Major Safety Questions Still Remain
Indeed, when it comes to safety, it’s important to realize that since only a few thousand verified healthy volunteers have been exposed to the actual vaccine, the real beta testers will be the masses of people who line up first to take the vaccines when they come to market.
In his article, Berdine stresses he has yet to find a medical colleague who is willing to be among the first to take the experimental vaccine. Most say they want to review the safety data after a year or so of use before they’ll consider getting it.
“These colleagues are concerned about possible autoimmune side effects that may not appear for months after vaccination,” Berdine writes. It’s worth noting that none of the trials currently underway include immunocompromised volunteers, so the effects of these vaccines on people with suppressed immune function is wholly unknown.
This is a significant problem, seeing how an estimated 14.7 million to 23.5 million Americans suffer from some form of autoimmune disease,8 and these people are also at increased risk for COVID-19 complications and death.
If the vaccine exacerbates autoimmune problems, the outcome could be devastating for an extraordinary number of people. The volunteers currently enrolled in trials are all healthier than the average American, yet side effects appear commonplace even among this “elite” group.
What You Can Expect From the COVID-19 Vaccine
An October 20, 2020, article9 in the Observer lists the known side effects that have emerged in the various trials. Chills, fever, body aches and headache are the most commonplace, but at least two cases of transverse myelitis — inflammation of the spinal cord — have also occurred.
Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that the vaccine’s side effects are “no walk in the park,”10 and Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, has stressed the need for a broad-based outreach campaign to discuss the reality of side effects, as patients might not come back for the required second dose if the side effects take them by surprise.11
Dr. Eli Perencevich, a professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa Health Care, has suggested essential workers should be granted three days of paid leave after they’re vaccinated, as many will feel too sick to work.12
A December 1, 2020, CNBC article,13 which looked at the frequency of adverse reactions, noted that 10% to 15% of participants in the Pfizer and Moderna trials reported “significantly noticeable” side effects.
Buried way down at the bottom of the article is a suggestion from a past advisory committee member, who proposes the nomenclature of “serious adverse reaction” be changed to "immune response," so they can reprogram how people think about these side effects, even if they end up having to stay home from work because of them.
The article also admits they have no idea what, if any, long-term reactions there might be, which means (as we already knew) that this is a great big public health experiment and, of course, anything that happens post-marketing will be labeled a "coincidence."
In related news, a participant in India’s AstraZeneca trial is now suing the company claiming the vaccine caused “serious neurological damage,”14 and a group of researchers warn the COVID-19 vaccines could potentially increase your risk of HIV infection.15 Then there are the concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine permanently altering your DNA, effectively
turning you into a transhuman.16 As you can see, there’s a lot to consider before taking this vaccine.
But people won't stay home either. People do what they want and they can't seem to do anything about the spread. All efforts seem to be wasted. But who wants to throw in the towel and say "don't even try, if you die you die?" No one in a position of responsibility is going to say that but their efforts are not really doing anything to stop it. That is my personal opinion. I could be wrong.
