German Vaccine Maker BioNtech Faces Series of Lawsuits for Alleged COVID-19 Vaccine Harms

The experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccines that were developed and launched to market in record time, generating record profits for their manufacturers as well as injuries for untold thousands, will be put to the test before the German courts.

The Mainz-based pharmaceutical company and Pfizer partner BioNtech is facing a series of lawsuits in its native Germany for suspected injuries and adverse events caused by its COVID-19 vaccine. The lawsuits were supposed to begin at the end of this month (April 2023) but have been pushed back to July 7. The two law firms bringing the suits, from Düsseldorf and Wiesbaden, are representing 185 claimants, and plan to extend the scope of the suits to include the three other main vaccine manufacturers (presumably in reference to Moderna, Janssen and AstraZeneca).

The experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccines that were developed and launched to market in record time, generating record profits for their manufacturers as well as injuries for untold thousands, will now be put to the test before the German courts. If successful, the class action suit may pave the way for similar suits in other parts of the world. If so, it is likely to be the national governments that bought the vaccines and made them de facto mandatory by making life unbearable for the unvaccinated, rather than the vaccine makers themselves, that will end up bearing the costs.

To its minimal credit, the German government, unlike most of its counterparts in Europe, is at least beginning to acknowledge some of the harms caused by COVID-19 vaccines. It has even coined a name for the phenomenon: post-vac syndrom.

The Tricky Task of Proving Causation

Anyone who suffers permanent health damage as a result of a recognized vaccination complication can apply for at least a modest pension from one of the state’s pension offices. For all other suspected vaccination complications, it is far more difficult to receive compensation. In early July, the first of the 185 claimants will finally have her day in court. She allegedly suffered heart damage as a direct result of vaccination, reports the Spanish daily ABC (translated by yours truly):

The woman, who according to her lawyer works in the medical profession, wants to remain anonymous. She alleges that she was forced to get vaccinated in order to keep her job and she blames (BioNtech) for having put a vaccine on the market whose side effects had not been sufficiently studied. The crux of the matter will be whether her lawyers can demonstrate causality, whether there is a direct connection between the vaccination and the damage, in addition to excluding and ruling out other possible causes.

A second female litigant complains of suffering from a herpes-associated illness, lung disease, menstrual disorders, nervous system dysfunction and vision problems, reports Der Tagesspiegel. A third woman experienced, among other things, severe muscle twitching after the vaccination and was bedridden for seven weeks.

BioNtech insists that “so far in none of the cases [it has] examined has a causal connection between the described health impairments and the vaccination with Comirnaty been proven.”

“We take our responsibility as a vaccine manufacturer very seriously,” carefully examining each case, said a company spokeswoman. BioNtech, like all COVID-19 vaccine makers, is essentially immune from liability for any harms its products may produce. It can also fall back on the correlation vs causality argument. “When evaluating the case,” said the spokeswoman, “we can rely solely on the medical facts to evaluate whether there is a causal relationship or not. Unfortunately, that is what is often missing.”

Germany’s Shifting Vaccine Landscape

When Pfizer-BioNtech’s experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccine hit the market, in December 2020, it was met with a mixture of relief, excitement and pride in Germany, the country where it was developed. That enthusiasm was not shared by all German citizens, however, with the result that by the autumn of 2021 Germany had somewhat lower vaccination rates than some of its Western European neighbours. The government’s response was to ramp up the coercive pressure on the unvaccinated.

Germany came closer than just about any Western country to enacting a universal COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Through its vaccine passport system, it systematically discriminated against millions of unvaccinated civilians, depriving them of access to basic government services, public buildings and even the ability to travel or work. Like neighboring Austria, it also experimented with targeted lockdowns of the unvaccinated.

In August 2022, by which time it was abundantly clear that the vaccines prevented neither systemic disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 or transmission of the virus and many EU countries, including even Austria, had softened or suspended their COVID-19 vaccine passport restrictions, Germany’s Health Minister Karl Lauterbach was talking about taking them to a whole new level. As I reported at the time, this included plans to repurpose the Corona-Warn-App into a color-coded system as a means of more easily corroborating people’s vaccination status.

The app’s different colors would confer different rights in the future. Those rights would apparently include the ability to access certain public places as well as the right not to wear a mask in hospitality venues. In the end, the plans came to nothing, perhaps due to the intensity of the public backlash. A few months later, the German government was threatening to cancel its vaccine deals as its stockpiles of unused vials kept rising, and Lauterbach found himself at the center of one of the biggest vaccine injury scandals to have emerged since the pandemic.

Lauterbach’s U-turn

On numerous occasions Lauterbach had claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines were “without side effects,” even as the Paul-Ehrlic-Institute (PEI), Germany’s medical regulatory body and research institution for vaccines and biomedicines, was reporting growing numbers of vaccine injuries. By the summer of 2022, it had lodged 323,684 cases of vaccine side effects resulting from a total of 183 million single vaccine jabs: an average rate of 1.8 cases per 1,000 doses. Severe vaccine side effects were clocking in at an average of around 0.3 per 1,000.

That was a significant understatement, according to German health insurance firm BKK Vita. In a letter to PEI in late February 2022, the firm’s board warned of a dramatic under-reporting of the side effects of vaccinations based on the billing data of its health insurance division. According to that data, as many as 2.3% of vaccine recipients — an order of magnitude higher than PEI’s number — were suffering from post-vaccine side effects.

For their troubles the firm’s CEO Andreas Schöfbeck and board were dismissed without notice just days after the letter was sent. The firm quickly disassociated itself from Schöfbeck, whom it painted as an avid anti-vaxxer. From Tagesschau:

“It is not the first time that Schöfbeck has appeared with well-known opponents of vaccination. In January 2021, the then-head of the health insurance company at the time wrote the foreword to Clemens Arvay’s book “Corona Vaccines – Rescue or Risk”. In it he questioned whether there were “sufficient studies on the (the vaccine’s) efficacy and side effects” and whether it was justifiable “to vaccinate so many people without the benefit of long-term studies”

It is far from clear whose data — the PEI’s or BKK Vita’s — was closer to the truth, in part because of the paucity of high-powered studies into COVID-19 vaccine harms. One of the few such papers that does exist, by a team of respected researchers including Peter Doshi, an editor of the BMJ, Robert Kaplan, the Chief Science Officer for AHRQ, and Sander Greenland of UCLA, was published in June last year. One of its main findings was that the mRNA vaccines, combined, were associated with an absolute risk increase of serious adverse events of special interest of 12.5 per 10,000 — one in 800.

NC’s IM Doc described the study as a “fascinating piece of work” that deserves serious attention:

What they found is that more patients were suffering excess severe adverse events with both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines than were being saved from hospital admissions. You heard that correctly – more people had severe side effects than people being kept out of the hospital. The numbers were particularly tragic for Pfizer(-BioNtech). The authors absolutely admitted that this was the best they could do with the available numbers. BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES and BIG PHARMA HAVE REFUSED TO RELEASE DATASETS. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY TRAGIC IN ITS UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR. They ended the study with a plea to release the data and given their findings, the urgent need to break out the risk/benefit ratios for different demographics. ie do old people have a satisfactory risk profile while young people do not, etc etc etc. I will reiterate – none of these authors are slouches. They are in the top tier of folks in their fields. This has to be taken seriously.

Back in Germany, Lauterbach’s assertions that the vaccines did not cause any side effects had become so ridiculous that they were no longer tenable. In March, he made a spectacular U-turn, as Thomas Fazi reported at the time:

In a recent TV interview, he admitted that vaccine-induced injuries are a serious issue, and that his ministry was planning to launch a programme to investigate the negative consequences of Covid vaccination and improve care as soon as possible. Additionally, Lauterbach said that he hopes pharmaceutical companies will voluntarily help to compensate those harmed by the vaccines. “That’s because the profits have been exorbitant”, he said. Just a year ago he had said: “The pharmaceutical companies will not get rich with vaccines”.

The revenues of BioNtech alone — a company that probably would not exist without the hundreds of millions of euros of seed funding, subsidies and other investments provided by the German federal government — increased 190-fold between 2019 and 2021.

For the moment there are no signs of BioNtech, or any of the other pharma companies, voluntarily dipping into their vast profits to compensate those injured by the vaccines they created, not to mention the families who have lost loved ones. In Germany at least, the health ministry has begun to recognize vaccine injuries as a serious issue; in many other European countries, including the UK, the vaccine injured are met with a wall of silence.

Yet as more and more Germans lodge compensation claims for the injuries they have sustained, it is the state that will be ultimately liable for any vaccine-related damages. In the end, many will end up receiving nothing due to their inability to prove causality. As a recent BMJ paper covered for NC by KLG argues, this lack or “reciprocity” — i.e., the effective inability of anyone harmed by the vaccines to recover financial compensation — is one of a litany of reasons why COVID-19 vaccine mandates are both unethical and undesirable.

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39 comments

  1. zagonostra

    “COVID-19 vaccine mandates are both unethical and undesirable.”

    That concluding sentence still has not been accepted, internalized and processed by many, if not the majority. What happened with multiple private/public industries (pharmaceutical, entertainment, private/public, schools etc…) and the State combined to first cajole and then mandate vaccination is a story that is still working its way through the body politic.

  2. Thomas Hartzsch

    “it is likely to be the national governments that bought the vaccines and made them de facto mandatory by making life unbearable for the unvaccinated, rather than the vaccine makers themselves, that will end up bearing the costs”. No. They wont. The tax payer will bear the cost.

    1. flora

      I seem to recall that part of the leaked pfizer contracts for some latin and south american countries included pfizer indemnifation clauses that said if pf was sued and lost the countries would have to pay the costs – and those payments could include military bases, ports, and other national infrastructures. Was that ‘gunboat diplomacy’ applied to US inc pharma rights? Inquiring minds want to know. / ;)

    2. IM Doc

      I had heard over the past 2 years that this was going on – until now, I have never seen any documentary evidence. I have had colleagues all over the country stating they had received instructions like this – this is the first hard copy I have ever seen. It is not just Kentucky.

      https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1646696738013454336?cxt=HHwWgICxoa39ntotAAAA

      As I have been stating for 30 years when I teach Medical Ethics —

      The first slide of the first lecture states the following —

      MEDICAL ETHICS ARE NOT JUST FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE PATIENTS, THEY ARE ALSO PRESENT FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE PHYSICIAN.

      The second slide is the following –

      The driving force behind BIG PHARMA and its corporations is NOT HEALTH CARE or WELL-BEING. It never has been and never will be. Rather, Big Pharma exists to move the merchandise. They have a FUDICIARY responsibility to make profits for their shareholders. They have no such fudiciary responsibility for ANYONE’s health – including your patients. You should always remember this.

      And slide three –

      YOU, HOWEVER, as a physician have a FUDICIARY and a MORAL responsibility to your patients and their well-being. If you are not ready to fulfill that edict, the door is right behind you.

      How far we have fallen.

      ACTUAL BONUSES and in ungodly amounts, for every COVID vaccine administered. A medication that was experimental at best. Who knew the safety? Who knew the efficacy? Just line ’em up – 125 bucks a pop into your pocket….. This is much worse than I ever could have imagined.

      It was bad enough that BIG PHARMA reps like Scott Gottlieb were all over TV during this time. Again look at #2 above – he is there ONLY to move merchandise. But now, we have starting to emerge evidence of some of the most unethical behavior in medical history. Did the physicians involved consider informed consent, the evidence, anything? Or was it just another 125 bucks in the pocket.

      I am heartbroken. Dr. William Osler somewhere is shaking his head in disgrace. There is enormous risk of great backlash as these revelations continue to come out. I do everything I can to live and work by those ethics I swore to so long ago. Accordingly, I never participated in this kind of thing. And as according to #1 – those ethics protected me and everyone else who followed them.

      I have a feeling that this is just the beginning. The lawsuits and recriminations that are going to be coming our way will be for the ages.

      1. Alan F.

        IM Doc, thank you for posting this. I am not a doctor but am a professional otherwise closely tied in with the US medical industry, and what a broad and varied industry it is to behold.

        I believe the medical profession and industry (separate but related things) took minor reputational hits around the end of 2020 – early 2021 for various reasons, but perhaps most powerfully, the trend of masked nurses and others doing music video dance routines in empty wards, all the while politicians and hospital executives were claiming that hospitals were swamped and the situation was dire. A lot of the harms were caused by non-physicians (executives and politicians), and others were caused by the tiny subset of physicians who are CMOs or on hospital system medical committees, but the average person likely doesn’t understand these internal workings. (Incidentally, I know a lot of CMOs, and I find them generally smart and thoughtful, but rarely if ever able to break free of groupthink from whatever the most vocal physicians are claiming is best.)

        I know someone whose husband died of untreated cancer during this time, because it was discovered around March 2020 and was deemed not an essential emergency service, repeatedly for month after month, until it was too late to treat, and he died. And “of course” his wife couldn’t be there with him, due to visitor rules and the medical prison way things were run at that time. There are a lot of people who experienced something like this, usually in relation to elderly relatives who were at their life expectancy anyway, but died in worse than usual circumstances due to Covid rules.

        It remains to be seen how the US-marketed vaccines will prove out in terms of long term side effects, but the US medical industry and seemingly 98% of physicians were 110% in favor of them, so they will own whatever result happens, even if they too were misled by the makers, as I suspect many were.

        But I direct to you that there will be great opportunities for thoughtful and independent minded physicians going forward. It does not matter if you are pro-vaccine, anti-vax, selective or neutral, so long as you are open minded and willing to seriously analyze whatever data and information shows up, without bias. Everyone will still need medical care, some people will need a lot more than before, and I think most will be far more choosy about physicians than they had been in the pre-Covid days. Meanwhile, as in most professions, a lot of physicians will have retired, either purely from age (Baby Boomer effects), or a combination of age and weariness of the changed profession.

        1. IM Doc

          It is one thing to incentivize the PATIENT to take any medication. That is an ethical quagmire in and of itself, even if the medication in question had been vetted and researched completely and you know enough about risk/benefit to be reasonable. We to this day do not know enough about risk/benefit in these COVID vaccines to even begin to be reasonable. Especially in the one size fits all approach we have been doing. No one seems to be too interested in actually doing the work here……What the benefit is in an 80 year old obese diabetic amputee is likely to be very different than a 20 year old male athlete – but we have never done this work.

          To incentivize and bonus the PHYSICIANS is on a whole new level of perfidy. This is just unbelievable. And the dollar amounts!!!……My understanding is that the doses themselves cost on average 20-50 dollars. Yet, we are giving the physician many times that as a bonus. Right off the bat – where is that money coming from? Cui bono?

          Nope. This is just incredibly unethical. Where were those who are supposed to be watching out for these kinds of things?

          I have said this so many times before – and I will say it again. The proliferation and eventual take-over by medicine by nonprofits like Blue Cross and likely your local health care systems has been an unmitigated ethical disaster. They have absolutely no accountability.

      2. Polar Socialist

        They have a FUDICIARY responsibility to make profits for their shareholders

        This is not true, even if many believe so. Stakeholders may have more influence in a company than employees, suppliers or clients put together, but according to the US (or any other country’s) law company is only legally bound to respect the contracts it has made with the employees (pay salaries and other perks), suppliers (pay for services and material provided) and clients (provide the service and/or material paid for).

        When you purchase company’s shares you don’t enter in any type of legal contract that assures profits from the said purchase. Although most big shareholders do want us to believe so.

        1. Alan F.

          but according to the US (or any other country’s) law company is only legally bound

          This is not quite true, although there are nuances.

          Extremely short summary of the law: corporate law is a matter of state law in the USA, not federal law, and there are 51 or more variations on corporate legal requirements (50 states, DC, then the matter of PR and territories). Other countries have their own corporate law, which should not be assumed identical to US law. Your statements are closer to being accurate for Germany than for any US state, for example.

          Under most US laws, corporate directors have a fiduciary duty to use their entrusted assets to make money for the shareholders. Yes, they need to follow all other laws and contracts in doing so, but ultimately making money is their #1 job, as long as not in violation of other law. Some states have proposed forms of “stakeholder capitalism” to modify this, but in general shareholders come first, in theory. (In reality senior corporate officers come first, plurality shareholders come second, and everyone else is basically a bagholder.)

          Be aware that Delaware corporate law dominates current US corporate law, and previously NY and NJ corporate laws were dominant. In each case the laws were favorable to the rich interests of insiders and major shareholders, so companies moved there under various excuses, and it’s a self-reinforcing cycle.

          Also be aware that Delaware and other corporate laws are a bit sociopathic in their requirements, but this is exaggerated and exploited by corporate officers who are themselves somewhat sociopathic, so it can be hard to distinguish between what is truly required by law and what is a convenient smokescreen.

          Regardless, for US state corporate laws, it is inaccurate to say that directors have no duty to the shareholders. (Outside the US it varies by country.)

          For a contemporary overview, consider this recent paper discussing the prominent 1913 case Dodge v. Ford:

          Dodge v. Ford discussion

  3. jrkrideau

    One of the few such papers that does exist, by a team of respected researchers including Peter Doshi, an editor of the BMJ, Robert Kaplan, the Chief Science Officer for AHRQ, and Sander Greenland of UCLA, was published

    It seems to have attracted a fair bit of attention, not all favourable at PubPeer and other places Serious adverse events of special interest

    1. Walter

      Been a fair way down the rabbit hole on this. The Doshi paper, some tweets, Dr. Susan Oliver’s youtube criticizing the paper, Norman Fenton’s response to her, then off to vaccine skeptic Steve Kirsch, etc. I have *NO* idea who to believe. I suspect that 278,000 Americans have NOT died from these vaccines, but it sure seems like we could look more closely at them. I wonder if the more conventional vaccines will prove to be safer(?).

      Completely off the wall thought: Yves linked to this on April 8: https://scitechdaily.com/covid-19-is-a-vascular-disease-coronavirus-spike-protein-attacks-vascular-system-on-a-cellular-level/ The paper itself is at: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.121.318902 (Circulation Research).

      If some of the damage done to endothelial (often vascular) cells is caused JUST by the virus spike binding to ACE2, without requiring the virus to be injected into the cell, could the spikes created by the mRNA vaccines also do damage? How widespread and how bad?

      (I know almost nothing about this, just enough to cause trouble. I don’t like to amplify general antivaxx sentiment, but it would be good to have better answers than “Shut up! The smart people will take care of it.”)

      1. Yves Smith

        There are tons of confounding factors that due to the deliberate failure to collect data, might mean a lot (not all but most/many) vaccine injuries are due to maladministration, such as:

        1. Failure to aspirate needle leading to vaccine being injected into a blood vessel

        2. Failure to do bloodwork prior to vaccination resulting in many people getting vaccinated very close to a prior asymptomatic or low symptom/undiagnosed Covid case.

        1. Walter

          “1. Failure to aspirate needle leading to vaccine being injected into a blood vessel”

          Saw a number of letters and at least one paper on aspiration of covid needles. Debate was still going on last year. Different negative effects of intravascular injection for different vaccines. Some authorities blithely recommending against aspiration, ‘cuz it hurts more. Some syringes can’t be aspirated, etc.

          Gack! The rabbit is well into bedrock, and headed for the mantle. I give up, for now.

  4. Yeti

    I’ve been following fellow Canadian Jessica Rose on her journey through the VAERS database. You can find her on substack. As well Sasha Latypova has done a deep dive into the QA and manufacturing of these “vaccines”. SBM’s David Gorski has written many articles claiming anyone who has reservations about these drugs are “anti-vax quacks”. I have since been been banned from commenting on his site due to my questioning of his narrative. Dr. Charles Hoffe wrote a open letter to our top Health Officer in B.C. with his observed concerns over the vaccination of his patients. He was met with threats from the health office of losing his hospital surgery rights if he continued to contradict the narrative.
    https://canadahealthalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/dr_hoffes_open_letter_to_dr_bonnie_henry_apr_5_2021.pdf
    I urge you to read his letter

  5. JonnyJames

    Mandates are undesirable and unethical indeed. If Pfizer/BioNtech are protected from prosecution (in the USA) and virtually impossible to prove causality in court elsewhere, they are, in effect, above the law.

    If the vax is so well-tested and safe, why are they immune from prosecution and civil liability? To make maters even worse: Pfizer and Moderna were/are subsidized with public resources, yet they are unaccountable.

  6. Alan F

    Watch this issue.

    I expect that within 3-5 years you will see several of the vaccine makers bankrupted and several western governments toppled, probably through landslide elections, as a result of this.

    * I’m well aware that the vaccine makers have legal liability protection in most if not all countries where their products were used. However, many of those protections are void in the case of fraud. There are already compelling indications of multiple types of fraud in the official trials of one of the most widely used vaccines, and it would be surprising if the others had valid trials given what has come to light for the one, and the similarities with the others. Moreover, even if they somehow blunt fraud accusations and avoid direct liability, their reputation is likely to be destroyed to an extent that their other products won’t sell, and such that most countries other than the USA decide to cancel or disregard their drug patents on which their profits rely. (The USA isn’t likely to move first, given that the current USA is a de facto narco state, with licensed pharma being the narcos.)

    People who were vaccinated on a truly voluntary basis will eventually feel betrayed, although many of them have years left of cognitive dissonance before they move to that feeling.

    However, the large numbers of people who accepted vaccination under severe coercion, such as threat of losing their job, their university status (without refund or credit), or even an outright ban on public life in much of Europe, will not hesitate to blame both vaccine makers and their governments. Whatever portion of those coercively-vaxxed people who suffered physical side effects, or saw a loved one suffer them, will be seething with rage to an extent not seen in many decades.

    1. Jason Boxman

      I know of an employer where, as it was a government contractor, mandated vaccination; months later this was silently dropped when the Biden administration rolled on most mandates. Real employment harm, economic harm, has been done by mandating these non-sterilizing experimental shots. To say nothing of fomenting distrust of actual vaccines.

      I only hope that you’re right, and responsible parties are held to account.

    2. Rip Van Winkle

      Regarding universities, here’s a tale of 3 cities in Indiana:

      Indiana University in Bloomington – still mandating the vax. (This is the one with the exclusive business school, etc.)

      Ball State in Muncie – nothing now, but did have test and mask kabuki.

      Indiana State in Terre Haute – ‘kid’ conventional vax list only.

      The latter 2 would have emptied out with such a requirement.

    3. Acacia

      given that the current USA is a de facto narco state, with licensed pharma being the narcos

      Drug companies and drug cartels — which are close to one another, when you think about it.

    4. Late Introvert

      I work with seniors on a part-time basis, in a college town in the Midwest. Ostensibly I’m doing tech support, but I consider it also a therapy session of sorts. No, you’re not an idiot because your phone or laptop sucks and is making you insane. I show them how I struggle with how stupid it all is, and they are much relieved to know it’s not their fault.

      I’m a senior myself, depending on the definition. I’m still masked, and as far as I know I’m still Covid free. My interactions are 1-on-1, I have a HEPA filter in my office, and I request others mask. They do so very poorly and while I offer free N95s they always show up next time in a medical mask and take it off and pull it away from their face or let it drop. On those occasions I rinse and spray when I get home.

      But, so many deaths at the senior center where I work in the past year, far more than in 2020, before the vaccines, and before Cranky Joe declared the pandemic was over. On top of that none of my co-workers were sick when we masked and distanced, but now all but 1 of 6 has had it, and several of their kids as well.

      You would think people would be outraged but mostly not. People who were masking a year ago are not anymore. The propoganda works scary good. Even my co-workers have abandoned masks. I’m being asked to attend meetings and classroom sessions where I’m the only one masked.

      So no, I don’t think there will be consequences, regular folks got told to move on, nothing to see here, and they all said OK, great!

      1. Late Introvert

        And is there any definitive test for if one has had an asymptomatic infection in the past? Asking here because this is the place.

        1. Random BSN Student

          If you are not vaccinated, antibodies for the S protein or N protein would be evidence of prior infection. If you have been vaccinated, antibodies for the N protein are what you would look for, because you would be expected to have antibodies for S protein as a result of vaccination. However, people with asymptomatic or very mild cases are more likely not to develop antibodies, so a test is not definitive. Even if you do develop antibodies, they can fade over time. Here is CDC guidance on interpretation of Covid antibody tests. Scroll down to the section “Interpretation of anti-S and anti-N antibody results based on vaccination status”.

          Different types of antibodies can be tested for. The CDC page says that IgM and IgG antibodies become detectable by 1-3 weeks after infection (but here is another source with more specific info). Usually, IgM antibodies appear first and would be evidence of a relatively recent infection. They only last a few weeks to months. If you do not have IgM antibodies, it may simply be that you did not get tested soon enough. IgG antibodies appear later but tend to last longer. However they too can disappear.

          In the UK, I believe there are home test kits you can buy that will test your blood for the N protein. In the US, as usual, we are not so lucky. You would need to have a lab test ordered. Here is Quest Diagnostic’s page which lists the Covid tests they offer and other info. The only N protein tests they have are for IgG. For example, Quest Diagnostics test code 31672.

          (I know there are some actual professionals in the commentariat and people who are better informed than me. If I provided inaccurate info please correct me.)

          P.S. At school today I learned from a faculty member that one of the clinical sites was closed to students two months ago because over 40 residents were infected with Covid and more than 10 died. Thank goodness the pandemic is over. /s

          1. Late Introvert

            Thanks, so now the question is if you don’t test for the virus, are you still vulnerable to LONG COVID???

            Dunt Dunt Dunnnnnnnn

  7. p fitzsimon

    Everything in life worthwhile has some risk. But these vaccines were well worth the risk.

    1. Alan F.

      I disagree. These vaccines had very limited benefit, and there is extensive evidence of harm.

      Just to start, here’s an article from this site, more than a year ago:

      https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/03/pfizer-february-2021-post-marketing-vaccine-side-effects-tally-raises-alarms.html

      Here are unrelated site articles discussing evidence of a huge death rate in the wake of these vaccines:

      https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/covid-vaccines-killed-278000-americans

      https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/ed-dowd-millennial-age-group-25-to?s=r

      https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/exclusive-proof-that-the-top-israeli

      You can find tons more if you want, although I’m guessing you will dismiss those and not look further. BTW, look up who Kirsch and Dowd are before dismissing them as kooks.

      There is considerable evidence that these vaccines provided only about 5 months’ protection against Alpha and Delta strains after the first two-dose series, and less protection against all other strains. The boosters provide protection for shorter time periods yet. The original doses seem to increase susceptibility to Covid-19 for a few weeks after receiving them, also. If the vaccines were 100% safe and entirely free of side effects that might be a tolerable, if icky, trade-off. But even their own supporters won’t claim they are THAT safe, they only argue on the relative safety.

      1. Objective Ace

        Kirsch lost all credibility with me when he started offering people tens of thousands to remove their mask on an airplane. Its unfortunate, because he probably had some solid points, but someone who is so dedicated to an agenda–they’re willing to ignore any evidence to the contrary and pull a stunt like that simply cannot be trusted.

      2. p fitzsimon

        I did look up Kirsch, very impressive. But people with impressive credentials can still be crazy as loons, Musk, Jobs, Robert Kennedy, Thiel and the British anti-vaccer Andrew Wakefield. You can take fluvoxamine I’ll stick with Pfizer and continue to take my yearly flu shot, shingles and pneumonia shots.

        1. Sue inSoCal

          P Fitzsimon, I agree, but I can’t say I didn’t have side effects from the booster. Otoh, I have a deteriorating neurological disorder. The caveat of waiting between temporary cessation of disease modifying drugs before the vaccine and/or boosters was ignored. When I researched side effects, there were my issues. They were temporary, thankfully. I don’t regret the vaccine, but will personally be cautious with MRNA vaccines in the future unless there is more research. In the meantime, I’m current with my usual vaccines as well.

    2. C.O.

      A worthwhile risk is one voluntarily taken based on honest data and that does not cause as many if not more social harms it was meant to prevent. Perhaps these experimental COVID-19 mRNA vaccines could have counted as such a worthwhile risk in that way without applying coercive measures to force people to take them, while undertaking serious NPI policies instead.

    3. Objective Ace

      I dont know how you can even begin to look at this as if its the same calculation indeterminate of age, demographic, co-morbity status, etc. These vaccines were being recommended to individuals who had just had covid less than a month ago–possibly still recovering. 2nd shots were advised for people who had had severe reactions to the 1st shot.

      Given this, the blunt statement you made is repugnant

  8. Yeti

    My last post fell through the cracks I assume, so will try again as I feel this is relevant and important. Dr. Charles Hoffe is a doctor in rural BC, Canada. He wrote a open letter to our provincial Health Officer in April 2021 shortly after vaccine rollout pointing out his observations.
    https://canadahealthalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/dr_hoffes_open_letter_to_dr_bonnie_henry_apr_5_2021.pdf
    The 1 in 800 adverse reaction effect seems to agree with his observations.

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