When Daily Sceptic reader Ian Price experienced an alarming adverse reaction to his first AstraZeneca jab he decided that he did not want to risk a second dose. However, his GP had other ideas and told him he should have Pfizer for his second dose. Despite being presented with worrying safety data from Pfizer’s own trial results, the GP would not agree to an exemption. Ian writes:
I am pro-vaccine but anti-mandate. However, I have recently discovered via correspondence from my GP that the Department of Health is not ‘following the science’ in the guidance it gives to GPs on vaccine safety.
By way of background, I declined the second vaccine following an adverse reaction to the first AstraZeneca vaccine received in March 2021. I remain partially vaccinated which means that I fall into the category of citizens described by Sir Tony Blair as “idiots”. Resenting the increasing stigmatisation of the unvaccinated, I discovered via Google search that there was such a thing as a vaccine exemption. After all, even Blair acknowledges that it is possible to have a “health reason” for not being jabbed. So I called the NHS number and had a form posted to me. I filled it in and dropped it off at my GP’s surgery.
“I’m struggling a bit with the Covid exemption form,” wrote my GP to me in a text on December 1st. “I am not sure I am comfortable with precluding you from the option of a second injection.” He was about to go away but offered a phone consultation on his return. Puzzled by his framing of the issue as being about not limiting my options, I agreed to the follow-up call.
In our long discussion on December 29th, his advice remained that I should take the Pfizer vaccine. I explained that I felt my risk from Covid was negligible and I was not convinced that it was greater than the risk from a second vaccine. He remained reluctant to issue an exemption but agreed to look into it further and come back to me. His subsequent text message read as follows: “I have re-read the guidance extensively on issuing of vaccine exemptions and unfortunately it can only be issued if there is a medical contraindication to receiving an alternate vaccine.”
He was good enough to attach a link to the guidance document from the Department of Health and Social Care. I looked at this document and found a further link to the Green Book Chapter 14a. As outlined in my letter to him below, the paragraph on the safety of the Pfizer vaccine reads as if the scientific evidence is reassuring. The paragraph cites two published papers that describe safety studies of the Pfizer vaccine: Walsh et al, 2020 and Polack et al, 2020. Both studies demonstrated very limited evidence of systemic events – “generally mild and shortlived”. Reading this paragraph, as a layman, I would conclude that there is no cause for concern.
Dated December 21st 2021, the Green Book omits Pfizer’s own trial data from the six-month stage – published on November 4th 2021 – even though it refers to an article published in the same journal in May 2020 by the same authors. While Pfizer has come in for criticism for its trial methodologies, the safety issues at the six-month stage are clear: out of 21,926 subjects in the vaccinated group, 6,617 or 30.2% experienced an adverse event. This compares with 13.9% in the placebo group. Related adverse events which an investigator has assessed as related to the Pfizer injection stood at 23.9% of the vaccinated group against 6.0% of the placebo group. The results also show an increased risk of death with nine from cardiovascular events compared with five from the placebo group. The evidence of risk is plain to see.
But this published paper – with the same authors and in the same journal (the New England Journal of Medicine) as the one of May 2020 – is not referred to in the Green Book. Is this a sin of commission or omission? It’s hard to say. My letter to my GP, attached in full as an appendix below, lays out my reasons for not getting a second vaccination. My GP called me on the phone and explained he still felt unable to award an exemption. When pressed he told me that he could not refute any of the arguments I made in my letter to him.
I respect my GP who I feel is, like his colleagues, under political pressure to vaccinate as many people as possible. I believe in personal autonomy when it comes to decisions such as whether or not to take a vaccine and it appears to me that by omitting the latest published evidence from Pfizer in its guidance to GPs, the Government is not being honest about vaccine safety.
Dear Dr. XXXXX
Happy New Year.
Many thanks for your text message of December 30th 2021 and for forwarding me the link to the Department of Health and Social Care clinical guidance document. Now that I’ve had a chance to take a look at the document, I wanted to come back to you.
Firstly, while I am disappointed in your decision not to issue me a vaccine exemption, I do accept that it is consistent with the guidance you shared with me. It is, I agree, unambiguous in stating: “A caution to one vaccine or vaccine type where safe alternatives are available should not lead to exemption.” On this basis, you have recommended to me that I take a Pfizer vaccine following an adverse reaction in April to AstraZeneca.
My issue is with the question of safety with regard to the Pfizer vaccine, particularly when, as I explained on the phone last week, set against the possible risks I face from COVID-19.
Risks from Covid
To get an objective sense of my risk from COVID-19, I used the QCovid risk assessment tool. Led by the University of Oxford, the development of this tool involved the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England. Research published in the BMJ shows that the model performed well in predicting severe outcomes due to COVID-19 i.e., death and hospitalisation.
My absolute risk of catching and dying from COVID-19 – based on my age, BMI and all the other personal data entered – is 0.0018%.
Since the data used in the model is only as recent as June 2021, I assume that this risk is, if anything, now significantly lower since the milder Omicron variant is now prevalent. The risk figure does not, furthermore, account for the fact that I have had one vaccine.
Safety of Pfizer Vaccines as Presented in Department of Health & Social Care Guidance
- The Guidance document links to the Green Book Chapter 14a for more information on vaccines and their cautions.
- The Green Book has a paragraph citing two published papers that describe safety studies of the Pfizer vaccine: Walsh et al, 2020 and Polack et al, 2020. Both studies demonstrated very limited evidence of systemic events – “generally mild and shortlived”. Reading this paragraph, as a layman, I would conclude that there is no cause for concern.
- However, my understanding of the Walsh et al, 2020 paper is that it covered data concerning the first seven days after vaccination only. The Polack et al paper, which I now understand to be derived Pfizer’s own trial data, has two months’ worth of study and efficacy data. The same authors published a six-month study dated November 4th 2021. The Green Book is dated December 21st 2021 and yet makes no mention of the follow-up study.
- The Polack et al paper of 2021 reports adverse events among 30.2% of the vaccinated trial subjects as against 13.9% of the placebo group.
My evaluation of the risks confronting me
- As I mentioned when we spoke on the phone, having experienced an adverse reaction to the first vaccine – something that caused me and my wife considerable distress – I have to trade off the risk of taking another vaccine against the combined risk of a) catching COVID-19 in the first place and b) falling ill as a result.
- Pfizer’s own trial data published in the Pollack et al paper referenced in the Green Book shows an absolute risk reduction of 0.84% seven days after the second dose.
- So, were I to take the vaccine as advised, I would be reducing my risk of dying by 0.84% – from 0.0018% to 0.0015%.
- However, the risk of an adverse reaction to the vaccine at more than twice the rate experienced by the placebo group in Pfizer’s own trial strikes me as a considerably poorer option.
Summary
- I am educated to Masters level in social science and can read an academic journal article. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that I am not a clinician and may have misinterpreted something. If so, please tell me what is the statistical likelihood of my serious injury, illness or death from the Pfizer vaccine? Also, please tell me what is the statistical likelihood of my serious injury, illness or death from COVID-19 if I were to remain only partially vaccinated?
- On the principle of “first, do no harm” I urge you to reconsider your decision based on up-to-date clinical trial data that has not been included in Department of Health and Social Care Guidance.
Yours sincerely
Ian Price
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I am sure our Ukrainian correspondent will be along shortly to offer his most gracious apologies.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/pact-future-planetary-technocracy-global-crises-global-corporatocracy/5864483
I posted this earlier in the News Roundup. A long article but it does provide a wealth of information on what Global Government is all about.
It’s the biggest risk we face by far because by its very nature it is not accountable to anyone- they can’t be thrown out. That’s obviously the appeal to these people- that and the God complex. If you were a politician or “leader” of some kind you’d quite fancy a succession of well paid sinecures that the voters couldn’t sack you from
… and worse, there will be a one size fits policy throughout the world, so no way to compare and contrast other ways of doing things nor judge how well we are doing. It will be a dictatorship of do as we say or else.
Yes the point about comparisons is an excellent one
It’s a question of value to us. While there are obvious, and less obvious, benefits from a degree of global standards, excessive enforcement of them can be inimical to the concept of innovation and ensuing benefits.
I do not believe you fully understand the grotesque, wholly encompassing nature of the Totalitarian endeavour. It is not a world we would want to live in. Think 1984 plus worst nightmare. On steroids.
I don’t want global standards. I want accountability. I want to be able to sack who it is that governs me, and cause to be sacked people working for an organisation I fund if they don’t deliver what I am paying for. Anyway, do you seriously think that the people who are pushing world government are concerned with “benefits” from “global standards”?
Quite. I think some people are still making their way to what’s it’s all about though. And once you get there it’s such a brain-f*ck that the easiest thing to do is to reject it as plausible.
Wow, you’re clearly just not getting it
The idea of global governance is to force all nations to work cooperatively and in unison, as expressed by institutions such as the UN or EU. But such wishful thinking does not really materialize, as typified by exactly these institutions.
Governments, whether global or national, are run by politicians. Politicians are people who strive for recognition, live for publicity, fight for leadership, and are driven by a need to exert power and decide over others – in other words, in general, the worst of society!
My father used to say the best Prime Minister would be the one that had to be dragged screaming into office. A successful businessman will prefer to continue in business. Anyone enjoying a satisfying profession will prefer to remain in that profession. Nobody ‘in their right mind’ wants to become a politician.
Clearly, there are politicians whose ideals are to serve and better society – Andrew Bridgen comes to mind – but there is a clear danger that a majority, especially if unsuccessful in their chosen career, may wish to serve and promote some contemporary ideology, particularly if convinced the population is too ignorant to recognize the ideology’s supposed importance.
Thus large populations can easily be coerced to succumb to ideals which little interest, let alone benefit them: globalism, uncontrolled immigration, DEI, climate change, forced medical interventions, commercial sanctions, wars.
In my opinion, we need a better selection process for politicians if we wish to achieve better governments.
I think we also people to be a lot more cynical about politicians, and to expect a lot less from the state in return for the state getting out of our lives as much as possible.
Absolutely. The head of Germany’s Foreign Office (and leader of the Green Party) is famous for once saying that peace negotiations with Putin were unthinkable as long as he did not change his course by 360°, which had the Russians rolling in the aisles (she obviously meant 180°). It was not a slip of the tongue since she repeated 360° twice more. How can Germany’s chief diplomat and leader of the country’s foreign policy be so lacking in basic education?
“The Covid lockdowns are of course the paradigmatic example of this [very foolish public policy]”. How myopic! Covid was a cruelly-calculated, globally-coordinated hoax, a “plandemic, clearly judged such by Reiner Fuellmich and his large team of experts in their 2022 model trial on Covid-19 Crimes Against Humanity, see https://metatron.substack.com/p/reiner-fuellmichs-grand-jury-court.
The alleged global threats to humanity asserted by the globalist establishment are not real threats at all, they are confected threats with the ulterior purpose of wrecking western economies and forcing the people into serfdom via digital straitjackets.
The main threat to this country is the United Nations which is at the centre of all our oppressions, be it the climate change hoax via its subsidiary IPCC, fake “plandemics” via its subsidiary WHO and mass immigration via its subsidiary IOM. We need to talk about withdrawing from the UN and all its evil works.
Our current situation is, let us not forget, a continuation of the C1984 Scamdemic within Agenda 2030, and in this country we are now being pushed very aggressively towards complete societal breakdown and civil war.
If those Deagell forecasts are right…Christ!
To paraphrase a 20th century revolutionary: Who will free us from government?
The bricolage of the functioning of government-as-activity being like the strands of subterranean micro fungi that link every tree in a forest to every other.
Have the globalists considered that there might be a religion that still conceives of the world in spiritual terms? One that has, in some expressions at least, an ambiguous view of the ‘laws of kings’.
Our government is working for Satan.
Great Article———-But who gets to choose this Global Government? —-The answer is NO ONE. It is a Technocratic Coup by the Liberal Progressive (Communist) blob. Capitalism that brought prosperity to half the world is to be replaced by Marxism with the Technocrats in total control of all the wealth and resources.
Are the capitalists – who want us to be slavish consumers – and the marxist technocrats – who want a minimal slave population to do their dirty work – truly aligned? Surely the conflict between the desire for consumers and the desire to preserve the planet for themselves is something we can exploit.
Good point. I would though argue that we haven’t had experienced genuine capitalism for a while now. We appear to live in an age of corporatism rather than capitalism.
Government-as-activity that spans the globe is akin to the pantheistic idea of the spirit of God as the sole force that animates everything.
Any news on how the WHO plan to choreograph a monkeypox scare into the US elections? Or is a new Covid variant ready for release?
The Monkeypox scare got laughed out of court. They’re now working on Bird Flu.
We used to have Government by consent; that is what democracy and the peaceful transition of power represented. We used to have policing by consent.
Now we have neither.
We effectively live in a Dictatorship of detached and self-selecting Elite, both Globalist and National. And the only way they can retain control is to operate a Police State. That is what we are becoming.
We are already in a Police State. Harry Miller is clear on this and I have a lot of respect for his focus on that topic. See his recent interview on the Together channel:
https://www.youtube.com/live/CIQabx8oO8Q
You just need to read H.G.Wells’s The Shape of Things to Come, published in 1933, to understand what’s going on.
It’s all there: technocratic government by “experts”, control of population through pandemics, elimination of national identities and religions, and a limit on the global population to 1 or 2 billion.
It even mentions the year 2030.
When you read around the literature, it’s very interesting to see how often this date pops up. As well as being baked in to the UN’s Agenda2030, it was mentioned by Keynes, and just the other day, by Elon Musk:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1820799076310352124
The big irony is that with Wells it’s never entirely clear whether he was writing a blueprint, a warning, or a satire, or actually all three at the same time.
Definitely another way to bypass democratic systems of government.
Just as we have seen with all the woke and DEI nonsense which none of us voted for.
Excellent article – thank you.
When Michel Foucault describes the emergence of the state in early modernity as being, in essence, an epistemological or metaphysical phenomenon, is he referring to a postmodern or a rational epistemology? Given his status as a leading postmodernist, I guess the former, in which case, given that ideology’s disdain for logic and evidence, and for reality and reason, we should be wary of his analysis, to say the least.