Unbiased, evidence-based approach needed to settle medical controversies around Covid deaths, vaccines
The recent confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, USA, has been widely welcomed by several campaigners who had been pleading for protecting children in particular and people in general from several high-risk exposures, including to several hazardous substances and technologies. As someone who has read several of these campaign articles and the research papers published in prestigious papers on which these were based, I can assert with confidence that a lot of solid evidence has been presented to support the assertions made or serious questions raised regarding hazardous products and technologies. Despite this, the campaigns got a lot of unjustified criticism, at least some of which emanated directly or indirectly from the promoters of hazardous products and technologies.
The debates got particularly intense in the case of some vaccines when some critics were unfairly accused of being opposed to the entire science of vaccines while what many of them in fact opposed was the neglect of proper scientific approach and procedures in the hurry to spread high-profit products, and the concentration of vaccine production and development in the hands of those big multinational companies and billionaires who placed quick profits and industry control over human life and safety.
Unfortunately while very well-argued, evidence-based issues were raised by thousands of doctors, scientists and researchers, and of course by health activists, generally the establishment views not only prevailed but in addition the critics were treated in very unfair ways to silence them. Many of them had to pay a high price in terms of job and career opportunities, and had to suffer isolation and insults.
It is extremely unfortunate that in matters concerning human health and safety, and particularly child health and safety, such dividing lines have been drawn and even those critical voices which are backed by a lot of evidence have been ignored. One hopes that with the emergence of RFK Jr. as the HHS Secretary, a more balanced view on several controversial issues can emerge, and people as well as policy makers can access facts and figures presented by all sides to take decisions which are best suited from the point of view of protecting health and safety.
Policy makers need to be guided by careful evidence-based approach in all times. This need has increased all the more in recent times due to two important factors. Firstly, there are several factors related to the recent pandemic. Secondly, there is the rapid increase in the dominance of the profit motive in health sector. Billionaires emerged and progressed rapidly in the health sector in pandemic times and its aftermath. A top billionaire at world level (or the organization dominated by him) has emerged as a leading financier of leading international health organizations which have the biggest influence worldwide on health (and pandemic) policy. This billionaire has also been associated with highly unethical promotion of GM crops and foods, indicted by many scientists for their very harmful health impacts, and now we have this billionaire wielding excessive influence in leading health organizations as a leading funder of their work. At the same time the profits of leading multinational companies engaged in pharmaceuticals and vaccines have increased enormously and they are now in an even stronger position to influence international and national decisions in their favor.
All this has resulted in a highly sensitive situation in which the responsibility of national public health policy makers and the caution they have to exercise have increased much more compared to earlier times. One of the ways of ensuring this is to look at the emerging evidence as widely as possible, including alternative views which are different from dominant views or critical of them.
Initially only the establishment view on COVID vaccines was published by the big media but subsequently, after many concerns were raised by some prominent scientists and others, including by RFK Jr. and his fellow-campaigners, some of this was also reflected in top world newspapers and journals. In this condition attention may be drawn to an article published in The Wall Street Journal on January 1 2023 (article titled Are Vaccines Fueling New Covid Variants). Written by Allysia Finley, a member of the editorial board of this prestigious, solidly pro-establishment newspaper this drew attention to a lot of recent research which has raised concerns and voiced a lot of caution regarding an aggressive policy on booster doses.
Two days earlier, on December 30, The Epoch Times, also a US publication, had highlighted the results of an investigation based on data of several states which, despite some limitations of data base, showed an overall tendency for booster receivers to be exposed to more risks. Commenting on this and other data Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA vaccine, commented, “It is unassailable that a very large fraction of highly inoculated (people) are among those being hospitalized or dying. So at a minimum, the effectiveness of in preventing hospitalization or death does not appear to be aligned to the official policy position.”
Earlier in August 1921 Geert Vanden Bossche D.M.V. Ph.D., virologist and vaccine expert, had warned that vaccines could lead to new more, more infectious viral variants becoming increasingly dominant.
Perhaps the most discussed book which presents alternative information and viewpoints on this issue has been written by Robert Kennedy, Jr., nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy, who had been taking up one child health and public health issue after another for years before recently becoming the HHS Secretary. Despite several efforts to block and obstruct this book and its views, this well-referenced book titled ‘The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health’, sold over a million copies in just a few months. This as well as some other recent books like ‘Cause Unknown—The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths’ by Ed Dowd have done much to draw attention to several less known aspects of this debate in the USA and other western countries.
It may prove to be very useful if policy makers also consider the viewpoints and facts emerging from these alternative viewpoints to take more balanced decision instead of merely following the dominant viewpoints. This may be particularly true of side-effect and safety aspects. Generally in the case of all vaccines adverse events recorded constitute an important part of discussion relating to them, and this is all the more so in the case of COVID-19 vaccines which were developed and distributed in unprecedented hurry.
A review of adverse impacts of COVID-19 vaccines is attempted here in the context of the USA where comparable data over a time period of several years is available. The adverse events following all other vaccines are compared with adverse events following COVID-19 vaccine during 2020-21.
We can compare the official data for per month deaths following COVID vaccines with the longer-term data from the same comparable official source for per month deaths following all other vaccines in the context of the USA. The source of all this data is VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) which has been recording adverse events, serious injuries and deaths following vaccinations for several years in the USA. There have been criticisms, supported by studies, that what gets recorded in VAERS may be very substantial under-estimates but still it is the only officially recognized data base we have in the public domain. VAERS figures do not establish a cause and effect relationship. This data base only tells us that a certain number of adverse events including deaths were reported and recorded in this system within a certain specified number of days following vaccination. The same is also true of the data on adverse events of other countries later in this review.
The VAERS data inform that for the roughly sixteen and a half year period ( 198 months) from July 1997 to December 2013, counting all the various vaccines that are administered in the USA, many adverse events were recorded which included 2149 deaths. This figure is available in a paper titled Deaths Reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System 1997-2013, United States, authored by Pedro L. Moro, Jorge Arana , Mario Cano and others. This paper,( Clin. Infect. Dis 2015 Sep.15; 61(6), reproduced by National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information is based on what was recorded in VAERS. This paper also says that these deaths showed a declining trend.
Dividing 2149 by 198 we find that on average per month 11 post-vaccine deaths were recorded, counting all the various vaccines administered in the USA.
Now let us look at the post-vaccine deaths recorded only for COVID-19 vaccine in the USA under the VAERS since this vaccination started in December 2020. During the roughly 11 months period from December 14 2020 to November 12, 2021,a total of 8,664 deaths were recorded This works out to an average of about 788 deaths per month.
Thus we learn that the number of post-vaccine deaths recorded per month for COVID-19 vaccine up to November 12 2021 (788) is about 72 times of the deaths per month that were recorded earlier for all vaccines combined (11), as revealed in a longer-term study of VAERS records for 198 months, years 1997-2013.
While calculating this we have used the much lower VAERS estimate which excludes deaths following COVID vaccine attributed to ‘foreign reports’.
During the period of about 11 months December 14 2020 to November 12 2021 following COVID-19 vaccine, in the VAERS system of USA, after excluding foreign reports, a total of 654,413 adverse events and 54,962 serious injuries were recorded.
These easily verifiable statistics, as also the findings of important studies that VAERS data on adverse side effects should be treated as substantial under-estimates, should have clearly got more attention in official decisions, as also the hardly discussed possibility of adverse impacts that may manifest much later. People should be adequately informed for a proper democratic debate to take place.
Another important aspect relates to extension of COVID-19 vaccination to teenagers and children and voices of caution voiced by several senior scientists in this context. In fact In India almost as soon as the official announcement in this context was made, on December 6 2021 a senior epidemiologist of AIIMS Dr. Sanjay K. Rai, President of Indian Public Health Association and involved in Covaxin trials in India in a very senior position, stated that this will not yield any additional benefits. At the world level Dr. Robert Malone, who had a very important part in the debate, had warned against high risks involved in this. He stated that thousands of scientists and doctors oppose this (Physicians Declaration II-Updated October 29 2021, Global COVID Summit, International Association of Physicians and Medical Scientists). Dr. Malone is discoverer of in-vitro and in-vivo RNA Platform and architect of mRNA Vaccine Platform. Hence his views and those of several other senior scientists should not be ignored. In the interests of ensuring safety and avoiding any adverse impacts it is important to resolve these controversies in such a way that the health and safety concerns of all and particularly of children are well protected.
Dr. Sanjay Rai made another important point in his statement. He stated that even among adults, COVID vaccination had helped to reduce severity and mortality, but had not helped significantly to reduce infection risk and even those fully vaccinated had been infected and such breakthrough infections had been increasing in some countries.
More specifically, he stated about COVID vaccination, “But according to whatever knowledge we have about vaccines, they are unable to make a significant dent in the infection. In some countries people are getting infected even after taking booster shots.”
An additional reason he gave regarding the need to avoid COVID vaccination of children related to the much lower risks from this disease to children. Combining all these factors together he made a strong case for avoiding COVID vaccine for children and teenagers.
He was certainly not alone in highlighting this as thousands of medical scientists, doctors and public health activists from around the world had pointed this out. Dr. Robert W. Malone recommended very strongly again COVID vaccine for children, pointing also to similar opposition by thousands of scientists and doctors in a declaration (see Robert W. Malone’s article titled 16,000 Physicians and Scientists Agree Kids Shouldn’t Get COVID Vaccines, The Defender, Children’s Health Defense, December 15, 2021).
In this article Malone has also provided the reference for the declaration in which thousands of scientists and doctors had endorsed the ‘Physicians Declaration II –Updated October 29 2021, --Global Covid Summit—International Alliance of Physicians and Medical Scientists. This statement had stated the following reasons against vaccination of children for COVID:
- Negligible clinical risks for SARS-CoV-2 infection ( COVID-19) infection exist for healthy children under 18.
- Long-term safety of the current COVID vaccines in children cannot be determined prior to instituting such policies. Without high-powered, reproducible, long-term safety data, risks to the long-term health status of children remain too high to support use in healthy children.
- Children risk severe adverse events from receiving the vaccine. Permanent physical damage to the brain, heart, immune and reproductive systems associated with SARS CoV-2 spike protein-based genetic vaccines have been demonstrated in children.
R.W. Malone confirmed that as many as 16,000 medical scientists and doctors, most of them MDs or Ph.Ds, had endorsed this declaration. He further explained the implications of this statement in greater detail in the article cited above. Here he added regarding the serious risks mentioned in this declaration that once these damages occur, these are irreparable. In addition he stated that this novel technology has not been adequately tested and we need at least five years of testing /research before we can really understand the risks. He also reminded that harms and risks for several medicines were revealed after several years in the case of several medicines.
Keeping in view all these factors, this may be a suitable time to use an unbiased, evidence-based approach to settle some of those medical controversies which have serious implications for health and safety, particularly in the context of children.
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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Protect Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, Man over Machine, and A Day in 2071
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