With apologies to the nervous flyer, I’m sorry to tell you that flying became less safe on December 8th 2020 when MHRA authorised Pfizer’s Covid vaccine in the U.K. Let me explain.
Last month I wrote about Pfizer’s latest analysis of millions of patients’ data from a range of European national healthcare systems including the NHS. The data are segmented by categories like age, sex and, importantly, the Covid vaccination status of each patient (the very data which governments around the world continue to refuse to make public). Pfizer’s results include a ‘Hazard Ratio’ (HZ) which is a measure of the relative frequency of a serious adverse event between the Covid vaccinated and unvaccinated groups. As I said last month, Pfizer itself is now reporting to medicine regulators that its Covid vaccine has significantly increased the occurrence of a range of heart conditions. Here’s a screenshot :
What I didn’t say at the time is that I had also written to Sir Stephen Hillier, the Chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority, asking for his comments about the implications for aviation safety, and in particular the increased likelihood of a Covid vaccinated pilot being incapacitated in-flight by a cardiac issue. I didn’t mention that in my article because I had decided to give the CAA a chance to respond to my letter. However, a month on, it still hasn’t replied despite being chased – hence this further article.
“Not so fast,” you might say. “Even if Pfizer itself is now saying that its Covid vaccine increases the frequency of heart problems, the affected pilots will no longer be flying because they will have been screened out by the regular medicals which pilots have to pass to keep their licence.” And it’s true, the number of U.K. pilots failing their aero medicals (all causes) has soared. Shout out to Sally Beck for reporting on that late last year:
Unfortunately, the CAA has just refused my FOI request for data on what proportion of those medical ‘fails’ were for heart conditions. It would only give me data for 2021 onwards – which of course prevents any pre/post-vaccine comparisons.
However, there is still a major problem. The periodic medical examinations required by aviation regulators don’t eliminate the risk of in-flight incapacitation. They never did. In fact, aviation regulators have, for years, scaled the periodicity and depth of those medicals against the frequency of sudden incapacitation in the general population. For dual pilot flights, aviation regulators use a ‘1% rule’: the probability of one of the pilots becoming incapacitated mid-flight must be less than 1% per year.
The corresponding ‘rule’ for a solo pilot is an order less (0.1% per year) because there is no second pilot to take over.
The problem should be obvious by now but I’m going to make it crystal clear. Pfizer’s latest report of increased heart problems in the Covid vaccinated has most likely invalidated CAA’s prior assumptions about the risk of incapacitation in the general population on which it based the periodicity and depth of its pilot medicals. So flying has become less safe since December 8th 2020 when MHRA authorised Pfizer’s Covid vaccine.
Pfizer’s latest report obviously comes on top of the numerous media reports over the last four years of pilots becoming incapacitated mid-flight. That has always happened – aeromedicals just reduce the risk, they don’t eliminate it – and CAA collects information (called Mandatory Occurrence Reporting) on all such incidents. However, it is impossible currently to judge if there is any recent increase in heart-related pilot in-flight incapacitation because CAA states that “the release of occurrence information to the general public or the media, including in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, is not permitted”.
Nevertheless, Pfizer’s latest reported figures are now there for all to see. Worryingly, CAA was unsighted until I alerted the CAA Chairman to Pfizer’s latest report in my letter of October 12th. How do I know? Because the MHRA admitted in a recent Parliamentary Written Question that it has not discussed Pfizer’s report with any industry safety regulators.
“Why not”, you ask. My guess is that MHRA didn’t make the connection. The problem is that medicine regulators’ idea of safety management is that a medicine is safe if ‘benefit outweighs risk’. That’s relative. If the risk increases it just carries on if its staff perceive (or can argue, however spuriously) that the benefit still outweighs it. That’s their whole mindset. I doubt they even saw the link to aviation safety because there’s probably no-one in MHRA with knowledge, experience or training about conventional safety management in other safety critical sectors, aviation or otherwise, all of which deal in absolute safety risks. Aviation regulators, rightly, don’t consider the ‘benefit’ of flying when assessing safety. It’s either safe or it’s not.
I think it’s also likely that CAA was reassured by MHRA’s ‘safe and effective’ narrative without realising that the medicine regulators define safety in such a relative way (‘benefit outweighs risk’). I wouldn’t be surprised if the CAA is now spitting feathers at MHRA for not having consulted it about Pfizer’s latest report.
To me, the solution is not just for MHRA and CAA to start that consultation. It is actually for medicine regulators to be stopped from maintaining the charade that safety should be defined as ‘benefit outweighs risk’. As I have suggested before, medicine regulators should be forced to adopt the same safety management principles as everyone else and have a minimum tolerable level of risk – how many people can be allowed to die or be seriously harmed before a drug is suspended. That level would be different for chemotherapy drugs compared with over-the-counter painkillers, but my point stands. I would hazard a guess that this would render a lot of drugs unsafe overnight. I wonder if Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Donald Trump has empowered to “Make America Healthy Again” by reforming the U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, will address this obvious anomaly.
A few other things are worth pointing out:
- This is a ‘damage has been done’ issue. Heart damage is usually persistent. It’s irrelevant that airlines stopped mandating the Covid vaccine a few years ago, that a pilot might last have had the Covid vaccine several years ago, or even that it’s no longer being offered routinely to under 65s.
- One of CAA’s required medical tests is an electrocardiogram (ECG) which records the electrical signals in the heart which, in turn, can indicate a wide range of cardiac problems. If the routine ECG is abnormal, CAA specifies a range of follow-up tests. Perhaps Pfizer’s findings mean that aviation regulators like CAA should now require additional routine or follow-up heart-related tests, e.g. Troponin which is a biomarker for heart muscle damage and D-Dimer which detects blood clots.
- All of the above also applies to Air Traffic Controllers. They, too, are required by aviation regulators to pass periodic medicals.
- This is a global issue. Although Pfizer’s results are based on national healthcare data from just a handful of European countries (albeit covering tens of millions of patients), they are surely indicative of an increase in heart problems in Covid vaccinated pilots worldwide.
There is one final important point worth making. Pfizer’s report also has implications for other sectors where an individual is in control of a safety critical system with potentially catastrophic (i.e., fatal) impact on third parties. The obvious ones are drivers of buses, coaches, lorries and trains. They, too, are required by their respective safety regulator to pass a medical as a condition of a licence to operate. In those cases it’s the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) which, like the CAA, are accountable to the Department for Transport. Perhaps the House of Commons Transport Select Committee will investigate the safety impact of Covid vaccines on aviation and all the other sectors within its purview. Or the Covid Inquiry.
Or, as many think, are they all just in denial of the adverse safety profile of the Covid vaccines, or want to avoid the economic impact of loss of confidence in air travel and mRNA technology?
But at least none of them can deny having been warned – by Pfizer itself, no less.
Until Nick retired a few years ago, he was a Senior Civil Servant in the Ministry of Defence responsible for the safety and effectiveness of ammunition used by the Armed Forces. He is co-author of the Perseus Group report on U.K. medicines regulator the MHRA.
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A more pertinent question would be to ask why Mr Tegnell’s British counterpart wasn’t in charge in the UK. I think the answer is straightforward.
The Globo-Commies already have everything they want in Sweden. The last vestiges of masculinity and defiance of arbitrary authority left that country a long time ago. They have already had a hijab wearing feminist political party for a long time now. Their rape gangs are a fully integrated part of the community. A large number of their population have already chipped themselves voluntarily so no need for vax passes. When it came time to roll up their sleeves, there was no question of doing so.
So don’t kid yourself that we would have been saved by some renegade, independently thinking public health official. Following his gut instincts and the evidence where it led. Those decisions are not taken at a national level.
The lockdowns had nothing whatsoever to do with protecting public or economic health, in fact just the opposite. I hope the author enjoyed writing this piece of whimsy for it can only be wishful thinking. Accepting this fanciful scenario ultimately is to fall in with the cock-up theorists and the last three years have been far from a cock-up.
It’s a ‘ No’ from me.
Exactly hux. They’re hardly going to go to that extent for our percieved wellbeing then enforce and continue to enforce toxic shots on us, particularly those who least need it, such as kids and pregnant women. And all the money they spent on the PsyOp extravaganza…they’ll want to see it wasn’t money down the drain won’t they? This sham was nefarious and malicious from the get-go. The safety and well-being of people the very least of their concerns. Only the most naive or brain dead would think otherwise at this point in time.
We have obviously got the same book open on the same page Mogs.😀😀
You call it ‘whimsy’ and of course you are right in that because it did not happen and given Cummings and Gove high up in the Government, it would not have happened because one had wimps in charge.
However, I wrote a long email to my Tory MP on the 2nd day of lockdown and suggested a scenario that was not much different to this piece by Stacey because I am an ex dairy farmer and knew the totally wrong models that Ferguson had given us on BSE, F&M and Swine Fever.
I agree with MM above that these were not decisions driven at national level but at world level with the types like WEF pulling the strings.
I am dismayed by this attempt to paint Professor John Edmunds as a lockdown sceptic. We know from his own lips he was anything but: –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkY4BHsU0_M
Quite.
“I am dismayed by this attempt to paint Professor John Edmunds as a lockdown sceptic.”
Both you and Stacey are correct if chronology is taken into account. On 10/3/20 Edmunds (I refuse to use titles with these b*stards) was interviewed on Newshit where he rubbished lockdowns (how I detest that word). Later he must’ve sold his soul to the Devil, evidenced by your link. (I can’t load the clip of Newshit so here’s a still.)
I don’t think so. From about 6.00 minutes after Peston asks about mistakes made in response to the outbreak, he says he was in favour of ‘more radical alternatives’ to the strategy at the end of February/beginning of March. He also said he was pleased when the strategy was changed. I take that to mean that he was in favour of lockdowns early on, despite what he said on Newsnight and Channel 4.
So many questions to answer. Dr Tegnell at least seems to have learnt from his experience with swine flu. But in more general terms the following questions still mystify me:
Maybe others have more questions or even some answers!
The answers lie in the posts of myself and Mogwai posted earlier.
I know, but I want to see the detail!
Where did the flu go and why has it just reappeared?
Temporarily replaced by COVID as most prevalent respiratory disease. Countries with a less idiotic health policies than the UK had earlier reappaerances of influenza.
Indeed. The biggest thing missing from this article is early treatment and prophylaxis using what was already largely known at the time, most notably HCQ and various vitamins and minerals (evidence for IVM came a month or two later). The late Dr. Vladimir Zev Zelenko (RIP) knew the truth. Even Dr. Dmitry Kats’ idea for using high dose Niacin monotherapy was unveiled by him in March 2020, falling predictably on the deafest of ears.
Ask not “What If Anders Tegnell Had Been in Charge? ” Ask only what would have happened if we hadn’t voted to leave the #Nazi #EU ? …
If it only had been this way. Life is not some sort of movie and one cannot press the pause button, stop living for two years and then resume it as if nothing had happened, despite Corona’s witnesses kept implying that. These people have stolen almost two years of my life, there’s no chance in hell that I’ll ever get them back, and they’ve stolen them because they expected to benefit from that, both personally (all these SANITIZE! SANITZE! SANITIZE! mysophobes, eg, Trisha Greenalgh) and commercially.
The relentless appeal to mankind’s traditionally worst character traits, cowardice, egotism, and xenophobia, dressed up as unselfish behaviour for the common good alone ought to be sufficient to condemn them. Noble ends doesn’t justify ignoble means, people employing ignoble means are pursuing ignoble ends.
Indeed. But I will do you one better: what if Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua was in charge? Long story short: no lockdowns, no masks, no school or business closures, and mass gatherings would have actually been encouraged. And the excess death rates would still have been similar to stricter neighboring countries. The end.
Thanks for this article, lots to think about…
FYI, here’s my email to Anders Tegnell, dated 22 December 2020, asking him how does he justify fast-tracked coronavirus vaccination in Sweden, given most of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 in Sweden are in people aged over 70 years – is it appropriate and ethical to implement experimental, fast-tracked vaccine products for the Swedish population?
https://vaccinationispolitical.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/sweden-coronavirus-vaccination-ethical-considerations.pdf
Most enjoyable counter factual.
You and Stacey are both correct but only if you follow the chronology. On 10/3/20, Edmunds (I refuse to give any of these b*stards titles) was interviewed on Newshit where he rubbished lockdowns. However it wasn’t long before he’d sold his soul to the Devil.
Oops, (not sure it was my fault) this was meant to be a reply to Chris P – see above.
Had to stop reading this by Mid March 2020. If only, etc. Too tragic to continue.