Well, this is a story that will not garner much mainstream attention, which is evident by the fact that Pfizer shares are up seven percent on Tuesday.
The Jerusalem Post, citing previous data, reported that two people have died after participating in Phase 3 trials of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. This comes as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is set to grant emergency-use approval on Thursday.
One of the people who died was immunocompromised.
More from the newspaper:
At the same time, the FDA said that there currently is not enough research to guarantee the vaccine’s safety for immunocompromised groups, pregnant women and children.
Israel’s Midaat Association responded to the report on the deaths, explaining that when vaccines are administered to at-risk populations “there may be unfortunate cases. One should not infer from this about the safety of the vaccine but welcome the transparency required from the pharma companies in the drug approval process.”
The association noted that in large trials of tens of thousands of people, death can occur without any connection to the trial, but that companies like Pfizer are required to report those deaths.
“According to the published data, six of the participants in the experiment died, two of whom received the vaccine and four of the control group,” said Dr. Uri Lerner, the scientific director for Midaat. “After an in-depth examination, no connection was found between the experiment and the cause of death.”
Meanwhile, the FDA’s vaccine advisory panel stated that while the Pfizer vaccine meets expectations, it did warn of “severe adverse reactions” after the second dose.
The vaccine has been shown to elicit increased local and systemic adverse reactions as compared to those in the placebo arm, usually lasting a few days…
The most common solicited adverse reactions were injection site reactions (84.1%), fatigue (62.9%), headache (55.1%), muscle pain (38.3%), chills (31.9%), joint pain (23.6%), fever (14.2%)
…
Severe adverse reactions occurred in 0.0-4.6% of participants, were more frequent after Dose 2 than after Dose 1 and were generally less frequent in older adults (>55 years of age) (<2.8%) as compared to younger participants (≤4.6%). Among reported unsolicited adverse events, lymphadenopathy occurred much more frequently in the vaccine group than the placebo group and is plausibly related to vaccination.
We shall see the long-term side effects in the coming years.
Anyone up for a cool rat’s tail?
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