Covid-19 vaccines and vaccinations

In the latest major update, the World Health Organization (WHO)'s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) said last week it no longer "routinely recommends" follow-up COVID-19 boosters for people with a medium or low risk of developing severe illness from the virus. Canadian health officials are, for the most part, echoing that message.

https://www.who.int/news/item/28-03-2023-sage-updates-covid-19-vaccination-guidance

 

Yup. All mitigation measures are slowly being removed. Even as some studies are estimating prevalence by assuming a 55% reduction in LC rates from vaccination. Somehow I never hear about the flu being over, even though COVID is now on the same constantly mutating endemic status.

We now have 2 messages related to avoiding Long Covid:

1. The only way to avoid LC is not to catch COVID; all measures to reduce infections have ended, and infections are being promoted as good, somehow, in a reversal of centuries of painful lessons
2. The 2nd best way to reduce risk is recent vaccination; most are being shut down and most people's last vaccination is probably over a year at this point

Of course, the other message about LC is: oh, and what is Long Covid, surely it's not related to COVID because, uh, 3 weeks of "lockdown" 2 years ago.

We truly are in the "you do you" era of private health. Public health is dead, short live private health.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/10/bbc-presenter-husband-suing-astrazeneca/

AstraZeneca is being sued by a man whose wife died of thrombocytopenia a week after her AZ vaccine.



"His lawyers sent AstraZeneca pre-action protocol letters in November, on behalf of nearly 75 claimants, several of whom have had relatives die or survive with injuries related to the vaccine.

The claimants are pursuing legal action under the Consumer Protection Act 1987, and demanding payment under a government Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme.

Solicitor Peter Todd from Scott-Moncrieff and Associates, which is acting for the claimants, said damages were being pursued on the basis that the vaccine was a “defective product in that it was not as safe as consumers generally were reasonably entitled to expect”.

In August 2021, Newcastle coroner Karen Dilks said Ms Shaw had died from “vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia”, a very rare condition that induces swelling and bleeding on the brain"................

A spokesperson for the Department for Health and Social Care said the vaccines were the most effective prevention against the disease, but acknowledged that “in extremely rare circumstances” individuals had been “severely disabled or died” due to receiving the vaccine. "


The Australian government has withdrawn AZ vaccine because of the number of people developing thrombocytopenia after vaccination. See
https://www.s4me.info/threads/covid-19-vaccination-experiences.19645/page-56

 

Thank you for posting. It reminds me of the terrible time I had trying to get help after my own adverse reaction to the AZ vaccine. I am not surprised people died given what happened to me. There were so many different problems.

1. My GP surgery was almost totally dedicated to giving the vaccine. We lost our GP and the surgery for that first point of medical care.
2. It was very hard to talk to the surgery on the phone. The telephone queue was over an hour and often just gave up.
3. The online system stopped taking appointments. It went to a different system where we typed in our symptoms and then waited for a reply but no one ever called me back.
4. There was 1 locum GP on call at a satellite surgery. The rest were working from home.
5. The surgery changed to a triage system if one could get through on the phone. This was a call back from a nurse and it was after 48 hours if lucky. The nurse knowledge was very poor.
6. The local clinical commissioning group would not respond to phone calls, emails etc
5. The local PALs did not answer the phone or emails.
6. It took a complaint to my MP and to the 111 service to get a GP to call me
7. There was no system in place for adverse reactions to the vaccine to be investigated locally or for patients to be sent to
8. NHS staff were more concerned about potentially catching Covid from me than investigating what was happening
9. No one wanted to touch me so a proper examination was never done
10. A&E were burned out and overwhelmed
11. There were no consultants oncall at my local hospital for adverse reactions
12. Once the problems were known about there was no method I could see to educate A&E staff. My local hospital staff first heard about it when I told them
13. I was accused of being an anti-vaxxer reading things on the Internet by A&E. They refused to investigate my symptoms on my first attempt
14. There was no communication to scanning staff on what CT scan needed to be done to detect this. The scan they gave me turned out to be the wrong one.
15. A&E staff didn't know what blood tests to run or how to read them.

All of this occurred before and then after the problem was known about.

 

I thought this might be of interest in relation to the Pfizer vaccine :

https://lesmoutonsenrages.fr/wp-con...Clinical-Trials-Vaccine-Pfizer-BNT162b12-.pdf

The link contains info from ClinicalTrials.gov that has been saved as a PDF file. Presumably this was because the person who did it thought the information might disappear.

 

I am sorry you had such a terrible time @ukxmrv. The lack of healthcare provision you experienced was dreadful. To have to involve an MP for a callback from a doctor is a nonexistent medical service.

We had a system here that interfered less with routine medical care ( church hall vaccine delivery covering a number of practices but only involving one GP, combined with large dedicated provision in eg Epsom racecourse which covered large numbers.)

My problems began with having an adverse reaction. I dealt with throat angioedema mostly myself as well as a large number of other symptoms. I kept a log for 8-10 weeks. Luckily! at the end of 2019, I had had an anaphylactic reaction to a satsuma and was in hospital for a week. Following that time, a private Consultant experienced in MCAS talked me through a rescue remedy, so I had my emergency kit and epipens if needed ready, and used my kit ( but not epipens) many times from an hour after AZ1 and in the following weeks. It was frightening and lonely. Without the epipens just in case, I would have had to call an ambulance 7/8 times. By the time I saw a doctor, each episode had passed so there was very little interest.

I did go ahead with a third primary v, this time Pf, fortunately in a major hospital setting ( the AZ was classified as almost anaphylaxis so it was a precautionary measure), and reacted dreadfully within 10 minutes, was rushed into A and E with symptoms including frightening BP and HR. Eventually it began to settle and I got home asap. The follow up letter advised no further vs in case of a fatality. I was offered another last week.

I have hEDS but had no painful joints prior to vaccination. Now my life is dominated by pain and searching for relief giving treatments.

It seems clear to me that a system was set up to vaccinate enormous numbers as swiftly as possible but with no provision for adverse reactions. These vaccines were not developed in the way vaccines normally are and fully trialled but were developed and administered so swiftly that we now know many people were vaccine injured. I have an acquaintance who is a medical scientist who is very critical of the way these vaccines were developed. His wife ( a doctor) was on the trial for AZ so they are a very provaccine family but he expressed huge concerns.


I am disturbed that we have heard so little about those damaged. Many are spending large amounts of money they don't have because the NHS isn't treating them.

I know large numbers of people were vaccinated in a short time but without attention towards and care of those injured, this cannot be regarded as a success.

@Arnie Pye - have not yet read your link but will
edit: apologies to you and @TigerLilea for mixing up your names.

 

Salon has a good article about the current state of covid, the cessation of preventive measures and monitoring, and the dangers of allowing the virus to keep mutating.

https://www.salon.com/2023/04/13/th...-experts-say-it-should-be-renamed-sars-cov-3/

 

Another result of vaccine damage, this time a fatality.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-65321937



"The death of a doctor after his Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab was due to "unintended complications of the vaccine", an inquest has ruled.

Stephen Wright, an NHS psychologist in south-east London, died 10 days after his first dose in January 2021, senior coroner Andrew Harris found.

Dr Wright, 32, suffered a blood clot to the brain after receiving the vaccine.

His wife Charlotte has been trying to get the "natural causes" wording on her husband's death certificate changed.

She is pursuing legal action against the pharmaceutical company, along with dozens of other people."............

edit:
"Speaking to BBC Radio 4's World at One, Mrs Wright agreed that some people had not been prepared to listen to her over how her husband had died.

She said: "Even with people in my life, there were questions and queries about whether I was actually telling the truth so, two years later, I can finally say it is the truth."

 

One of my cousins suffered a blood clot in the heart that killed her after receiving the AZ vaccine. I don't know her age at death exactly but I'd guess somewhere in her mid/late 50s, and she wasn't unhealthy.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ifes-story-told-died-AstraZeneca-vaccine.html

A two page spread about the death of Lisa Shaw who died after the AZ vaccine due to the vaccine according to the coroner. See #1123.
Some reference to issues like the government's indemnity of AZ with regard to any damages awarded relating to the vaccine, the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme and number of claims, the withdrawal of France and Germany from using AZ and what information they based this on.

 

A 14 year old teen in Japan died 45 hours after having her third Pfizer vaccine. Two thousand deaths have been reported in Japan from the covid vaccines.

 

It would be interesting to know when France and Germany knew about the blood clots.

Also if there was a particular batch of the AZ vaccine that was more prone to causing an adverse reaction.

On the Facebook page for people with ME to talk about the vaccines there was a group of us with similar adverse reactions to mine and it turned out (when we compared notes) to have been one particular batch of AZ. Not everyone and not always AZ of course.

 

Interesting old article from The Guardian dated 13/4/21 "how UK doctors linked rare blood clotting disorder..."

"In the UK, the young woman admitted in the first weekend of March had a severe headache, intolerance of light and vomiting. They gave her the standard treatment – a platelet transfusion and a small amount of blood-thinning drugs."

(that was before I had the vaccine)

....

(no date for this)

"Levi alerted the government’s chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser, as well as the MHRA. “When Marie told me that she had actually confirmed this in all three patients and had a positive test, and when I heard from the German group who found apparently similar findings, I sent an email to Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance and they immediately responded,” he said.

He did not want them to take action, he said, “because I think that vaccination is absolutely great and we should not stop it and we should not scare people. But just to make them aware. So I think they kept a close eye on the numbers in the following days.”

...

...The German group had quite a lot of experience with this particular condition. They had exactly the same information, but they were a little bit reluctant to share it with other people because they were in the process of getting it published in one of the scientific journals,” he said.

...

So we sent out an email to everyone, which was very well received. And now we have a sort of WhatsApp group of about 500 people that exchange information on a daily basis.”

A month on, Scully said she believes they are in a good place. A working group of leading haematologists meets daily. It has put out guidance to doctors for identifying and treating patients, who in turn report any new cases. “We get all the cases, discuss them, discuss treatment and then it’s immediately fed into the regulators, I believe it really is exemplary,” she said.

--------------------------------------------

That would tend to confirm my suspicions that there was no formal method to share this information with UK hospitals or A&E departments.

My local hospital did not have a Haematologists involved in my care at all. The A&E staff would probably have not been on their WhatsApp group. They would not know to run a platelets test and felt quite happy to turn me away and accuse me of being an anti-vaxxer who "read too much on the internet" without any examination or blood tests.

 

Germany suspended routine use of AZ on the 30th March 2021 for under 60s.

"The EU and UK medicine regulators both backed the vaccine after previous cautionary suspensions in Europe this month."

"Ahead of announcement, the German cities of Berlin and Munich, and the region of Brandenburg, halted use of the vaccine for people below the age of 60"

France already limits use of AstraZeneca to those aged over 55.

On Monday, Canada recommended immediately suspending the use of AstraZeneca in people aged below 55 following the reports of rare but potentially fatal blood clots in Europe, CBC reports."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56580728

 

Very concerning to see these data come out years after the initial push for everyone to take AZ and the anti-vaxxer accusation at anyone who questioned the lack of long-term safety data. A friend of mine had huge deterioration in health after AZ. Whether it was a coincidence, who knows.

 

I would be interested in knowing more about the yellow card system and how it is/is not working. It is the official way to alert medical authorities to problems with medical treatments.
I completed 3 yellow cards about the vaccines and had 3 acknowledgements with different report numbers.

"What happens next? Our team will now evaluate your report, alongside others received, to determine if the suspected side effects that you have reported have affected others. A team of safety experts which includes doctors, pharmacists and scientists will continually evaluate reports and consider other information, such as medical literature and data from international medicines regulators to help ensure that the benefits of the vaccine continue to outweigh any risks."..........( from the response letter.)

2 of my reports related to AZ and I remember reading in an official document (which I will have to search out) that oral and throat swelling which I had were side effects of this vaccine.

I do want to follow this up but am about to start preemptive resting in preparation for a journey on holiday. I can't do both but hope to manage this later. I will drop in from time to see what is happening.

 

My guess? Not enough of the general public were aware enough of its existence. And of those who were, to what extent do you assess something as a "problem"? I mean, should I have reported every "side-effect" I had from the vaccination (fever, feeling bleugh, shivers, muscle aches, soreness at injection site, etc.), or just assumed those were standard side-effects of vaccines, the sort of thing I might get from a flu jab?

 

Yes. It's tricky @Wits_End. At some point I would like to know the figures for yellow card reports and what has happened to them. How many people completed cards and are they ever followed up? I had a telephone conversation with someone once but cannot remember who initiated the call. I hope info re this will start to filter out.

I seem to remember a reference early on to mild side effects being usual but we are hearing now about much more extreme effects and fatalities.

 

I was told to only log a Yellow card report if the side effects were different to the card or sheet you were given (i.e. new) or lasted longer than a few days or needed hospital treatment.

Mild side effects as you described were expected and should not be logged.

Were you given an information sheet when vaccinated that contains the expected side effects and what to do if there was a problem?

 

@Binkie4

The reports are on this MRHA website (this is a link to the AZ one)

https://yellowcard.mhra.gov.uk/idaps/CHADOX1 NCOV-19

I have had a few discussions with them on the phone and emails. They are under no obligation to investigate individual reports or for groups or reactions that they do not consider serious they say.

They won't answer specific questions on groups of patients or when they knew about a particular side effect or when the fatalities started or how they determine safety for an age group against virus risk.

I have tried.