Blunted

Spiked has published a spiteful article by Fraser Myers that claims HART is “notorious for its anti-vax statements”. This follows a debate between him and Andrew Bridgen MP on GB News in which Bridgen brought along facts and Myers repeated the phrase “anti-vax conspiracy theory” numerous times. In turn, the debate had come about after Myers had published a shoddy attack — short on facts and heavy on invective — on Bridgen a week previously.  The Spiked article was brutally dismembered by Will Jones at Daily Sceptic. 

Perhaps stung by this, Myers produced the offending article, bringing HART into the picture after we asked for clarification about funding that Spiked had previously received from Pfizer. Nick Dixon, also of Daily Sceptic, has attempted to triangulate the state of play. We have written a longer piece about this episode; numerous others have opined on the matter. David Paton stated that Myers “would have more credibility in this debate if Spiked addressed their inexcusable support for sacking unvaccinated care workers” having supported this policy in July 2021.

Myers’ unpleasant statement about HART sits alongside various incorrect facts.  We are happy to put the record straight and — as Myers has stated that this is his final word on the matter — we are pleased that this debate can be put to bed… unless, of course, Myers was just shooting from the hip with that statement and intends to continue the discussion.

1. Myers claims it is wrong to call the vaccines experimental. The injections were always experimental, which was why Pfizer’s Chief Scientific Officer described Israel as a “sort of laboratory” for the covid vaccines and why the world eagerly awaited evidence that they might work. The Pfizer phase 3 trial for safety does not officially conclude until 31st December 2023, but they destroyed the control by offering them the vaccine so the proper phase 3 safety studies will never complete. The safety aspect of Pfizer’s pregnancy, immunocompromised and myocarditis/pericarditis studies do not complete until 31st March 2026. The appropriate phase 0 pre-clinical work to measure the amount of spike protein produced in the body and how long it lasts has still not been done, or has not been made public.
   
2. Myers claims it was wrong to call the injections a gene therapy simply because they are not thought to alter a person’s DNA. According to Moderna’s filing in June 2020 “mRNA has been characterised as a Gene Therapy Medicinal Product.” BioNTech agreed in a filing in March 2020 saying, “mRNA therapies have been classified as gene therapy medicinal products.” Do these companies not know what they’re talking about?
   
3. Myers quotes early safety data saying that there were 139 adverse reactions in the vaccine arm and 97 in the placebo arm, claiming that it “isn’t an enormous difference”. These figures are from table 2 of the paper he references but he has not read the whole of table 2. This works out at an extra 12.5 events per 10,000 participants, which is 1 in 800 and exactly what Bridgen claimed. In the UK that would account for 52,000 such injuries after the second dose alone and would be properly defined as “uncommon” not “rare”. It is worth remembering that this terminology is designed for describing the harms from drugs given for treating people who are already sick. Serious harm caused to healthy people at a rate of 1 in 800 is totally unacceptable. Remember these were only the worst adverse events –  life changing events, hospitalisations or deaths – which had all occurred during the short period of follow up at the very beginning of the safety trials. There had only been a median of 2 months follow-up at that point. For some participants the ink was metaphorically still wet on their consent forms. Any events that occurred after the cut off were not included in the study. He is right that others have criticised that paper but none of the critics have attempted their own analysis to estimate the scale of harm. It is also worth noting that this is a very high rate of serious adverse events — more frequent than 1 in 1,000 is properly termed ‘uncommon’ rather than ‘rare’ and certainly not ‘very rare’.  Assuming a similar adverse reaction rate for later doses, such a rate would amount to over a hundred thousand such serious adverse events in the UK after 151 million jabs.
   
4. Myers then complains that 1 in 800 refers to the number of events, not the number of people affected. The same paper points out that the published trial data is inadequate to make that assessment. FDA data showed twice as many vaccine recipients had multiple adverse events as placebo participants which further suggests a genuine issue here.
   
5. Myers then claims the number needed to vaccinate (“NNV”) calculations from UKHSA were based on 2023 data. That is not correct: they were based on data from July 2022. At the time vaccines were still being pushed on the whole population. The estimates they calculated of thousands to hundreds needing to be vaccinated to prevent a serious hospital admission tally well with the estimates HART carried out for the NNV to prevent a single death from the Delta wave, using UKHSA’s own data.

HART can cite multiple other sources to evidence the claim that the covid injections were harmful and caused deaths, but what do we know? Myers has, after all, declared that HART is “notorious for its anti-vax statements”. But at least we’ve looked into the matter and attempted to shed light on some very iffy claims made by the authorities. If that has saved one person from suffering an unnecessary adverse effect, our consciences are clear — we will sleep well knowing we did what we could. 

Others, however, will have to look themselves in the mirror for evermore and know what they have done.