Diabetic Mediterranean Diet

I know it’s a little early to be asking that question. Within a year, an unknown number of you will be asking. Where do you go for satisfaction? The CICP: Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program. Forget about suing the vaccine manufacturer, distributor, or medical practitioner who jabbed you. They got the federal government to absolve them of liability in most cases. If injured, you need to file your claim within a year of vaccination.

As far as I know, this program only applies to U.S. residents. Perhaps only U.S. citizens.

Here’s an excerpt from a related fedgov program, the NVICP web page:

Vaccines save lives by preventing disease.

Most people who get vaccines have no serious problems. Vaccines, like any medicines, can cause side effects, but most are very rare and very mild. Some health problems that follow vaccinations are not caused by vaccines.

In very rare cases, a vaccine can cause a serious problem, such as a severe allergic reaction.  

In these instances, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) may provide financial compensation to individuals who file a petition and are found to have been injured by a VICP-covered vaccine. Even in cases in which such a finding is not made, petitioners may receive compensation through a settlement. 

Many physicians in my community are excited and lined up to take the COVID-19 vaccine. But not me. I even have risk factors for more serious COVID-19 disease: age 66 and hypertension. After reviewing what little data are available from the Warp Speed vaccine trials, I’m not convinced the vaccines are safe enough for me. I’ll take my chances with the virus rather than the vaccine. I’m not afraid of dying from COVID-19; if that happens I’ll be in heaven with Jesus. I’ve lived a full and lucky life, blessed by a wonderful wife, fantastic children, good health, missed Viet Nam by a few years, no major economic upheaval. My biggest concern about catching the virus is the burden it would lay on my co-workers if I’m off-duty for 1 to 3 weeks.

That said, if I were older and had other co-morbidities, I might take the vaccine now. When we have more long-term data on vaccine safety, I might take the vaccine. It could take up to a couple years before we have that data.

I am not anti-vaccine, in general. As a child I got the vaccines for polio, measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, and probably diphtheria, maybe others. I took the hepatitis B vaccine as an adult because I’m exposed to blood from my patients. I’m due for another tetanus booster and will take it without reservation.

Steve Parker, M.D.

PS: I’m doing everything I can to optimize my health and immune system, including weight management and regular exercise.

PPS: Pharmacist Scott Gavura at Science Based Medicine provides a table comparing vaccination vs catching the virus vs hydroxychloroquine treatment. He implies my odds of death from COVID-19 infection are two out of a hundred (2%). I don’t think it’s nearly that high.

PPPS: Click for an interesting article on CICP at the Centre for Research on Globalization. I have no idea of its accuracy.

Peter Doshi, an associate editor at British Medical Journal, is not favorably impressed with the recent vaccine trial announcements. “90% effective.” “95% effective!”

Coronavirus guru Anthony Fauci assures us that a coronavirus vaccine will only be FDA-approved if it’s “safe and effective.”

From Doshi:

But what will it mean exactly when a vaccine is declared “effective”? To the public this seems fairly obvious. “The primary goal of a covid-19 vaccine is to keep people from getting very sick and dying,” a National Public Radio broadcast said bluntly.

Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said, “Ideally, you want an antiviral vaccine to do two things . . . first, reduce the likelihood you will get severely ill and go to the hospital, and two, prevent infection and therefore interrupt disease transmission.”

Yet the current phase III trials are not actually set up to prove either. None of the trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus.

Will COVID-19 vaccines save lives? Current trials aren’t designed to tell us.

Switching gears to the flu vaccine for a minute. The flu vaccine’s been a godsend in preventing influenza death among the frail elderly, right? Not so fast there, pardner. Doshi again:

But the truth is that the science remains far from clear cut, even for influenza vaccines that have been used for decades. Although randomised trials have shown an effect in reducing the risk of symptomatic influenza, such trials have never been conducted in elderly people living in the community to see whether they save lives.

Only two placebo controlled trials in this population have ever been conducted, and neither was designed to detect any difference in hospital admissions or deaths.

Moreover, dramatic increases in use of influenza vaccines has not been associated with a decline in mortality.

The Moderna and Pfizer trials enrolled 30,000 and 44,000 participants, respectively. That sounds like a lot of people to be vaccinated. But they only vaccinate half the folks. The other have serve as a control group. Next, the investigators track the occurrence of coronavirus events over time, then compare the two groups. An “event” may be anything from a cough plus positive COVID-19 PCR test, to hospitalization or death. Of course, they also look at potential adverse effect of vaccination, comparing the two groups.

The trials aren’t going to give us good information on COVID-19 hospitalizations and death rates because those outcomes are so infrequent. Most people with symptomatic COVID-19 experience only mild symptoms; there are relatively few cases of serious disease in a general population of 30,000.

Who needs a safe and effective vaccine the most?

• Those over 60-65
• Anybody seriously immunocompromised (i.e., a poor immune system too weak to fight infection).

Immunocompromised people are excluded from the seven ongoing trials. So these trials focus on those over 60, right? Wrong. The Moderna trial eligibility started at age 18. Pfizer’s accepted 12-year-olds.

Surely the vaccine trials will have some participants over 60-years-old. There just may not be enough to generate clinically meaningful data on serious disease outcomes and adverse effects in the elderly.

Steven Novella says Moderna developed their vaccine with a grant from the U.S. government, and Pfizer funded themselves. Each vaccine has cost over two billion dollars to develop. They will be the first ever mRNA vaccines approved by the FDA. Our other vaccines are based on different technology. Both vaccines require two shots, 28 days apart.

Steve Parker, M.D.

PS: I am not generally anti-vaccination.