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Top Doctors Speculate a Reversal on COVID Vaccine Safety Could Be Coming

Katie Pavlich
Katie Pavlich  |  June 24, 2021 6:00 AM

Writing in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, UCLA Geffen School of Medicine Doctor Joseph Lapado and Yale School of Public Health Doctor Harvey Risch warn there are legitimate and serious concerns about the side effects of the Wuhan coronavirus vaccine. They also worry vaccine politics could be preventing officials from telling Americans the truth about the risks. 

"One remarkable aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic has been how often unpopular scientific ideas, from the lab-leak theory to the efficacy of masks, were initially dismissed, even ridiculed, only to resurface later in mainstream thinking. Differences of opinion have sometimes been rooted in disagreement over the underlying science. But the more common motivation has been political," they write. "Another reversal in thinking may be imminent. Some scientists have raised concerns that the safety risks of Covid-19 vaccines have been underestimated. But the politics of vaccination has relegated their concerns to the outskirts of scientific thinking—for now." 

"The large clustering of certain adverse events immediately after vaccination is concerning, and the silence around these potential signals of harm reflects the politics surrounding Covid-19 vaccines. Stigmatizing such concerns is bad for scientific integrity and could harm patients," they continue. 

Lapado and Risch don't simply state opinions; they back up their concerns with data and clinical experience. 

"Four serious adverse events follow this arc, according to data taken directly from Vaers: low platelets (thrombocytopenia); noninfectious myocarditis, or heart inflammation, especially for those under 30; deep-vein thrombosis; and death. Vaers records 321 cases of myocarditis within five days of receiving a vaccination, falling to almost zero by 10 days. Prior research has shown that only a fraction of adverse events are reported, so the true number of cases is almost certainly higher. This tendency of underreporting is consistent with our clinical experience," they write. "Analyses to confirm or dismiss these findings should be performed using large data sets of health-insurance companies and healthcare organizations. The CDC and FDA are surely aware of these data patterns, yet neither agency has acknowledged the trend...the implication is that the risks of a Covid-19 vaccine may outweigh the benefits for certain low-risk populations, such as children, young adults and people who have recovered from Covid-19. This is especially true in regions with low levels of community spread, since the likelihood of illness depends on exposure risk." 

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Further, they point out that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Dr. Anthony Fauci have advocated everyone should be vaccinated and yet haven't produced any scientific data showing vaccination for those with natural immunity would be beneficial. 

"While you would never know it from listening to public-health officials, not a single published study has demonstrated that patients with a prior infection benefit from Covid-19 vaccination. That this isn’t readily acknowledged by the CDC or Anthony Fauci is an indication of how deeply entangled pandemic politics is in science," they say. 

On the contrary, there are a number of peer reviewed studies that show natural immunity is effective against re-infection of the disease and its variants. 

The op-ed comes shortly after the CDC held an emergency meeting to examine hundreds of instances of heart inflammation as a result of the vaccine.