Thousands of people in the United States believe they have experienced rare but serious side effects following getting vaccinated. Confirming a relationship, however, is a difficult task.
Shortly following their arrival in late December 2020, COVID-19 vaccines turned the pandemic around and opened a path back to normality. By one estimate, they prevented regarding 14.4 million deaths worldwide.
In a small percentage of people they also caused side effects.
Over more than a year, The New York Times spoke to 30 people who said they had been harmed by Covid vaccines. Your symptoms may not be related to the vaccines. But these people, along with more than a dozen experts, believe that federal authorities are not doing enough to investigate their complaints.
All vaccines carry some risk of side effects. More than 270 million Americans have received regarding 677 million doses of Covid vaccines, and even the rarest side effects—occurring, for example, in just 0.001 percent of patients—might mean that thousands of receptors were affected.
In fact, more than 13,000 people have filed claims with a government fund that compensates people for injuries caused by the Covid vaccine. However, so far only a dozen people have been compensated, almost all of them for a heart problem caused by the vaccines.
Here are four conclusions from our research.
For most people, the benefits of Covid vaccines outweigh any risks
Even the best vaccines and medications have some side effects. That doesn’t negate their benefits, nor does it suggest people should stop taking them.
The rotavirus vaccine, for example, is a resounding success, but it can cause intussusception — a life-threatening disease in which the intestine folds in on itself — in regarding 0.02 percent of vaccinated children.
Some side effects caused by Covid vaccines may be equally rare. Researchers in Hong Kong analyzed health records in that country and found that regarding seven out of every million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine triggered a shingles attack severe enough to require hospitalization.
Other side effects are slightly more common. Covid vaccines can cause myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, in one in 10,000 male adolescents. (Myocarditis is one of four serious side effects recognized by federal health authorities.)
Deaths caused by vaccines are extremely rare, despite claims by some conspiracy theorists that vaccines have caused death rates to rise.
Further analysis may indicate that in some groups, such as young men, the benefit of Covid vaccines no longer outweighs the risks. But for most Americans, vaccines are still much safer than contracting Covid.
Federal surveillance has caught some side effects, but may miss others
To detect problems with vaccines, federal agencies rely on multiple databases. The largest, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, is useful for generating hypotheses, but contains unverified reports of harm. Other databases combine electronic medical records and insurance claims.
These systems detected blood clotting problems associated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and a potential risk of stroke following mRNA immunizations, which is still being investigated. But federal researchers followed Israeli scientists’ lead in identifying myocarditis as a problem among young men.
The American healthcare system is fragmented, with medical records stored by multiple, uncooperative companies.
Not all electronic medical records describe symptoms in the same way, making comparisons difficult. Insurance claims databases may not have records of vaccines administered at mass vaccination sites.
Federal systems may also miss symptoms that are not easy to describe or diagnose.
Proving that vaccination caused a disease is complicated
Among the hundreds of millions of Americans who were vaccinated once morest Covid, there were deaths, heart attacks, strokes, miscarriages and autoimmune diseases. How to distinguish illnesses caused by the vaccine from those that would have occurred anyway?
The rarer the disease, the more difficult it is to answer this question.
Simply judging by the moment (the appearance of a specific problem following vaccination) can be misleading. The most famous case is that of childhood vaccines, which were wrongly linked to autism because the first manifestations often coincided with the vaccination schedule.
Serious side effects may appear for the first time in animal vaccine studies. But few such studies were possible given the country’s desperate schedule in 2020. Clinical trials of the vaccines were intended to test their effectiveness, but they were far from large enough to detect side effects that might occur in only a few. people per million doses.
Most independent studies of side effects have not been large enough to detect rare events, nor to exclude their possibility; Others have looked only at a pre-established list of symptoms and may have missed atypical cases.
A group of experts convened by the National Academies concluded in April that, for most side effects, there was insufficient data to accept or reject a relationship with the covid vaccine.
Understanding all the side effects can take years
Federal health authorities recognize four major side effects of Covid vaccines, not including temporary pain at the injection site, fever and general malaise that can accompany the injections.
But in federal databases, thousands of Americans have reported that Covid vaccines caused ringing in the ears, dizziness, brain fog, wild fluctuations in blood pressure and heart rate, new or recurring autoimmune diseases, hives, vision problems, kidney disorders, tingling, numbness and loss of motor skills.
Some studies have examined reports of side effects and largely concluded that there is no relationship. Closer examination may reveal that many, perhaps most, of the other side effects reported are not related to the immunization. Most of them are also associated with Covid, and may be the result of undiagnosed infections. But without in-depth studies, it’s impossible to be sure, experts said.
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