Covid-19: Mass inoculation with trial vaccines can trigger human catastrophy if it goes wrong.
First published Apr 6th 2021
Vaccines have been instrumental to the elimination and control of many diseases around the world. For instance Polio has been eradicated by means of vaccine in almost all countries. Vaccines have also contributed immensely in the control of many infant diseases including measles, chickenpox, diphtheria and many others. The contribution of vaccines to the reduction of infant mortality rate cannot be understated. These vaccines took many years of research and development before they were brought to the market.
Vaccines can also do more harm than good, If not trialed exhaustively before it is released to the market and there has been some mishaps recorded in the use of vaccines.
The current Covid-19 pandemic have brought many players into the vaccine making business which is healthy for the industry but we must also ensure that standards are maintained both in the development and vetting process.
The way the safety of Covid-19 vaccines have been hyped by the health authorities and the manufacturers leaves much to be desired, because they lose sight of the fact that these vaccines are still under emergency use with lower safety threshold and are yet to qualify for licensing.
If they are that safe they should apply for the license and then bear the responsibility for any adverse effects that occur as a consequence of it's use and not operate under the cover of the immunity from legal prosecution that they sought and got approved by the various governments.
It is premature to assert that the current Covid-19 vaccines in the market are very safe as they have just been trialed for a short period and hence not possible to envisage all side effects that can emanate as a consequence of vaccination within this space of time.
The vaccines are yet to be licensed but have only been granted emergency use authorization. Unfortunately only few of the vaccine manufacturers like Johnson and Johnson have clearly made this distinction in their marketing literature but this should be a mandatory requirement for all.
The fact remains that the long term safety of Covid-19 vaccines is currently unknown hence we need to exercise caution in their use.
Some diseases that may arise due to vaccination can take months to manifest while others can take years. This is the reason why traditional vaccines undergo trials for years in other to give enough time to verify their safety.
For instance the RotaShield vaccine, was the first vaccine developed to prevent rotavirus, a serious gastrointestinal disease in children. The vaccine was licensed in the U.S. in 1998. A year later, an investigation showed that the vaccine increased the risk of a rare intestinal obstruction by one to two cases per 10,000 infants vaccinated. The vaccinations were halted, and the manufacturer pulled the vaccine from the market. (1)
Another case in time is the 1976 swine flu vaccine that was linked to Guillain-Barre Syndrome where it was found out there was a small increased risk of a serious neurological disorder called Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) following vaccination with a swine flu vaccine. The increased risk was approximately 1 additional case of GBS for every 100,000 people who got the swine flu vaccine. When over 40 million people were vaccinated against swine flu, federal health officials decided that the possibility of an association of GBS with the vaccine, however small, necessitated stopping immunization until the issue could be explored.
The US Institute of Medicine (IOM) conducted thorough scientific review of this issue in 2003 and concluded that people who received the 1976 swine influenza vaccine had an increased risk for developing GBS. (2)
Another case is the 2009-2010 H1N1 influenza Vaccine that caused Narcolepsy. An increased risk of narcolepsy (a chronic sleep disorder) was found following vaccination with Pandemrix, a monovalent 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine that was used in several European countries during the H1N1 influenza pandemic. This risk was initially found in Finland, and then some other European countries also detected an association. Pandemrix was specifically produced for pandemic 2009 H1N1 influenza.
According to Narcolepsy UK, In 2010 there was a startling increase in narcolepsy across the UK and northern Europe, with new cases developing on a weekly basis. Some doctors described it as an epidemic. (4)
Developing an illness from a vaccine, something that is supposed to prevent disease, can be disheartening for individuals and families and should never be taken lightly.
We will be very fortunate if the current mass vaccination does not trigger some long term health challenges for those that have been inoculated. The public are making enormous sacrifice embracing this vaccination campaign that use novel methods, trialed within a year. We can only hope that as at when the adverse effects start showing up, if any, they are not that devastating and we can live with them.
In a recent interview with one of the vaccine makers, the CEO when pressed on when he will get a Jab, proclaimed he was not in the vulnerable category so he wouldn't be getting one soon. That's reasonable but he should also ensure that the product is administered correctly only to the most vulnerable and not for mass vaccination that can precipitate a human catastrophy. There is no doubt that public confidence on the vaccines will be boosted if each of the CEOs of the manufacturing firm publicly get inoculated with their Covid-19 vaccine.
The public is justified in any form of covid-19 vaccine hesitancy because of the circumstance under which they have been developed. An emergency use authorized vaccine should not be employed for mass vaccination as the consequences can be very grave and devastating to humanity if it goes wrong. It should only be used sparingly and in the current situation to only the vulnerable categories pending when licensing is given which can take years, because of the rigorous requirement they have to satisfy.
The risks associated with using vaccines produced under such circumstance may be justified in a pandemic setting for people in a live or death situation but certainly not for healthy people nor advocating a global vaccination campaign. Hence such vaccines should be used with caution until the safety is proven in the long term.
The technocrats who should advice their various government better on the applicability and use of these candidates vaccines have remained silent in the face of the abuse in the application of emergency use authorization. The World Health Organization has also not performed well in this regard because of its politicization.
It is absolutely dangerous, reckless and can be catastrophic to vaccinate substantial world population with an experimental vaccine that has not been licensed for use.
We cannot vaccinate our way out of the pandemic with experimental vaccines.
We need to mitigate against the risk of a human catastrophy by combining this with other remedies and not rely only on vaccination for the eradication of the disease
This is the first time in history experimental vaccines have been deployed in this scale as a means to eradicate a disease.
Imagine a situation where after some months down the line it's discovered that the vaccines cause irreversible major health damage for most of the population vaccinated and which may possibly affect their future offspring. This will be a human disaster that will live with us for generations to come and may be worst than the initial pandemic.
In the scramble to find a solution to the pandemic we should also not lose sight of the possible risks of mass vaccination. There is the need to consider various "What-if" scenarios and apply appropriate mitigation strategies to these risks.
Effective pharmacovigilance will be required to monitor long term safety on the vaccinated population.
People that have developed recent natural antibodies to the disease should not be vaccinated as current evidence suggests that the naturally acquired antibodies are more robust than that acquired through the current vaccines that targets specific antigen and do not confer more lasting immunity including protection from variants.(3)
It is most likely we may experience more frequent surge in infection rates compared to that before the introduction of Covid-19 vaccines due to the shorter duration of protection the vaccines confer except if there are strict adherence to the use of face masks and other measures that control the spread of the disease.
If we start experiencing more deaths and frequent reinfections on vaccinated population then this has gone wrong and we need to pause the campaign and seek alternative remedies except if we are able to produce vaccines that offer long term immunity and prevent transmission. This also underscores the reason why everyone cannot be vaccinated as we need to have enough population to serve as a control group to those already vaccinated.
There is the need to extrapolate the number of the population that have neutralizing antibodies in order to determine how soon we will approach herd immunity. There has to be an end to the pandemic and our focus should be bringing this to an end as soon as possible hence we need to develop forecasting models to aid this determination.
Kudos to the German Government for taking the bold decision to restrict the vaccination campaign to the more vulnerable older population. It is hoped other governments will have the political will to do the same.
It will be wise for every government to come up with a formula of what percentage of their population they aim to vaccinate to mitigate against annihilation of a race.
New covid-19 vaccines should be able to offer something substantially different from the ones in the market before they are granted Emergency use Authorization. Vaccines that offer long term immunity and prevent transmission will be ideal to bring the pandemic to a rapid closure.
In conclusion, in my previous article I hypothesized two possible ways of ending the pandemic ( https://theintuitivethinkerblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/19/covid-19-is-the-end-of-the-pandemic-in-sight/ ). In addition, a hybrid option of using vaccines to protect the most vulnerable in conjunction with other remedies to treat the disease is proposed, allowing the natural immune system of the healthy unvaccinated population to generate more robust antibodies that respond to variants and confer longer term immunity than the current vaccines.
We then have to wait it out pending when we attain herd immunity in order to avert a human catastrophy.
We are in uncharted waters and need to mitigate against a human catastrophy that can be triggered by mass vaccination of global population.
Let's not sell our soul but do what is morally right. Lets hark to the voice of reason.
References
StatsNews ,Dec. 23, 2020
“Covid-19 vaccines are safe. But let’s be clear about what ‘safe’ means”, Wayne C. Koff and Michelle A. Williams ,https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/23/covid-19-vaccines-safe-that-doesnt-mean-no-side-effect/Center for Disease Control and Prevention , CDC, September 4 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.html
SCIENCE, 05 Feb 2021, Vol 371 issue 6529 “Immunological memory to SARS-CoV-2 assessed for up to 8 months after infection”, Jennifer M. Dan et al, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6529/eabf4063
Narcolepsy UK, https//www.narcolepsy.org.uk/resources/pandemrix-narcolepsy