UK: Vaccine injury scheme ramps up staff as claims over Covid jabs keep growing
Increasing demand for Covid vaccine injury payments has seen the number of staff processing claims increase 20-fold, figures show.
The Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS) has scaled up operations and boosted its administrative staff from four to 80 to handle the claims.
A project is also under way to digitalise the application process to make it simpler and quicker for claimants.
But MPs, campaigners and families have called for the process to be reformed, arguing that the payment cap of £120,000 is too low, too slow and bureaucratic, and the eligibility criteria is too strict.
If a person is left severely disabled as a result of receiving certain vaccines they could be entitled to the one-off payment from the Government.
Families can also apply for the payment if a loved one died as a result of a vaccination.
It is not treated as compensation, meaning claimants can still seek damages in court.
“Inadequate funds to families’
A group of patients and families are now taking legal action against AstraZeneca after they suffered injury or bereavement as a result of complications from the Covid vaccine.
The Hausfeld Claimant group, which includes 13 bereaved families and 28 survivors, says the VDPS offers “inadequate funds to families”.
Sarah Moore, leading the litigation, said: “No amount of compensation will bring back loved ones or restore those injured to health but it can make life a little bit easier for the mothers, fathers, children, parents and partners who are now reshaping their lives.”
Figures released under a Freedom of Information (FOI) request in March show more than 4,000 claims related to a Covid-19 vaccine have been submitted since Nov 1 2021.
The payment scheme was taken over by the NHS Business Services Authority in November 2021, after previously being handled by the Department for Work and Pensions.
Of the 4,017 claims made, 334 relate to a claimant who has died.
Some 48 claims have been approved so far, Maria Caulfield, a health minister, told MPs in February.
A separate FOI document published in February revealed 3,842 claims had been received, meaning the number submitted has increased by almost 200 in one month alone. Of those, 814 claims were unsuccessful and a further 37 did not meet the eligibility criteria.
Under the VDPS, severe disablement means a patient must be at least 60 per cent disabled to qualify, based on the Social Security (General Benefit) Regulations 1982.
‘Balance of probabilities’
A patient’s medical records along with “all scientific evidence” will be considered in the application by an independent medical assessor.
They will decide if the person is due a payment based on whether “on the balance of probabilities” the vaccine caused the disability, and if the level of disability is 60 per cent.
Many claimants have been diagnosed with vaccine-induced thrombocytopenia and thrombosis, a rare condition linked to the Covid-19 jab.
The number of people who experienced life-changing adverse reactions to coronavirus vaccines is tiny compared to the millions who received the jab.
Data from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, up to Nov 23 2022, show 445 cases of major thromboembolic events (blood clots) with concurrent thrombocytopenia (low platelet counts) in the UK following an AstraZeneca jab. The overall case fatality rate was 18 per cent with 81 deaths.
The Government says it can take “at least six months” to process a VDPS claim, but a claim about a Covid-19 vaccine “will take longer”.
Jeremy Wright, Conservative MP for Kenilworth and Southam, raised the issue in the Commons this week and called on the Prime Minister to revamp the scheme.
He told The Telegraph: “It's good news if they're improving the resources to handle claims. There are a lot of claims and it's taking a very long time to process them.”
He added there were still “structural problems” with the scheme, including the low cap and 60 per cent disablement cut off.
Rishi Sunak said on Wednesday: “We are taking steps to reform vaccine damage payments schemes by modernising the operations and providing more timely outcomes, but of course I'd be happy to talk to the honourable gentleman further about it.”
The Telegraph has spoken to families who have waited more than a year for the payment.
Sheila Ward, whose husband Stephen, 57, died after having the Covid vaccine, said the compensation scheme was “not fit for purpose”.
Her husband, who was retired, had the Oxford AZ jab in March 2021. Mr Ward had no pre-existing conditions but after a few days developed a headache and had to stay in bed.
“We just thought he had been doing too much,” said Mrs Ward, 55, who lives in Newcastle.
When she went upstairs to check on him she found him unable to speak. He was taken to hospital where he was treated for a stroke. The doctors found bleeds and clots on his brain.
Compensation took a year
Later Mrs Ward was told by doctors that her husband had suffered seizures. He died before he could receive an operation.
A coroner’s certificate listed the vaccine as one of the causes of death but obtaining compensation took a year.
“The whole process was very slow and they never gave me updates unless I chased them,” said Mrs Ward, whose claim was finalised in June 2022.
“Personally, I don't think the compensation families receive is enough. I'm in a fortunate position that my husband had a pension, so my income has been subsidised that way.
“For anyone who has been left with a lifelong disability or young children, it simply wouldn’t be enough to replace somebody's income.”
Mrs Ward said the Government should consider raising the cap but also make the process faster. “It is not fit for purpose,” she said. “I’ve heard of cases where it takes 20 months for a decision. That is far too long”.
Vikki Spit, 40, lost her partner Zion of 21 years in May 2021 after he suffered a blood clot linked to the AZ vaccine. It took more than a year for Ms Spit, who campaigns for Vaccine Injured Bereaved UK, to receive the VDPS.
“The [60 per cent disabled] criteria is a really big [issue], because there are so many people just left with nothing after being severely injured, and have life-changing disabilities, and they’re just told ‘well you’re not interested enough’,” she said.
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Immune Tolerance and the COVID-19 Vaccines
Turbo-cancers, which are very aggressive cancers characterized by 1) rapid progression and 2) diagnosis at a late stage, have been increasing significantly in the last couple of years. One of the major factors that may be contributing to this increase is the COVID-19 vaccine, especially those vaccines operating on the mRNA platform. In particular, one of the major mechanisms associated with the modus operandi of these mRNA vaccines is the class-switch from IgG3 to IgG4, and the subsequent reversal in the phenomenon known as Immune Tolerance.
Immune Tolerance can be defined as 1) “the process by which immune cells are made unresponsive to self-antigens to prevent damage to healthy tissues. It prevents an immune response to antigens produced by the body itself or recognized from a prior encounter.”, or 2) “the state of an active, highly regulated unresponsiveness of the immune system to self-antigens or against a particular antigen that can induce an immune response in the body.”, or 3) “prevention of an immune response against a particular antigen. For instance, the immune system is generally tolerant of self-antigens, so it does not usually attack the body's own cells, tissues, and organs. However, when tolerance is reduced substantially, disorders like autoimmune disease or food allergy may occur.” Immune tolerance is analogous to a military operation defending one’s homeland against invasion from without and within, where it is desired to do maximum damage to the invaders and minimum damage to the homeland and its residents (also see the following references for more comprehensive analyses of Immune Tolerance (link#1; link#2; link#3; link#4; link#5; link#6).
Immune Tolerance is important for analyzing biological mechanisms, and for examining the onset and progression of many diseases. A more comprehensive view of Immune Tolerance would be useful for understanding its mechanisms and impacts. This Op-ed provides an overview of Immune Tolerance, based on the contents of the premier biomedical literature (Medline). The main output of this study is a hierarchical taxonomy of the Immune Tolerance biomedical literature, where the taxonomy is generated using a text-clustering approach. This Op-ed will show how the immune system uses Immune Tolerance to destroy foreign invaders or endogenous dysfunctional processes like rapid cancer cell multiplication without destroying the host in the process, or, conversely, how the immune system allows mild foreign invaders, such as allergens, to co-exist within the host with minimal damage to the host. It will also show how factors that adversely impact the immune system can distort the function of Immune Tolerance, and allow foreign invaders or endogenous dysfunctional processes to exert massive damage on the host.
METHODOLOGY
A query was developed to retrieve articles from Pubmed that focused on Immune Tolerance, and was entered into the Pubmed search engine on 25 September 2023. It retrieved 23,049 articles (with Abstracts only) for the period 1 January 1993-31 December 2023. The records retrieved were imported into the CLUTO text-clustering software, 64 leaf clusters were selected, and a hierarchical taxonomy was generated by the algorithm. Each leaf cluster was analyzed by visual inspection, and aggregate categories consisting of related leaf clusters were constructed.
The Immune Tolerance phenomena related to COVID-19 vaccine effects were identified from the records retrieved by the Pubmed query (as well as records related to the records retrieved by the query). and discussed.
The Pubmed query used is: "Immune Tolerance" [Majr] OR "immune tolerance" [tiab] OR “immune system tolerance" [tiab] OR “immunological tolerance" [tiab], where Majr is major MeSH theme and tiab is title and abstract.....
Some of the more egregious contributors to immune system dysfunction and, in some sense, promoters of unwanted Immune Tolerance to both micro-organisms and cancer cells are the present bioweapon injections masquerading as COVID-19 vaccines. The immune system consequences of these injections are highlighted here because of the large number of people who received them. Our studies have shown that the fundamental modus operandi of these injections is destruction of the immune system, where the level of immune system destruction increases with each injection. This immune system destruction can potentially lead to i) increased numbers of, and more aggressive, cancers, ii) reactivation of dormant viruses, and iii) increases in autoimmune diseases. The Immune Tolerance that accompanies this immune system destruction plays a strong role in each of the three adverse effects mentioned above.
Specific mechanisms of both the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 (mainly) mRNA vaccines that could induce unwanted Immune Tolerance were presented in the text, but only those arising from the COVID-19 vaccines will be presented here. They include: Class switching to increased IgG4; Incorporation of pseudouridine into mRNA; Multiple mRNA injections; Degradation and suppression of the immune system potentially leading to cancer (Suppression of Toll-Like Receptors, Impact on Tumor Suppressor Protein p53 and Genomic Transposable Element LINE-1, Spike Protein Interference with DNA Repair Mechanisms, Vaccines contaminated with Plasmid DNA containing SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, Simian virus 40 (SV40) in DNA discovered in Pfizer mRNA vaccine vials, Enhanced expression of PD-L1, Induction of pseudo-autoimmunity (more focused on autoimmunity rather than cancer)). Additionally, excerpts from critical papers show some of the synergies among these mechanisms acting in concert.
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/immune-tolerance-and-the-covid-19-vaccines-27e6426a
********************************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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15 October, 2023
New York State Supreme Court Issues Final Blow to Vaccine Mandate for Healthcare Workers
The pandemic is over. The Biden administration was forced to end the COVID-19 public health emergency declaration in May. Most people threw out their masks, embraced large indoor gatherings once again, and stores finally ditched those obnoxious and ineffective Plexiglass dividers. But even in this post-pandemic era, there are still legal battles playing out across the country over vaccine mandates.
In January, New York's Supreme Court struck down the state's vaccine mandate for healthcare workers but, of course, the Empire State didn't want to let go without a fight.
Last week, however, the Supreme Court Appellate Division, Fourth Department, dismissed the state's appeal.
"The mandate is over and declared unconstitutional," Sujata Gibson, attorney for the plaintiffs, said on X.
"This was an important victory. While it does not make healthcare workers whole, it does protect us from future overreach by the executive branch," she noted, according to Children's Health Defense.
The state Supreme Court on Jan. 13 declared New York’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers “null, void, and of no effect,” and ruled that the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) lacked the authority to impose the mandate.
The ruling pertained to a lawsuit filed on Oct. 20, 2022, against the NYSDOH, Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul and health commissioner Mary T. Bassett, by Medical Professionals for Informed Consent — a group of medical practitioners impacted by the mandate — and additional plaintiffs, including two doctors, a nurse, a radiologic technologist and a medical laboratory specialist. Children’s Health Defense (CHD) funded the lawsuit.
On Jan. 24, the state appealed the Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned the mandate. However, before the appeals court ruled, Jonathan Hitsous, attorney for the New York State Attorney General’s office, announced unexpectedly during a May hearing that the state planned to rescind the mandate.
Hitsous argued that the repeal would render the original lawsuit “moot” — meaning the rights and interests of the parties involved would no longer be at stake — and he requested that the lower court’s Jan. 13 decision striking down the mandate be vacated.
CHD and Gibson opposed the move in a joint statement, arguing that vacating the lower court’s decision would “leave open the very real possibility that this constitutional violation could happen again and ruin many more lives.”
“The law does not allow an agency to voluntarily stop an illegal activity and then claim they shouldn’t be held legally accountable,” Gibson told CHD.TV at the time.
Since then, New York formally repealed the mandate through the administrative process. In its ruling issued last week, the court held that the repeal “moots” the state’s appeal, but it declined to vacate the lower court’s decision or to take any position on it.
The vaccine mandate for healthcare workers went into effect in September 2021, which led to about 34,000 medical professionals to quit or be terminated.
Margaret Florini, a spokesperson for Medical Professionals for Informed Consent, told The Defender, "This is just the beginning."
"I think we will see many new lawsuits come about because of this historic win," Florini said. "There is still plenty of work to be done. We lost so much, not just money but relationships, marriages, friends, and homes. We cannot forget what was done to us and we must continue to shed light on it and make impactful changes that will truly prevent this from happening again."
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Beware the COVID Cranks
Dr. Anthony Fauci is back in the news as the media hype a resurgence of COVID-19 cases. Asked earlier last month by CNN’s Michael Smerconish if people should begin wearing masks again, he said, "I hope they would abide by the recommendation and take into account the risks to themselves and to their families. We are not talking about forcing anybody to do anything." Fauci, of course, backed a national mask mandate in 2020.
But that’s the least of the COVID contradictions from Fauci and others. Put aside the obfuscations of the origin of the virus (smearing proponents of the Wuhan “lab-leak” as conspiracy theorists.) Our public health bureaucracy has made so many misleading and confusing pronouncements, and FGI has uncovered such inconvenient facts through FOIA requests, that the public should take any new dictates with a truckload of salt.
Prior to COVID, the only randomized control trial (RCT) of cloth mask efficacy was performed in the context of SARS virus. Considered to be the “gold standard” for drawing scientific conclusions, the RCT study found that cloth mask “filtration was extremely poor (almost 0%).” So, when COVID hit, the information with the highest integrity indicated cloth masks were virtually useless as a filter for airborne SARS virus. Perhaps Fauci was thinking of this study when he initially said there was no need for masks.
By October 2020, Fauci was a mask-believer, and working on a paper for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that praised mask efficacy when The Federalist published an article that cited the findings of a CDC study completed the month before. Masks and face coverings, the CDC concluded, were ineffective in preventing the spread of COVID-19.
The records obtained by FGI showed that Fauci was aware of both the article and the CDC study while working on his JAMA paper, as a co-author sent them to him the day the article was published. Fauci’s response: “Not good for our paper.”
In another email she stated, “I would not tell people that the cloth masks we are all wearing provide PERSONAL PROTECTION against acquisition of the virus-they may to some degree, but I have never seen convincing data on this.”
Shortly thereafter, Fauci’s JAMA paper was published without reference to the inconvenient studies, instead relying on an already discredited mask study. When another scientist pointed out the blunder, Fauci told his assistant to make a note of it but not to take any action to correct it.
It wasn’t just Fauci. Early in the pandemic, the CDC and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) created the COVID-19 Real-Time Learning Network website purporting to share “accurate, timely information about COVID-19.” In November 2021, Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, penned an official letter with several colleagues to the medical editor of the website, pointing out that both the site and the CDC’s guidance on masks currently contained incorrect, harmful advice for the American public.
Osterholm warned that the flawed information would “not only damage the credibility of science and endanger public trust by misrepresenting the evidence, but also provide false expectations in terms of respiratory protection to the public.” Officials should “reconsider [their] statements about the efficacy of masks and face coverings for preventing transmission of SARS-CoV-2.” Osterholm identified a pattern of cherry-picking studies based on their alignment with the administration’s policy agenda, saying, “Studies that do not support its perspective are similarly downplayed.”
Osterholm was ignored and CDC doubled down on claims that “any mask is better than no mask.”
Unfortunately, the dysfunction doesn’t end with masks. In November 2022, Vice President Kamala Harris tweeted, “One shot, once a year—that’s all most people will need to stay protected from COVID year-long.” The next day, HHS Secretary Becerra tweeted, “An updated COVID vaccine can help protect you from the worst outcomes of COVID. If it’s been over 2 months since your last dose, make a plan to get one now.” Becerra repeated his two-month recommendation the following day in another tweet.
Upon seeing the tweets, FGI made a FOIA request for documentation of the scientific reasoning supporting Becerra’s prescription for COVID-19 vaccine booster shots every two months. By law, the government is given 20 business days to respond to a FOIA, yet it took eight months and a lawsuit for the HHS to confirm that there was no medical evidence for six shots per year nor were there any documents or communications explaining the origin of the Secretary’s public health pronouncement.
We can hope COVID-19 as a public health issue and the government dysfunction that came with it will continue to fade into memory. Our public health bureaucracy didn’t exactly cover itself in glory while it was trying to cover our faces – and its posterior.
https://townhall.com/columnists/petemcginnis/2023/10/10/beware-the-covid-cranks-n2629584
*******************************************************Italian Study Claims Neanderthal Genes Are Linked to Long Covid
The cause of Long Covid has been the source of ongoing speculation. Studies have pointed to a dysfunction in the immune system and another points Covid-19 latching onto the ACE2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2) receptor, which acts as the doorway through which the virus infects cells. The depletion of ACE2 is central to the neuromuscular complications experienced by a significant percentage of Covid-19 patients. There may be at least 6 million people worldwide suffering from Long Covid and the prolonged disease also has advocacy groups. Now, a recent study out of Italy indicates the reason some people are infected with Long Covid is because of ancient genes.
Neanderthal Genes
A recent study from Milan, Italy and carried out in the Northern Italian city of Bergamo, suggests genes inherited from Neanderthals, extinct cousins of modern humans, could help explain why some people developed life-threatening forms of Long Covid while others didn’t. The Northern Italian city was hit very hard by the Covid pandemic, and Bergarmo suffered one of the highest death rates of the pandemic. The high number of infections provided scientists with data for the study, though the research doesn’t address why so many people died there compared with other parts of Italy or Europe.
The researchers were led by Giuseppe Remuzi. They found genes passed down from Neanderthals may confer higher risk from Covid-19. Remuzi is with the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan. This research was done on behalf of WHO’s ORIGIN study group.
The study was a genome wide associate study (GWAS). The researchers studied a sample of nearly 10,000 people in the Bergamo area, identified several genes associated with the development of severe respiratory illness. Three of those genes belonged to a group of variations in DNA, or haplotype, inherited from Neanderthals. The study found that people who carry the Neanderthal haplotype were twice as likely to develop severe pneumonia from a Covid infection than those who didn’t, and three times as likely to be hospitalized in intensive care units and put on ventilators.
What is not known is whether the haplotype is more common in the Bergamo region than in other Italian or European regions. Epidemiologists still don’t know why parts of northern Italy suffered such high death tolls, especially early in the pandemic. Scientists have suggested factors could have included age, air pollution and that the virus hit the region early in the pandemic and spread undetected.
Study Shows Risk for Some
“This study shows there is a particular section of the human genome that is significantly associated with the risk of getting Covid-19 and of developing a severe form of it,” says Remuzzi. “That section is more important than any others to explain why some fall seriously ill.” Remuzzi added in Bergamo 33% of those who developed life-threatening forms of Covid had the Neanderthal haplotype.
About 2% of the genomes of people of European or Asian ancestry is inherited from Neanderthals, and they have been linked to modern humans’ susceptibility to a variety of diseases. The study adds to a growing body of research which indicates that a cluster of Neanderthal genes increases the likelihood of developing severe forms of Covid-19. Bergamo was an early epicenter of the pandemic. As pointed out, a notable feature of Bergamo is that its population is relatively homogeneous. Perhaps this study provides the answer as to why Covid was so prevalent in the Northern Italian city.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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