A Limited Hangout on Vaccine Harms

A Limited Hangout on Vaccine Harms
(CROCOTHERY/Shutterstock)
Jeffrey A. Tucker
5/6/2024
Updated:
5/6/2024
0:00
Commentary

Well, it’s finally happened.

The New York Times (NYT) has acknowledged COVID vaccine harms. In a major piece written by their top pandemic reporter, Apoorva Mandavilli, the paper has written of “thousands” the world over who have experienced when it is more like millions, according to many experts who have been yelling about this issue for years.

The thesis is not that the vaccine harmed people but really that people BELIEVE they have been harmed. It is their truth. We should listen, as they say in postmodern parlance.

At least it is something, right? Multitudes the world over have been screaming about the most dangerous shots ever authorized and still not withdrawn given the evidence. Indeed, mandates to get them are still in place at many U.S. colleges and even to legally immigrate to the United States.

The legacy media has been steadfastly silent, as if obeying a gag order. At last, the venue decided it was time to say what everyone knows but say it is with a spin.

Somehow the paper manages to blame the victim. “The rise of the anti-vaccine movement has made it difficult for scientists, in and out of government, to candidly address potential side effects.”

It’s a strange statement because anyone who expressed even the slightest doubt about universal mandatory vaccination with untested technology was smeared as an anti-vaxxer (yes this has happened to me more times than I can count, even though before three years ago, I never thought much about the subject at all).

In addition, the article concludes that the shots are still worth the risk because they saved millions of lives (this is completely unproven and ever fewer believe it). The story is pitched as a recognition of the vaccine-injured the same way nations celebrated those injured or killed in battle, people harmed in a worthy cause.

Really? From the beginning, the COVID response followed military protocols and this approach to the injured and dead follows the same line of thinking. But that is precisely the core of the problem. It was an infectious disease and should have been treated with traditional public health measures. What they chose instead has absolutely broken everything.

Further, we have proof that the Biden censors came to treat true stories of vaccine injury as “malinformation” and pushed social-media companies to block them from appearing. This is nowhere mentioned in the article, which is deeply insulting.

There is a phrase for the intention of this article. It is called a “limited hangout” in reference to an old tactic used by the intelligence community to admit some errors, some messes, some scandals, in order to distract from wider and more devastating failures. It is deployed when the public outcry becomes too great to enable credible full denials.

In effect, the major cheerleader for the vaccine, the smearer of good people everywhere, has been forced to admit error, even while downplaying the extent of it. Maybe that will be the end of it? It’s highly doubtful.

The strategy is extremely risky. If you wait too long, and the reality that people have experienced is too commonly understood, the tactic can end only in reinforcing more public outrage and an even more intense demand for investigation.

That seems to have happened, as the article prompted an astounding outpouring of tragic stories, even in the comment section of the article itself. Even Chris Cuomo, brother of the Governor of New York during the crisis, has admitted to being vaccine-injured.

There are three salient points here that point to the biggest public health scandal of our lifetimes:

1. Most people did not need these shots even if they were safe and effective, which they were not. It was known from the very outset that COVID had medically significant effects mostly for the aged and infirm. Most everyone else would be better off with infection-acquired immunity, which is (or was) widely known to be broader, long-lasting, and more effective than any vaccine for most diseases. It was also known from January 2021 that the vaccines produced an unusually large amount of harms.

2. The companies that were producing these shots were deploying a brand new technology, supposedly some miracle tech that would allow fast printing of any vaccine for any disease. But it would not otherwise have passed regulatory standards. It was pushed through under the pretext of emergency, given pre-approval by the military, and the companies that made them were fully indemnified from liability for harms. There was simply no way that this disastrous experiment could end well.

3. The Biden administration took it a step further and mandated the shots for all businesses with more than 100 employees plus all transportation and health-care workers. Part of that mandate was shot down by the Supreme Court but much of it remains. In other words, millions were forced to get a shot they didn’t want. To top it off, there was clearly a political motive here. The White House took note of more reluctance to accept the shot in Red states, so someone gained some sadistic pleasure out of muscling the political enemy.

The full range of injuries has shocked me. We all know somehow who was injured. We know plenty of people who faced multiple strange illnesses following vaccination that the victims have been reluctant to admit were vaccine harms. This is because many people chose to get them when they obviously did not need them. Others were forced to get the shots, but unwilling to believe that governments could impose on them a product that turned out to be deeply harmful.

Looking back at my own enlightenment on this, I never believed a vaccine was necessary because all the top experts in February 2020 said that the disease could be handled by off-the-shelf therapeutics. President Trump even said the same, despite wanting credit for Operation Warp Speed now (though he will rue the day that he demanded such credit).

It was in May 2020—only two months into lockdowns—that a very wise man, Professor Barry Brownstein, sent me an article to publish. I did so only reluctantly because I thought it was surely overwrought. I published it anyway, and it caused the roof to fall in on my end, as if I had sawed through a pillar of public health. I was truly astonished.

He wrote as follows and with perfect prescience:

“If you’re cheering the government for cutting red-tape, think again. Liability shields for crony capitalists and no cost for failure policies guarantee errors will be made. Without market safeguards significant injuries to human beings are highly likely. Errors will be exacerbated if medical tyranny prevails with legal mandates requiring the COVID-19 vaccination for employment and travel.”

Wow. He is a prophet. I had no idea at the time but everything about which he warned came true.

No one can say we did not know. We knew. For sure. They went ahead anyway. Now four years later, we get the very first admission that there was and is a problem. Edward Dowd put together a nice contrast between then and now.

(Screenshot/The New York Times)
(Screenshot/The New York Times)
He missed this one from the paper only last October: “Feeling Terrible After Your Covid Shot? Then It’s Probably Working.”

I can do no better than to quote from among the VAST number of comments on the NYT’s own piece. They were unable to censor this fast enough. I will let their words finish up the remainder of this article.

“Finally, a glimmer of information from the NY Times about the myriad harms caused by the Covid vaccines. This has arguably been one of the most suppressed stories on the planet because thousands, indeed millions, have been negatively affected by these vaccines. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) maintained by the CDC has over 1.6 million reported adverse events and over 37,000 reported deaths. https://openvaers.com/ During the pandemic, the news of vaccine injury was not reported on by mainstream media, only by independent media. People who reported their injuries on their social media accounts had their posts removed—and in many instances their accounts closed—so the information about potential harm didn’t get shared. All we heard, and still hear, is ‘safe and effective.’”

“Finally! An article addressing this issue. To those who asked, yes, these injuries were known worldwide and other countries stopped vaccinating healthy young individuals. We must remember the vaccine neither stopped transmission or infection. The continued disconnect and selfishness as I read these comments—‘Well, it didn’t happen to me so it can’t be real’ or simply, ‘That’s the price we had to pay!’ No, it’s not. These ‘side-effects’ are more common and devastating than what is indicated here. I have a friend who started menstruating 10 years after menopause, along with sky high blood pressure after her 4th shot; daughter and female friends stopping or missing months of periods after shot; my niece, a nurse in NYC getting shingles after her booster and then, remarkably, later getting another ‘booster’ and winding up in the hospital with blood clots on her lungs; young (20 something) friend in NYC nearly died after multi-system shutdown starting night of vaccine—doctor told him “We’re seeing a lot of this.” And a 20-year-old man developing tinnitus immediately after vaccine; Migraines, menstrual irregularities, brain fog and symptoms too numerous to list—beginning and continuing the day of and weeks following their Covid vaccine. Thank you NY Times for this article.”

“I got the vaccine with no hesitancy as soon as it became available for my age group. Within a week of my second dose, I developed severe neurological symptoms which included violent internal tremors that would occur during sleep and wake me up throughout the night, every night, for over 2 years. It was a nightmare that ruined my life. I had so much faith in our health care officials, that even after I fainted immediately following my first dose, I went back for the second one because I was told it was “just anxiety” and there were no adverse reactions to the vaccines. I was 34, in the best shape of my life, and had no medical conditions. The chances of me developing a neurological condition out of thin air with no relation to the vaccine I received only days prior seems unlikely. It’s possible, but let’s be honest, highly unlikely.”

“Same thing with me, as far as tinnitus, hypertension, and erectile disfunction (sic). A healthy 20-something prior to the first vaccine in 2022, a marathon runner with no known health issues, I have been reduced to rubble in so many ways since: no social life, no sexual life, no life, in short. I remember the first time I called an otolaryngologist: as soon as she heard ‘I got vaccinated yesterday and now…’, she simply said “no link is established, it i all (sic) in your head, just wait it out”. 2.5 years later, I am still waiting. That constant hissing in my ears is maddening. A fellow sufferer (there are fellowship groups out there on-line, thousands of them) had recently killed herself. And the medical community rejects us and tells us we are imagining it... So so hard.”

“I would like to know where the proof is that the Covid vaccines saved any lives at all. The ‘absolute’ effectiveness was only ever about 1 percent. Most people were not that vulnerable to Covid—certainly not people under 50.”

“A week after my Pfizer #2, I went from competitive road cycling racing (age 23) to not walking. 3 years later and I still struggle to walk over a mile and be otherwise active because of the nerve type pain in my left leg. I had dozens of tests, spent thousands on treatments, thought I might have had cancer, then MS, then so many other diseases, but nobody could find anything wrong with me. It hurts all the time. I was forced to get the shot to go to University even though I didn’t want to. It has cost me my active lifestyle, left me frustrated and in constant pain.”

“Bad luck for my sister who dropped dead of a heart attack. Bad luck for my brother who was hospitalized multiple times with blood clots. Bad luck for me who now has BP 210/120 and is taking 4 meds to try to live another year. But everyone else is alive and well, YAY!!!!!!”

“I had a cerebellar stroke 20 days after the vaccine booster. I am a cardiology nurse practitioner, so am familiar with accessing medical literature. US medical literature was initially almost completely devoid of any articles, but the British Medical Journal had published articles almost immediately, recognizing this side effect. The cited 14 strokes per million vaccine recipients, above the expected baseline rate. This is attributed to increased coagulability from the endogenous immune response, following the vaccination. The increased risk window they cited was 28 days.”

“I am a 67-year-old female physician who developed tinnitus, POTS, pericarditis, total body burning neuropathy and mast cell activation syndrome within 48 hours of receiving one dose of the Pfizer vaccine. I went from being healthy to being a complete invalid and have been extremely debilitated for the past 39 months. I have had multiple conversations with Drs. Janet Woodcock and Peter Marks who ignored and dismissed me as well as countless others. Their behavior cannot be excused and goes against all tenents (sic) of medicine.”

“I was a healthy 45 year old biomedical scientist when I received the vaccine. Within a week I was hospitalized with chest pain, arrhythmia. Pulmonary embolism in both lungs. I still have brain fog, tinnitus, poor memory, pain in my feet. I’m not the same as I once was.”

“So glad to be seeing this finally written up. There are SO many of us. I’m 2.5 years in after a Pfizer booster shot and only now have I had a vaccine immunologist confirm it was the cause of my many surprising issues. I was a healthy young woman, and now have a variety of neurological issues, from dizziness to tinnitus, insomnia, vision processing, brain fog etc.”

“As I am sitting in a waiting room for testing that my neurologist ordered, I came across your article. I am a nurse practitioner who was extremely healthy, very physically active, normal weight with no significant past medical history. I had 2 Moderna vaccines (December 2020 first) and then the bivalent in at the end of Sept 2022. By December 2022, I had significant arrhythmias, weight loss, weakness, etc. March 2023- my autoimmune labs suggested drug-induced lupus and I was sent to rheumatology. July 2023- Weakness to my bilateral lower extremities, lifting arms above my head, tightening pain around ribs. Physically unable to workout (sic) yet alone even stand to shower most days- even fell down my stairs for no apparent reason. Seeing neurology now and I’ve had several MRIs showing lesions to my frontal lobe. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on specialists, testing, etc. My specialists believe it is vaccine related but I have yet to have a diagnosis or any sort of treatment. I am a mom and wife who can barely function- my life has been significantly altered since taking the bivalent. Thank you for being a voice for those like me who feel unheard.”

“My son, 12 at the time, developed severe vertigo that started 2 days after his 3rd Covid vaccine. This active kid woke up and couldn’t walk. He missed 2 weeks of school and never went back to 6th grade full time, only attended 2-3 half days a week and had to use a wheelchair because of the dizziness. He had extreme exhaustion and could barely walk from the vertigo. Eventually he was diagnosed with Long Covid and vestibular dysfunction. The vertigo took about 5 months to clear up but the fatigue lasted about 2 years. About 18 months into this journey he was also diagnosed with SVT which is a super rapid heartbeat. He had a successful ablation recently and the fatigue is finally easing. Only 1 of this (sic) doctors thinks the vaccine caused this, the rest just think it was covid and continue to encourage us to have him vaccinated again. I have often thought about reporting his issues but couldn’t ever figure out how to do it. Such a shame reading all of these stories.”

“My son, 14 years old in 2021 was an athlete, soccer player perfectly healthy boy who got 2 Pfizer shots in 2021 (August and September) 3 days later after his 2nd shot he started with bad eczema all over his feet, and from there on his health started deteriorating we saw the Dr did some labs nothing showed up. Still, he was feeling extremely tired and with palpitations so I insisted and was referred to a cardiologist because I thought he had myocarditis. The cardiologist found he had a mediastinal mass and was diagnosed one day after with T Cell Lymphoblastic Lymphoma.”

“I’m a doctor. I received the first round of Moderna vaccines, but no boosters since. My wife adamantly refuses all Covid vaccines. We both caught Covid, were very ill for 3 days, but recovered fine, but I did have post-Covid fatigue that lasted ~6 months. We have many friends and family members who have caught Covid multiple times, despite getting every booster when they became available. One healthy man, in his 50’s, has gotten every booster, and has had shingles 3 times. I am a pathologist, and I have autopsied vaccinated persons who died from showers of thousands of blood clots throughout their lungs, in a pattern that I have never seen in the past 40 years, and not described in medical literature. I am convinced that the Covid vaccines, especially the mRNA types, damage blood vessel lining cells in a way that has never before been seen. The excess death numbers in the U.S. and Great Britain clearly show significant increases, which I believe have arisen from vaccine complications, but these realities are being ignored in favor of pro-vaccine propaganda. We will never know how many young people have died suddenly and mysteriously from unforeseen vaccine complications.”

“The last time I looked at the VAERS data, which is kept by the CDC, there were 35,000 reports of people who died within 48 hours of receiving the Covid vaccine and 1.3 million who were injured. This isn’t by itself proof of causation but it is a red flag that for previous vaccines has halted use until further research could prove that these events were not related.”

“Not just symptoms but actual deaths. Excess mortality numbers are also an issue. To top it off the NYPS system still requires the Covid vaccine yearly for my preschool and Kindergarten granddaughters. This is beyond inappropriate.”

“I had a severe adverse reaction to the booster. The arm pain that I had experienced twice before was so intense this time it felt like somebody had shot me in the arm. That pain spread to my chest, and I was at the ER within 48 hours of being vaccinated. Thus began the worst experience of my life. Some doctors believed me, but most said I was anxious or an anti-vaxer despite having a clear diagnosis of pericarditis from my cardiologist. Eventually I ended up at Mayo Clinic, where myopericarditis was my suspected diagnosis, but I didn’t trust the contrast and refused the MRI that would have conclusively proven whether that was what I had. I was bed ridden (sic) for six months and in a wheelchair for a year. I will never forget that pain. I woke up every single day feeling like I was having a heart attack. I was at the ER 15 times in less than six months. Because I’m female and in my 30’s, my case was considered “atypical” and I had to fight twice as hard to be taken seriously. But I was lucky, because Mayo took me seriously and I was given the proper treatment for the parts of my reaction that medicine understood.”

“I believe in science, have vaccinated my children, and didn’t hesitate about getting the COVID vaccines. My 4th vaccine/the bivalent booster changed my life. 6 days after the shot, I was at urgent care with chest pains and electric sensations in my feet/ankles, followed by two ER and 9 specialist visits. I felt like I was dying, but was told there was nothing wrong w/my heart and it was ok to exercise. The electric/burning/tingling sensations progressed over the months from my feet to my hips, chest, arms & face. My drs were all very nice, but not one knew what to do, nor offered to file a VAERS report. 11 months into this harrowing experience, I was diagnosed w/COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis, small fiber neuropathy, abnormal temperature regulation and more.”

“During the pandemic ,I was relying on the data provided by UK and Taiwan on the real world effect of vaccinations. Taiwan had the number of deaths after vaccinations on a week by week presentation , the number jumped up in the first few weeks especially the first two after vaccination , death rate was about one in ten thousands in about 10 million doses . therefore it is logical to deduce a lot more serious or less serious adverse side effects on vaccinations did occur . .... this is not especially a high number if its benefits outweight (sic) the risks, or if the disease is highly fatal, unfortunately it seemed not the case. UK had a very detailed analysis rolled out every week, if you looked at the raw data yourself and not relied on the executive summary which was quite misleading, you would find that the benefits of vaccinations were minimal if there was any. At least this was the case for omicron, because we never had the chance to know the real effect on the early strains which almost disappeared when the vaccines rolled out.”

”It is easy to discount serious reactions to the COVID vaccine unless you experience them yourself. For years, I got the Pfizer vaccine until I received their bivalent booster in the fall of 2022. That last shot was horrific. From the moment it went into my arm, I wailed and complained at how it hurt. In the months that followed, I mostly took to my bed from total exhaustion. Two months later, I was in the hospital surrounded by a team of hematologists. My white blood cells, hemoglobin and platelets were all dangerously low. Six months earlier, my lab results showed strong numbers in all three areas, leaving doctors baffled. I do not have blood disease in my family, which ruled out a genetic cause for my condition. After a bone marrow biopsy, doctors concluded I have aplastic anemia, due to COVID exposure. (I have never tested positive for COVID.) Aplastic anemia is a serious blood disease, treated just like cancer. This came as a big shock and initial treatment was difficult. I had four chemo infusion treatments, followed by daily doses of oral immunosuppressants and chemotherapy, with blood infusions twice a week. A year and half later, I am in remission but still on drug therapy. My leukemia specialists regularly evaluate my blood. I will need to stay on the medication up to three years or for my lifetime. I am convinced my aplastic anemia came from the Pfizer bivalent vaccine. Life is not the same. There is no turning back.”

“After many months of constant pain, my neurologist informed me that I had ‘vaccine mediated short fiber neuropathy’, a condition in which the immune system attacks the sensory nerves in the body. She explained that enough time had passed from the initiation of Covid vaccines for doctors to see my syndrome and link it to the vaccine. She also noted that my left Vagus nerve, a major part of every human’s nervous system, appeared to be damaged. Over the last 2 1/2 years I have tried IVIG, IV methyl prednisone, IV ketamine, stellate ganglion blocks, physical therapy, massage, acupuncture, red light therapy, therapeutic ultrasound applied to my vagus nerves, intermittent fasting, and low dose naltrexone.”

“A central fact remains: Covid deaths were not spread evenly across the population but concentrated in the elderly with comorbidities. Translation: the risk for healthy people under 50 was minimal. Almost non-existent in those under 18. Yet the government forced a novel vaccine with limited safety data on millions of Americans. This was poor risk management. We are only beginning to discover the long-term ramifications.”

“I am pretty sure that COVID vaccinations, particularly the booster, inflamed my endometriosis, which had been very manageable previously. I ended up in pain for three weeks every month, often pain where I felt like my insides were being clawed out. At the time, the CDC was claiming there were no effects on women’s menstrual systems. By the time I went to the doctor in June 2022, on my campus, she had seen so many young women with similar symptoms, she was sure it was the vaccine.”

“After being forced to choose between taking the COVID-19 vaccine or losing my job, I reluctantly complied by getting the Pfizer Vaccine. By the time I got home after getting the vaccine I went straight to down (sic) because I wasn’t feeling well. Within an hour symptoms started to worsen and never stopped. That was September of 2021 and I’m still struggling with severe lasting side effects. I was healthy and active prior to this vaccine. Now I’m just struggling to get through the day with all the symptoms I still have.”

“Thank you for this—because it clearly highlights that these symptoms aren’t cooked by anti-vaccine rhetoric but at the same time too easily ignored even by medical professionals themselves. My dad is a senior researcher with a MD/PhD and my mom is chemist (sic). They got the first wave of vaccines as they were essential workers. My mom developed life threatening super rare hyper immune response called HLH a day after her 2nd Moderna vaccine. Her symptoms were a decrease of all of her blood cells (hemoglobin, white blood cells, platelets) to a level that required multiple transfusions a week. Her condition took a month for Hopkins to diagnose. After a (sic) 8 months of this nightmare including chemo and steroids, we couldn’t save her and lost her to HLH and diffused B cell lymphoma, which was only discovered 2 days before she passed. To this day, the Hopkins doctors believe it’s plausible vaccine contributed but can’t say for a fact despite her symptoms started literally a day after her shot.”

“I’ve suffered alarming chest pains since my first covid vaccine, was hospitalised multiple times, couldn’t work or exercise for over 6 months and have spent thousands on private testing. In New Zealand we’ve had many young people killed and injured from the MRNA Pfizer vaccines. There people were never at risk over Covid yet they were forced to get vaccinated.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press, as well as 10 books in five languages, most recently “Liberty or Lockdown.” He is also the editor of "The Best of Ludwig von Mises." He writes a daily column on economics for The Epoch Times and speaks widely on the topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.