Civil Defense Perspectives vol. 38 #6
As of Jan 2, 2024, the lead entry on the website of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) is still “COVID-19 Vaccines.” It states: “COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and free. Everyone 6 months and older can get an updated COVID-19 vaccine.” It adds that “Children aged 6 months–4 years need multiple doses of COVID-19 vaccines to be up to date, including at least 1 dose of updated COVID-19 vaccine.”
Other nations are banning the use of these vaccines in persons under age 30. Social media, especially since Elon Musk bought Twitter, is full of reports of sudden deaths and other catastrophes linked to receipt of these vaccines. Coincidences? Various authorities, of varying credibility, announce detailed theories and “smoking guns” that trend explosively for a time. Click bait for fund-raising campaigns? The theories, such as the hydras, the snake venom, and the self-organizing nanobots, fade away, and the funds disappear. So, what can we conclude about safety?
A series of guest editorials in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (www.jpands.org) considers the negative evidence for many of the possible adverse events.
The term “negative evidence” is generally understood to mean “evidence for a theory provided by the non-occurrence or absence of something.” Absence of evidence is not the same thing. An adverse reaction, for example, might have occurred, but is deliberately being hidden. The lack of expected data is a highly valuable form of negative evidence recognized by astute scientific and legal investigators.
Negative evidence is not uncommon. It takes time and effort to produce believable false data. It is much easier and safer for anyone who wants to mislead the public to hide inconvenient information than to create false data or an elaborate cover-up. Deliberate omission of data is the form of scientific misconduct that is the most difficult to prove. There are numerous historical precedents involving famous scientists who intentionally omitted relevant data contradicting their favored theories.
Discovery of compelling negative evidence requires not only diligence and commitment but also substantial expertise on the subject. Hence, negative evidence is frequently missed by laypeople, who due to lack of knowledge cannot perceive what should be there but is missing, or who don’t understand its significance.
Such evidence may be accompanied by ludicrous but distracting claims made by someone not involved in concealing the relevant clues. The subversive, centuries-old tactic of highlighting such claims is called “muddying the water.” Given a choice between the obvious liar and a scientist who does not lie—but does not tell the whole truth, the public will select the latter. It will not matter whether a liar was deliberately planted. The existence of a self-evident prevaricator boosts the credibility of the sinister person who is hiding the evidence. Thus, the credible-appearing scientist who willfully withholds pertinent information is at least as dangerous as a prevaricating charlatan.
Antibody-Dependent Enhancement
Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) is the puzzling paradox in which virus-specific antibodies, instead of neutralizing the virus, enhance its entry to cells and its replication. This will result in worsening of the viral disease. It can happen in any scenario in which neutralizing antibodies to the virus are produced, including primary or secondary viral infections and in relation to vaccination. Vaccine-related antibody-dependent enhancement (VADE) has been described in association with vaccinations for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), measles, and dengue fever.
VADE appears to be an unavoidable problem in vaccine development. Its significance is that the intervention (vaccination) actually worsens outcomes.
Disturbingly, vaccines against a precursor of COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-1 have elicited VADE in animal models. Questions about VADE with COVID-19 vaccines (CVADE) have been raised by many authors. Logically, any evidence to prove or disprove its existence should be vigorously sought by epidemiologists as well as by basic and clinical researchers. Such efforts should have resulted by now in publication of numerous robust epidemiological and research studies, meta-analyses, and case reports, and the establishment of registries. There should be comprehensive entries on these subjects in medical textbooks and in the clinical decision support modules (CDSM) of electronic health records. Strangely, nothing of the sort is happening.
Additionally, there is unusual silence by the authorities and mainstream medical community even about the rate of any type of COVID-19 infections among vaccinated patients. This is so unusual that even the mainstream press started to report on it. Florida and CDC officials refused requests by newspapers and other media to release data indicating how many vaccinated Floridians have been infected, hospitalized, or died of COVID-19, citing “privacy concerns.” This pervasive informational embargo on stratified data related to breakthrough infections and VADE precludes serious epidemiological study.
Indonesian authors reported two patients with a clinical presentation consistent with CVADE, and theorized that vaccination could cause excessive boosting of the inflammatory process leading to an exaggerated clinical course of the COVID-19 illness. However, beside such singular reports virtually no other clinical paper describes the presence or even the suspicion of CVADE. Initially, the lack of reports may lead to the reassuring conclusion that CVADE is indeed irrelevant. However, examination of the papers on “breakthrough” infections shows that no one was looking for CVADE.
There is no need for any gargantuan elaborate conspiracy to stop the free flow of information on VADE. All one needs is to disallow access to the centrally controlled governmental database and cut the governmental funding for the research. Subsequently, the misleading narrative that the subject is either non-existing or irrelevant can be easily created.
Why is research into adverse effects such as CVADE proceeding at a turtle’s pace, not “warp speed”? Wouldn’t it be better for the huge army of “science communicators” to have plentiful data to support their assertions about the insignificance of CVADE? It would—only if the data supported their assertions.
Does someone want to limit the flow of the data about this subject—and why? This is the essential question to ponder (https://jpands.org/vol27no1/orient.pdf).
Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which is co-managed by CDC and FDA, is an outgrowth of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. It is a spontaneous (or passive) public reporting system, not an ongoing formal clinical trial, and not a formal real-world data (RWD) study such as an active survey or registry.
If officialdom really cared about the true outcomes of vaccinations, it would long ago have created a comprehensive formal, epidemiological, multitiered active survey/registry system for vaccine outcomes. The system would use formalized questionnaires, medical records abstracting, and actual laboratory data collection, and would, for example, be structured like the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Such a system would use observational study methods to collect and harmonize both subjective and objective data about the outcomes of vaccination. Subsequently, it would aggregate large data sets and analyze identifiable trends or patterns correlating subjective reports with objective data.
By design, VAERS is unhelpful in studying effect modifiers like VADE (ibid.).
VAERS still constitutes a headache for vaccine mandate proponents since passive data are better than no data. But authorities can excuse disregarding safety signals on the basis that VAERS is a very inaccurate system—because it is.
With the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC established V-safe, a “vaccine safety monitoring system that lets you share with CDC how you or your dependent feel after getting a participating vaccine. After you register, V-safe will send you personalized and confidential health check-ins via text messages or emails to ask how you feel.” According to the frequently asked questions, CDC will not call anyone directly to follow-up on your responses, but it may send a text advising you to file a report with VAERS. V-safe has been discontinued for COVID-19, but you can still log in for RSV.
Note that RSV vaccine is being heavily promoted for both children and elderly, even with TV ads. Past experience with RSV and VADE is apparently being ignored.
Autopsies
When thousands of unexpected sudden deaths, or deaths “after a short illness” are reported in previously healthy young persons, gathering postmortem information is of substantial scientific, clinical, social, and legal importance. However, counterintuitively, despite this obvious need, available data are very scarce.
The vacuum in the official medical literature is being filled by information of variable quality presented on alternative platforms, frequently by anonymous authors, retirees, well-intentioned laymen, or even sinister charlatans. Despite their variable quality, those reports are relevant since they indicate the possibility that there is a strong safety signal present in the postmortem data—a signal that seems to be deliberately ignored by officialdom—or even suppressed (https://jpands.org/vol27no2/orient.pdf).
Two retired German pathologists laid down the gauntlet in 2021. The “German Pathology Conference” was widely disseminated on the internet. There was a lack of academic rigor, but many shortcomings could be explained by power asymmetry between officially recognized “experts” and dissidents. Many of the findings used standard methods. However, the unorthodox forensic content, including dark-field microscopy, raises many questions. The way to confirm or refute the findings is by autopsies by independent pathologists, who can publish their findings free of censorship.
Autopsies are expensive and generally not funded by insurance. Hospitals no longer are required to perform a significant percentage of autopsies to maintain accreditation (http://tinyurl.com/4zshaju4). It is possible to obtain a privately funded forensic autopsy. The College of American Pathologists offers a fee-for-service autopsy list (http://tinyurl.com/ym87njbb), and there are others, such as autopsydoctor.com, which family members might wish to investigate. One might request preservation of certain specimens, such as liver, kidney, heart, or muscle, in case additional methods such as immunohistologic stains become available. Also preserve some vitreous humor for toxicology. Limited autopsies, possibly restricted to biopsies of selected tissues, are also possible.
COVID-19 Vaccines and Fertility
The effect of a pharmaceutical on fertility is obviously of the utmost importance. Yet the only exception to the generally low quality of studies on COVID vaccines concerned menstrual irregularities, which were too frequent in researchers themselves to be ignored. Only 44% of participants who generally menstruated reported no change after vaccination. Authors concluded, however, that “generally, changes to menstrual bleeding are not uncommon or dangerous, yet attention to these experiences is necessary to build trust in medicine” (http://tinyurl.com/pv86fn3s). This paper does not investigate effects on fertility. Between 2020 and July 2022, PubMed listed only 106 publications on COVID vaccine and fertility, and 10,245 on COVID and diabetes.
Clinical assessment of fertility is complex, especially in females, and birth rates are affected by many confounders. We have many safety signals, and lack the serious research needed to clarify the complex issues. Official experts have the ethical responsibility to rule out this devastating potential consequence to current and all potential future generations before permitting, much less mandating use of these products in persons who have the ability to reproduce. Yet the coercion to administer these products on a massive scale continues unabated. Officialdom attempts to silence criticism of the official narrative by oppressive and vindictive actions (https://jpands.org/vol27no3/orient.pdf).
Based on examination of VAERS reports on pregnancy outcomes, Thorp et al. conclude that: “The administration of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy and women of reproductive age should be halted immediately until these safety signals can be fully investigated (http://tinyurl.com/2ypexs99).
COVID Vaccines in Children
Although COVID vaccination is being added to the childhood vaccination schedule, assuring liability protection for the manufacturer, there is no evidence for the assertion by the CDC/Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that “the benefits of mRNA vaccination outweigh the risks.” One voting panelist, Eric Ruben, M.D., Ph.D., editor-in-chief of NEJM, stated: “we’re never going to learn how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it.” Steven Hatfill, M.D., writes: “This madness must stop now. It is time for individual and group accountability” (https://jpands.org/vol28no4/hatfill.pdf).