Friday, April 28, 2023



Ringing in the ears after Covid shot

Thousands of Covid vaccine recipients have reported persistent ringing in their ears after getting the shots and scientists are still investigating the connection.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains that data does not support a link between the vaccines and the condition known as tinnitus, but the problem has become persistent and widespread enough to merit more attention.

Over 16,000 vaccine takers in the US have reported some form of tinnitus after getting the shots, while a Facebook support group called ‘Tinnitus and Hearing Loss/Impairment after COVID vaccination’ has gained 4,000 members.

The risk would be tiny even if there is a connection, given that 675million vaccine doses have been administered in the US, according to the CDC.

Dr Shaowen Bao, a neurophysiologist at the University of Arizona, Tucson’s College of Medicine and a longtime tinnitus sufferer, set out to investigate the association by sampling nearly 400 members of the Facebook tinnitus group.

While on the surface the complaints of ringing in the ears may sound like anti-vaccine propaganda, the Facebook from which Dr Bao gleaned his sample maintains that it is ‘pro-vaccine’ and does not parrot anti-vax sentiments such as claims that the shots cause deafness.

Many of the sufferers reported other symptoms, including dizziness and vertigo after their shots.

This, Dr Bao said, suggests ‘that the vaccine is interacting with pre-existing risk factors for tinnitus. If you have the risk factor, you will probably get it from the first dose.’

Tinnitus after vaccination, most often the first shot, could be caused by inflammation around the brain or spinal cord, Dr Bao said.

Dr Bao has said: ‘Vaccination is an immune response; it could cause inflammation - peripheral inflammation - and peripheral inflammation could affect the brain where the tinnitus is initiated.

Tinnitus is a common condition affecting as many as 25 percent of American adults.

Is Covid to blame for this crackling noise in my ears?

Viruses (including Covid-19) can cause tinnitus — usually as a result of inflammation which damages nerves that carry hearing information to the brain. A study last year found 20 per cent of those affected by Covid developed tinnitus.

Patients report a phantom noise in the ear that can be mild as well as extremely disruptive to daily life.

It can sound like persistent ringing, hissing, roaring, or screeching at low or high volumes.

Dr Bao found that in many cases, the tinnitus was severe, including one man who experienced such persistent ringing that he could no longer hear his radio.

The study, which has not been published, is one of just a few studies looking into the link between vaccinations and tinnitus.

A 2022 study published in the journal Laryngoscope found that the risk of developing tinnitus after the first dose of the Covid vaccine was low - and in fact, the risk was higher after receiving other vaccines such as the flu shot. But just because the risk is low does not mean it is zero.

Dr Gregory Poland, founder and director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group in Rochester, Minnesota has detailed his ordeal with tinnitus after getting his Covid vaccines, telling NBC News last year that he thought the sudden noise ‘was a dog whistle going off right next to me.’

A lack of CDC-sanctioned research into the little-understood after effect of vaccination has frustrated sufferers like Dr Poland, who said the leading health agency is ‘unconcerned’ about the reports.

The true total number of people with tinnitus linked to a Covid vaccine is murky at best. In addition to the 4,000-person Facebook group, the CDC’s voluntary reporting database shows at least 16,000 entries of people who experienced tinnitus at some point after getting the shot.

Times of onset vary, with some sufferers saying the ringing came on 36 hours after vaccination while others said about a month.

Some sufferers saw tinnitus come on after their second shots, but most after their first.

The effect may also be a product of long-covid, or the lingering symptoms even after recovering from the disease. The most commonly reported among them include fatigue and brain fog, but researchers at Yale University have begun enrolling participants in a study of long covid symptoms that includes tinnitus.

Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a professor of medicine at Yale University and clinical long Covid researcher, said the tinnitus could be caused by internal vibrations in the ear.

Researchers have not pinpointed a cause for tinnitus generally, though various theories exist. A team at Stanford University’s Medicine Molecular Neurotology Laboratory suggested that forms of tinnitus reflect some damage in the inner ear.

Dr Konstantina Stankovic, an inner ear expert and head and neck surgeon at Stanford said the brain tries to compensate for the damage in the inner ear ‘and starts to make sound of its own.’

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One final question for Australia's medical regualtors: Will your credibility be restored or slide further?

On 25 July 2021, Scott Morrison said the government will buy another 85 million Pfizer booster doses in 2022 and 2023. That’s more than three boosters for every Australian or more than four for every adult, after their initial two-dose vaccination. Thus the government was already aware of the vaccine’s waning effectiveness against the existing strain and its likely ineffectiveness against new variants. This of course is also the understanding about annual flu vaccines: they are reformulated every year because the pathogen is unstable and keeps mutating, which in turn rules out an eradication strategy. This is why we learnt long ago to live with the flu, focus public health efforts on protecting the most vulnerable through annual vaccines and leave the rest of society to carry on with the normal routine of life. Meanwhile, the ‘safe and effective’ messaging on Covid vaccines looks increasingly suspect. Confidence has diminished in health authorities, parliaments, medical establishments and media for their manifold failures to interrogate the official claims and report on the rising toll of vaccine injuries. As from last month, the AstraZeneca vaccine is no longer available in Australia owing to the ‘rare but serious side effect’ thrombosis. On 31 March, the ABS reported there were 25,235 (15.3 per cent) excess deaths in Australia in 2022. Yet the government and opposition MPs rejected a motion from Senator Ralph Babet to hold an inquiry into this concerning phenomenon. Meanwhile from 1 April Switzerland has withdrawn all vaccine recommendations. Doctors can administer Covid vaccines only in individual cases under specified conditions and bear the risk of liability themselves.

Even if Covid had proven to be as deadly as the Spanish flu and the vaccines 90 per cent effective, coercion and mandates would still have been unethical. Revelations that authorities knew this to be false in early 2021, means there was little medical justification either. This makes the public policy scientifically perverse and ethically immoral. Social media Big Tech made it worse by actively censoring, shadow-banning, downgrading and slapping labels from self-identifying fact-checkers better described as misinformers and disinformers. (India has gone one logical step better. The government will create a fact-check body for regulating online content. Opposition parties have denounced the move as censorship and accused the ruling party of being the biggest purveyor of fake news.) On the one hand, Big Pharma and public regulators meant to oversee them colluded to hide and delay important information. On the other, they ferociously attacked independent researchers who tried various forensic techniques to ‘mine’ the relevant data and offer a counter-narrative, with the goal of discrediting and demonising anyone with the temerity to question the official ‘truth’. The Censorship-Industrial Complex was weaponised into a powerful tool of state power in an evolving system of governance that is a threat to the very survival of free society. I am not impugning doctors and researchers who put their faith in the underlying integrity of the regulatory agencies and medical establishments, even if that faith turned out to have been misplaced and abused. I too feel betrayed by the WHO and disillusioned with its patchy performance, to put it kindly.

On 5 April Maryanne Demasi published an article on Substack, republished by Children’s Health Defense, that the triumphalist 95-per-cent-efficacy narrative of the Pfizer vaccine, which would give us all an exit ramp from the coronavirus pandemic with universal vaccination, had already gone off script by June 2021. Some highly vaccinated countries like Israel were experiencing a fresh wave of infections that was fuelling vaccine hesitancy and slowing take-up. By July Israel was reporting effectiveness of 64 per cent and in August only 39 per cent. Regulatory filings show that Pfizer and the FDA had evidence already in April 2021 on waning effectiveness. This was not publicly disclosed until much later. The press release from Pfizer on 1 April 2021 announcing results of its six-month Phase 3 trial repeated claims of 91.3 per cent efficacy against the Covid disease and up to 100 per cent effectiveness against severe disease. The top authorities continued to downplay the lack of evidence to demonstrate vaccine effectiveness against viral transmission and long-term protection. While acknowledging the possibility of breakthrough infections, Anthony Fauci said on national TV on 16 May 2021, ‘When you get vaccinated, you not only protect your own health, that of the family, but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community… you become a dead end to the virus. And when there are a lot of dead ends around, the virus is not going to go anywhere’. The official report from Public Health Ontario in March shows Covid hospitalisations and deaths in 2022 were 31 and 39 per cent higher respectively than in 2021, despite 76 per cent of Ontarians being double-vaccinated.

Neither the pharmaceutical industry nor public health agencies are releasing all the data nor undertaking the important safety studies and acting on safety signals in a timely fashion to restore trust in their good faith, competence and integrity. Independent researchers are still having to do medical detective work instead. With widely varying and contested definitions and measurements of Covid and vaccine-related deaths, they look instead for clues in all-cause excess deaths. In February, Norwegian scientists published a study which found vaccination rollouts across 31 countries in 2021 were associated with rising all-cause mortality in the first nine months of 2022. A March analysis from the Vaccine Damage Project concluded there were 310,000 vaccine-related US excess deaths in 2021 to 2022 inclusive. Professor Norman Fenton calculates the number of deaths caused directly by vaccines until 23 March 2023 to be 120,000 in the US and 16,000 in the UK. Dr. Ros Jones, a retired consultant paediatrician, examined the lagged temporal correlations in several European countries between vaccine uptakes and falling births nine months later. On 28 March WHO experts published a revised roadmap which prioritises vaccines for the elderly and people with comorbidities, relegates healthy children and adolescents down to low priority because of their low disease burden and recognises natural immunity from prior infections.

In a sign they might be awakening to the risk of cross-vaccine hesitancy because of disillusionment with Covid vaccines, the guidance acknowledges: ‘The public health impact of vaccinating healthy children and adolescents is comparatively much lower than the established benefits of traditional essential vaccines for children’.

My final question is to the public health clerisy. If you become transparent on efficacy, investigate safety signals urgently and fully and publish the findings honestly, in the long run will your credibility worsen or will you begin to regain public trust and confidence?

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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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