Earlier this month I attended an event organised by Vaccine Injured and Support Group Northern Ireland (VIBS NI), held at Parliament Buildings in Stormont.
Because the group had been unable to secure cross-party backing from the NI Executive, it took place completely outdoors on a blustery Tuesday morning, running for over two hours, and breaking just before heavy rainfall. There is no doubt it would have been preferable to host it in the warm indoors, particularly for the older people who sat for hours on foldable chairs. But it should come as no surprise that such an event is just not politically correct enough for that kind of reception. You can be assured there will be no rolling out of the red carpet for the vaccine injured anytime soon.
The reluctance to engage with the vaccine-injured seems to be, in my opinion, directly related to the coercive nature of the vaccine rollout in the first instance. The authorities made it clear that taking the vaccine was a priority, to the point where those who were hesitant could be excluded from social venues and perhaps even the workplace, and it’s very likely that the same authorities now don’t want to hear from those who have been injured by the same jab.
Vaccine injuries are treated, by and large, as yet another strand of conspiratorial thinking. Ignored by medical professionals, big pharma, and governments – including our own. Yet over 21,000 reports of suspected Covid vaccine side effects have been made to the State regulator here (1,268 reports were cardiac or heart related (such as palpitations) while a further 15,795 reports were linked to general symptoms and local reactions) – with the majority of reported injuries classified as mild, as opposed to severe.
However – as MLA Paul Frew detailed in an interview last year – there have been 51 suspected deaths in Northern Ireland reported under the Yellow Card system, with 5,093 ‘serious’ events reported to authorities over the border.
The internet is filled with people sharing stories about their own negative, sometimes catastrophic, experiences with Covid vaccines. I’ve personally heard dozens of people claim how loved ones suddenly “went downhill” after taking a Covid jab, or how a relative or neighbour died suddenly, allegedly after being vaccinated. I’ve overheard multiple such conversations in the queue at the pharmacy, on the train, walking down the street. While these are merely anecdotes, they do make one inclined to believe that Covid vaccine injuries have become the elephant in the room.
But I do agree that anecdotal evidence is not enough: and the onus is on those who argue that vaccines are harmful to provide the evidence. But that doesn’t mean that those who have suffered injuries should be sidelined.
In the same way, it is true that anecdotes lack statistical depth, but it cannot be denied that there is a growing number of stories appearing in the news detailing multiple people who have lost family members or sacrificed their own health to Covid vaccines. There was the awful case earlier this month which saw a GP practice in England accept that a 26-year-old design graduate was not told the correct risks involved in taking the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine.
Jack Hurn died in 2021, two weeks after driving to the GP practice with his girlfriend, where they both took the AstraZeneca jab – owing to the fact that the one they had planned to take, Pfizer, was not available that day.
He died from a complication of the vaccine, suffering “catastrophic” blood clots. The last words he told his devastated mother were, “I’m scared.” A horrendous death, heartache visited on a family that will remain for the rest of their lives – but where is the outrage over such deaths?
The international cases are piling up. The Daily Mail just last week, for instance, detailed how a young Australian woman, who had been encouraged by her employer to get vaccinated and also required a vaccine to go to her university campus, died five weeks after taking a Moderna shot.
Her death certificate lists myocardial infarction with subacute myocarditis as the cause. Her mother recently told a parliamentary inquiry that she believed her daughter would be alive today if she had not taken the Moderna booster shot.
“Had we known that there were risks there would have been no way that I would have allowed Natalie to receive another vaccine and I know that she would not have had it either,” she told MPs in Canberra in 2023.
These are just a couple of cases I’ve read about in the last ten days or so. Then of course there is the rabbit hole which is Covid vaccine injuries.
I recently learned about a local musician who was forced to retire because he had developed a rare nerve disorder. Funny enough, the local newspaper who reported on his plight never once mentioned a Covid vaccine in a lengthy article featuring the ex-musician. Yet, the popular Tyrone man, Larry Lowe, says he was forced to retire on medical grounds after developing trigeminal neuralgia – a rare but recognised neurological complication after Covid vaccination.
“During the 2 years, 6 months and 28 days since receiving a Covid booster, I have been forced to retire on medical grounds. Top neurological experts have since treated my unique vaccine induced injury called painful trigeminal sensory neuropathy secondary to covid vaccine, with clinical features of small fibre neuropathy.
“Following protracted treatment locally and in London, I have been told that there is nothing more that can be done for me, apart from fortnightly psychologist appointments with St Thomas. I am officially disabled, and struggle with all manner of movement, sensitivity to light, chronic pain and endless attacks of extreme pain,” Mr Lowe wrote on social media this month, in a post which was flooded with support. There is no doubt that the Moderna link will probably not make the papers.
Sceptical readers might be too quick to dismiss individual stories of the harms caused by the largest vaccine rollout in history as mere coincidence, freakish misfortune, or simply collateral damage – the cost of doing business at scale. Yet there seems to be little official interest in looking for hard evidence around the number of serious side-effects suffered from Covid jabs.
While it’s hard to do this subject justice here in one article, it is notable that the frequency of serious side effects reported from these vaccines – whose approval was rushed through on an emergency basis – is multiple times higher than the traditional vaccines, such as for polio and MMR. The number of people who have experienced a vaccine related injury could be much higher than stated due to under-reporting, meaning stats show just a fraction of the true number of vaccine casualties (Mr Frew told me that of the up to 100 people he had met complaining of vaccine injuries, the majority had not reported to the yellow card scheme).
I’m unvaccinated – I did the research, and weighed up the odds. As someone perfectly healthy and in my twenties, taking a Covid vaccine made no sense to me. I did not agree with being blackmailed into taking a medicine which I did not need. There is no denying that those of us who made that decision were treated as idiots for a while – painfully patronised and looked upon as menaces.
It was a decision which meant not being allowed, for a time, to board a flight or go to the pub with friends, or eat in restaurants because of not having a vaccine pass. Some people sneered, others were bewildered by the apparent selfishness of it – but three years on, I genuinely have yet to meet anyone who rejected the vaccine and in time, regretted that decision.
Strikingly, the vast majority of those who attended the Stormont vaccine injured event earlier this month, were vaccinated. These were not the same people who had been branded oddballs and essentially banished from public life for non compliance – rather they were the sensible, well-meaning members of the public who had made the resolution to get vaccinated.
I could see very quickly that this event was not some sort of hobby horse for the unvaccinated and proud. No, these were individuals who had shown unfaltering obedience when it came to the government’s Covid vaccine booster programme. They had followed absolutely all of the public health advice and listened to the daily news bulletins and the national health service. So, how can the press possibly label them as “anti-vax?”
One woman, now a volunteer with VIBS NI, told me that she had been borderline obsessive about wearing PPE gear. During the height of the pandemic, she was meticulous about making sure everything was washed down and pristine for fear of catching Covid. When it emerged that a Covid vaccine had become available, it seemed like a no brainer. The golden ticket out of a tumultuous lockdown crisis that appeared to have no end. She was first in the queue. Yet, here she was, just a few short years later, standing at the gates of Stormont as an active volunteer with a vaccine injured and bereaved support group. What on earth has happened?
The truth is that people have been injured by the Covid vaccine. People have lost loved ones. And they feel they are being actively ignored.
I spoke to one man who had secured a certificate from his doctor because it was acknowledged that the Pfizer vaccine had been detrimental to his health. There was also a young mum there who detailed being diagnosed with multiple conditions, including myocarditis – which now means she cannot fly. She welled up with tears explaining how the event had fallen on the same date she had been booked to fly to Salou with her two young children, but the trip had to be cancelled.
“I just want to know why we had to take this vaccine,” she told those gathered. “For what reason?”
Separately, a couple from Antrim, Ruth and Kenneth Kelso, spoke about their quest for answers regarding the death of their 23-year-old daughter, Ruth. She had only gotten vaccinated so that she could go to a music festival in England. She died seven months later, with Addison’s disease recorded as her official cause of death. The couple want to know if the vaccine could have played a role in her death.
These are the conversations which are being had, in public and in private – and it’s time we acknowledged them. This is not happening – you guessed it, not a single journalist who had been sent a press release turned up at the event, nor did a single politician (aside from Paul Frew).
While a lot of the discussion around Covid vaccine injuries is anecdotal, the data suggests this is more than just smoke and mirrors. The negative effects of Covid jabs are being dismissed, because ultimately it suits the politicians and news publications who promoted vaccines as a miracle cure. People impacted feel alienated and ostracised. Their trust in public health is in tatters, and it will only deteriorate further if this conversation continues to be suppressed.
At the very least we should be willing to have the conversation, to listen to those who have been ignored by default for supposedly being part of the ‘anti vax’ brigade. Those who are suffering have been treated like black sheep for too long. They deserve recognition.