Letters: ‘Misleading’ claims in article on Covid vaccinations

I feel that Ms Blythman’s summary of the MHRA’s Yellow Card report statistics was misrepresentative and misleading.

In her summary of the Yellow Card report she states that “it recorded a total number of deaths caused by Covid vaccines, to date, of 1,766 people”.

The MHRA clearly state in their weekly reporting of the Yellow Card system: “The MHRA has received 611 UK reports of suspected ADRs to the Covid-19 Pfizer/BioNTech Vaccine in which the patient died shortly after vaccination, 1,122 reports for the Covid-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca, 19 for the Covid-19 Vaccine Moderna and 32 where the brand of vaccine was unspecified.

“The majority of these reports were in elderly people or people with underlying illness.

“Usage of the vaccines has increased over the course of the campaigns and as such, so has reporting of fatal events with a temporal association with vaccination.

“However, this does not mean that there is a link between vaccination and the fatalities reported. Review of specific fatal reports is provided in the summaries above.

“The pattern of reporting for all other fatal reports does not suggest the vaccines played a role in these deaths.”

Kevin Murphy, Kilwinning.

Correction

We accept that the figure of 1,766 deaths caused by Covid vaccines was incorrect. That is the number of deaths reported as possibly linked to a vaccine, however, they will not have been fully investigated at the time of reporting and a report is not proof that the vaccines caused death. We accept making a causal link was a step too far. We apologise for the error.

Dubious premises in the article

JOANNA Blythman has been allowed to publish a second article on Covid vaccination which selects articles to support her dubious premises while ignoring any caveats in them.

She states that the NHS Yellow Card scheme recorded 1,766 deaths caused by the Covid vaccines.

No it didn’t. It actually recorded this number of deaths possibly associated with Covid vaccines. Similarly, she quotes 1,261,714 adverse events caused by the vaccines.

The Yellow Card scheme encourages healthcare workers to report any event which follows an intervention such as vaccination.

Sometimes these are relevant, but only a proportion of the

1.2 million reports are caused by the vaccine.

To give a slightly ludicrous example, if I fell and broke my leg on the day of my vaccination, I could record this as a possible adverse reaction.

Blythman quotes Anthony Fauci’s comments on waning immunity. Immunity with almost all vaccines wanes, which explains why many of us are being offered a top-up vaccine six months after the previous one.

Some double-vaccinated people will be hospitalised but even waning immunity makes a fatal outcome much less likely. She doesn’t bother to quote the French experience of the public’s response to vaccine passports as it wouldn’t suit her dubious argument, so I’ll do it for her: the prospect of a vaccine passport being required for almost all social activities led to an increase in the voluntary vaccination rate increasing from 54% to 75%.

Blythman states that we should all have informed consent to any medical procedure.

I agree, but we should also be spared misinformation such as provided by her article.

Sam Craig, Glasgow.

Blythman should be ashamed

HOW ironic that Joanna Blythman accuses others of living in a “post-fact universe” when she irresponsibly regurgitates the anti-vaxx lie that all deaths and suspected adverse events reported after Covid vaccinations under the MHRA’s Yellow Card reporting system are “caused” by the vaccine. She should be ashamed of herself.

Apart from a range of mild-to-moderate symptoms, rare but serious, and widely reported blood-clotting (thromboembolic) reactions, and some other rare conditions, there is no strong evidence of causal links between the vaccine and deaths or adverse reactions. The health benefits of vaccination far outweigh the disbenefits.

All this is fully explained in the MHRA’s weekly reports, which include the statistics.

Nick Walker, Glasgow.

A very real false sense of security

JOANNA Blythman’s article strikes a chord with me as I write from my isolation cell after being double-jagged and boostered and am still Covid-19-positive, despite following all of the controls and advice being foisted upon us.

The message from Westminster and Edinburgh would have us believe that vaccination is a solution to the spread of the infection, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Indeed, the truth is that both governments are culpable of creating a very real false sense of security where those of us who were ultra-careful and cautious have dropped their guard and the spread of the virus grows unabated.

This main spread will not be through the 10% unvaccinated, who probably still have their guard raised, but through the 90% vaccinated who have listened and trusted both governments, creating a more relaxed attitude amongst them.

Focusing on the 10% unvaccinated and not the message to the 90% vaccinated is not only misguided but ignores and hides what is going on. Even though both governments may not want to admit their mass vaccination solution is not working, the actual scientific data is saying otherwise.

We need to change the main message, and quickly. I’m sure the families and dependants of all the over-50s who have been double-vaccinated and who have paid the ultimate sacrifice would agree.

Jim Mcpherson, Crosslee, Johnstone.

Johnson’s factual speech to the CBI

I WONDER how many commentators, so full of scorn at Boris Johnson’s 20-minute CBI speech, actually heard it or have read it in full?

Most printed media and the BBC devoted almost all their reports to a few typical Boris-isms which by now even he should have grown out of, and to about 20 seconds when he lost the place in his reading matter (– possibly the fault of a secretary?).

What has happened to our “newspapers of record”?

The rest of his speech was factual, interesting, credible, amusing in parts, praising UK inventiveness, engineering and manufacturing, and saying that we need innovative private enterprise to recover from Covid and years of under-investment – ie, what prime ministers from either main party would normally say to the CBI, whose director-general praised it in his response.

John Birkett, St Andrews.

England’s endless good fortune

BORIS Johnson’s England, or at least the one he believes in, is a truly wondrous and fortunate place.

It has Scotland to take the sting out of the Arctic blast, Ireland to take the brunt of the Atlantic gale, and Europe to dam the human flood of refugees who, irony of ironies, just want to be English.

John Jamieson, Ayr.

Restoring aircraft ventilation levels

THE news that a new variant of the Covid virus has emerged must mean that all steps to reduce its spread around the world should be enforced at the earliest possible moment.

One important action would be for all airlines and travel companies around the world to increase the air through the body of their aircraft. Most of them were quick to reduce ventilation taken from the aircraft engines when on-board smoking was banned. It should be restored to an even higher level.

Rodney Lang, South Lanarkshire.

IF the latest, concerning, news about a new Covid-19 variant emerging from southern Africa tells us anything, it’s that we can’t afford to be complacent and assume that the worst of the pandemic is over.

The pandemic still has the capacity to surprise us and test our painstakingly developed defences. I suspect this will be the case for a long time to come.

G Marshall, Glasgow.

Consequences of minimum pricing

I AM writing in response to Alan Simpson’s article, “Dearer drink won’t cure the problems”, (November 25).

During COP26 I had the opportunity to chat to a young Glasgow policeman who worked in a deprived area of the city.

He talked about his daily work, which he loved, and which sounded to me a lot like social work.

I asked him whether he thought that the minimum pricing of alcohol had helped his patch, and was surprised when he said he was against it.

He explained that as a result of this measure, he had seen many people turn from alcohol to illegal street drugs because they were more affordable. But he considered the street drugs more damaging, both individually and socially, than legal alcohol.

It seems that in trying to solve one problem, a worse one was being made.

As I have not heard this commented on in any media reports, I wondered whether it has been researched.

Sue Harley,

Dunblane.

WAS anyone else perplexed by Alan Simpson’s opinion piece on minimum unit pricing(MUP) of alcohol? He seems to think “expensive tipples” are worst affected by MUP. Not so.

The reason people on Saturday nights out do not drink vintage champagne and 25-year-old malts is because each unit of alcohol in them costs well over £1. Therefore the proposed rise in MUP to 65p will not affect their price at all.

Those who binge-drink to get drunk, drink cheap beer, cider, wine, et cetera, because each unit of alcohol in them costs 50p.

A 30% rise in MUP will mean that they cost 30% more. Studies show that means, on a population average, we will drink a little less and a little less often, so we will be a little healthier. That is a good thing.

David Hill, Dumfries.

Is quango a waste of space?

THANKS to the dogma of Zero Waste Scotland, slavishly followed by councils reducing collections, our bins are overflowing and streets are strewn with wind-blown litter.

Could I suggest running a re-branding competition for this overpaid and self-serving quango? Zero Results Scotland or Waste of Space are my entries.

Kathryn Grant, Falkirk.