COVID-19: Vaccine Trials Ended
Dear Mr. Frank Wilson:
How much confidence do you have in a new product that has been tested for only a few months?
People are clamoring to get the new COVID products, including those who might have been in the placebo group in the Pfizer and Moderna trials. Now, they can get their shots because trials that were supposed to continue for two years are being terminated prematurely.
As Shannon Brownlee, a lecturer at George Washington University School of Public Health, and Jeanne Lenzer, author of The Danger Within Us: America's Untested, Unregulated Medical Device Industry and One Man's Battle to Survive It, point out, “Many vaccines, along with drugs and medical devices, look ‘miraculous’ at first—only to turn out to be less so as more data comes in.”
The possibility that the FDA might fail to insist on further testing once vaccines were marketed was pointed out in September by Howard Bauchner, M.D., editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). “Prematurely approving a vaccine could undermine Covid-19 vaccine efforts and erode confidence in vaccines more generally.”
Vaccine adverse effects are tracked by the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), but reporting is voluntary and incomplete. And without a controlled trial, it is hard to determine whether the vaccine caused the effect.
More than a dozen countries, mostly in Europe, temporarily halted the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine because of reports of serious or deadly bleeding or blood clotting problems, but then restarted them after the European regulatory agency declared the product safe. It was not clear that the rate of post-vaccine problems was greater than the background rate.
But on Mar 31, Germany suspended the product in persons under the age of 60 due to renewed concerns. The regulatory agency found 31 cases of rare blood clots in veins draining the brain (cerebral venous sinus thrombosis).
While the demand for vaccines is high overall, there is also considerable resistance, especially in health workers. In Switzerland, at most half of health workers were willing to get inoculated. In Germany, a survey by a care home operator found that only 30% wanted to get vaccinated. Half of French workers say they will resist.
French hospitals had to slow the rollout because 25 percent of workers were too sick to work for a time after the injections.
As trust diminishes, more coercive measures are being used to get people to take the jabs.
For information on prevention and early treatment protocols, see c19protocols.com.
Jane M. Orient, M.D.
Executive Director, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
Hi Frank,
ReplyDeleteI got the Jannsen shot earlier this month. M just got her second Pfizer today. We are doing our part for herd immunity. Because these shots are not 100%, we are still wearing our masks when out and about, keeping our distances. This continues to protect others as well as us two, while we as a country are nowhere near the 80% participation we need for herd immunity.
The results of the trials are good enough for us all to know, that the risk in taking the vaccine is far less than the risk of the virus even as it is, but also with variants, killing us. In one year, 700,000 Americans have died from the virus. We cannot go through another year unvaccinated with what we have available, especially with the virus strains getting more deadly.
The gamble we have, is whether, if we all get the vaccine, will 700,000 of us die in the upcoming year? That answer is an emphatic No.
The other risk, is that enough people circulate propaganda that makes people think the vaccine will be more deadly to them than the virus, as if there is a reasonable decision to be made, even at the personal level. What this could do, is add to the small percentage of people who do not get vaccinated, to such a degree, that herd immunity is not achieved, and yet more deadly strains result, sabotaging a national effort to save even millions of lives. And what for?, all to be a successful spin doctor of important data.
What could also "undermine confidence in vaccines generally", is the idea that the government or someone somehow knows that these vaccines are perfect. No one thinks that. That's a straw argument. It's a preparation to be "right" if something goes "wrong". It's an "I told you so" coming from ignorance. The wrongness will always be in the ability to say that 700,000 more people did not die this coming year.
M & I know two things. First, that even though we have been vaccinated, we could easily catch the virus if we let our guards down and pay with our lives, and second, that we may not as a country achieve herd immunity because of imperfections in the vaccines and/or others not doing their part and getting vaccinated.
Speaking truth to propaganda, everybody please get vaccinated. Your and our risk of death is lowered significantly by doing so. We need 80% of us to be smart enough and caring enough to join this national effort to save lives, our own lives. This is the reason why "People are clamoring to get the new COVID products." There is no other reason. We are in this together.
On my phone is the sticker I received after I got the shot. It says, "I got the vaccine. I wear a mask. I save lives." The lives I save are not only M's and my own, but yours as well, everybody's.
Don't give up. Be smart. Live long.
Rus