‘WE ARE tired of being used to score anti-vax points’ said the text preceding the link in the Global Health Now listing of June 10 to a STAT news item reporting an interview with three people suffering from covid-19 vaccine side-effects, or PVS (post-vaccination syndrome). It seems that the pro-covid-19 vaccination lobby has found three people it can trust to speak about the other side of the covid-19 vaccines. The one we have been reporting regularly since the covid-19 vaccines were rolled out.
The (not so) subliminal message here was that you may speak about the adverse effects from which you are suffering, provided you distance yourself from the anti-vax brigade. Thus, the STAT piece is replete with phrases and sentences such as ‘we want to be clear. None of us authors were or are anti-vaccine’; ‘Covid vaccines have saved millions of lives worldwide’; and ‘those who have reported PVS conditions are a small fraction of the population’.
However, it is all there in the interview. The group which the interviewees represent operates under the auspices of Yale LISTEN Study which has over 250 members. So, more than just a handful of people.
The symptoms described by those with PVS include ‘excessive fatigue, numbness, brain fog, neuropathy, insomnia, palpitations, myalgia, headache and dizziness’. The sufferers also have altered immune profiles and ‘elevated levels of circulating spike protein’. Well, fancy that.
The original study from which the data are derived is still at the preprint stage. Given the success rate of other studies reporting covid-19 vaccine side effects it will be interesting to see if this one ever progresses beyond the preprint stage. Other such studies have been withdrawn, even from preprint sites.
The conclusion of the original study was that the findings ‘merit further investigation to better understand this condition and inform future research into diagnostic and therapeutic approaches’. According to the LISTEN group interviewees, this caused a ‘firestorm’, presumably because it challenged the ‘100 per cent safe’ mantra about the covid vaccines and was counter to the prevailing narrative that vaccines are good per se and must not be criticised.
According to the LISTEN group, the number of people suffering from PVS is unknown. Perhaps they have only just become aware that they are not alone, but that nobody in authority really cares. While they claim that one side of the debate (the ‘anti-vax’ side) is using them ‘to score points’, the other side is ‘disregarding (them) entirely’. Neither side ‘seems to be listening’ to them.
Naturally I have sympathy for these poor people who have been the victims of one of the biggest confidence tricks of the 21st century. But I welcome them to the real world. Many of us who have expressed concern about the covid vaccines are not ‘anti-vaxxers’, and we are all too readily written off as such. But we are on your side. You will not only be disregarded by the covid-19 vaccine obsessed, but your side effects will also be downplayed. If you raise your voices higher, they will try to discredit you.
However, there is some good news on the horizon. US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary announced on Fox News at the end of last month that Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr will order a US national survey to ascertain the true level of covid-19 vaccine injury. Let us hope that the voices of those suffering from post-vaccination syndrome grow louder, not quieter, and that they are not only heard but also believed. If public health is to mean anything, it must include the welfare of those who were harmed in the name of protecting others. Dismissing or silencing these individuals does not protect science; it betrays it. The same media and institutions that have turned a blind eye should be forced to confront the uncomfortable truth: a narrative built on certainty has left many abandoned in uncertainty.
