeletal pain, tendon pain, orthostatic intolerance, renal colic, seborrhoeic dermatitis and “painful respiration.”
Among trial participants who received the BNT162b1 candidate vaccine (not granted EUA):
- 86% of “younger participants” reported solicited (expected) localized reactions (remaining in one part of the body), with 18% reporting Grade 3 or higher solicited local reactions, 86% of younger participants reporting “mild” solicited local reactions and 54% reporting “moderate” solicited local reactions.
- 92% of younger participants reported solicited systemic reactions (spreading to other parts of the body), with 44% reporting Grade 3 or higher solicited systemic reactions, 90% reporting “mild” solicited systemic reactions and 74% experiencing “moderate” solicited systemic reactions.
The report states:
“The most frequently reported solicited systemic reactions of any severity were fatigue (n=68, 81%), headache (n=66, 79%), myalgia (n=51, 61%), malaise (n=50, 60%), and chills (n=47, 56%). The remaining symptom terms were less frequent.
“For nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, myalgia, arthralgia and fever each symptom was assessed as severe in ≤10% of participants.”
- 45% of younger participants reported a total of 83 unsolicited (unexpected) TEAEs within 28 days of receiving the first or second dose.
A total of 51 of these unsolicited TEAEs were reported as “related” to the vaccination, while 2% of participants sustained Grade 3 or higher TEAEs (four in total), “of which three events were assessed as related by the investigator.”
No unsolicited TESAEs or deaths were reported in this category.
- According to the report, among younger participants, TEAEs included:
“‘General disorders and administration site conditions’ reported by 9 participants (11%),” including influenza-like illness and injection site hematoma.
“‘Nervous system disorders’ reported by 10 participants (12%),” including presyncope, hyperaesthesia, paraesthesia, and headache.
“‘Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders’ reported by 9 participants (11%),” including cough and oropharyngeal pain.”
Other symptoms included back pain, musculoskeletal chest pain, cervicobrachial syndrome, taste disorder, sleep disorder, depression, hallucination, dysmenorrhoea, pruritus and pityriasis rosea, while one participant required the excision (removal) of a papilloma.
- One younger participant discontinued participation in the trial, “due to a moderate AE (malaise),” while another participant discontinued participation “due to dose-limiting toxicity.”
- 83% of “older participants” reported solicited local reactions, but none were reported as Grade 3 or higher, while 83% of solicited local reactions were “mild” and 42% were “moderate.”
- 92% of older participants reported solicited systemic reactions, with 28% of participants experiencing Grade 3 or higher solicited systemic reactions, 89% experiencing “mild” solicited systemic reactions, and 61% experiencing “moderate” solicited systemic reactions.
According to the report:
“The most frequently reported solicited systemic reactions of any severity were headache (n=29, 81%), fatigue (n=27, 75%), myalgia (n=18, 50%), and malaise (n=18, 50%). The remaining symptom terms were less frequent.”
- 36% of participants reported a total of 24 unsolicited TEAEs within 28 days of the first or second dose, nine of which were assessed as “related” to the vaccination.
Of the participants in this category, 11% reported TEAEs of Grade 3 or higher (four events in total), with one of these events assessed as “related” to the vaccination.
- TEAEs reported by older participants included oropharyngeal pain, nasopharyngitis, bladder dysfunction, sleep disorder, musculoskeletal pain and musculoskeletal chest pain, pollakiuria, migraine, syncope and alopecia.
- One older participant receiving the BNT162b1 candidate sustained a TESAE (syncope), and there were no deaths in this category.
Of note, none of the participants for either vaccine candidate were pregnant, which raises questions about recommending and administering the vaccine to pregnant women despite the absence of any clinical trial data.
As the documents show, a wide range of adverse effects were reported, including cardiovascular and nervous system conditions, most of which were determined to be unrelated to the vaccination itself.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
South Australia introduces prospect of jail time for breaking strict Covid restrictions
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | May 20, 2022
The state government of South Australia is about to introduce the harshest penalties in the nation, and some of the most severe in the world, for those breaking Covid restrictions.
The regulations, which are coded in the Public Health Act, mandate that citizens that break isolation rules or fail to abide by vaccine passport and mask mandates are subject to a fine of $20,000 or two years in prison.
Businesses that are in noncompliance with the law face an even bigger fine of $75,000. The law is expected to pass Parliament this week and applies to those who break Covid regulations in high-risk settings. Upon passage, regulations codified in the Public Health Act would take effect on June 30.
The tough regulations have drawn sharp criticism from some members of South Australia’s Parliament and civil liberties groups. Despite this disapproval, Premier Peter Malinauskas, a Labour Party member, says that the new law is necessary to protect the state’s most vulnerable residents. Continuing, Malinauskas adds that Australia is in a stage of the pandemic where governments need to once again conduct basic services in a normal manner, thus necessitating the codification of Covid laws.
Those who oppose the new law not only criticize its tough penalties but how it was passed by Parliament.
Referring to the law as a “backroom deal,” Adelaide Advertiser of the Liberal Party condemned it as a way for Malinauskas to quickly incarcerate rule breakers. The Law Society of South Australia also criticizes the law as being overly vague.
The group’s head, Justin Stewart-Rattray, says that the act fails to provide an adequate definition of what constitutes a close contact. Examining Australian regulations since the start of the pandemic, Stewart-Rattray points out that the definition of close contact has changed several times throughout the crisis.
Given how unclear the law is, Stewart-Rattray says that enforcement could be too wide, leading to rampant abuse of power and loss of rights for accused citizens.
Why the World should be very concerned about New Zealand under the Jacinda government
By Guy Hatchard | Waikanae Watch | May 19, 2022
The New Zealand government relies upon a science body known as Te Punaha Matatini (Centre for Science in Society) whose work is funded directly by the office of the Prime Minister and cabinet.
Yesterday, Te Punaha Matatini published a 21-page document entitled “The Murmuration of Information Disorders” (see attached release from the Science Media Centre) designating those opposed to the government’s pandemic policies as violent right wing insurrectionists planning the weaponised storming of parliament and the execution of public servants, academics, journalists, politicians, and healthcare workers.
This is an utterly false characterisation worthy of the worst excesses of historical propaganda.
This 21-page document, represented to the public as a scientific paper, contains not a single discussion of the scientific concerns being raised in opposition to government pandemic policy.
It omits for example analyses of the government’s own official figures which show that the vaccinated are more vulnerable to infection, hospitalisation, and death than the unvaccinated, a fact that has been deliberately hidden from the public.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern introduced yesterday’s Te Punaha Matatini report with the words:
“One day it will be our job to try and understand how a group of people could succumb to such wild and dangerous mis- and disinformation. And while many of us have seen that disinformation and dismissed it as conspiracy theory, a small portion of our society have not only believed it, they have acted upon it in an extreme and violent way that cannot stand. We have a difficult journey in front of us to address the underlying cause.”
Since when do reasonable scientifically-based questions asked of the government in good faith constitute violent insurrection?
I am tempted to think that Ardern could just as well be talking about her own government. The Prime Minister and the social scientists(?) working at Te Punaha Matatini might do well to read the New York Times, (although they probably don’t do so because the official policy of the New Zealand government is to discourage any information that is not sanctioned and edited by themselves).
A NYT article on 10 May 2022 entitled “Emergent Hid Evidence of Covid Vaccine Problems at Plant” reports that
“Emergent BioSolutions, a longtime government contractor hired to produce hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccine doses, hid evidence of quality control problems from Food and Drug Administration inspectors in February 2021 — six weeks before it alerted federal officials that 15 million doses had been contaminated.”
A reasonable observer might conclude that early (and later) concerns being voiced about vaccine safety were justified, but the New Zealand government is far from reasonable.
A succession of scientific papers published in reputable journals during recent weeks (which we and many others have reported extensively and communicated directly to the government) have in fact fully justified concerns about safety and efficacy, but unbelievably our government is in denial and still moving ahead with propaganda advertising of their mRNA vaccination agenda for all ages and, as today’s Te Punaha Matatini report shows, labelling any opposition as a conspiracy with violent aims.
How Did the Transformation of the NZ Government Come About?
New Zealand has a small population of 5 million, but it has been used to trial new products in order to gauge what the public reaction and acceptance might be in bigger markets overseas. Never more so than during the pandemic. Take up of the Pfizer mRNA Covid vaccination has reached up to 95% of the eligible population.
This has been achieved through a transformation in the style of government, media control, science funding, intellectual standards, and international relations unprecedented in the western world, along with the coercion of draconian employment mandates and the pursuit of dissenters through compliant courts.
This has been engineered under the leadership of a person with a bachelor’s degree in communication who grew up in a strict rural Mormon household and cut her political teeth under the Blair administration in London. In keeping with her upbringing and education, Ardern is a leader who is sure she is right and is prepared to enforce her orthodoxy against all opposition and reason.
Her international perspective is one of unquestioning acceptance of the authority and right to rule of global institutions. Her top confidant and mentor Helen Clark, former NZ Labour Prime Minister, is closely associated with this outlook. Ardern recounts that she begins her day with a discussion with Clark over breakfast.
Like Ardern, Clark is renowned for her iron fist management style. She ruffled feathers at the United Nations Development Programme, which she led from 2009 to 2017, reportedly undermining human rights and supporting China’s Belt and Road initiative.
On 9 July 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) appointed Clark as co-chair of a panel reviewing the WHO’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the response of governments to the outbreak. The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPR) examined how the outbreak occurred and how future pandemics can be prevented.
Nothing says more about the overt global agenda of Ardern and Clark than this 11 May 2022 statement of the New Zealand government:
“The establishment of a pandemic treaty/instrument was a key recommendation of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response and is one of New Zealand’s foremost global health priorities”
Like China, New Zealand’s fading international reputation for successful management of the pandemic was actually built on a single policy—control the borders, restrict entry, and impose lengthy quarantine.
The Current Situation in New Zealand is Deeply Concerning
Ardern controls the media and the science dialogue through a mixture of government funding and exclusion of dissent. The government has spent big on saturation advertising advising complete safety and efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine, and continues to do so.
It has instituted funding of cultural groups, GPs, and commercial organisations who promote vaccination. The level of funding is so generous that it has distorted prior long standing economic and political relationships.
So far the government has spent on the order of $100 billion on the pandemic in addition to normal expenditure. To put this in stark perspective, that is equal to the total annual government budget prior to the pandemic—more than $20,000 for every man, woman, and child. This is borrowed money which will have to be repaid through increased taxation of an already struggling population.
We Have No Constitution in New Zealand, the Power of the Government Is Absolute.
The control that Ardern’s government exercises over the courts, government agencies, parliament, media, independent regulators, and over the vast majority of the population is staggering and rigidly enforced. Dissenting medical professionals are excluded from practicing and in some cases prosecuted also. They are also mercilessly hounded and vilified by bought mainstream media.
In an atmosphere of strict government control, more worrying aspects of information control have emerged. In some cases noted by my scientific colleagues, policy and pronouncements that they have demonstrated are in conflict with published research have disappeared from the public record.
Even rare court rulings in favour of caution have been rapidly bypassed by simply passing new laws without debate. Court rulings about mandates have also been openly flouted, as happened when the military vaccine mandate was ruled illegal. With the support of the government, the military said the courts had no jurisdiction over its operation and went ahead anyway.
Ardern has introduced her policies in such a dedicated, persuasive, secretive, and complete way that almost the whole population of New Zealand has complied. They have accepted limitations on medical choice, judicial protections, human rights, press freedom, freedom of information, privacy, employment conditions and opportunities, standard of living, and social interaction.
Ardern’s successful efforts to persuade the population that government should be your only source of truth, have all but negated any of the longstanding mechanisms of government accountability. A majority of the population have all but concurred with Ardern that the unvaccinated may be safely blamed for every government failing and omission; and for all Covid case loads, hospitalisations, and deaths contrary to all evidence.
The opposition parties have apparently accepted that they will in future go about their business using the same Ardern doctrines and techniques. Accordingly they have failed to sound the alarm, investigate Covid science publishing deeply, or oppose draconian legislation. They have joined Ardern in labelling peaceful protest as unacceptable and illegal.
Ardern on the Global Stage
Ardern is about to deploy her international political capital to promote the globalisation of her policies and outlook. Her public persona can be deceptively mesmerising. You should be worried.
The world’s economy also has no constitution. So far Ardern appears to be happy to allow it to be controlled by global economic predators. Pfizer has been uncritically promoted by her, and the notion of WHO control over New Zealand’s sovereign rights is being welcomed with open arms. It fits with her strict hierarchical perspective.
Ardern may be viewed by naive foreign governments as a pandemic success story unfairly criticised in her own country. Stop for a moment and consider that she is about to lend her support to the promotion of a new world order on the global stage using her trademark persuasive techniques of propaganda, coercion, and control of information.
VAERS Data Show New Deaths, Injuries After COVID Vaccines, As CDC Signs Off on 3rd Shot for Kids 5-11
By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | May 20, 2022
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released new data showing a total of 1,268,008 reports of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and May 13, 2022, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.
The data included a total of 28,141 reports of deaths — an increase of 173 over the previous week — and 230,364 serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period — up 1,887 compared with the previous week. There were 6,859 additional total adverse events reported to VAERS over the previous week.
Excluding “foreign reports” to VAERS, 817,538 adverse events, including 12,961 deaths and 82,544 serious injuries, were reported in the U.S. between Dec. 14, 2020, and May 13, 2022.
Foreign reports are reports foreign subsidiaries send to U.S. vaccine manufacturers. Under U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, if a manufacturer is notified of a foreign case report that describes an event that is both serious and does not appear on the product’s labeling, the manufacturer is required to submit the report to VAERS.
Of the 12,961 U.S. deaths reported as of May 13, 16% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 20% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 59% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.
In the U.S., 581 million COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered as of May 13, including 343 million doses of Pfizer, 219 million doses of Moderna and 19 million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

Every Friday, VAERS publishes vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed.
Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to May 13, 2022, for 5- to 11-year-olds show:
- 10,745 adverse events, including 279 rated as serious and 5 reported deaths.
- 22 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation).The CDC uses a narrowed case definition of “myocarditis,” which excludes cases of cardiac arrest, ischemic strokes and deaths due to heart problems that occur before one has the chance to go to the emergency department.The Defender has noticed over previous weeks that reports of myocarditis and pericarditis have been removed by the CDC from the VAERS system in this age group. No explanation was provided.
- 43 reports of blood clotting disorders.
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to May 13, 2022, for 12- to 17-year-olds show:
- 31,572 adverse events, including 1,824 rated as serious and 44 reported deaths. VAERS reported 44 deaths in the 12- to 17-year-old age group last week.
- 64 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death — with 96% of cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
- 651 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis with 639 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
- 168 reports of blood clotting disorders with all cases attributed to Pfizer.
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to May 13, 2022, for all age groups combined, show:
- 20% of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.
- 54% of those who died were male, 41% were female and the remaining death reports did not include the gender of the deceased.
- The average age of death was 73.
- As of May 13, 5,527 pregnant women reported adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccines, including 1,732 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.
- Of the 3,622 cases of Bell’s Palsy reported, 51% were attributed to Pfizer vaccinations, 40% to Moderna and 8% to J&J.
- 880 reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome, with 42% of cases attributed to Pfizer, 30% to Moderna and 28% to J&J.
- 2,291 reports of anaphylaxis where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death.
- 1,707 reports of myocardial infarction.
- 13,972 reports of blood-clotting disorders in the U.S. Of those, 6,266 reports were attributed to Pfizer, 4,989 reports to Moderna and 2,679 reports to J&J.
- 4,194 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis with 2,570 cases attributed to Pfizer’s, 1,427 cases to Moderna’s and 183 cases to J&J’s COVID-19 vaccines.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps.
Pfizer Document Dump Shows Doctor With Ties to Gates Foundation Deleted Trial Participant’s Vaccine Injury
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 18, 2022
An 80,000-page cache of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine documents released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sheds light on Pfizer’s extensive vaccine trials in Argentina, including the unusually large size of the trials and the story of a trial participant whose vaccine reaction was “disappeared.”
The case of Augusto Roux in Argentina suggests that in at least one instance, a trial participant whose symptoms were determined to be connected to the COVID-19 vaccine was later listed, in official records, as having experienced adverse events that were not related to the vaccination.
Vaccine trials in Argentina also appear to have glossed over adverse events suffered by other trial participants, and the potential connection between the adverse events and the vaccine.
The FDA on May 2 released the latest cache of documents, which pertain to the Emergency Use Authorization of Pfizer’s vaccine, as part of a court-ordered disclosure schedule stemming from an expedited Freedom of Information Act request filed in August 2021.
As previously reported by The Defender, the documents included Case Report Forms from Pfizer COVID vaccine trials in the U.S., and the “third interim report” from BioNTech’s trials conducted in Germany, both of which listed adverse events sustained by participants in the U.S. and German trials.
Many of these adverse events were indicated as being “unrelated” to the vaccines — even in instances where the patients were healthy or otherwise had no prior medical history related to the injuries they sustained.
Story of ‘disappeared patient’ goes public
Several bloggers and online investigators called into question various aspects of the Argentine vaccine trials, pointing out the number of participants in the Argentine trials dwarfed that of other, typically smaller trials at other locations in different countries.
They also pointed out the large number of participants appeared to have been recruited to the trial in a remarkably short time, and questioned the connections between one of the key figures of the Argentine trial to vaccine manufacturers, Big Pharma and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The large number of trial participants in Argentina may be related to the fact that the trial appears to have been held simultaneously in 26 hospitals.
The large number of participants is revealed in another of the documents released this month, where on page 2,245, the list of randomized participants at trial site 1231 begins, while on page 4,329, the list of participants at trial site 4444 begins.
Site 1231 refers to the main trial site location and 4444 (page 24) most likely refers to the disparate hospitals participating in the trial outside the main location.
Commenting on the revelation, blogger David Healy wrote:
“About 5,800 volunteers were enrolled, half getting the active vaccine. This is almost 4 times more than the next largest centre in this trial.
“Amazingly 467 doctors were almost instantly signed up and trained as assistant investigators in the study.”
In all, 4,501 patients participated in the Argentine trials, representing 10% of all Pfizer trial participants worldwide.
Complete information about adverse events during this extensive trial in Argentina does not appear to have been released as of this writing.
However, Roux’s experience has since become public.
Roux, often referred to as the “disappeared” patient, volunteered for the trial (volunteer number 12312982) and received his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Aug. 21, 2020.
According to Healy, Roux “felt pain and swelling in his arm right after the injection. Later that day he had nausea, difficulty swallowing, and felt hungover.”
After a series of symptoms, Roux — during a clinical trial visit on Aug. 23, 2020 — was classified as experiencing a “toxicity grade 1 adverse effect.”
He nevertheless received his second dose on Sept. 9, 2020.
According to Healy:
“On the way home by taxi, he started feeling unwell. At 19:30, he was short of breath, had a burning pain in his chest and was extremely fatigued. He lay on his bed and fell asleep. He woke up at 21:00 with nausea and fever (38-39 C) and was unable to get out of bed due to the fatigue.
“Over the next two days, he reports a high fever (41 C) and feeling delirious.
“On September 11, he was able to get out of bed and go to the bathroom when he observed his urine to be dark (like Coca-Cola). He felt as if his heart expanded, had a sudden lack of breath and fell unconscious on the floor for approximately 3 hours.
“Once he recovered, he felt tired, was uncomfortable, had a high heart rate on minor movement, was dizzy when changing posture. He had a chest pain which radiated to his left arm and back.”
On Sept. 12, 2020, Roux was admitted to the Hospital Alemán, where he stayed for two days. It was initially believed he had COVID-19, but he tested negative for the virus. His symptoms also were found to not correspond with viral pneumonia.
After a series of X-rays, CT scans and urine tests, Roux was discharged Sept. 14, 2020, after being diagnosed with an adverse reaction — specifically, an unequivocal pericardial effusion — to the coronavirus vaccine (high probability), according to his discharge summary.
Doctor who altered Roux’s record had ties to Gates, NIH, Big Pharma
However, on Sept. 17, Dr. Fernando Polack, Pfizer’s lead investigator for the Argentine trials according to a Pfizer document released in December 2021, reported in Roux’s record that his “hospitalization was not related to the vaccine.”
Even after Roux’s discharge, his health difficulties continued. As reported by Healy:
“On November 13 [2020], he had negative IgG and IgM SARS COV-2 (QML technique), which is unusual post vaccine.
“On February 24, 2021, a liver scan showed a minor degree of abnormality. In March 2021 and February 2022, his liver enzymes remained abnormal.”
Ultimately, Roux lost 14 kilograms (30.8 pounds) in a period of three to four months, and continued to suffer from fever and bouts of breathlessness for several months afterward.
Polack, who reported Roux’s hospitalization as unrelated to the vaccination, is known for his close ties with various vaccine manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
For instance, he is listed as the lead author in a Dec. 31, 2020, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) article on the purported efficacy of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.
According to Healy, Polack also appears to be the founder of iTRIALS, a trial site management company, and another organization located at the same physical headquarters, the Fundación INFANT.
Healy wrote:
“When COVID struck Argentina, [Polack] and his Fundación became involved in a trial of immune plasma, taken from patients who had recovered from COVID, given to patients who had recently acquired the disease.
“In May 2020 he speculated that this would make COVID like an ordinary cold, and the Gates Foundation would offer financial support. He used high-profile press conferences to disseminate his exciting message.”
The conclusion of the study published in the NEJM following the plasma study reads:
“Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Fundación INFANT Pandemic Fund; Dirección de Sangre y Medicina Transfusional del Ministerio de Salud number, PAEPCC19, Plataforma de Registro Informatizado de Investigaciones en Salud number, 1421, and ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04479163.”
According to Healy, “[a] subsequent systematic review and meta-analysis failed to confirm these findings, noting ‘very serious imprecision concerns.’”
Healy pointed out that Polack, in his NEJM disclosure statement, did not indicate any conflict of interest or financial interest in the COVID-19 vaccine trials in Argentina, but:
“Polack reported grants from Novavax and personal fees from Janssen, Bavarian Nordic A/S, Pfizer, Sanofi, Regeneron, Merck, Medimmune, Vir Bio[technology], Ark Bio, Daiichi Sankyo outside the submitted work.
“At least eight of these companies are engaged in RSV vaccine research in babies and pregnant women. Fernando has mentioned a combined RSV, flu and COVID vaccine.”
And, in relation to Polack’s relationship with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Healy reported:
“[Polack] also doesn’t mention his extensive financial involvement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This organization supports industry vaccine trials including Covid and RSV. Fernando is heavily involved through his Gates-sponsored Fundación INFANT in Buenos Aires in RSV trials and research.
“Gates sunk $82,553,834 into Novavax’s RSV vaccine ResVax which was shown to be ineffective in clinical trials in pregnant women.”
Polack’s own bio from a 2017 medical conference states “[h]is work is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institutes of Health [NIH], the Thrasher Research Fund, the Optimus Foundation and other international organizations.”
That same year, Polack testified at an FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) meeting, where he “acknowledged having financial interests in or professional relationships with some of the affected firms identified for this meeting, namely Janssen [producer of the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine], Novavax, and Bavarian Nordic.”
According to Dr. Joseph Mercola, Polack “also happens to be a consultant for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC),” and “a current adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
Governments worried about Covid misinformation should start with their own lies and distortions: Indiana AG
The Daily Sceptic | May 20, 2022
Governments concerned about Covid misinformation should start with their own lies and distortions, Indiana’s Attorney General has told the U.S. Government. In a submission to the U.S. Surgeon General, who had requested information on the impact of online health misinformation during the pandemic in the United States, Todd Rokita joined with leading scientists Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff to set out nine examples of disinformation propagated by the CDC and other health organisations that have “shattered the public’s trust in science and public health and will take decades to repair”. Read their full submission below.
May 2nd 2022
Agency: Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Surgeon General
Action: Request for Information (RFI)
Subject: Impact of Health Misinformation in the Digital Information Environment in the United States Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic
Response: COVID-19 Misinformation from Official Sources During the Pandemic
Submitting parties: Todd Rokita, Indiana Attorney General; Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine; and Dr. Kulldorff, Senior Research Fellow at the Brownstone Institute and former Professor at Harvard University School of Medicine.
The Office of the Surgeon General requested information on the prevalence of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of such misinformation on the U.S. public health system in order to be better prepared to respond to a future public health crisis.
We agree that misinformation has been a major problem during the pandemic. The spread of inaccurate scientific information has made it difficult for the public to make the right decisions to protect themselves, their families, and their communities from COVID-19 and the collateral public health damage arising from the pandemic countermeasures. As such, the disinformation has led to great harm in the lives and livelihoods of Americans. We submit the following examples of disinformation from the CDC and other health organisations that have shattered the public’s trust in science and public health and will take decades to repair.
#1 Overcounting COVID-19: The official CDC numbers for COVID-19 deaths and hospitalisations are inaccurate. The official tallies include many people who have died with rather than from COVID-19. CDC has not distinguished deaths where COVID-19 was the primary cause of death, where COVID-19 was a contributing cause of death, or where the death was entirely unrelated to COVID-19, but they incidentally tested positive.
There are three reasons for this problem. (i) The counting of COVID-19 cases and deaths is unlike the way that public health counts the incidence and mortality caused by other diseases; physicians have been advised to fill out death certificates to privilege COVID-19 as a proximal cause, even when the medical facts suggest otherwise. (ii) The population-wide testing to identify asymptomatic individuals infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus is unprecedented in human history. (iii) Although it would have been easy, CDC has not conducted random national surveys of medical charts to determine what proportion of reported COVID-19 deaths were truly due to COVID-19. Ex-post audits of death certificates and medical records in Santa Clara County and Alameda County, California, for instance, found that in around 25% of death certificates in which COVID-19 was labelled as the primary cause of death, other causes of death were more likely. The peer-reviewed literature confirms that COVID-19 is overcounted in other developed countries. Ex post audits of death certificates should be conducted to establish an accurate death count from COVID-19.
#2 Questioning Natural Immunity: There has been consistent questioning and denying of natural immunity after COVID-19 recovery. Using seriously flawed studies, CDC falsely claimed that natural immunity is worse than vaccine acquired immunity. In October 2020, the CDC director published a “memorandum” in the Lancet, questioning natural immunity. Most critically, by mandating vaccination for people who have recovered from COVID-19, the Government, corporations, and universities de facto deny natural immunity.
For scientists, this has been the most surprising disinformation. We have known about natural immunity since the Athenian Plague in 430 BC; other coronaviruses generate natural immunity; and throughout the pandemic, we knew that the COVID-19 recovered have good natural immunity if and when they get exposed the next time. That is, six months after the start of the pandemic, we had epidemiological evidence that natural immunity lasts at least six months; a year into the pandemic, we knew that natural immunity lasted at least one year, and so on.
#3 COVID-19 Vaccines Prevent Transmission: The CDC director and other health officials falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine prevents the transmission of COVID-19 to others. This was also the rationale for vaccine mandates and passports – to prevent the spread of the virus to others. At the time, we did not know, and it turned out to be wrong. When the COVID-19 vaccines were approved for emergency use, the manufacturers presented randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that showed that the vaccines reduced symptomatic disease. The trials were not designed to determine whether they could also limit transmission or prevent death, even though they could have been designed to do so. As it turned out, vaccinated individuals spread the disease to others. While it was unfortunate that the RCTs were not designed to answer the disease transmission question, it is irresponsible for public health officials to claim that they did when the RCTs did not even attempt to answer that question.
#4 School Closures Were Effective and Costless: In the United States, most schools were closed for in-person teaching for some time, and many schools were closed for over a year. This decision was based on false claims that it would protect children, teachers and the community at large. Already in the early summer of 2020, we knew this was false. Sweden was the only major Western country to keep schools open throughout spring 2020 without masks, social distancing, or testing. Among these 1.8 million children ages one to 15, there were zero COVID-19 deaths, only a few hospitalisations, and teachers did not have a higher COVID-19 risk than the average of other professions.
Moreover, while older people living with a working-age adult had a higher COVID-19 risk, there was no evidence that also living with a child increased that risk further. In a July 2020 New England Journal of Medicine article evaluating school closures, they did not mention the Swedish data and evidence, which is like evaluating a new drug without including data from the placebo comparison group. Despite clear evidence on the safety of keeping schools open, misinformation led to many schools being closed for over one year.
#5 Everyone is equally at risk of hospitalisation and death from COVID-19 infection: Though public health messaging has blunted this fact, there is more than a thousand-fold difference in the risk of hospitalisation and death for the old relative to the young. Though the risk of death is high for the old and some other vulnerable populations with severe chronic illness, the risk posed to children from COVID-19 infection is on par with the risk posed by a bad influenza season. Surveys indicate, however, that both old and young overestimate the risk of death from COVID-19 infection. This misperception about risk is harmful because it leads to demand for policies – such as school closures and lockdowns – that were themselves harmful.
#6 There was no reasonable policy alternative to lockdowns: Even from the beginning of the pandemic, the sharp age-gradient in the risk of severe disease on COVID-19 infection has provided an alternative to the lockdown-focused policies that many U.S. states adopted – focused protection of the aged and otherwise vulnerable. In October 2020, along with Prof. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University, we wrote the Great Barrington Declaration – a public petition that proposed heightened measures to protect the vulnerable and a return to near-normal life for the less vulnerable (including the opening of schools). Tens of thousands of doctors and scientists signed the Declaration in opposition to lockdowns. In the Declaration itself and in supporting documents, we offered many concrete policy suggestions for better protecting the vulnerable, including reduced staff rotations in nursing homes, free home delivery of groceries and other essentials offered to older people living in the community, paid sabbatical leave or alternative work arrangements for older workers, and many other policy options. We also invited the public health community to join in thinking creatively about other ideas to protect the vulnerable. As subsequent research has confirmed, it was clear even at the time that lockdowns could not protect the vulnerable (nearly 80% of COVID-19 deaths have occurred among the elderly in the U.S.). Meanwhile, countries like Sweden, which did not implement lockdowns, have had near-zero overall excess death over the last two years of the pandemic. Lockdowns are an aberration– a sharp deviation from traditional public health management of respiratory epidemics – and a catastrophic failure of public health policy.
#7 Mask mandates are effective in reducing the spread of viral infectious diseases: Contrary to assertions by some public health officials, mask mandates have not been effective in protecting most populations against COVID-19 risk. The SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads by aerosolisation. Unlike larger viral droplets, which are pulled by gravity to the ground shortly after emission, aerosols are tiny particles that can persist in the air for extended periods. Aerosols escape through gaps of poorly fitted masks, greatly reducing their ability to stop disease spread. Cloth masks, in particular, cannot stop aerosols, and even well-fitted N95 masks have diminished capacity to stop viral transmission when they become moist from breathing. It is thus unsurprising that the highest quality evidence available – randomised trials – conducted both before and during the pandemic find that masks are ineffective at stopping the spread of respiratory viruses in most settings when worn by untrained people.
#8 Mass testing of asymptomatic individuals and contact tracing of positive cases is effective in reducing disease spread: Mass testing of asymptomatic individuals with contact tracing and quarantining of people who test positive has failed to substantively slow the progress of the epidemic and has imposed great costs on people who were quarantined even though they posed no risk of infecting others. Three facts are crucial to understanding why this policy has failed. First, even close contacts of someone who tests positive for the SARS-Cov-2 virus are unlikely to pass the disease on. In a large meta-analysis of household contacts of asymptomatic positive cases, only 3% of people living in the same home got sick. Second, the PCR test that has been used to identify asymptomatic infections often returns a positive result for people who have dead viral fragments, are not infectious, and pose no risk of infecting others. And third, the contact tracing system becomes overwhelmed whenever cases start to rise, leading to long delays in contacting new cases. At precisely the moment when contact tracing might be needed, it cannot do its job. At the same time, quarantining people is costly – for workers without adequate sick leave, absenteeism due to contact tracing means pay cuts, lost opportunities and perhaps even an inability to feed families. For children, it means more skipped lessons and missed opportunities for academic and social growth at school, with long-run negative consequences for their future prospects. In the U.K., an official government review determined that its 37 billion pound investment in contact tracing was a waste of resources. The same is undoubtedly true in the United States.
#9 The eradication of COVID-19 is a feasible goal: Throughout the pandemic, from “two weeks to flatten the curve” and onwards, the suppression of the spread of COVID-19 has been an explicit policy goal. Implicitly, public health leaders have made the suppression of COVID-19 spread to near-zero levels the endpoint of the pandemic. However, SARS-CoV-2 has none of the characteristics of a disease that can be eradicated. First, we have no technology to reduce the spread of the disease or meaningfully alter disease dynamics. Lockdowns and social restrictions fail because only people who can afford to work from home without losing their job can comply over long periods. While we have vaccines that can help prevent hospitalisation or death resulting from COVID-19 infection, the vaccines wane in efficacy against COVID-19 infection and cannot stop transmission. Second, there are many animal hosts for SARS-CoV-2 and evidence of transmission between mammals and humans. One USDA study in late 2021 found that nearly 80% of white-tailed deer in the U.S. had evidence of COVID-19 antibodies. Dogs, cats, bats, mink and many other mammals can get COVID-19. So even if the disease were eradicated among humans, zoonotic transmission would guarantee that it would come back. Finally, eradication takes a global commitment from every country – an impossible goal since COVID-19 eradication is far from the most pressing public health problem for many developing countries.
Bill Gates and the Coordinated Campaign for Nasal Spray Vaccines
eugyppius – May 18, 2022
As we saw a few weeks ago, Bill Gates is subtly annoyed at our SARS-2 mRNA vaccines. They have to be kept cold, which makes them third-world unfriendly. They’re not very good at inducing mucosal immunity, which makes them bad at stopping infection. They require trained needle-wielding “vaccinators”*, which is an extra step that limits uptake. What would please this unelected omnipresent merchant of nuclear-grade charitable benevolence the most, is a nasal spray vaccine, like they had in the movie Contagion. Gates really liked that film. They just snorted the vaccine, and then the virus went away.
Why can’t we have vaccines like they have in the movies, Gates wants to know? Well, perhaps we can.
Two weeks after Gates made his wishes known, a curious guest essay appeared in the New York Times : The Answer to Stopping the Coronavirus May be Up Your Nose. The vaccines are great, says essay author and Yale immunobiologist Akiko Iwasaki. Only, nasal spray vaccines would be even better. Our current vaccines are bad at inducing mucosal immunity. Also, the “barrier … for a needle shot” is probably higher than the barrier for inhaling things.
Iwasaki envisions “potentially over the counter” vaccines that everyone can snort “every four to six months.” She’s also co-author of a preprint, which shows that if you get mRNA-immunised mice to inhale recombinant unadjuvanted spike protein, their mucosal immunity improves. Not for nothing, this is the same approach envisioned by the EcoHealth Alliance lunatics in their infamous PREEMPT grant proposal. There, they fantasised about “develop[ing] recombinant chimeric spike-proteins from known SARSr-CoVs … to boost immune memory in adult bats” and then spraying these proteins into caves for the bats to inhale (p.4).
It’s nice to know that the research program that set off the whole pandemic will now circle back to provide remedies against the pandemic that it caused. This is fine. This is Science.
* To my great delight, Gates actually uses this term.
German Supreme Court rules mandatory vaccination is constitutionally justified
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | May 19, 2022
Judges in Germany’s top court clearly haven’t looked at the data produced in multiple countries, showing the vaccinated being more likely to catch coronavirus.
In a press release today, the court announced that a case, challenging the obligation to provide evidence of vaccination, had been unsuccessful. The complainants said that the mandates violated their fundamental rights.
Whilst the initial vaccine mandate for all adults was rejected earlier in the year, it was still implemented for healthcare workers in March. This meant that all healthcare workers had to provide proof of full vaccination, recovery from COVID-19 or a small number of medical exemptions. If employees did not provide proof, the health department was to be notified immediately and the individual banned from entering the workplace.
One of the reasons for the case being unsuccessful, given in the judgment, was that interference with the right to physical integrity is constitutionally justified. Basically, the protection of vulnerable people is more important than an individual’s fundamental right.
The judgement admits that COVID-19 is mild for most people but can be fatal for the elderly and vulnerable who also don’t respond well to vaccination. They say that at the time the law was passed, a clear scientific majority assumed that vaccinated and recovered people were less likely to become infected and therefore transmit the virus. It was also assumed that vaccinated people were less infectious and for a shorter amount of time. According to the judgement, expert third parties largely agree that vaccine effectiveness will continue to exist, albeit at a reduced level.
Comically, the judgement states that there is no justification for compulsory vaccination enforced by the state but instead the decision should be down to the individual – they can choose to either give up their previous job or consent to the impairment of their physical integrity. Why thank you, Master, for providing me with two terrible choices. But, every cloud and all that, I suppose it is better than being pinned down and vaccinated. Well, until you can’t pay your rent or buy food for your children and have to steal a cardboard box to sleep on in the street.
Fortunately, the judges concluded that it is ok to breach an individual’s fundamental rights because serious side effects or serious consequences induced by the administration of the vaccine are very rare. And, in any case, they are continuously monitoring and evaluating them. They say that the very low probability of serious consequences of vaccination contrasts with the significantly higher probability of damage to vulnerable people.
They conclude, that the further development of the pandemic, after the law was passed, has not changed anything. Nor have any new developments or better insights.
So there you have it. An individual’s rights can be overhauled if a majority of experts conclude you are a danger to a small group of people. Whilst I can understand and appreciate the need to protect the elderly and vulnerable, this shouldn’t be used as a pretext to remove people’s basic rights.
The majority of health care workers want to protect the elderly and vulnerable, that’s why they do the jobs they do. If they are ill or test positive, they aren’t going to deliberately go and infect someone who is likely to die from Covid – they aren’t pyschos (unlike some of the individual’s making these laws).
Furthermore, the science clearly doesn’t back up what they are saying. You are more likely to catch Covid if you are vaccinated and your viral load is similar, if not the same. There may be evidence showing that you are not as infectious for as long but there also may be evidence showing you can have Covid but aren’t testing positive.
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach welcomed the ruling saying that “the state is obliged to protect vulnerable groups”. He is now off for a meeting with other G7 ministers, despite being in contact with the US health secretary, a day before testing positive for Covid. Rules for thee, not for me.
Clearly, the battle to retain one’s basic rights is still not over in many parts of the world. And if it isn’t completely squashed now, you can be sure it will return everywhere with a vengeance, come the winter.

