(First of two parts)
Medical colleagues and some readers have been asking us if we’ve already had a change of heart regarding our position on vaccination for COVID-19. Since March 2021, we’ve been proposing to suspend mandatory vaccination, until we had clearer data on its true efficacy and safety. (“Six urgent steps that may help turn health crisis around,” March 22, 2021)
We updated it from time to time as new evidence got published, and now, 19 months later, it’s fair to assume that although published data is still a little hazy with conflicting conclusions, the preponderance of data and real-world clinical experiences strongly suggest that we may be putting public health on the edge with continuing mandates to have booster vaccinations.
So, our quick answer to the question if we’ve changed our position on vaccination is: We have stronger evidence now to maintain our call for its suspension, or at the very least, make it voluntary. Our health officials should also look at our own data on why we have an increase in excess deaths, especially cardiovascular deaths, temporally associated with the rollout of vaccination.
More and more medical experts from all around the world, who have been previous staunch “provaxx” advocates, are now turning around and trying to do penance for their previous pronouncements or writings by warning the public of the apparent consequences of vaccination, especially in the young.
Serious adverse events
In a peer-reviewed, two-part paper published recently in the Journal of Insulin Resistance, one author presents scientific findings that are convincing many doctors to join the call for the suspension of all COVID-19 vaccines.
In the paper, titled “Curing the pandemic of misinformation on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines through real evidence-based medicine,” Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a consultant cardiologist and fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in the United Kingdom, presents real-world data and reanalysis of randomized controlled trial data, showing that in the nonelderly population, there might be a greater risk of serious adverse events or side effects from the vaccine that may outweigh the benefit of being spared from being hospitalized or dying from COVID-19.
We emphasize that this is in the nonelderly population and relatively low-risk sectors of the population, especially schoolchildren, wherein the balance tilts heavily more on the risk than the benefit side. In the elderly and those with serious comorbidities like heart disease, obesity, chronic lung disease, etc., the benefit may be stronger and the balance is not heavily tilting to one side.
Dr. Malhotra explains: “There has been a rise in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and heart attacks linked to COVID-19 mRNA vaccine with plausible biological mechanisms of harm.” He adds, “Pharmacovigilance systems and real-world safety data, coupled with plausible mechanisms of harm, are deeply concerning, especially in relation to cardiovascular safety.”
Dr. Malhotra should know whereof he speaks, being the president of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Public Health Collaboration, which is consulted on various public health concerns. He is recognized as an international expert in the prevention, diagnosis and management of heart diseases.
But many recall that he was one of the world experts strongly promoting COVID-19 vaccination on television and YouTube videos. He appeared on the TV show “Good Morning Britain” and encouraged the public to get vaccinated. He was one of the first in his country to get his full dose of the prescribed vaccine then.
Similar to our previous calls, Dr. Malhotra is proposing to suspend the rollout of all COVID-19 mRNA vaccines to investigate purported vaccine-induced side effects. He’s also seeking all the raw data from published clinical trials to be released for independent peer scrutiny. Sometimes, there can be bias in analyzing raw data, so they’re better peer reviewed in their entirety, and not only with researchers selecting data.
Calls for ambulances
Dr. Malhotra and like-minded peers explain that recent reanalysis of Pfizer and Moderna randomized controlled trial data suggests that the risk of suffering serious adverse effects of mRNA vaccines, particularly in nonelderly individuals, is significantly higher than the risk of hospitalization due to COVID-19. They attribute the spike in out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrests and heart attacks to possibly the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine and explain that there’s basis for the “plausible biological mechanism of harm.”
The paper cites that in 2021, there was a significant rise in calls for ambulance services due to sudden cardiac arrest in England. An extra 14,000 calls were noted compared to the number in the previous year (2020). A similar trend appears to be emerging in Israel in the 16-39 age group, where a 25-percent increase in heart attacks or cardiac arrests temporally associated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine administration is observed. No increase in sudden cardiac arrests has been observed with actual COVID-19 infection.
Dr. Mahotra says that this side effect actually mirrors a potential signal suggested from the Pfizer Phase 3 clinical trial. Dr. Malhotra also questions the way the vaccine recipients are informed on the pros and cons of vaccination. “It cannot be said that the consent to receive these agents was fully informed, as is required ethically and legally,” he stresses. He laments that “authorities and sections of the medical profession have supported unethical, coercive and misinformed policies such as vaccine mandates and vaccine passports, undermining the principles of informed consent.” He calls these as truly “regrettable actions” and a “medical misinformation mess.”
In the paper’s conclusion, Dr. Malhotra urges his international colleagues to learn from this global pandemic experience. He writes: “We must use this as an opportunity to transform the system to produce better doctors, better decision making, healthier patients and restore trust in medicine and public health.”
He reiterates that all the raw data on the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines clinical trials be independently analyzed, and until such is done, mRNA will always remain suspect as a possible cause for the cardiovascular complications seen in young people receiving the vaccine. “Any claims purporting that they confer a net benefit to humankind cannot be considered to be evidence-based,” he adds.
(To be continued next week.)