There's a new shot on the block
As the regulator falls apart
We’re following on from this article below, in which the AstraZeneca burst onto the UK market in a carnival of science positivity. “It’s 100% safe and effective!”, they said. When concerns were raised that this might not be true, the regulators came out swinging for their product, reassuring the public everything was ok. Then, without any fanfare at all, they acknowledged their might possibly be a problem and they pulled it from the market without telling anyone. So now what do they do?
Well, by now, it’s May 2021, and as the AstraZeneca vaccine is being rapidly phased out, there’s a new kid on the block ready to take up the slack; the brand new Pfizer mRNA vaccine. Take a look at the graph below and you can see this story play out. The graph shows AstraZeneca usage in green and Pfizer in blue. The vertical bars are the number of adverse events being reported which use the scale on the right. It shows us that just as AZ was phased out, the Pfizer vaccine remained on the market to finish the job.
Notice that in GPT’s graph, the green ‘AZ Adverse Events’ bar takes up all the vertical space. GPT offered up code for that without me prompting it to, perhaps because it’s the most straightforward way to do it? It’s interesting only because when it’s plotted this way, the number of adverse events certainly catches the eye. Compare that to how the UK regulator presented the same data, well, it just looks different is all. There’s a random and unused ‘total reports’ scale that goes up to 80,000 for no obvious reason.
At the height of the AstraZeneca campaign, there were 20,000 yellowcard reports coming in per week. It should be noted that Yellowcard was associated with an under reporting effect. Before Covid-19 got started, there was a healthy discussion on how to increase reporting to the Yellowcard ‘side effect monitoring’ scheme. “There is under-reporting of suspected [adverse events] in children“ said the UK regulator in 2018. There were three reports backing up that claim, leading to a rule of thumb: “It is estimated that only 10 per cent of serious ADRs and 2-4 per cent of nonserious reactions are reported”, said a statement published in 2006. That lines up with VAERS, the United States system for collecting this kind of data, which by their own admission, “receives reports for only a small fraction of actual adverse events”.
So when those adverse events reports start to come in, with 20,000 rolling in per week, you’d think the regulator would pay very close attention. Especially when a concerning number of those reports had a fatal outcome. In total, there were 1,202 reports of fatal outcomes in 2021 and we know from the official data that the vast majority of these vaccines were given in a period of just five months. That’s 240 fatal reports a month, 60 fatal reports a week, and 9 fatal reports per day. Shouldn’t this have triggered some action sooner than a meek statement in April?
Absolutely everyone who is sensible is at great pains to have me inform you that these are just reports of fatal outcomes. It’s true - they are not confirmed deaths - but I’m not sure that’s quite the slam dunk our detractors think it is.
To quote exactly from the regulator themselves, these are “suspected” fatal outcomes. For a serious adverse event (like death) to count, it has to be ‘recognised’ as a serious adverse event. For the avoidance of doubt, I’ll quote the regulator in full, the report “does not represent an overview of the potential side effects associated with the vaccines. A list of the recognised adverse effects of the COVID-19 vaccines is provided… here.”
Click on the link. You won’t see any information about recognised side effects of the AZ vaccine, because for whatever reason that information was removed in January 2024. Interesting. Park this little nugget of information as well because we’ll come back to it.
Elsewhere on the government’s website, we can find that information. There’s a gov.uk page that acts as an interesting history of regulatory knowledge of these problems. On April 3rd 2021, there was no mention of ‘fatal’ adverse events associated with the AZ vaccine but around five days later on April 7th or 8th, the page was updated with a new section.
“Serious thromboembolic events with concurrent thrombocytopenia, sometimes accompanied by bleeding, have occurred very rarely following vaccination with COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca during post-authorisation use. This includes life-threatening and fatal cases.”
What’s interesting about the timing of this update is that it ran perfectly parallel with the regulator’s press release finally acknowledging the issue of blood clots. So there’s a natural social experiment here; there’s an MHRA press release written for public consumption, and a quiet update to the recognised side effects written for healthcare professionals. The public are not told that the vaccine’s side effects now include death from thrombosis, but healthcare professionals are. Six weeks later, the product had been rapidly phased out of use.
What’s odd about this, is that the MHRA were specifically asked about this and they responded publicly in July. Were they recommending the vaccine be pulled from the market? Whenever you read the MHRA respond to safety questions, you get an awful word salad which obscures a simpler truth, so I asked Gemini to faithfully consense their answers.
Q: Has the MHRA recommended stopping the vaccine?
No, the MHRA continuously monitors vaccine safety and hasn't found reason to stop using it.
They use various methods to track safety, including Yellow Card reports and other data analysis.
If new risks emerge, they'll assess them and take appropriate action (e.g., warnings, restrictions).
They answered in the negative, they saw no reason to stop using the vaccine, but at that exact moment, usage of AZ vaccine was cratering to nothing. So we either had the MHRA gaslighting the public by phasing it out whilst saying they had no plans to, or the health practitioners had lost faith in the MHRA’s position and stopped using it of their own accord. Under the latter scenario, one presumes there are landfills dotted across the UK full of unused AZ vaccines. If that’s not the case, there was an official decision, unacknowledged, to take it off the market.
In the same FOI, they are asked if they know how many people had died as a result of AZ vaccination. Again, because of their matador dancing performance, I’ll post the response filtered by Gemini:
Q: How many deaths/hospitalizations within 28 days of vaccination?
The MHRA doesn't have this data, but suggests checking the Office for National Statistics.
They received reports of 936 deaths following vaccination, mostly in elderly/ill individuals. However, they emphasize this doesn't prove the vaccine caused the deaths.
So they get reports of fatal outcomes and they don’t actually follow up on them properly because they don’t hold that exact data. At that time, the MHRA had to have been aware of at least one death because they’d commented publicly on it the month prior. Lisa Shaw, a BBC radio presenter, died as a result of blood clots caused by the AZ vaccine. The MHRA were asked about this by the BBC and they put out a statement.
"We are saddened to hear about the death of Lisa Shaw and our thoughts are with her family. As with any serious suspected adverse reaction, reports with a fatal outcome are fully evaluated by the MHRA, including an assessment of post-mortem details if available.
"Our detailed and rigorous review into reports of blood clots occurring together with thrombocytopenia is ongoing."
The tragic death of someone, and still the MHRA give this weird half baked answer in which the death only remains ‘suspected’. We will look at post-mortem details if they are available they said. Then the same class-prefect protective shield they always use; they’re doing a ‘detailed and rigorous review’. To give you an idea of just how unclear the picture was (and remains), writing on Shaw’s death, The Guardian provided a fig leaf entirely typical for the time.
The risk of a clot linked to the jab is thought to be about one in 100,000 for people in their 40s, according to the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). The risk of death across all age groups has been put at about one in a million.
One month prior to this, the MHRA didn’t even list these clots as a possibility, they didn’t even know that death was a possible outcome of their AZ vaccine, then here in May, in response to a tragedy and a PR disaster, they’re pulling numbers out of nowhere to try and put the issue to bed. As you saw, four weeks after Lisa’s death, the MHRA were directly asked how many deaths were caused by the vaccine, and their answer was they didn’t know. This is a massive regulatory failure.
On the question of deaths, in their full answer, they say “The majority of these reports were in elderly people” to which a reader might think, “ahh yes, well old people die anyway, so it’s likely that”. But what does their data actually show? Look at the graph above, a little under half of the reports of fatal outcomes were in ages below 60. These aren’t people you expect to die from old age, and so it’s actually these cases which the regulator should have focused very carefully on, but rather than give a straight answer, they redirect the bull. They don’t have the number of deaths caused by the vaccine, but it’s likely that anyone who died from it is old or sick (even though about 40% were not old).
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What I think is worth stating clearly is this: we do not know how many people were killed by the AZ vaccine. The ONS, whom the UK regulator refer you to, record how many people died with vaccine complications written onto their death certificate. They report 64 deaths, but it’s not their job to actively investigate anything, they just passively record death data. They also cannot and do not make distinctions between Pfizer/Moderna/AstraZeneca. The MHRA, who should take a somewhat more active role, received reports 1,424 deaths in total, and of those, they cannot or will not tell you how many were caused by the vaccine.
Add to this the under reporting factor they’ve been aware of for years and its possible those 1,424 reports are just a fraction of the reports of we should have. But of course, we cannot use that to extrapolate how many reports their should be. So… we’re stuck. We do not know the answer. Whatever the truth, it’s a very convenient situation for the companies pushing these products.
So what about the number of people disabled by the vaccine? Do they have the answer to that? Again, here’s Gemini summarising the word salad.
Q: How many disabled/incapacitated by the vaccine?
The MHRA can't comment as reports don't track long-term disability.
They caution that reported side effects don't necessarily mean the vaccine caused them.
This is yet more evidence that the Yellowcard system just isn’t fit for purpose. The reports come in, then when quizzed about what any of it might mean, they don’t have an answer. Death is not the only endpoint, they should have some proper data on how these products are affecting people’s health, but there’s no concrete follow up on reports at all. When a report of a serious injury or death comes in on a novel product, it should be on the MHRA to conclusively rule out that the product was involved. If it’s not the job of the MHRA to conclusively answer this question, then what purpose are they serving?
Now… let’s get back to removal of that information from the Yellowcard website. Do you recall?
I don’t know the reason that happened. The data is still available on other recesses of the gov.uk website, but in its rightful place on the Yellowcard side effect reporting portal, it is gone. It was yanked somewhere between November 10th, 2023, and January 4th, 2024. For the curious minded amongst us, AstraZeneca acquired two companies in that exact period. They paid $1 billion dollars to acquire Gracell Biotechnologies, a clinical-stage company developing ‘CAR-T therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases’. They also spent up to $1.1 billion to acquire Icosavax, a biopharmaceutical company developing “a protein virus-like particle (VLP) platform.
Was it time to move on from their disastrous product? This smart business move covered their bases for ‘traditional like’ vaccines, and gets them back in the race for the rosy future of gene therapy. We can only speculate as to why the regulator removed ‘recognised’ side effects of their product from their website at the exact time these acquisitions took place. It’s an independent regulator after all…or as they put it themselves, ‘From Watchdog to Enabler’.
Whilst the regulator totally dropped the ball, there were case studies and science papers being published all over the world. Independent scientists were doing the work the regulators wouldn’t - looking at the case reports of people suffering side effects from the vaccine. In the next part of this series we’re going to look at some of those reports, what was known and when, and the disparity between public ‘news’ knowledge, and the brewing realisation amongst medical practitioners that something was very wrong.
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I wanted to cry reading this article. Sadness for those injured and killed, frustration with the corrupt system and complete incompetence of those meant to protect us from unsafe medical products. A complete derelict of duty. How could this happen. Four years on and the culprits are still free to roam. It is criminal. One thought came to mind. Many people I speak in the UK, believe President Putin to be the devil incarnate. And yet, they would never be critical of their government health agencies despite these agencies harming and killing UK citizens.