Is it ok to ask about the ramping up of vaccine side effects stories?

[SparklingJam]

I’m generally pro vaccines, but I’m starting to question the effects of the covid jab, and wonder if it’s possible to have a discussion about it. Apologies if this has been done to death, or isn’t an accepted topic.

I’ve been seeing more information about deaths of young men, how the vaccine isn’t very effective against covid, and hearing all about dreadful side effects, to the point where some people won’t have the jab because they “know” they’ll die.

I can fully accept that there are side effects, but the talk of increased deaths (apparently 1300 excess deaths per week, coupled with videos of supposed undertakers saying they are 50-100% busier now) is making me question things and worry.

Having said that, in my extended circle of friends, family and colleagues, I know many people who are mostly vaccinated, and apart from a day or 5 of feeling fluey they all have no side effects and haven’t died.
At the same time through the same extended group, I know a couple who have died of covid and several who still have long covid which has disabled them to varying degrees.

It would be logical to think that the excess deaths are a catch up to lock down and lack of hospital treatment, plus the current issues many have with seeing a gp or calling an ambulance, but I am assured by certain people that the excess deaths are solely due to the vaccine.

@Samarie123

As always, that's complete nonsese and you have no evidence to back up your claim, because it doesn't exist.

I have seen Pfizer's post-authorization data - it was reassuring. They must be some of some of the most scruitinised documents, not sure why you think you can see something thousands of experts missed.

They have been doing since the vaccines were developed @EmEllGee - repeated fake claims with no evidence whatsoever to back them up. mi

It's repetitive too - these same claims must have been made dozens of times over, and they've been linked plenty of info and have posters give proper explanations as to their origins/why they're untrue etc, but nothing sticks.

Given that health misinformation causes real harm and costs lives - and that there seems to be a real focus on scaring pregnant women on here - it's frustrating not much is done about it.

@EmEllGee

As far as I can see vaccine scepticism is generally down to 1) psychological reactance (those who react against rules that they feel threaten their freedom) - which is often then linked to 2) an individualistic or hierarchical world view.

you genuinely can only see those 2 options? how about - 3) a personal experience with grave vaccine injuries and/or death? your analysis of "vaccine skepticism" is extremely reductive and misinformed.

When Pfizer released it's data it was shown that the vaccine caused over 1,200 diseases. So while it may have been ok against covid (which is isn't as the vaccinated keep getting it} It seems to be causing more harm in other ways.

This is just more rubbish that keeps circulating in the anti-vaccine fever swamps.

Anti-vaxxers misrepresent Pfizer report to say 1200 died in the first months of rollout

WHAT WAS CLAIMED

There were more than 1,200 vaccine-related deaths in the first 90 days of the Pfizer rollout.

OUR VERDICT

False: The claim that the deaths were caused by the vaccine misrepresents what the published data on adverse events actually means.

Australian social media accounts are sharing an online article that claims Pfizer’s own reporting shows there were more than 1200 vaccine-related deaths in the first three months of its COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

But the claim follows a familiar anti-vaccine pattern of using adverse events reports, which cannot be directly attributed to receiving the vaccine, to misrepresent the data, according to experts who spoke to AAP FactCheck.

On March 9, the Facebook account for Australian Free Independent Press Network (AFIPN) posted a link to an article hosted on its website by an author called John Napper. The article was headlined, “Pfizer, stranger than fiction”. The article discusses documents a US court ordered the US Food and Drug Administration to release following a Freedom of Information Act request by the group Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency.

The article says the first trove of documents revealed that “over 1200 vaccine related deaths occurred within the first 90 days of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine rollout”. That number is in a Pfizer report that analyses data on adverse events reported during the first three months of the Pfizer rollout, up to February 28, 2021.

Table 1 (page 7) of the report records 1223 fatalities reported as adverse events during that period. While there is fresh impetus among anti-vaccine groups following the release of the Pfizer documents, such as here, claims about the 1223 figure were first fact-checked in December 2021 following the initial release of documents by the FDA, such as here and here. Those checks point out that nowhere in the Pfizer report does it say the 1223 deaths were linked to the vaccine.

Jacques Raubenheimer a senior research fellow in biostatistics at University of Sydney who has written on vaccine misinformation and data misinterpretation, makes the same point. He told AAP FactCheck it was important to heed the report’s warning that an accumulation of adverse event reports did not necessarily indicate that a particular adverse event was caused by the drug.

“If we have, as a most conservative estimate, 10 million doses and we have reports from 42,086 cases, then that gives us 0.4 per cent of doses leading to reports, and when we further consider that most of those were not serious, then we suddenly realise that, far from sounding the alarm, this document shows the opposite,” Dr Raubenheimer said in an email.

Professor Nigel McMillan, the director of the Infectious Diseases and Immunology Program at Griffith University Queensland, said the claim of 1223 deaths related to the vaccine’s first three month rollout was a common misuse of information.

Here's another debunking of this batshittery from AFP.

Articles inaccurately claim document reveals Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine deaths

@peppathe3rd

Because even if - anecdotally - I knew someone that had been harmed, I’d use some critical thinking and realise that it’s a very, very rare occurrence - and I wouldn’t then try to sway people with highly controversial or discredited fringe pseudoscience. What you are doing IS harmful. And very, very misinformed.

In my social circle side effects don’t seem to be very rare. I know one lady who died from blood clot after her first covid jab, one girl (13 at the time) who developed head tremors after her first jab, one colleague hospitalised for months with CIDP after her second jab (and was told that numbers of similar cases have skyrocketed), many people with severe headaches, vomiting etc after their jabs, and I only know of one person (in my wide social circle) who died of “covid complications” at the start of the pandemic at a time when they were not sure how to treat it. He was ventilated and developed a lung infection.

...who died of “covid complications” at the start of the pandemic at a time when they were not sure how to treat it. He was ventilated and developed a lung infection.

It's a complete revision of history to suggest that people haven't died of COVID, or that the only reason they died is becaue they were put on a ventilator, and otherwise they would've been just fine.

If you require ventilation in ICU, you are very very sick, and prognosis is poor. It's a perfect example of selection bias.

@BirdsAndButterflies

From my social circle, workplace, from their social circles I do not know of one person who has had a side effect. Not one - other than an achey arm.

That is precisely why you cannot rely on anecdotal evidence - and why you need to look at the stats globally.

And if your social circle consists of other who have a tendency to believe misinformation, then it’s clearly not a reliable source.

Yes, it's a classic case of when all else fails, bring out the anecdata and talk about what happened to aunt Mary's hairdresser. I think that when people tell stories of loads of people they know personally who have had severe adverse reactions to the vaccine, it's pure fabrication. Statistically, it's like the lot of them claiming they've been hit by a meteor. In the US we have a million people dead from covid and 300 or so still dying every day. The idea that they are dying from medical malpractice is wildly insulting to HCPs and beyond ridiculous.

@BirdsAndButterflies
Unfortunately, they aren't rare in my circle either. Our next door neighbour had a debilitating stroke the day after his first jab, my close friend's 17 year old cousin developed vaccine induced myocarditis and will no longer be able to play sports - he was on track to becoming an athlete in college, my husband's best friend's father passed away from a brain clot after the 2nd shot and the family attributes it to vaccine damage, my father's partner went blind for several months following her 1st shot, my mother's close friend had a stroke then heart attack following his 3rd shot (but thankfully survived), and i am limiting this account to my immediate circle.

@MissConductUS

And in addition, takes no account of the fact that Aunt Mary’s hairdresser could be attributing any ailment to the vaccine without an official diagnosis by a medical professional.

Yet this is more believable than the advice given by the most highly qualified professors globally who have spent decades studying their field of expertise in great depth.

Well like I say @peppathe3rd - it’s lucky medicine doesn’t rely on anecdotal evidence from random people on social media who are not experts/prone to misinformation from dodgy videos on far right hosting platforms.

We have absolutely no idea if you are making that all up, or whether your hunch is confirmed by a medical professional.

And in my social circle - I’ll say it again - not ONE person has had a bad reaction. However I know many who have died or had their health compromised due to Covid.

@EmEllGee
What strikes me most about your posts and others that share your position regarding the vaccine is your complete lack of empathy. Yesterday, someone wrote that they were suffering from the aftermath of the vaccine they had taken that day, and not one of you replied to them. Where is your humanity?

@peppathe3rd

and what strikes me is your COMPLETE lack of empathy and understanding for the millions globally who have lost their lives to Covid or had their health/livelihoods severely compromised due to Covid. And why on Earth you would try to persuade others to make extremely poor decisions with harmful misinformation and anecdotal hunches.

Where is YOUR humanity???

the humanity.
the horror.
will no one think of the children.

@EmEllGee
I, unlike you it seems, am capable of having empathy for more than 1 thing at the same time. Of course I empathise with all the Covid deaths and complications- how couldn't I? You make bold presumptions without knowing the first thing about me. I see no point in further communications with you. Hopefully, this will be the last.

You know who see people with vaccine induced injuries and illnesses? Doctors.

And this is anecdata, I know, but my mother's a doctor, my father is a professor (science-related), my sister's an epidemiologist, my brother's a doctor. In other words, I've known and been surrounded by lots of medical professionals in my life. And they're all vaccinated. Their families are all vaccinated.

They read (and, crucially, understand) the research, they see the patients and still, they overwhelmingly prefer the odds of vaccination for themselves and their loved ones.

I didn’t suggest it was medical malpractice. It’s common unfortunately for ventilated patients to develop lung infections.

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00134-020-05980-0

And you can think what you like, and that’s very much a symptom of denial, but every person I know who has had a severe reaction really really has. You are happy to believe that one of my friends died from covid but not that one died from a blood clot after her vaccine?
Cherry pick what you wish to believe. I hope you never have to experience the deaths of friends and/or family from either.

Let's look at some actual evidence.

Blood Clotting, COVID-19 and Vaccines

Do COVID-19 vaccines cause blood clots?

The Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccines have not been shown to increase the risk of blood clots in multiple studies. However, two COVID-19 vaccines are associated with an extremely rare syndrome known as vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT). It was discovered in March 2021 in connection to the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and then later with the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. In rare cases—2 to 20 per million—antibodies that the body produces as a side effect of the vaccine lead to uncontrolled activation of platelets. This causes both low platelet counts and blood clots to form.

The occurrence of this rare antibody is a random event without a known association with a person’s medical history or any particular conditions.
“There’s no way to predict who’s likely to develop the rare antibody that triggers VITT,” Abou-Ismail says. “While it is a little more common in younger women compared to other populations, it remains exceedingly rare even in that group.”

If deciding whether a COVID-19 vaccine is worth the risk, Abou-Ismail tells his patients that ”mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are safe in patients with a history of blood clots or increased risk factors. The risk of developing a blood clot from COVID-19 infection is far higher than getting a blood clot from a COVID-19 vaccine.”

In fact, he stresses that having a history of a blood clot is even more reason to get vaccinated because these patients are more likely to get a potentially life-threatening blood clot from COVID-19 infection itself. It is in no means a reason to avoid vaccination with an mRNA vaccine.

So no risk from the mRNA vaccines, and an incidence of 0.0002% to 0.002% with the older, phased-out vaccines. Yes, I am skeptical.

Yes, this. DD2 was doing a research Masters in infectious diseases during peak Covid, working in labs at a world-leading, London-based, post-grad-only university. Everyone from the professors through the students to the janitors had had vaccinations because they all understood that the risk posed by Covid was so exponentially higher than the risk posed by vaccination damage.

That's not to deny the possibility of vaccination damage, clearly it does occur.

But the data shows what the data shows in terms of relative risk. People researching in precisely this field almost unilaterally (you will always get the odd outsider) favour the vaccination.

What strikes me most about your posts and others that share your position regarding the vaccine is your complete lack of empathy. Yesterday, someone wrote that they were suffering from the aftermath of the vaccine they had taken that day

The "aftermath"? @peppathe3rd

Your agenda is showing.

Someone very casually posted that they had a headache, and their partner had a fever. These have to be some of the most common side effects of vaccination (not just SARS-COV-2), that affect billions of people. They're perfectly normal symptoms of the immune system being activated.

I personally won't reply to every post I see on MN, and presumably other people won't either. I might've done if the poster was really worried or asking a question, but they weren't.

Then why did you say they died of "COVID complications" in quotation marks...?