On July 28, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech posted a six-month data update from their key Covid vaccine clinical trial, the one that led regulators worldwide to okay the shot.
At a time when questions about vaccine effectiveness were rising, the report received worldwide attention. Pfizer said the vaccine’s efficacy remained relatively strong, at 84 percent after six months.
It also reported 15 of the roughly 22,000 people who received the vaccine in the trial had died, compared to 14 of the 22,000 people who received placebo (a saline shot that didn’t contain the vaccine).
These were not just Covid deaths. In fact, they were mostly not from Covid. Only three of the people in the trial died of Covid-related illnesses – one who received the vaccine, and two who who received the saline shot. The other deaths were from other illnesses and diseases, mostly cardiovascular.
Researchers call this datapoint “all-cause mortality.” Pfizer barely mentioned it, stuffing the details of the deaths in an appendix to the report.
But all-cause mortality is arguably the MOST important measure for any drug or vaccine – especially one meant to be given prophylactically to large numbers of healthy people, as vaccines are.

Although the researchers released their update in July, the data was already more than four months old. They had stopped collecting information about deaths as of March 13, the “data cut-off.”
But even at the time, their figures were somewhat troubling.
In their initial safety report to the FDA, which contained data through November 2020, the researchers had said four placebo recipients and two vaccine recipients died, one after the first dose and one after the second. The July update reversed that trend. Between November 2020 and March 2021, 13 vaccine recipients died, compared to only 10 placebo subjects.
Further, nine vaccine recipients had died from cardiovascular events such as heart attacks or strokes, compared to six placebo recipients who died of those causes. The imbalance was small but notable, considering that regulators worldwide had found that the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines were linked to heart inflammation in young men.
(I reported accurately on this study on Twitter on July 29, and the next day Twitter suspended me for a week for doing so, the fourth of my five defamatory “strikes” for Covid “misinformation.”)
At best, the results suggested that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine – now pushed on nearly a billion people worldwide at a cost of tens of billions of dollars and ruinous and worsening civil liberties restrictions – did nothing to reduce overall deaths.
Worse, Pfizer and BioNTech had vaccinated almost all the placebo recipients in the trial shortly after the Food and Drug Administration okayed the vaccine for emergency use on Dec. 11, 2020.
As a result, they had destroyed our best chance to compare the long-term health of a large number of vaccine recipients with a scientifically balanced group of people who had not received the drug. The July 28 report appeared to be the last clean safety data update we would ever have.
But now the FDA has given us one more.
On November 8, the agency released its “Summary Basis for Regulatory Action,” a 30-page note explaining why on August 23 it granted full approval to Pfizer’s vaccine, replacing the emergency authorization from December 2020.

And buried on page 23 of the report is this stunning sentence:
From Dose 1 through the March 13, 2021 data cutoff date, there were a total of 38 deaths, 21 in the COMIRNATY [vaccine] group and 17 in the placebo group.
Pfizer said publicly in July it had found 15 deaths among vaccine recipients by mid-March. But it told the FDA there were 21 – at the same data cutoff end date, March 13.
21.
Not 15.
The placebo figure in the trial was also wrong. Pfizer had 17 deaths among placebo recipients, not 14. Nine extra deaths overall, six among vaccine recipients.
Could the discrepancy result from some odd data lag? Maybe, but the FDA briefing book also contains the number of Covid cases that Pfizer found in vaccine recipients in the trial. Those figures are EXACTLY the same as those Pfizer posted publicly in July.
Yet the death counts were different.
Pfizer somehow miscounted – or publicly misreported, or both – the number of deaths in one of the most important clinical trials in the history of medicine.
And the FDA’s figures paint a notably more worrisome picture of the vaccine than the public July numbers. Though the absolute numbers are small, overall deaths were 24 percent higher among vaccine recipients.
The update also shows that 19 vaccine recipients died between November and March, compared to 13 placebo recipients – a difference of almost 50 percent.
Were the extra deaths cardiac-related? It is impossible to know. The FDA did not report any additional details of the deaths, saying only that none “were considered related to vaccination.”
But with tens of thousands of post-vaccine deaths now reported in the United States and Europe – and overall non-Covid death rates now running well above normal in many countries – a fresh look at that vague reassurance cannot happen soon enough.
Alex Berenson is a former New York Times reporter and the author of 13 novels, two non-fiction books and the Unreported Truths booklets.
November 17, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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The latest figures from the Office For National Statistics (ONS) reveal that in the past eighteen weeks, England and Wales registered 20,823 more deaths than the five-year average.
Only 11,531 of those deaths involved covid-19. It means that 9,292 deaths or 45 per cent are not linked to coronavirus.
Now if you bear in mind that covid is only listed as a cause of death if someone dies within 28 days of testing positive for the virus, it stands to reason that the real number of covid deaths is a lot less than 11,531. What’s going on then?
According to The Telegraph :
… Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, said: “I’m calling for an urgent investigation.
“If you look at where the excess is happening, it’s in conditions like ischemic heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver and diabetes, all which are potentially reversible.
“This goes beyond just looking at the raw numbers and death certificates. We need to go back and find if these deaths have any preventable causes.
“This could be the fallout from the lack of preventable care during the pandemic, and what happens downstream of that.
“We urgently need to understand what’s going wrong and an investigation of the root causes to determine those actions that can prevent further unnecessary deaths.”
Weekly figures for the week ending November 5 showed that there were 1,659 more deaths than would normally be expected at this time of year. Of those, 700 were not caused by Covid.
The UK Health Security Agency’s own data reveals that there have been thousands more deaths than the five-year average in heart failure, heart disease, circulatory conditions and diabetes since the summer. …
Heart failure and circulatory conditions. Hmm.
Waiting times for echocardiograms and other exploratory procedures have increased. I accept that this must account for some excess deaths due to heart failure and circulatory conditions, but not all of them.
What about the vaccines? Are the vaccines playing some part in the upsurge of heart problems and circulatory conditions? Is anyone asking that question this morning? The answer is of course no.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the jabs are playing no part in the excess death rate whatsoever. Maybe it’s a coincidence that we’re seeing tens of thousands more deaths than normal, in the same year that more than 110 million experimental jabs have been injected into the nation’s arms.
November 17, 2021
Posted by aletho |
War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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Australia’s government could be forced to spend tens of millions in payouts after receiving more than 10,000 compensation claims from people who suffered side effects and loss of income due to Covid-19 vaccines.
Under its no-fault indemnity scheme, eligible claimants can apply for compensation amounts between AU$5,000 (US$3,646) to AU$20,000 (US$14,585) to cover medical costs and lost wages as a result of being hospitalized after getting the shot. The scheme’s online portal is scheduled to be launched next month.
Official figures suggest, however, that over 10,000 people have already indicated their intention to make a claim since registration opened on the health department’s website in September. If each claim was approved, the government could face a bill of at least AU$50 million (US$36.46 million).
There were around 78,880 adverse events to Covid-related vaccination in Australia as of November 7, according to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which regulates national health products. The majority of side effects were minor, including headaches, nausea, and arm soreness.
Only people who experienced a moderate to significant adverse reaction that resulted in a hospital stay of at least one night are eligible for coverage under the government’s scheme. Those seeking $20,000 or less have to provide proof their claims are vaccine-related – although there has been no information as yet on exactly what evidence would be acceptable.
“Adverse events, even though they happen to a tiny proportion of people, for the people it does impact it’s really quite devastating,” Clare Eves, the head of medical negligence at injury compensation firm Shine Lawyers, told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Among the adverse reactions covered are the blood clotting disorder “thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS)” linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine and the “myocarditis and pericarditis” heart conditions associated with the Pfizer vaccine. Other reportedly accepted side effects are Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological condition, and immune thrombocytopenia (excessive bleeding due to low platelet levels).
Claims for over $20,000, including those for vaccine-related deaths, will be assessed by an independent legal panel of legal experts and compensation paid on its recommendations. Nine people have reportedly died after an adverse reaction to one of the three vaccines in the country.
Eves told the Morning Herald that her firm was representing a number of litigants over the vaccine side effects, including several who are not eligible for the scheme.
November 17, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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As scholars at leading British universities over recent decades, we witnessed the replacement of critical thinking and debate by narrative: facts are discrimination and scientific method is imperialism; truth, instead, is derived from ‘progressive’ values. This educational trend may be a major contributory factor to the ease in which society has been inculcated to the Covid ‘new normal’ of masking, testing, and repeated doses of vaccines for a disease of similar risk to severe influenza.
One doesn’t need much critical reasoning to observe the flawed logic of some vaccination enthusiasts, such as people who respond to experiencing any side effects, however debilitating, by saying “at least I know it’s working”, or, after contracting the disease despite their promised inoculation (over 90% effective, according to initial drug company claims), “I’d have been worse off without the jab.” Perhaps these attitudes have some justifiability. But, especially in light of the fact that none of the purported Covid vaccines is greater than approximately 1% effective at preventing an individual from contracting Covid in terms of absolute risk reduction, it would make more sense to take the opposite view, that the vaccine is not working as well as it should.
This week the Manchester Evening News (November 9th 2021) reported the tragic story of Neil Astle, a 59 year-old solicitor, who died from a blood clot in the brain soon after his first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. The coroner, attributing death to the injection, asserted that this was an “extremely rare” consequence, and praised the family for promoting vaccination despite their loss. His brother remarked: “I think everybody in this country should have the vaccine. I had the vaccine even after Neil died.” The wife of the deceased, whose first sign of something wrong was her husband’s severe headache, remarked that “the vaccine never even entered our minds because it was nine days after”. This appears to be a case arising from microcoagulation, whereby small clots in peripheral blood vessels gradually grow like a snowball, eventually blocking a critical artery.
Comments criticising the coroner’s and relatives’ comments, and the newspaper’s coverage, were swiftly removed. This is not the only case of a family urging others to take the vaccine that has evidently taken the life of their loved one, or after a vaccinated loved one died from Covid despite the presumed protection.
Also used for the vaccination drive are cases of unvaccinated people succumbing to COVID-19. Fifteen year-old Jorja Halliday, a healthy teenager, died on the day she was due to be vaccinated; her grieving mother urged people to get the jab as soon as possible. In a similar vein, unvaccinated Megan Blankenbiller saw the error of her ways from her death bed, convinced that the vaccine would have saved her. It is reminiscent of what Hamish Fraser, one of Britain’s most famous Catholic converts from Communism, reported in his biography Fatal Star. Fraser served as a political officer with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War and oversaw the execution by firing squad of suspected traitors who, in order to prove their loyalty to the cause, were heard shouting Communist slogans as the order to fire was called. Dedication to the cause must be demonstrated whatever the terrible consequences.
As we have observed online and in hecklers at freedom rallies, the zeal for Covid vaccines sometimes distorts into misanthropic missives against those yet to roll their sleeves up (one of us is jabbed, the other not). Some people get very angry very quickly on hearing any opposition to the universal vaccination programme. Education and professional standing are no brake on the outpouring of vitriol.
Canadian Cardiologist Sohrab Lutchmeial died in his sleep after his third injection of the vaccine. Aged 52, this sprightly hockey coach had frequently attacked ‘anti-vaxxers’ on Twitter, saying “I want to punch these people in the face” and tweeting: “For those who won’t get the shot for selfish means – whatever – I won’t cry at their funeral.” Such comments made by a vaccine sceptic would surely breach Twitter’s ‘community standards’, while any doctor wishing ill of the vaccinated would be in trouble with the professional regulator.
This social schism is unprecedented and may have been partly manufactured. According to Laura Dodsworth, whose book A State of Fear investigated how the British public was subjected to a form of psychological warfare by the Government, the Nudge Unit, formed under David Cameron’s administration, became a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A respiratory infection, elevated to the status of pandemic, was exploited to induce something akin to mass hysteria.
Fear displaces rational thought. Firing of the primitive mid-brain blocks out the perception and considered response of the cerebral grey matter. The authorities knew that a mortal threat would terrify people, reducing them to putty in the hands of modellers. Meanwhile, a divisive strategy was used to vilify the sizeable minority of dissidents as selfish and dangerous extremists. The term ‘anti-vaxxer’, rarely heard two years ago, was weaponised for abuse.
Millions have been brought round to unquestioning faith in heroic medicine and herald vaccines as ‘miracles of science’, with slavish adherence to rules and restrictions. Indeed, in their blind obedience to the cause, many appear to have been ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’, a reference to the notorious cult led by Jim Jones. We are not suggesting that vaccine enthusiasts are at the same level of delusion as those of doomsday cults, but some parallels may be drawn. If we consider Jim Jones’s community in the Guyanan jungle as a Platonic pure form of cult behaviour, we can use such an extreme manifestation for comparative purpose.
An idealistic, charismatic figure, Jones was a civil rights activist in the 1960s. He gave his son the middle name of Ghandhi. Decrying social injustice, he recruited hundreds of black Americans, as well as numerous graduates versed in radical ideology. On November 18th 1978 the cult culminated in the murder-suicide of 918 followers, most having drunk cyanide-laced Kool-Aid on Jones’s order. How was such a massacre possible?
Theodore Millon, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard, described a personality disorder featuring puritanical compulsion, whereby the world is divided into good and evil with no middle ground. With fanatical zeal, the self-declared good cannot bear to be in the company of the bad, which is why extreme cults take refuge outside normal society. Common to cults is a belief that humanity is in grave danger, and we can see this thinking in the more devout believers in climate change and Covid crises.
Research shows that contrary evidence strengthens rather than undermines the beliefs of cult followers. The more compelling the facts, the shriller the reaction to the messenger. Cultists struggle to relax, which partly explains why they depend on meditative practices. Indeed, Covid culture has shown a difference in outlooks like that between progressives and conservatives. Converts to the conservative cause from the Left, such as educationalist Katharine Birbalsingh, were initially surprised to find that their erstwhile political opponents were not the ogres that they were portrayed to be. Tammy Bruce, a gay feminist broadcaster in the USA, remarked: “Something had to explain why my left elite allies were generally miserable, angry and paranoid, while the enemy was secure, comfortable, generally happy people.” Bruce came to realise the difference between idealistic engineering and conservative realism.
Covid vaccine absolutism allows no exemptions. Refuseniks will get no sympathy, and it is troubling to see the lack of lines drawn by punitive zealots. If the Government ordered vaccination of newborn babies, if unvaccinated relatives and neighbours were sent into quarantine camps, if hospital treatment were denied to the unvaccinated, would supporters of the regime call for caution? Unlikely, because that is not how cultists behave.
We wonder whether, if and when the Covid emergency ends, the most faithful followers of Covid orthodoxy will take themselves off to a redoubt, and it will be we sceptics who will try to coax them back.
Both Professor Roger Watson and Dr. Niall McCrae are Registered Nurses.
November 16, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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Amid a surge in Covid-19 cases, Gibraltar has canceled official Christmas events and “strongly” discouraged people from hosting private gatherings for four weeks. Gibraltar’s entire eligible population is vaccinated.
The government of Gibraltar recently announced that “official Christmas parties, official receptions and similar gatherings” have been canceled, and advised the public to avoid social events and parties for the next four weeks. Outdoor spaces are recommended over indoor ones, touching and hugging is discouraged, and mask wearing is advised.
“The drastic increase in the numbers of people testing positive for Covid-19 in recent days is a stark reminder that the virus is still very prevalent in our community and that it is the responsibility of us all to take every reasonable precaution to protect ourselves and our loved ones,” Health Minister Samantha Sacramento said.
Gibraltar, a tiny British Overseas Territory sharing a land border with Spain, has seen an average of 56 Covid-19 cases per day over the last seven days, up from fewer than 10 per day in September. The rise in cases, described by the government as “exponential,” comes despite Gibraltar having the highest vaccination rate in the world.
More than 118% of Gibraltar’s population are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, with this figure stretching beyond 100% due to doses given to Spaniards who cross the border to work or visit the territory every day. Gibraltar’s entire adult population has been fully vaccinated since March, and masks are still required in shops and on public transport.
Gibraltar is currently doling out booster doses to the over-40s, healthcare workers, and other “vulnerable groups,” and administering vaccines to children aged between five and 12.
Similarly well-vaccinated countries have also reported surges in Covid-19 infections recently. In Singapore, where 94% of the eligible population have been inoculated, cases and deaths soared to record highs at the end of October, and have since subsided slightly. In Ireland, where around 92% of the adult population is fully vaccinated, cases of Covid-19 and deaths from the virus have roughly doubled since August.
November 16, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, Gibraltar |
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You’ve probably seen a handful of people on social media say that vaccine passport systems make them “feel safe.” You know and I know that these systems have nothing to do with health or safety.
Well, some authorities in Canada just admitted what you and I knew: the aim is to punish the unvaccinated.
The British Columbia Parks and Recreation department says: “Remember, the purpose of the PoV card is to incentivize residents to be vaccinated, not to control the spread of the virus.”
Then further: “This is an important shift to keep aware of for your decision-making; the province has shifted from actions that provide a COVID-safe environment to actions that provide discretionary services to the vaccinated.”
Patricia Daly, Chief Medical Health Officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, added:
“The vaccine passport requires people to be vaccinated to do certain discretionary activities such as go to restaurants, movies, gyms, not because these places are high risk. We are not actually seeing covid transmission in these settings.
It really is to create an incentive to improve our vaccination coverage…. The vaccine passport is for non-essential opportunities, and it’s really to create an incentive to get higher vaccination rates.”
So even though cities and countries with these systems in place are doing no better than countries that don’t, that isn’t the point.
The point, as I’ve said all along, is to punish those who decline the vaccines.
Bold emphasis added.
November 16, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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Just because the FDA, CDC and the Public Health Agency of Canada have found no issues with the vaccines, doesn’t mean they are safe. Here’s unassailable proof they aren’t.
We have to stop blindly trusting our trusted authorities that they are giving us good information. It isn’t warranted. We should always insist on hearing both sides of the story.
We should be extremely suspicious when not a single leading medical advocate of the vaccine is willing to debate a team of qualified scientists who disagree with the narrative.
For example, it is well known that Merck received approval from the FDA to give Vioxx to 2 year old children just 3 weeks before Merck pulled the drug for safety issues.
We’re doing it again now with our kids and this time the drug companies aren’t going to pull it even though there is compelling evidence in plain sight of everyone.

Here are three pieces of unassailable proof that the COVID vaccines are the most dangerous in history and should be immediately pulled:
- The VAERS data shows 8,456 deaths in the US (note: if you are using openvaers, be sure to “flip the switch” to show domestic only). Even using the most conservative assumptions of 223 background deaths (the highest annual death toll in VAERS history for domestic deaths), this is 8,233 “excess” deaths. Something caused those deaths. That’s a HUGE number. It’s a public health disaster. If it wasn’t the vaccine, then what did the CDC find caused all these excess deaths? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Note that I didn’t even have to multiply by the VAERS under-reporting factor (URF) of 41 (calculated via the CDC’s own methodology). There are only 226M vaccinated people. That’s a death rate from the vaccine of at least 36 deaths per million vaccinated (assuming the most conservative possible URF of 1). That’s 36 times more deadly than the deadliest vaccine in human history, a vaccine that is too unsafe to use. It has no business being on the market. Note that all reports in VAERS are validated by HHS before they are allowed to appear in VAERS. Mistakes do happen. There are at least 2 records of the 1.6M in VAERS that were gamed, one by Dr. David Gorski (who is proud of breaking Federal law to do that).
- A prominent group of neurologists with 20,000 patients has had around 2,000 patients with vaccine-related adverse reactions. In the 11 year history of the practice, they’ve never had a patient with a vaccine-related adverse reaction. While this could happen just by bad luck, the chance of it happening by “bad luck” is less than 1 in 10**100, i.e., impossible. This is a huge increase in significant neurological events that is inexplicable if the vaccines are safe. This is further evidence that the increase in the events reported in VAERS is not “stimulated reporting.” NOTE: The doctors won’t come forward publicly for fear of retribution (loss of medical license). That’s why nobody knows. With the doctors’ permission, I’m happy to disclose it to the NY Times or other allegedly reputable news source under NDA if they want to do a story on it.
- And then there is the 60-fold increase in the rates of adverse events happening in front of our eyes. Hard to explain since it never happened before the vaccines rolled out.
When I say unassailable, I mean that nobody can argue using evidence that these happened due to something other than the vaccine as the primary cause. The “using evidence” is key. People make hand-waving arguments all the time to dispute hypotheses. What matters is arguments with supporting evidence. That appears to be non-existent in all three cases.
Extra credit
And then I got this which matches what I’ve heard from others. It’s a bit hard to explain if the vaccines are safe. Check with your own neurologist if you don’t believe me.

November 16, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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WHILE the media engaged in a classic diversionary tactic – chortling over reports that former Health Secretary Matt Hancock was to write a book about how he won the Covid war – they virtually ignored perhaps the most concerning pandemic news out of Western Europe so far.
The Netherlands entered a three-week partial lockdown, the news of Austria’s lockdown for the unvaccinated was ‘officially announced’, and Germany’s health agencies began clamouring for tougher restrictions.
Segregation on so-called medical grounds is finding ever firmer footing in Europe – no doubt spurred on by its increasingly successful introduction in Australia and New Zealand even in the face of huge, impassioned protests.
This is the hyper-normalisation of medical apartheid at work, and one day soon the witless masses who permit this process to erode unchallenged the moral bedrock of their societies, will wake up to find that it was they, not their governments, who were the engineers of an all-encompassing punitive style of governance whose dystopian interventions not even the quadruple-jabbed will ultimately be able to evade.
On home soil the supposed leak of the UKHSA’s plan to abandon attempts at stopping the spread of SARS-CoV-2 ‘at all costs’ come springtime, using their exit-strategy named ‘Operation Rampdown’, should come as highly disconcerting and not optimistic news in light of the madness playing out across the Channel right now.
Quite aside from the fact that we have heard all this tosh about promised freedom numerous times before and yet here we are still stuck waist-deep in the bog of Covid-19 interventions, from what we know of the 160-page dossier so far, the scaling-back of spread-control measures is limp to the point of portentous: the real question being just what will such controls be replaced with?
The last 20 months has shown that when the State give with one hand, they use the other to put more shackles on the recipient – we, the people – and Operation Rampdown already sounds not like the Yellow Brick Road to freedom but the paving of the way for medical apartheid.
Ten-day self-isolation is supposedly to be entirely done away with: however, in all likelihood only for those vaccinated and with up-to-date boosters. Free Covid testing is supposedly to end: a move designed to impose a Macron-style financial burden on the unvaccinated, as private testing firms with ties to Government break free of the pricing limitations never enforced in the first place, and the national ‘Test and Trace’ system is purportedly to be scrapped, the billions invested set only to reveal the software’s original design-objective: universal health passports.
When Johnson talks about the ‘storm clouds gathering over Europe’ I don’t envisage the DHSC’s Covid-smoke wafting our way, I see instead scope for ‘circuit-breaker’ lockdowns for the unvaccinated; given succour via the majority of people’s inability to heed the deafening alarms currently being sounded by various neighbouring EU Governments.
At present the UK population is like an infant flat on its back, staring beguiled at a revolving cot-mobile, off which dangles the likes of Matt Hancock, dog coronavirus, and a Harry Kane international hat-trick; whilst Papa Johnson is busy disabling the home’s smoke alarms and opening all the windows in an attempt not to let Covid-19 out, but the far more noxious smoke of apartheid in.
Matt Hancock, I suggest not the working title ‘How I Won the Covid War’, but ‘How I Started the Covid War Engineered Never To Be Won’, alongside the quote from yourself, dated March 16 2020:
‘We should only use the NHS when we really need to.’
You say the war is won, Mr Hancock, yet we still can’t use the NHS. Write a book about that, why don’t you, then you’ll finally find yourself on the same page as the six million poor sods awaiting treatment.
November 16, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, European Union, Human rights, UK |
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The European Union database of suspected drug reaction reports is EudraVigilance, and they are now reporting 29,934 fatalities, and 2,804,900 injuries, following COVID-19 injections.
A Health Impact News subscriber from Europe reminded us that this database maintained at EudraVigilance is only for countries in Europe who are part of the European Union (EU), which comprises 27 countries.
The total number of countries in Europe is much higher, almost twice as many, numbering around 50. (There are some differences of opinion as to which countries are technically part of Europe.)
So as high as these numbers are, they do NOT reflect all of Europe. The actual number in Europe who are reported dead or injured following COVID-19 shots would be much higher than what we are reporting here.
The EudraVigilance database reports that through October 19, 2021 there are 29,934 deaths and 2,804,900 injuries reported following injections of four experimental COVID-19 shots:
From the total of injuries recorded, almost half of them (1,311,861) are serious injuries.
“Seriousness provides information on the suspected undesirable effect; it can be classified as ‘serious’ if it corresponds to a medical occurrence that results in death, is life-threatening, requires inpatient hospitalisation, results in another medically important condition, or prolongation of existing hospitalisation, results in persistent or significant disability or incapacity, or is a congenital anomaly/birth defect.”
A Health Impact News subscriber in Europe ran the reports for each of the four COVID-19 shots we are including here. It is a lot of work to tabulate each reaction with injuries and fatalities, since there is no place on the EudraVigilance system we have found that tabulates all the results.
Since we have started publishing this, others from Europe have also calculated the numbers and confirmed the totals.*
Here is the summary data through November 6, 2021.
Total reactions for the mRNA vaccine Tozinameran (code BNT162b2, Comirnaty) from BioNTech/ Pfizer: 14,002 deaths and 1,266,500 injuries to 06/11/2021
- 34,377 Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 196 deaths
- 37,779 Cardiac disorders incl. 2,050 deaths
- 348 Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 31 deaths
- 17,188 Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 10 deaths
- 1,129 Endocrine disorders incl. 5 deaths
- 19,593 Eye disorders incl. 30 deaths
- 107,066 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 565 deaths
- 324,554 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 3,983 deaths
- 1,433 Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 74 deaths
- 13,777 Immune system disorders incl. 72 deaths
- 49,517 Infections and infestations incl. 1,517 deaths
- 18,101 Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 217 deaths
- 31,592 Investigations incl. 432 deaths
- 8,709 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 243 deaths
- 159,698 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 172 deaths
- 1,080 Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 105 deaths
- 217,201 Nervous system disorders incl. 1,500 deaths
- 1,753 Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 50 deaths
- 200 Product issues incl. 2 deaths
- 23,195 Psychiatric disorders incl. 171 deaths
- 4,438 Renal and urinary disorders incl. 221 deaths
- 40,100 Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 5 deaths
- 54,682 Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 1,568 deaths
- 59,950 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 123 deaths
- 2,583 Social circumstances incl. 19 deaths
- 3,002 Surgical and medical procedures incl. 40 deaths
- 33,455 Vascular disorders incl. 601 deaths
Total reactions for the mRNA vaccine mRNA-1273(CX-024414) from Moderna: 8,196 deaths and 375,242 injuries to 06/11/2021
- 7,867 Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 89 deaths
- 12,009 Cardiac disorders incl. 881 deaths
- 150 Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 5 deaths
- 4,533 Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 2 deaths
- 326 Endocrine disorders incl. 3 deaths
- 5,527 Eye disorders incl. 27 deaths
- 31,082 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 317 deaths
- 101,013 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 2,904 deaths
- 612 Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 36 deaths
- 3,605 Immune system disorders incl. 14 deaths
- 13,769 Infections and infestations incl. 727 deaths
- 7,861 Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 152 deaths
- 6,833 Investigations incl. 136 deaths
- 3,556 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 195 deaths
- 45,788 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 163 deaths
- 496 Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 60 deaths
- 64,074 Nervous system disorders incl. 802 deaths
- 696 Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 7 deaths
- 71 Product issues incl. 2 deaths
- 6,817 Psychiatric disorders incl. 139 deaths
- 2,171 Renal and urinary disorders incl. 158 deaths
- 7,439 Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 7 deaths
- 16,508 Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 872 deaths
- 20,140 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 74 deaths
- 1,693 Social circumstances incl. 35 deaths
- 1,285 Surgical and medical procedures incl. 77 deaths
- 9,321 Vascular disorders incl. 312 deaths
Total reactions for the vaccine AZD1222/VAXZEVRIA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19) from Oxford/ AstraZeneca: 5,973 deaths and 1,065,560 injuries to 06/11/2021
- 12,976 Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 243 deaths
- 18,819 Cardiac disorders incl. 676 deaths
- 184 Congenital familial and genetic disorders incl. 7 deaths
- 12,521 Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 2 deaths
- 583 Endocrine disorders incl. 4 deaths
- 18,723 Eye disorders incl. 29 deaths
- 101,828 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 306 deaths
- 280,708 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 1,426 deaths
- 929 Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 57 deaths
- 4,646 Immune system disorders incl. 28 deaths
- 31,579 Infections and infestations incl. 399 deaths
- 12,147 Injury poisoning and procedural complications incl. 172 deaths
- 23,340 Investigations incl. 142 deaths
- 12,279 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 88 deaths
- 158,583 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 92 deaths
- 607 Neoplasms benign malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 21 deaths
- 220,125 Nervous system disorders incl. 937 deaths
- 504 Pregnancy puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 10 deaths
- 183 Product issues incl. 1 death
- 19,750 Psychiatric disorders incl. 58 deaths
- 4,004 Renal and urinary disorders incl. 57 deaths
- 14,909 Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 2 deaths
- 37,574 Respiratory thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 707 deaths
- 48,852 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 48 deaths
- 1,458 Social circumstances incl. 6 deaths
- 1,343 Surgical and medical procedures incl. 25 deaths
- 26,406 Vascular disorders incl. 430 deaths
Total reactions for the COVID-19 vaccine JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S) from Johnson & Johnson: 1,763 deaths and 97,598 injuries to 06/11/2021
- 936 Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 38 deaths
- 1,746 Cardiac disorders incl. 152 deaths
- 35 Congenital, familial and genetic disorders
- 964 Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 1 death
- 59 Endocrine disorders incl. 1 death
- 1,290 Eye disorders incl. 6 deaths
- 8,253 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 73 deaths
- 25,729 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 469 deaths
- 118 Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 11 deaths
- 416 Immune system disorders incl. 9 deaths
- 3,906 Infections and infestations incl. 137 deaths
- 879 Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 18 deaths
- 4,611 Investigations incl. 99 deaths
- 591 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 44 deaths
- 14,470 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 42 deaths
- 52 Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 3 deaths
- 19,444 Nervous system disorders incl. 191 deaths
- 38 Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 1 death
- 25 Product issues
- 1,324 Psychiatric disorders incl. 16 deaths
- 383 Renal and urinary disorders incl. 21 deaths
- 1,928 Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 6 deaths
- 3,444 Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 225 deaths
- 2,962 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 7 deaths
- 303 Social circumstances incl. 4 deaths
- 666 Surgical and medical procedures incl. 53 deaths
- 3,026 Vascular disorders incl. 136 deaths

*These totals are estimates based on reports submitted to EudraVigilance. Totals may be much higher based on percentage of adverse reactions that are reported. Some of these reports may also be reported to the individual country’s adverse reaction databases, such as the U.S. VAERS database and the UK Yellow Card system. The fatalities are grouped by symptoms, and some fatalities may have resulted from multiple symptoms.
November 15, 2021
Posted by aletho |
War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, European Union |
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AS an NHS hospital doctor, I have had a front-row seat as the drama of the coronavirus pandemic has unfolded. It has been a year and a half of confusion, frustration and anger for me as I’ve watched our profession drawn into complicity with what I anticipate will be regarded as one of the most egregious public health disasters in history.
I have watched as ‘the science’ has been presented on the national stage flanked by Union Jack flags as an unassailable truth. For something so apparently inviolable, it seems to shift and change disconcertingly from week to week, and for those of us looking beneath the pomp to the plain data, we see the rather unexciting (and unchanging) truth: the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, as it turns out, has a much lower infection fatality rate than early predictions. It is less deadly than the seasonal flu in children. The Office for National Statistics has reported the mean age of a Covid-attributed death in the UK to be 80.3 years, slightly older than deaths from other causes (78.2 years over the comparable time period).
What has been most upsetting for me has been the unquestioning compliance from the medical community as increasingly draconian, non-evidence-based and destructive virus control measures have been implemented. Some of the overt corruption, financial conflict of interests and politicisation has been laid bare in editorials in prominent medical journals such as the BMJ. But the vast majority of doctors have had no interest in asking questions or looking further.
My concern over our professional passivity turned to alarm as our compliance required us to support the roll-out of an experimental vaccine to a trusting population.
Contrary to the basic tenets of evidence-based medicine, pronouncing an experimental medical intervention ‘safe and effective’ now does not seem to require any peer-reviewed evidence of safety or clinically meaningful efficacy. The vaccines have not been shown in clinical trials to reduce transmission, hospitalisation or death. The phase 3 trials are not over and the safety data is not complete; the earliest trials will run into 2023.
The consent form for the Covid-19 vaccine does not disclose its status as an unlicensed experimental product. The risks remain largely unknown, although it is becoming clear that the vaccine has resulted in death or injury in a rising number of healthy people. A growing number of vaccine-induced syndromes are being recognised, including immune thrombotic thrombocytopaenia, myocarditis and menstrual irregularities, among many others being published in the literature. At the time of writing, there have been more than 380,000 reports, 1.2million injuries and 1,700 fatalities submitted under the MHRA Yellow Card scheme.
The Prime Minister himself has communicated the latest evidence, that two doses of the vaccine do not stop one contracting the virus, nor do they stop person-to-person transmission, they merely reduce the severity of symptoms. Despite this, it is clear the public are being subjected to a relentless media campaign of shame and coercion, that they must take this experimental product ‘for the greater good’ lest they be viewed as selfish cowards. A vaccine passport is now likely to be rolled out under ‘Plan B’, which proposes to return unlawfully usurped fundamental human rights and freedoms to only the vaccinated. Workers in the care home sector have had their livelihoods tethered to their compliance with the vaccine mandates, and a recent announcement confirms that this will soon include NHS employees. Not only is there no scientific basis for these mandates, these coercive actions breach the Nuremberg Code, as does the unprecedented lack of animal safety data for a novel medical product. A betrayal of the Nuremberg Code constitutes a crime against humanity.
It does not end there. The campaign marches on, and now includes the vaccination of children against a disease that has a statistically negligible chance of harming them. In the world of evidence-based medicine we doctors must weigh risks and benefits, we must ensure the risk of harm is far exceeded by the potential for protection or cure. In this case, with no real risk to healthy children from the infection, any harm is utterly unjustifiable. And the risk of harm is very real and measurable. Vaccine-related myocarditis is now a recognised injury, the risk inversely proportionate to age. Although rare, myocarditis can be fatal, and fatality is more common in the younger population. For reasons that have nothing to do with health, and despite the JCVI advisory board concluding that the health benefits do not outweigh the risks to children, the government is advising that we administer a medicine that carries a risk of serious injury to children who are healthy and who have no significant risk from the disease it purports to protect them against.
Despite all this, and despite our training to look at scientific literature and data with a critical eye, the silence from the medical community in the UK has been deafening. Yet we are the ones who should be shouting all of this from the rooftops. This is a duty of care and an oath we have forgotten.
It is typically those of us most conditioned by the expectations of society, utterly obedient and deferent to authority, who gain entry to medicine. One can see the path: we were good, compliant children and then good, compliant students. Now we are good, compliant doctors. I’m beginning to understand that goodness is measured in a different way, and obedience is not a virtue.
Obedience is learned through fear, threat and intimidation; it is in fact trauma programming and achieved through small control gestures when we were young and helpless. Now we are adults but still operating under these childhood programmes of beliefs and fears. We still feel helpless and beholden to a higher authority. We still submit to an authoritative decree even when it overrides our inherent moral compass.
The horrors of the classic Milgram experiment demonstrated that we live in a deeply traumatised culture, and the same conditioning, in my view, has shaped the medical community and its silence.
Even on the occasion when my counter-narrative evidence cannot be denied by a colleague, the usual response is: ‘It’s coming from the government; our hands are tied.’ But the truth is that most of the time doctors don’t want to see the evidence; their subconscious has prevented them seeing that the parent-like authorities of government, Sage and the MHRA, upon which we project a childlike trust, might be misguided, corrupted or dishonest.
And so we comment to each other on all the changes we are witnessing months into the vaccine roll-out: the unseasonal surge in hospital admissions, the post-jab autoimmune conditions and coagulation disorders, the numbers of ‘double-jabbed’ patients admitted with severe Covid infection, the numbers of lives ruined by lockdown and other Covid control policies. I challenge any doctor to deny that all of this simply feels wrong. To avoid this uncomfortable, authentic, human feeling – important information that should be acted upon – we will reach for something rote. ‘Anecdote is not evidence’ and ‘association is not causation’ will be the justification for carrying on, no questions asked, even though most of the damaging control measures implemented from on high were not based on any evidence at all. Meanwhile, an already struggling NHS has been damaged beyond repair by many of these policies. We are overwhelmed by the demand that we cannot meet, and the complexity of the crisis feels far beyond just one hospital Trust. The locus of responsibility to investigate remains above us and we wait for someone with more authority to come round and make sense of it.
And as we remain silent, the destruction continues.
Most of us went into medicine for the right reasons: to help the vulnerable, to reduce suffering. I know my colleagues are kind and well-intentioned and that their faith in our unelected public health policymakers is the result of a lifetime of conditioning. For those of us who have looked at the data and see the truth, I understand the fear: the risk of non-conformity is immense; careers, reputations and livelihoods are at stake. I recognise an even larger threat: a threat to our chosen profession, our life purpose, the possibility that we have been following a false god in our honest intentions to help the ill. We are at a difficult crossroads, but the choice for me is clear.
Although I am not on the front line in the ‘fight’ against coronavirus, and have had nothing to do with the vaccine campaign, I feel complicit in this public deception. I can no longer hide within a system that has proved itself to be weak-willed and unwilling to stand against the irrevocable erosion of inalienable human rights and freedoms in the name of public health safety. It is past the time for us to grow up, stand up and speak out.
November 15, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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It’s all about liability. It will magically become available when the vaccine for children is fully approved, not before.
The reason Comirnaty isn’t available is because those shots would expose the company to liability since the fully-licensed product doesn’t have the liability waiver of the EUA product.
But once the Pfizer vaccine is fully approved in kids, then Pfizer gets liability waiver on all age groups due to a “feature” in federal law for child vaccines (NCVIA). At that time, they are done. They can market the COVID vaccine products under full approval for all age groups and face no liability when it kills or disables you.
This is why they are focused on the kids. This is why there is a reformulation at a 1/3 dose and they changed the buffer and the storage conditions (low temperatures not required). All of these will weaken the protection, but result in a safer vaccine (since it is ineffective).
But for the clinical trials on the 5-11 year olds, they did not use the formulation they approved in the meeting. This is known as bait and switch. So they used a more effective vaccine to show efficacy (in the trials they completed), then they get the FDA to approve the drug but with a change in formulation, then the product with the new buffer will go out to the public with the lower efficacy, but better safety. This is because they don’t want to jeopardize any adverse events happening until they are fully approved. So they basically use formula 1 for safety, get approval for formula 2 (safer, less effective), then roll out formula 2 under EUA.
They also arrange with the FDA and CDC to make sure no early treatment drugs get approved or recommended. This is why there is no movement on fluvoxamine, ivermectin, etc. since that would blow the EUA. Fluvoxamine is the best drug ever for COVID with a mortality reduction of 12X when taken early. It’s the best drug to date for COVID, but the CDC and NIH are deliberately burying it until the vaccines are fully approved. Then they’ll say, “ok, we have all the data.”
So at the end, Pfizer gets a fully approved vaccine with full liability protection. At that time, then the NIH can recognize other treatments.
This is how it is wired to go. Let’s be honest about it.
This is why nobody wants to debate our team about what is going on.
November 15, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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The Daily Sceptic has for some time been reporting on the apparent negative vaccine effectiveness visible in raw U.K. health data. Despite some age ranges now showing that the vaccinated are more than twice as likely to get Covid as the unvaccinated, this is routinely adjusted out, leading UKHSA to un-intuitively claim that the vaccines are still highly effective even against symptomatic disease. A recent post by new contributor Amaneunsis explains the Test Negative Case Control approach (TNCC) used by authorities and researchers to adjust the data, and demonstrates that while a theoretically powerful way to remove some possible confounders, it rests on an initially reasonable-sounding assumption that vaccines don’t make your susceptibility to infection worse:
A situation where this assumption may be violated is the presence of viral interference, where vaccinated individuals may be more likely to be infected by alternative pathogens.
Chua et al, Epidemiology, 2020
Amanuensis then compares results between the two different statistical approaches in a Qatari study to explore whether violation of this assumption is a realistic possibility and concludes that the multi-variate logistic regression found in their appendix supports the idea that viral interference can start happening a few months after initial vaccination.
What other angles can we explore this idea through? One way is to read the literature on prior epidemics.
H1N1
Between 2009-2010 there was a pandemic of H1N1 influenza, better known as Swine Flu. In April 2009 a small outbreak was detected in northern British Columbia. Researchers from Canada’s public health agencies researched the outbreak by doing interviews, testing and sero-surveys of the affected population. They were especially interested in the question of how effectively the routine trivalent influenza vaccine (TIV) was protecting people against H1N1.
The effect they saw was unexpected and previously unknown: people who had taken the flu vaccine had a more than doubled chance of getting sick with flu during the H1N1 outbreak:
We present the first observation of an unexpected association between prior seasonal influenza vaccination and pH1N1 illness … participants reporting pH1N1-related ILI during the period 1 April through 5 June 2009 were more than twice as likely to report having previously received seasonal influenza vaccine.
Janjua et al, Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2010
This result was shocking to the researchers. They were well aware of the impact these results could have on public support for the influenza vaccine programme and thus they didn’t merely double check their results, or request another team replicate their findings. They waited a year and a half, until six different investigations were all saying the same thing:
Canadian investigators thus embarked on a series of confirmatory studies… these showed 1.4–2.5- fold increased risk of medically attended, laboratory-confirmed pH1N1 illness among prior 2008–2009 TIV recipients… 6 observational studies based on different methods and settings, including the current outbreak investigation, consistently showed increased risk of pH1N1 illness during the spring and summer of 2009 associated with prior receipt of the 2008–2009 TIV
After the sixth study they seem to have accepted that the effect they were seeing was real.
One reason for their hesitation was that studies reported in other countries were inconclusive. Some suggested protective effects; nearly as many suggested no effect at all, and one other report showed increased risk. However, there was a very real risk of the so-called ‘file drawer’ problem, where inconvenient research simply doesn’t get published at all, and the Canadians had by this point made an enormous effort to make the conclusions go away via further research. The follow-up investigations left them with a high degree of confidence in what they were seeing, thus they explained contradictory foreign studies as being likely a result of either Canada-specific factors or flawed studies:
Findings of pH1N1 risk associated with TIV – consistent in Canada but conflicting elsewhere – may have been due to methodological differences and/or unrecognised flaws, differences in immunisation programs or population immunity, or a specific mechanistic effect of Canadian TIV. High rates of immunisation and the use of a single domestic manufacturer to supply >75% of the TIV in Canada may have enhanced the power within Canada to detect a vaccine-specific effect.
Quality analysis
How robust is this research? This is an epidemiological study and by now it’s worth being extremely sceptical of such papers, even if they run counter-narrative. Surprisingly, this paper seems quite good. It’s not written by epidemiologists and bears little resemblence to the sort of modelling papers that now dominate policy making. In particular, it:
- Makes no predictions, only studies past events to learn from them.
- Puts actual boots on the ground to gather the data they need.
- Correlates self-reported symptoms with a sero-survey.
- Makes restrained use of statistical methods (the primary results are a standard logistic regression).
- Controls for age, chronic conditions, Aboriginal status and household density, a selection which looks reasonable (the epidemic affected an Aboriginal reserve and they differ from the normal Canadian population health wise in several aspects).
- Stratifies by age. Note that Swine Flu was the opposite of COVID: it affected the young worse than the elderly.
- Honestly discusses the weaknesses of their study, which are primarily due to the small size of the epidemic rather than anything they could have addressed.
If there are errors in this work they are of a type that aren’t easily spotted by outsiders. Although we should give a tip of the hat to this team, after reading so many absurd public health papers over the past two years it’s nonetheless hard to escape the feeling that when researchers are about to violate some tenet of vaccine dogma they suddenly become model scientists, presumably in the hope that by applying higher standards they’ll find a reason why their results are wrong.
Other investigations
In 2018 Rikin et al published a study in the journal Vaccine designed to solve “the misperception that inactivated vaccine can cause influenza” which was acting as “a barrier to influenza vaccination“. They concluded that the folk intuition they were fighting wasn’t actually wrong in any meaningful way, due to the presence of viral interference:
Among children there was an increase in the hazard of [acute respiratory illness] caused by non-influenza respiratory pathogens post-influenza vaccination compared to unvaccinated children during the same period. Potential mechanisms for this association warrant further investigation. Future research could investigate whether medical decision-making surrounding influenza vaccination may be improved by acknowledging patient experiences, counseling regarding different types of ARI, and correcting the misperception that all ARI occurring after vaccination are caused by influenza.
Rikin et al, Vaccine, 2018
Although the paper claims that the mechanisms warrant further investigation, in reality at least one mechanism had been hypothesised as far back as 1960. In a seminal paper Thomas Francis Jr. coined the term “original antigen sin” to describe the way the immune system appears to prefer re-manufacturing antibodies for antigens similar to those it’s seen before, versus developing new antibodies customised for a slightly different invader. The odd name may be due to Francis Jr. having a Presbyterian priest as a father, thus OAS is sometimes summarised as “the first flu is forever”. This imprinting process can cause the immune system to misfire when challenged with a similar but different virus.
Some evidence for this comes from a 2017 review paper in the Journal of Infectious Diseases titled “The Doctrine of Original Antigenic Sin”, which stated:
Approximately 40 years ago, it was observed that sequential influenza vaccination might lead to reduced vaccine effectiveness (VE). This conclusion was largely dismissed after an experimental study involving sequential administration of then-standard influenza vaccines. Recent observations have provided convincing evidence that reduced VE after sequential influenza vaccination is a real phenomenon.
Monto et al, Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2017
Amusingly, the paper also states that, “Hoskins et al concluded at that time that prior infection is more effective than vaccination in preventing subsequent infection, an observation that remains undisputed.” How times change.
Speculating for a moment, viral interference might explain why despite influenza vaccines being advertised as having positive efficacy multiple studies have failed to find any impact on mortality at the population level (effectiveness). For example, in 2004 a U.S. government study concluded that they “could not correlate increasing vaccination coverage after 1980 with declining mortality rates in any age group” and “observational studies substantially overestimate vaccination benefit”. This is difficult to reconcile with trials and studies showing efficacy at sizes smaller than overall population, but could be explained if vaccines merely redirect immune resources towards one pathogen away from equally dangerous variants. The same phenomenon was found in Italy.
There are also counter-studies. By 2018 awareness was growing of the problem of viral interference and the impact it can have on TNCC effectiveness metrics. In 2020 Wolff published a study of flu outbreaks in the U.S. military. It opens by confirming the problem highlighted by Amanuensis:
The virus interference phenomenon goes against the basic assumption of the test-negative vaccine effectiveness study that vaccination does not change the risk of infection with other respiratory illness, thus potentially biasing vaccine effectiveness results in the positive direction.
Wolff, Vaccine, 2020
This time “receipt of influenza vaccination was not associated with virus interference among our population”. However the results of this study are rather contradictory and confusing, e.g. it also says “Examining non-influenza viruses specifically, the odds of both coronavirus and human metapneumovirus in vaccinated individuals were significantly higher when compared to unvaccinated individuals (OR = 1.36 and 1.51, respectively)”. Overall, Wolff seems to have found a mixed bag of effects in which the vaccines worked against influenza, but made some other viruses easier to catch and still others harder.
Analysis
Despite the institutional pedigree of the Canadian public health researchers reporting the problem, other researchers have struggled to accept it. They are subject to the same systematic social conditioning as everyone else, which is why the HSA’s explanation of why they use the TNCC methodology starts by simply saying “vaccines work”, even though their raw data actually shows the exact opposite – for the original definition of “work”, at least.
As a consequence researchers sometimes hide this problem when it arises by deleting negative effectiveness from data sets or models. Recently UCL modellers responded to the changing UK data by simply imposing a zero lower bound. No justification was given for this, and as the above papers show, presumably no literature survey was done to sanity-check this “fix”. The Qatari study initially also did this, and thus their key results (see table 2) vary wildly between initial and final versions. Fortunately, they realised that this was not scientific and changed their approach before publication.
The problem seems to go like this: everyone knows vaccines work, thus data showing they don’t must be in error and in need of fixing. Different adjustments are tried for confounders (sometimes real, sometimes hypothetical) until the data comes good, at which point the results are published and the idea that vaccines work is reinforced, leading to a greater propensity to view opposing data as flawed and in need of correction… ad infinitum.
The raw data now departs so seriously from the conclusions drawn from it that it would require a staggeringly huge behavioural change between the two camps to explain, one which stretches credulity past breaking point. The argument that the data requires adjustment/replacement due to speculated behavioural differences has another problem: that’s a sword that cuts in both directions. UKHSA is keen to stress that its raw data shows some effectiveness against hospitalisation. But that data is hopelessly confounded at this point by the fact that vaccine recipients are being told, in no uncertain terms, that while they might well get sick with Covid after taking it, the vaccine means their case won’t be “severe” and they definitely won’t need to go to hospital. “Severe” is a vague standard. Because Covid has a wide range of severities there will be many borderline cases where going to hospital is effectively a choice that could go either way.
Opinion polling shows consistently that governments and media have catastrophically failed to educate the population about Covid correctly: people routinely estimate that the unvaccinated infection:fatality ratio is orders of magnitude higher than it really is. In a recent French survey the population estimated the IFR at an astounding 16% (the true level is closer to 0.1%-0.3%) and their understanding of severity has got worse over time. If you previously believed that you had a 16% chance of dying if you got Covid, you were very likely to rush to hospital immediately on presentation of more or less any Covid-like symptoms. If you now believe that the vaccine reduces this risk to negligible levels then you’re very unlikely to bother unless you become quite seriously sick indeed, because to do so would effectively be a repudiation of the advice of government, scientific and medical authority. And if there’s one behavioural difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated that is more plausible than any other, it’s that the vaccinated are self-selecting for strong faith in scientific claims by authority figures. I’ve not yet seen any recognition by public health that this confounder exists – they are literally telling people what to do, and then declaring victory when people do it. If hospitalisation was 100% a force of nature that involved no element free will this wouldn’t matter, but the 50% drop in A&E admissions at the start of lockdown showed quite clearly that it’s not.
Conclusions
Negative effectiveness is important because if a vaccine halves your risk of getting one virus but doubles your risk of getting a closely related virus, you can end up back at square one. In fact, you’d end up in a worse position than when you started because vaccination programmes aren’t free: they consume enormous resources, both financially and in terms of public health staffing, and cause collateral damage via vaccine injuries (hence why vaccine manufacturers refuse to accept liability for harm caused by their products). It’s therefore of critical importance to understand the gestalt effect of vaccination on the immune system, and not merely on the specific variant of a virus that was originally targeted.
The fact that papers published as recently as 2018 are talking about negative vaccine effectiveness as a new, not really understood effect should give governments serious pause for thought. Most people in public health are clearly unfamiliar with this phenomenon – as indeed we all are – and are thus tempted to either ignore it, delete it from their data, or try to convince the public that it must be a statistical artefact and anyone talking about it is guilty of spreading “misinformation”. The reports in these papers provide recent evidence that vaccines making epidemics worse is in fact a real phenomenon and that it has been previously detected by serious researchers who took every effort to avoid that conclusion.
Nonetheless, despite my harsh words about IFR education above, we must acknowledge that the UKHSA is so far standing by the basic moral and foundational principles of public statistics. Their answer to the confounders and denominators debate is clearly written, straightforward, reasonable and ends by saying:
We believe that transparency – coupled with explanation – remains the best way to deal with misinformation.
That’s absolutely true. The deep exploration of obscure but important topics by independent parties is possible in the U.K. largely because the HSA is not only publishing statistics in both raw and processed forms, but has continued to do so even in the face of pressure tactics from organisations like Full Fact and the so-called Office for Statistical Regulation (whose contribution to these matters has so far been quite worthless). England is one of the very few countries in the world in which this level of conversation is possible, as most public health agencies have long ago decided not to trust the population with raw data in useful form. While the outcomes may or may not be “increasing vaccine confidence in this country and worldwide”, as the HSA goes on to say, there are actually things more important than vaccines that people need confidence in – like government and society itself. Trustworthy and rigorously debated government statistics are a fundamental pillar on which democratic legitimacy and thus social stability rests. Other parts of the world should learn from the British government’s example.
Many questions now lie open:
- To what extent does negative effectiveness require viruses to be different? For example, is the difference between H1N1 and the flu strains targeted by the Canadian TIV bigger, smaller or the same as the gap between COVID Alpha and COVID Delta, as perceived by the immune system?
- Although highly suggestive, is this genuinely happening with COVID vaccines, or is raw negative effectiveness due to something else, e.g. a temporal artefact caused by splitting waves into two overlapping waves as effectiveness wears off, or indeed, due to lack of adjustments for factors that TNCC fixes even though it may introduce other problems?
- Should this cause health authorities to abandon TNCC as a methodology, despite its speed and cost advantages?
The fact that TNCC can artificially make vaccines appear more effective than they really are, and that this would actually have happened during the Swine Flu pandemic, should really be addressed at the highest levels before anyone uses terms like “misinformation” again.
Mike Hearn is a software engineer who between 2006-2014 worked at Google in roles involving data analysis.
November 15, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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