Side effects: a very (too) embarrassing German study
A German study shows that serious side effects of covid vaccination are thought to affect around 500,000 people in Germany, or 0.8% of the vaccinated, contrary to the 0.2% officially announced by the German pharmacovigilance institute.
This study comes from the Charité, the Berlin university hospital where the PCR test submitted to the WHO in January 2020, on which all crisis management measures are based, originated. The hospital has removed the study’s page from its website.
For a year, Prof. Harald Matthes of the Charité, Berlin’s university hospital, has been conducting the “ImpfSurv” study [1], which so far includes around 10,000 patients, vaccinated and unvaccinated, questioned online systematically and at regular intervals about the side effects of covid vaccines [2]. They must be in good health at the time they consent to take part in the study[3]. The aim is to establish a register of side effects as well as the safety profiles of the vaccines.
The results of the study
A few days ago, Prof. Matthes presented his interim results to the German regional public broadcaster MDR[4], [5], [6]. The media and Prof. Matthes aim to be reassuring while conceding the enormity: serious side effects are said to be undeniable, as with any treatment, but nonetheless rare – even though they would affect around 500,000 people in Germany, according to Prof. Matthes – i.e. much more frequent than officially admitted. Nevertheless, this is an important signal, because it comes from the Charité, the university hospital that produced Dr Drosten’s famous PCR test, submitted to the WHO in January 2020, on which all health measures are based. The Charité reacted quickly by removing the study’s page from its website.Prof. Matthes estimates the under-reporting of side effects at around 70% to 80%. In 80% of cases of serious side effects, they are said to disappear after 3 to 6 months, and in 20% of cases they persist beyond 6 months. Yet these serious side effects would affect 0.8% of the vaccinated, contrary to the 0.2% of serious side effects, relative to the number of doses, officially announced by the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut (PEI)[7], the German pharmacovigilance institute. In absolute figures, out of 60 million vaccinated Germans, this would amount to around 500,000 people having suffered a serious side effect. As a reminder, a serious side effect is potentially fatal or causes incapacity for work of at least three days and requires medical treatment. The number of people affected would therefore be 16.5 times higher than that announced by the PEI[8] at the end of 2021.
Admissions, in homeopathic doses
Several German media outlets relayed the information about the study[9], [10], [11], [12], [13]. Nevertheless, these media, their “expert” doctors and Prof. Matthes go one better with their reassuring discourse: of course the vaccines remain, in their eyes, generally safe and effective since they induce antibodies – whether these are useful or not is not the question. Especially against the Delta variant, the question does not even arise for Prof. Matthes, but against Omicron he does not know[14]. According to him, the risk of individual side effects remains lower compared with the cumulative risks of the disease. Of course, Prof. Matthes is not an “anti-vaxxer”, since he himself has vaccinated many people. Moreover, a distinction should also be made between temporary serious side effects, which disappear after ‘only’ a few months, and permanent serious side effects, which alone would constitute damage or injury[15]. This is now a new discourse.
A well-honed method
Other media, such as Die Zeit[16], have even tried to discredit the study by questioning the professor’s integrity (he is an anthroposophist, or follower of Rudolph Steiner’s philosophy). The weekly claims to have found errors, without demonstrating them, and doubts the methodological concept, without ever once criticising the many methodological failings committed by “science” over the past two years. It also ignores other figures that support the thesis of an explosion in side effects: in 2021, a 3.5-fold increase in care administered in hospital was observed, as well as a 20% increase in deaths, following mass vaccination, compared with 2019 and 2020[17]. The weekly misleads readers when it suggests that the scientist confirmed these flaws, by admitting that his study had – nothing more normal in science – limitations. According to Die Zeit, the Charité has in any case already distanced itself from Prof. Matthes’ conclusions. Indeed, while this article was being written, between Tuesday 10 May and Wednesday 11 May, the study’s page disappeared from the Charité’s website[18].These tactics bear an unfortunate resemblance to those used against the former head of the German health insurance fund BKK ProVita, Andreas Schöfbeck. As a reminder, he had raised the alarm about the number of side effects linked to the covid vaccines. For this, he was disowned and dismissed from his post[19]. Meanwhile, the analyst responsible for evaluating BKK ProVita’s internal figures, Tom Lausen, has filed a complaint against the fund’s new director, who allegedly prevented the data from being passed on to the PEI[20].
By Colin Meier, independent citizen journalist and correspondent for Germany at BAM
[1]https://www.charite.de/en/service/clinical_trials_detail/item/studien_detail/impfsurv/
[2]https://www.focus.de/gesundheit/news/charite-forscher-harald-matthes-im-interview-mindestens-70-prozent-untererfassung...
[3]https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=83705
[4]https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/deutschland/panorama/corona-impfung-nebenwirkungen-impfschaeden-100.html
[5]https://www.mdr.de/video/mdr-videos/c/video-617880.html
[6]https://www.mdr.de/video/mdr-videos/c/video-617288.html
[7] https://www.pei.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/newsroom/dossiers/sicherheitsberichte/sicherheitsbericht...
[8] https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=83705
[9] https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/deutschland/panorama/corona-impfung-nebenwirkungen-impfschaeden-100.html
[10] https://www.mdr.de/video/mdr-videos/c/video-617880.html
[11] https://www.mdr.de/video/mdr-videos/c/video-617288.html
[12]https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/news/corona-impfung-halbe-million-faelle-mit-schweren-nebenwirkungen-li.226019
[13]https://www.focus.de/gesundheit/news/charite-forscher-harald-matthes...
[14] https://www.focus.de/gesundheit/news/charite-forscher-harald-matthes...
[15] https://www.mdr.de/video/mdr-videos/c/video-617880.html
[16]https://www.zeit.de/gesundheit/2022-05/corona-impfung-nebenwirkungen...
[17] https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=81102
[18] The consent form and the conditions for taking part in the study, such as the requirement to understand German, can be found here: https://sozmed.charite.de/redcap/surveys/?s=FL3MDD8KFR&l=40
[19]https://bam.news/politique/europe/vaccins-anti-covid-10-fois-plus-d-effets-secondaires-qu-annonces-2
[20] https://rtde.website/inland/133418-haelt-bkk-provita-daten-zurueck/
