“Haematologist Dr Sue Pavord was one of the [AstraZeneca] jab’s biggest supporters, but she knew something was wrong when she saw the side-effects up close,” says the Telegraph.
Pavord was so keen she even persuaded her daughter to take part in the trial:
Looking back, Pavord’s feelings about helping to get the AstraZeneca jab onto the market are somewhat mixed. The jab was heralded as “the vaccine for the world” on the basis that unlike the Pfizer jab, which had to be stored at ultra-low temperatures, it could be kept in fridges, making it easier to transport and roll out in developing countries. Boris Johnson described it as “a triumph for British science”.
But nine weeks after the vaccine finally started being administered to the public in January 2021, Pavord became one of the first doctors in the UK to realise that something may be amiss.
A young man came to see her as an outpatient on March 15th 2021. He had developed deep vein thrombosis – a type of blood clot – around a week after being vaccinated against Covid. He also had low platelets.
We now know that the AstraZeneca vaccine could lead to a condition now known as vaccine-induced thrombocytopenia and thrombosis (VITT), which can kill patients or lead to life-changing injuries.
But at the time, VITT had not even been named as a condition, and Pavord – a consultant at Oxford University Hospitals – knew that the combination of blood clots and low platelets was highly unusual.
“We see thrombosis commonly and we see low platelets commonly, but the two together really only have a select number of causes, quite rare and serious conditions,” she recalls.
Before long it turned out that other consultants in the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) were seeing the same phenomenon, but:
Those cases were more severe, and the colleagues in question had had various tests carried out which established that the patients had developed an antibody called ‘anti-platelet factor four antibody’, which is more commonly associated with a very serious immune reaction to a blood thinner called heparin.
Pavord started contacting other haematologists, and soon discovered that the common denominator was the AstraZeneca jab. Alarmingly, the fatality rate at that stage among those affected was a horrifying 75%. She and colleagues worked on treatments to bring the death rate down, but the work revealed the alarming implications for young adults:
We now know that one in 100,000 over 50s who received the AstraZeneca vaccine were at risk of VITT, with the figure dropping to one in 50,000 for the under 50s. Pavord and her colleagues estimate the risk for those in their 20s is one in 10,000.
The deaths of course have to be contextualised. The risks to those under 50 are twice that of dying under general anaesthetic, for example. Although Pavord supported the Government’s response to Covid, she was lobbying for it not to be given to the under-50s:
“We were seeing cases [amongst people] under 50. And it was when the vaccine rollout had reached the 50s that we started to notice the cases,” she reflects. “I was kind of pushing: we’ve got to stop the vaccine for people under 50. But then there were others going, ‘Well, these people are dying of Covid and we need the vaccine’.”
Needless to say there has been no official acknowledgement of the risks:
Last May, having distributed more than three billion doses of the vaccine, AstraZeneca announced that it was withdrawing its product. The company insisted the decision was a commercial one: the vaccine had been superseded by updated vaccines that tackle new variants. It was “incredibly proud” of the role the jab “played in ending the global pandemic”.
A cynic might argue that reads remarkably like a face-saving cover-up. Pavord restricts herself to saying “I’m relieved”.
Will we ever get the whole truth? Perhaps not in our lifetimes.
Worth reading in full.
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