COVID 20/20: The Media’s Coverup of Adverse Events 

Date : October 24, 2023 By Crystal Gonzalez

The worldwide medical and media establishment hailed the advent of COVID-19 vaccines as a hallmark achievement that would help humanity turn the corner in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Today, the president of the United States — who called the problem a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” is fully vaccinated and double-boosted — is now fighting a COVID-19 infection (The White House, 2021, n.p.). However, in a press briefing, Joe Biden sits unmasked, unaware or unconcerned that high viral loads are present in the fully vaccinated (Kampf, 2021). Further, the efficacy of the vaccines and boosters not only wanes over time but, moreover, can impair immune system response, according to the European Medicines Agency. (Yamamoto, 2022).

As for safety, media reporting, online censors, and fact-checkers act in lockstep to condemn any question. For example, Reuters Fact Check (2021a) wrote a strawman headline “debunking” a video of a person reviewing reports in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, declaring that VAERS did not prove any causation. While dodging the question at issue, perhaps Reuters Fact Check (2021a) just missed the poster’s opening statement of “probably,” instead of “proves” (Jahvolan Fan Page, 2021). The fact-checkers want to be doubly sure the public knows that the adverse events reporting system, designed for early warning and detection, is provisional and that the post is devoid of the context provided both within the video and the links posted with the video. Reuters Fact Check (2021a) conveniently ignores lending credibility to the FDA’s gold-standard system for early adverse events reporting.

Evaluating available information is an integral element of critical thinking (The elements of thought – one by one, n.d.). So, what does VAERS say? There were 845,611 adverse events reported, including 10,982 deaths in the United States associated with COVID-19 vaccines (United States Department of Health and Human Services et al., 2022). While Reuters Fact Check’s (2021a) bias slants solidly towards the potential incompetence of the reporting as being overly inclusive with false positives, “[o]nly about 1% of serious events are reported to the FDA, according to one study” (Kessler, 1993, p. 1). At the worst-case scenario 1% reporting threshold, that could be as many as 1,098,200 deaths and 84,561,100 total adverse events associated with COVID-19 vaccines in the United States. For perspective, during the 1976 swine flu outbreak, a mere 25 deaths and 500 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome associated with the vaccine led to the program’s suspension (Boudreau & Zamost, 2009).

Reuters Fact Check (2021a) also claims that while the database does not establish causality, only mere association, over half of the reported deaths occurred within 72 hours (America’s Frontline Doctors, 2021). Furthermore, lest we compare apples to oranges, the COVID-19 death rates, as reported by the CDC, are also provisional and do not establish causality. In fact, “When COVID-19 is reported as a cause of death – or when it is listed as a “probable” or “presumed” cause — the death is coded as U07.1. This can include cases with or without laboratory confirmation.” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d., para. 7).

We can assess Reuters Fact Check’s (2021a) purpose and orientation, shelving investigative reporting and instead lazily aligning with the prevailing narrative of the COVID-19 vaccines being safe and effective. It is a generous inference that the authors want to believe government agencies have the problem under control. However, the journalistic ideal that media should serve as the Fourth Estate during the most trying times takes a back seat to a default trust in the organizations they are tasked with monitoring. Instead, Reuters Fact Check (2021a) plays police on citizens over peripheral details, and this is not their only rodeo with biased reporting on COVID-19 vaccine adverse events. Again avoiding the question at issue, Reuters Fact Check (2021b) also opted for a red herring about the source of a screenshot instead of addressing the claim that more deaths were associated with COVID-19 vaccination than all vaccines combined over the history of VAERS.

A laymen’s search of the VAERS database reveals that for all vaccines from 1900 through 2020, there were 687,091 adverse events reported, including 1,779 deaths (United States Department of Health and Human Services et al., 2022). That amounts to over six times the number of reported deaths for COVID-19 vaccines compared to all other vaccines reported throughout VAERS history. The claim’s veracity seems to be a point Reuters Fact Check (2021b) had not considered worth mentioning.

These continued distortions of focus on information peripheral to the claims, paired with the contortion of the FDA’s early warning system as suddenly untrustworthy and over-reporting, are clear evidence of bias. Moreover, the media bias in disregarding adverse events as irrelevant presents a clear danger to the American People. This position effectively blinds awareness of potential health consequences of taking emergency-use authorized vaccines. For example, some of these reports have led to the FDA’s regulation of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine as a last resort due to the risk of blood clotting (Office of the Commissioner, 2022). Other adverse events reports include heart-related conditions like myocarditis, a risk increase associated with both Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, and confirmed by researchers from Public Health Ontario (Buchan et al., 2022).

By painting the VAERS database as nonessential, Reuters Fact Check (2021a) programs the public to ignore the entire system of early warning signs made available to the public by the FDA as part of The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, especially crucial in the event of fast-tracked vaccines using experimental mRNA science. This information is critical, considering the trend of worldwide policies hailing assumed safety and efficacy while holding federal and state jobs, necessary public spaces and surgeries, commerce, and worship hostage over people’s vaccination status. Aside from death and lifelong physical impairments, the implications and consequences of the media failing to investigate the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines outside what has been hand-fed to them via press releases have split apart families and damaged livelihoods.

With adverse events equivalent to ticking time bombs, the consequences of this professionally and morally indefensible behavior will reverberate for years. Unfortunately, the dishonesty and bias of United States Media surrounding COVID-19 coverage have cornered skeptics into subscribing to alternative sources they consider on equal or better footing, if not by the details, then by the general direction. These disinformation campaigns encompass vaccine 5G towers and magnetic nanobots — rendering a necessary press irrelevant because, at the end of the day, at least these far-fetched stories match their level of caution against public health agencies and their watchdogs being essentially the same.

References

America’s Frontline Doctors. (2021, October 29). AFLDS Files Lawsuit Seeking Immediate Injunctive Relief Revoking the Emergency Use of Covid-19 Vaccines Based on Disturbing New Mortality Data. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://www.americasfrontlinedoctors.org/news/press-releases/aflds-files-lawsuit-seeking-immediate-injunctive-relief-revoking-the-emergency-use-of-covid-19-vaccines-based-on-disturbing-new-mortality-data/

Boudreau, A., & Zamost, S. (2009, April 30). Ex-CDC head recalls ’76 swine flu outbreak – CNN.com. CNN. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/30/swine.flu.1976/index.html

Buchan, S. A., Seo, C. Y., Johnson, C., Alley, S., Kwong, J. C., Nasreen, S., … & Wilson, S. E. (2022). Epidemiology of myocarditis and pericarditis following mRNA vaccination by vaccine product, schedule, and interdose interval among adolescents and adults in Ontario, Canada. JAMA Network Open, 5(6), e2218505-e2218505.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

Jahvolan Fan Page. (2021, March 23). DEATH TOLL CLIMBING!!! Follow this link to know how to access the CDC website…. [Video]. Facebook. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://www.facebook.com/jahvolansf/posts/3552704021621590/

Kessler, D. A. (1993, June 2). A new approach to reporting medication and device adverse effects and product problems. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 269(21). Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://www.fda.gov/media/78526/download

Kampf, G. (2021). COVID-19: stigmatising the unvaccinated is not justified. The Lancet, 398(10314), 1871.

Office of the Commissioner. (2022, May 5). Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Limits Use of Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine to Certain Individuals. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-limits-use-janssen-covid-19-vaccine-certain-individuals

Reuters Fact Check. (2021a, April 8). Fact Check-VAERS data does not prove thousands died from receiving COVID-19 vaccines. Reuters. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaers-deaths/fact-check-vaers-data-does-not-prove-thousands-died-from-receiving-covid-19-vaccines-idUSL1N2LV0NY

Reuters Fact Check. (2021b, October 6). Fact Check-Screenshot claiming deaths from COVID-19 vaccines are higher than all vaccines combined since 1990 is not from VAERS website. Reuters. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid-1990/fact-check-screenshot-claiming-deaths-from-covid-19-vaccines-are-higher-than-all-vaccines-combined-since-1990-is-not-from-vaers-website-idUSL1N2R21J9

The elements of thought – one by one. (n.d.). The elements of thought. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://theelementsofthought.org/the-elements-of-thought-one-by-one/

The White House. (2021, September 10). Remarks by President Biden on Fighting the COVID-19 Pandemic. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/09/09/remarks-by-president-biden-on-fighting-the-covid-19-pandemic-3/

United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Public Health Service (PHS), Centers for Disease Control (CDC) / Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) 1990 – 07/15/2022, CDC WONDER On-line Database. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from http://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html

Yamamoto, K. (2022). Adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines and measures to prevent them. Virology Journal, 19(1), 1-3.