Randomised control trial study showing safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccine has clear conflicts of interest.
Vaccination
It is uncontroversial that all medicines carry the risk of side-effects. As a society, we therefore make a tradeoff between the seriousness of the disease and the risk that a medicine may do some harm. This is the same thought process behind the COVID-19 vaccines. Unfortunately, inaccurate information about the new COVID-19 vaccines have caused a great deal of misinformation to circulate.
View our COVID-19 Vaccination page designed to help you make an informed choice.
Browse the articles related to this topic below.
Join our community on Guilded.
To guard against censorship, this is a mirror of the video posted by Leandra Ashton on 5 December.
New guidelines right? We can all see our loved ones if we have a negative test right?
On Dec 2nd my Mum asked for an in-person visit and was told ‘We have no tests’. Don’t worry, replied my Mum, I’ll get one done. The next day, having been tested she emailed a negative test result. This was met with another no: “We’re waiting for vaccinations before visiting can take place”.
The only option? Another inhumane window visit. Today, at the end of her 10 minute ‘visit’, kneeling on concrete by the window trying to connect with my Nan, my Mum raised concerns with the care assistant about how my Nan was looking. This is the response she was greeted with…
COVID-19 vaccines designed to elicit neutralising antibodies may sensitise vaccine recipients to more severe disease than if they were not vaccinated. Vaccines for SARS, MERS and RSV have never been approved, and the data generated in the development and testing of these vaccines suggest a serious mechanistic concern: that vaccines designed empirically using the traditional approach (consisting of the unmodified or minimally modified coronavirus viral spike to elicit neutralising antibodies), be they composed of protein, viral vector, DNA or RNA and irrespective of delivery method, may worsen COVID-19 disease via antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). This risk is sufficiently obscured in clinical trial protocols and consent forms for ongoing COVID-19 vaccine trials that adequate patient comprehension of this risk is unlikely to occur, obviating truly informed consent by subjects in these trials.
The UK government has granted pharmaceutical giant Pfizer a legal indemnity protecting it from being sued, enabling its coronavirus vaccine to be rolled out across the country as early as next week.
The Department of Health and Social Care has confirmed the company has been given an indemnity protecting it from legal action as a result of any problems with the vaccine.
Ministers have also changed the law in recent weeks to give new protections to companies such as Pfizer, giving them immunity from being sued by patients in the event of any complications.
NHS staff providing the vaccine, as well as manufacturers of the drug, are also protected.
The army has mobilised an elite “information warfare” unit renowned for assisting operations against al-Qaeda and the Taliban to counter online propaganda against vaccines, as Britain prepares to deliver its first injections within days.
The defence cultural specialist unit was launched in Afghanistan in 2010 and belongs to the army’s 77th Brigade. The secretive unit has often worked side-by-side with psychological operations teams.
Leaked documents reveal that its soldiers are already monitoring cyberspace for Covid-19 content and analysing how British citizens are being targeted online.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/army-spies-to-take-on-antivax-militants-mfzsj66w2
Most people will escape “severe” side effects, defined as those that prevent daily activity. Fewer than 2% of recipients of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines developed severe fevers of 39°C to 40°C. But if the companies win regulatory approvals, they’re aiming to supply vaccine to 35 million people worldwide by the end of December. If 2% experienced severe fever, that would be 700,000 people.
Other transient side effects would likely affect even more people. The independent board that conducted the interim analysis of Moderna’s huge trial found that severe side effects included fatigue in 9.7% of participants, muscle pain in 8.9%, joint pain in 5.2%, and headache in 4.5%. In the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trial, the numbers were lower: Severe side effects included fatigue (3.8%) and headache (2%).
But that’s a higher rate of severe reactions than people may be accustomed to. “This is higher reactogenicity than is ordinarily seen with most flu vaccines, even the high-dose ones,” says Arnold Monto, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
https://web.archive.org/web/20201126203444/https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6520/1022
- Vaccine produced by a partnership between a University of Oxford research institute, Vaccitech, and AstraZeneca, does not need to be stored at freezing temperatures.
- Cheaper and easier to produce than the high-efficacy vaccines produced by BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna.
- The price of AstraZeneca’s shares dropped on the news, and an analysis from an investment bank concluded, “We believe that this product will never be licensed in the US.”
- A closer look at the the Oxford-AstraZeneca trials reveals some very shaky science.
- Cherry-picked the data
- Dosing issues
- Opaque planning and data analysis procedures
- Age group selection
https://www.wired.com/story/the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-data-isnt-up-to-snuff/
Moderna Chief Medical Officer Tal Zaks warns on #AxiosOnHBO to not “over-interpret” vaccine results: “They do not show that they prevent you from potentially carrying this virus…and infecting others.” Adding, we shouldn’t “change behaviors solely on the basis of vaccination.”
Mirrors:
Two major U.S. pharmaceutical companies racing to develop novel coronavirus vaccines have announced that their vaccines have been confirmed to be over 90% effective. But Masayuki Miyasaka, a leading immunologist at Osaka University, told the Mainichi Shimbun in a recent interview that even after these vaccines become available, he does not plan to receive them for the time being.
At a meeting of the Committee on Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan’s House of Representatives on Nov. 17, Miyasaka stated, “There’s no doubt that their effectiveness is quite high, but their safety is not guaranteed at all,” sounding a word of caution about expectations for the vaccines.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20201120/p2a/00m/0na/008000c
- The vaccine reduces symptoms; may prevent infection but this has not been proven.
- Mass testing is not the way out and could be very problematic.
- Around 1% of the population are infected and probably have no symptoms.
- If you are under 65, there is less risk than the regular flu.
- The number of people dying is the same as any other year.
- People of dying of respiratory diseases is about the same.
- Covid deaths will continue to go up.
- Hospitals are less full because they’ve increased their capacity; they’re not struggling to cope.
- Prevalence for the virus has plateaued.
- We should continue to be careful but COVID-19 is ‘not a major player’
Pfizer’s vaccine “may be more than 90% effective.” (Mahase, BMJ 2020;371:m4347, November 9) Specific data are not given but it is easy enough to approximate the numbers involved, based on the 94 cases in a trial that has enrolled about 40,000 subjects: 8 cases in a vaccine group of 20,000 and 86 cases in a placebo group of 20,000. This yields a Covid-19 attack rate of 0.0004 in the vaccine group and 0.0043 in the placebo group. Relative risk (RR) for vaccination = 0.093, which translates into a “vaccine effectiveness” of 90.7% [100(1-0.093)]. This sounds impressive, but the absolute risk reduction for an individual is only about 0.4% (0.0043-0.0004=0.0039). The Number Needed To Vaccinate (NNTV) = 256 (1/0.0039), which means that to prevent just 1 Covid-19 case 256 individuals must get the vaccine; the other 255 individuals derive no benefit, but are subject to vaccine adverse effects, whatever they may be and whenever we learn about them……We’ve already heard that an early effect of the vaccine is “like a hangover or the flu.” Will vaccinees who are later exposed to coronaviruses have more severe illness as a result of antibody-dependent enhancement of infection (ADEI), a known hazard of coronavirus vaccines? Is there squalene in the Pfizer vaccine? If so, will vaccinees be subject to autoimmune diseases, like Gulf War Syndrome and narcolepsy that have been associated with the adjuvant?
| Actual Study Start Date : | April 29, 2020 |
| Estimated Primary Completion Date : | June 13, 2021 |
| Estimated Study Completion Date : | December 11, 2022 |
https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04368728?term=Pfizer&cond=SARS-cov-2&draw=2&rank=1
- AIDS was a testing pandemic, just like COVID-19.
- Many of the excess deaths for COVID-19 were due to inappropriately high dosages of hydroxychloroquine during experimental study trials.
- High COVID-19 excess deaths stopped after the trials were ended.
- Professor Martin Landry, leader of the UK-based Recovery trial, may have made a mistake in proposing high dosage of hydroxychloroquine. It seems he confused it with diiodohydroxyquinoline, treatment for treatment of amoebiasis.
- The treatment caused the damage.
- The danger of over-treatment is everywhere because the industry wants to sell diseases.
- COVID-19 is a self-limiting disease.
- The data shows that COVID-19 has no more killing potential than the yearly flu.
- Masks and lockdowns are ridiculous and damaging the whole population.
- It’s a political thing and not a health problem.
- Remdesivir is an immunosuppressant and useless against COVID-19.
- You have to live with viruses and you can’t fight against them.
- There is no treatment against COVID-19.
- The treatment against COVID-19 is to rest, like the flu.
- The problem is testing. If you stop the test, you’ll see nothing.
- Lockdowns were an overreaction.
- Vaccines are probably not a solution. You’ll have to vaccinate everyone every year. It’s good businesses.
There’s just one curious problem: flu, it seems, has all but vanished.
The disappearing act began as Covid-19 rolled in towards the end of our flu season in March. And just how swiftly rates have plummeted can be observed in ‘surveillance’ data collected by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8875201/Has-Covid-killed-flu.html
TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) is the online version of the ‘Supplement to the Official Journal’ of the EU, dedicated to European public procurement.
The MHRA urgently seeks an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software tool to process the expected high volume of Covid-19 vaccine Adverse Drug Reaction (ADRs) and ensure that no details from the ADRs’ reaction text are missed.
https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:506291-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML&tabId=1
Interview highlights
- COVID-19 is not a dread disease that will kill everyone.
- The initially high case fatality rate of COVID-19 was because the medical community didn’t know how to treat it.
- The fatality rate of flu is 0.1% (1 in every 1,000 who are infected end up dying).
- Ventilators are the wrong option if you do not have an obstructed airway disease.
- Prod. Ioannidis: The infection fatality ratio of COVID-19 is 0.15%. This is pretty much the same as the flu.
- We should just ask people to be careful but otherwise go about your daily life.
- These things pass every year. This is the first ‘social media pandemic.’
- The normal practice for intensive care beds in the NHS is to run them almost full. This is because a lot of intensive care bed assignment is planned.
- ICU use at the height of the pandemic was has very low because the NHS was run as light as possible to cope with a second wave.
- Respiratory viruses don’t do waves.
- This is not opinion but is basic understanding among experts in the field. It is supposrted by the highest quality science. Sir Patrick Vallance knows this.
- COVID-19 follows the Gompertz Curve.
- You have immunity after your body has fought off a respiratory virus. If that was not the case, you’d be dead. Immunity probably lasts decades based on evidence from other viruses.
- Gompertz Curve is identical in all heavily infection regions.
- Something awefull happened in the middle of the year: PCR swab test.
- It is not true that if you test more people you’ll save more lives. A certain percentage of the test will come up positive even if there’s no virus in you.
- False positive rate wasn’t released.
- Kate Barker wrote in a government document on June 3rd, 2020, to SAGE: test has an unknown false positive rate; based on similar tests it may be between 1%-2%. This is a big deal.
- Based on 1%: for every 1,000 people you test, 10 will come back positive, even if they don’t have the virus. If prevalence is only 0.1% as reported by ONS, only 1 in 1,000 will be genuine. This means 9 in 10–in other words 90%–are false.
- Pillar 2 testing would have caused of the most of the positives to be false.
- 1,700 people die normally every day in the UK. During the summer, only about 10 were dying per day of covid.
- More testing, more false positives. We’ll never escape covid if we keep testing because most of the positives will be false. This is immunology 101. Sir Patrick Vallance would have known this.
- Influenza is a high mutation-rate virus. Coronaviruses are relatively stable so once you’ve recovered, you are probably immune for decades.
- COVID-19 kills 0.15%-0.2%, slightly more lethal than the average flu. Once it’s gone through the population, it won’t come back.
- 99.94% survive COVID-19 and will be resistant for a long time.
- COVID-19 is 80% similar to SARS-COV-1.
- People who were exposed to SARS have T-cell immunity 17 years later. Evidence for COVID-19 all point in direction.
- Our bodies have many lines of defense, including innate immunity and T-cells. Antibodies are in the last line of defense.
- Study shows around 30% prior immunity to SARS-COV-2. It was due to exposure to common-cold coronaviruses.
- The claim made by Sir Patrick Vallance that more than 90% are susceptible is a lie.
- Mass testing of the well populating is the worst problem as it generates false positives, fear and control.
- If you’re immune, you can’t be infected or infectious. Herd immunity is already in play in London.
- If SAGE is correct, London should be ‘ablaze’ with deaths.
- Current testing methods are not forensically sound.
- Tests detect common cold and dead virus.
- SARS-COV-2 has never really been a public health emergency.
- We do not need the vaccine to return to normal. Most people are not in danger from COVID-19. More people are in danger from car crashes and we accept that risk.
- Best case scenario is that the vaccine is 50% effective. Natural immunity might be better.
- The most vulnerable often don’t respond well to vaccines and die anyway.
- SAGE is giving lethally wrong advice.
- The reason the pandemic is not over is because SAGE says it’s not.
The world has bet the farm on vaccines as the solution to the pandemic, but the trials are not focused on answering the questions many might assume they are.
…But the truth is that the science remains far from clear cut, even for influenza vaccines that have been used for decades. Although randomised trials have shown an effect in reducing the risk of symptomatic influenza, such trials have never been conducted in elderly people living in the community to see whether they save lives.
Only two placebo controlled trials in this population have ever been conducted, and neither was designed to detect any difference in hospital admissions or deaths. Moreover, dramatic increases in use of influenza vaccines has not been associated with a decline in mortality
On 16 October, the Human Medicines (Coronavirus and Influenza) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (SI 2020/1125) entered into force. The Regulations cover temporary authorisations for vaccines, civil liability and immunity for participants in vaccination programmes, expansion of the healthcare workforce who can administer vaccines, promotion of vaccines and an exemption to wholesale licensing requirement.
Certain COVID-19 vaccine candidates could increase susceptibility to HIV, warns a group of researchers who in 2007 learned that an experimental HIV vaccine had raised in some people the risk for infection with the AIDS virus. These concerns have percolated in the background of the race for a vaccine to stem the coronavirus pandemic, but now the researchers have gone public with a “cautionary tale,” in part because trials of those candidates may soon begin in locales that have pronounced HIV epidemics, such as South Africa.
Some approved and experimental vaccines have as a backbone a variety of adenoviruses, which can cause the common cold but are often harmless. The ill-fated HIV vaccine trial used an engineered strain known as adenovirus 5 (Ad5) to shuttle into the body the gene for the surface protein of the AIDS virus. In four candidate COVID-19 vaccines now in clinical trials in several countries, including the United States, Ad5 similarly serves as the “vector” to carry in the surface protein gene of SARS-CoV-2, the viral cause of the pandemic; two of these have advanced to large-scale, phase III efficacy studies in Russia and Pakistan.
In today’s issue of The Lancet, four veteran researchers raise a warning flag about those COVID-19 vaccine candidates by recounting their experience running a placebo-controlled AIDS vaccine trial dubbed STEP. An interim analysis of STEP found that uncircumcised men who had been naturally infected with Ad5 before receiving the vaccine became especially vulnerable to the AIDS virus. The vaccine, made by Merck, had been the leading hope for what was then a 20-year search for a shot that could thwart HIV. But after the STEP results appeared, the field went into a tailspin. “It took a decade to recover,” says one of the co-authors of the Lancet correspondence, Lawrence Corey of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Lancet study: Use of adenovirus type-5 vectored vaccines: a cautionary tale
- [The fight against Covid] ignores the devastating social and economic impact of Covid restrictions, and exaggerates the threat the disease poses.
- Despite all the hysteria, this is not a modern plague.
- In the week ending October 2, Covid accounted for just 3.2 per cent of all fatalities in British hospitals.
- Even with the recent rise in infections, Covid mortality levels are drastically lower now than at the peak of the pandemic in the spring.
- That toll may increase, but it is highly unlikely to reach the levels we saw in spring.
- Covid-19 is a cruel disease that targets the old or those whose life expectancy is compromised by ill-health.
- While every life is precious, the average age of patients who die with Covid-19 is 82.4.
- Since August, just one otherwise healthy person under 30 has died with the disease, while in the same period only 97 victims have been younger than 60.
- One study in June by the Office for National Statistics found 91 per cent of people who died with Covid in England and Wales between March and June had at least one pre-existing condition.
- Contrary to the depressing propaganda, six in every seven people who are infected over the age of 90 actually survive.
- [T]here is little convincing scientific evidence to support the belief that these venues are significant arenas of transmission.
- Much of the North and the Midlands has been living with Covid restrictions for months, yet it has not stemmed the rise in positive cases.
- There is not a single documented case of any student this autumn yet dying from Covid.
- In 40 years, scientists have never found an HIV/AIDS vaccine, nor has one been discovered for the SARS virus in 18 years.
- A vaccine will probably be more like an annual flu jab — which will give some protection but not stop you contracting the disease — rather than a measles vaccine, which provides a lifetime’s protection.
- Edinburgh University argued that heavy-handed use of lockdowns and social distancing could cost between 149,000 and 178,000 lives over the course of the pandemic — far more than have died from Covid.
- The Government likely borrowing more than £350 billion this year — will have be paid by generations to come.