Troubling questions over AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine side effect admission

 

Malaysia wants an explanation from AstraZeneca about its Covid-19 vaccine that, the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant admitted, “can, in very rare cases, cause thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS)”.

TTS causes blood clots and a low blood platelet count.

Health minister Dzulkefly Ahmad was quoted by Kosmo as saying on May 2 that AstraZeneca must provide clarification to Malaysia and the world, adding: “They must take responsibility, just as we must take responsibility. We don’t want to hide anything.”

AstraZeneca’s admission may not have come if not for a class action lawsuit in England over claims that its vaccine caused death and serious injury in dozens of cases.

AstraZeneca is contesting the claims.

However, in a legal document submitted to the British High Court in February, the company, according to The Telegraph, said: “It is admitted that the AZ vaccine can, in very rare cases, cause TTS. The causal mechanism is not known.

“Further, TTS can also occur in the absence of the AZ vaccine (or any vaccine). Causation in any individual case will be a matter for expert evidence.”

What is interesting is that in May 2023, the company is reported to have said: “We do not accept that TTS is caused by the vaccine at a generic level”.

So, we have to ask: What else is being withheld by the various pharmaceutical firms and even perhaps our own government from those of us who had the jabs?

According to The Telegraph, 51 cases have been filed in the UK, with victims and grieving relatives seeking damages of up to £100 million (RM595 million).

A study by the Global Vaccine Data Network of more than 99 million people who received the Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines, published on Feb 12 in the journal Vaccine, found links to known rare side effects such as myocarditis, pericarditis and Guillain-Barré syndrome.

However, the study authors stressed, the “few serious side effects” that they had observed were rare.

But this finding is not really new, as, writing in the medical journal The Lancet in September 2021, a group of researchers said: “Although the benefits of primary Covid-19 vaccination clearly outweigh the risks, there could be risks if boosters are widely introduced too soon, or too frequently, especially with vaccines that can have immune-mediated side-effects (such as myocarditis, which is more common after the second dose of some mRNA vaccines, or Guillain-Barre syndrome, which has been associated with adenovirus-vectored Covid-19 vaccines).”

If the class action in England succeeds, the British government will have to pay as it had agreed to underwrite AstraZeneca’s legal bills.

In Malaysia, 12 individuals filed a lawsuit against the government, the health ministry, the minister in charge of the vaccination programme at the time, Khairy Jamaluddin , the then health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah and Covid-19 vaccine producers/distributors Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Pharmaniaga.

The 12 want the defendants to be held responsible for the side effects of the coronavirus vaccine injections, including severe complications leading to death.

Among other things, they claim the ministry had coerced agreements from them to be vaccinated to shield the defendants from being held accountable for severe side effects of the vaccine injection.

They insist that all subsequent vaccines undergo clinical trials and complete reports be produced on the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccines in controlling the spread of the virus.

AstraZeneca Sdn Bhd later succeeded in its bid to strike out the suit. The case against the others is still pending.

If the 12 do win, it is almost certain that the vaccine makers’ share of the payment and court costs will have to be settled by the Malaysian government because of the hush-hush indemnity agreement it signed – just like the UK and other governments – with the pharmaceutical firms. That means taxpayer money.

On June 6, 2023, FMT reported that the government had paid more than RM2.5 million in compensation to 150 applicants who had suffered serious cases of side effects after getting Covid-19 vaccines.

It quoted then health minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa as saying in a written reply in the Dewan Rakyat that the ministry had received 318 applications under a scheme providing special financial aid to those who had suffered from serious cases of adverse events following immunisation or AEFI.

“Of the 318, 150 applications were approved involving a payout of RM2.55 million. Thirty applications are still being evaluated and 138 have been rejected.”

She added: “Meanwhile, of the 26,716 AEFI reports received, only 1,869 reports (or seven for every one million doses administered) were classified as serious.”

Dzulkefly said on May 2 that the public should not draw hasty conclusions over the admission by AstraZeneca, insisting that Covid-19 vaccines had, in general, been beneficial.

“The incidence rate is 0.88 cases per million. Weigh the pros and cons based on evidence, and put it (side effects) into perspective,” he said, adding that he was not defending the firm but only stating the facts mentioned by it.

In this he was but echoing what health authorities everywhere have always insisted: that the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh any side effects, and that long-term side effects are rare.

They stress that problems such as extreme fatigue, persistent cough, shortness of breath, brain fog, headaches, blood clots and rapid heartbeat are due to long Covid or post-Covid-19 syndrome.

But given the latest development, it will be comforting if the government were to not only review the studies but to also undertake new studies on the side effects of the vaccines that the people were made to take during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is because many people continue to suspect that the Covid-19 vaccines have something to do with complaints of medical problems, including persistent aches and the eruption of cancer among some people.

Some say, in private conversation, that the health authorities and pharmaceutical giants are not telling the whole truth.

I believe in science and therefore I would like to believe the studies that say that the adverse effects of the Covid-19 vaccinations are rare.

But what I have been hearing from people over the past two years or so seems to to be rather disconcerting.

I am hearing stories about how people are suffering from aches and pains, and an acceleration of their preexisting health problems.

I am hearing about sleep problems and periods of unusual tiredness. Women, especially, have been complaining that they cannot work as before without bouts of frequent tiredness.

I am hearing about more people being diagnosed with cancer, and about those in remission suddenly being afflicted and dying in the last three years.

And they or their surviving relatives are privately blaming it largely on the Covid-19 booster shots.

Relatives of two cancer survivors who died of cancer during the pandemic told me they suspected it could be due to the vaccines. A doctor whose father died of a heart attack told me he suspected it was due to the booster shot.

The medical establishment dismisses such talk as unfounded or as conspiracy theories. The World Health Organization and the medical establishment say the vaccines have saved millions of lives. Certainly they would know better than the layman about this.
According to a report released in February by the Department of Statistics, cancer is the fourth leading cause of death in Malaysia, increasing from 10.5% in 2021 to 12.6% in 2022.

I wonder if anyone is keeping track of cancer cases before and after Covid-19? Have cases spiked? And if so, could the vaccines have reignited the cancer cells as some claim or is it the work of the Covid-19 virus?

I’ve always wondered how medical and health authorities are so sure that it is all due to the Covid-19 virus? How do they differentiate whether it is the virus or the vaccine that is causing the problem?

I wonder if it is too late for our health ministry to carry out a thorough study – if it hasn’t already – regarding this, and not simply accept the word of pharmaceutical firms or foreign health agencies and dump it all under “long Covid”.

An important question to pursue is how many people who did not contract Covid-19 or did not take the jabs or booster jabs suffer from such problems.

Also, has anyone compared problems and illnesses suffered by people who had taken the inactivated vaccines (like those from China) which trigger the production of antibodies, and laboratory created mRNA vaccines (like those from the West) which teach our cells how to make a protein or a piece of a protein that triggers an immune response?

Perhaps health ministry staff could visit homes and collect information. Or perhaps, people can be asked to go online and anonymously fill up a form about how they feel post Covid-19, especially after getting their second vaccine dose or booster shots.

If a comprehensive survey and study finds that all these problems that people complain about are not due to the vaccine, they should be informed so that they can stop blaming it on the vaccines and move on with the lives. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not reflect those of MMKtT.