A member of the House of Lords has called on the government to provide missing data that could establish a link between the COVID-19 vaccines and the surge in heart conditions in younger people since their rollout.
Lord Farmer on Tuesday asked the government’s health minister in the Lords what assessment they had made of the connection between vaccine status and coronary heart disease.
“A reluctance to disclose the full gamut of information sits uneasily with the government’s ongoing encouragement for people to get vaccinated.”
Peer Suffered Pericarditis Week After 1st Jab
Another peer, Lord Davies of Brixton, revealed that he had suffered heart inflammation following vaccination.“One week after I had my first course of COVID vaccination, I had an attack of pericarditis and ended up in St. Thomas’s Hospital. I am convinced that there is a link, but it is important to look at the longer-term effects.”
In spite of this, Lord Davies said that in his view, “having an attack of COVID causes more heart problems” than the vaccines and said the virus can have “a long-term impact on your general health.”
Lord Markham, the parliamentary under-secretary of state for health and social care, said in response that there is “no evidence” linking the jabs to the rise in heart disease and said the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has already provided this data “for research purposes,” although it is not available to the public.
Lord Markham claimed the risk of getting heart disease from COVID-19 is higher than the risk of suffering heart damage, such as myocarditis, which is a known side-effect from the vaccines and which disproportionately affects young males.
Lord Markham said the data produced by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) was “very clear.”
“The MHRA study on heart inflammation, which [Lord Davies] mentioned, said that there is that side-effect for one to two people per 100,000; unfortunately, the noble lord seems to have been one of them. However, if you get COVID it affects 150 people per 100,000. On balance, if you have not had the vaccination, your risk is 22 per 100,000.”
“One to two people per 100,000 who have had a vaccine experienced side-effects, but for people who have had COVID, it is 150 per 100,000. Having these vaccines is a much safer route to go.”
‘Pfizer Knew Efficacy Was Negligible’
Asking the minister about data showing whether or not the jabs could prevent passing on the illness, Lord Hannan said: “We had vaccine passports and travel bans, and it now seems that both the [World Health Organisation] and Pfizer knew at the time that its efficacy when it came to preventing transmission was negligible.”Lord Markham agreed that the vaccines “might not have reduced transmission much” but claimed “its main benefit was that it reduced the effects if you had it, as well as hospitalisations and deaths.”
Lord Farmer is one of a number of parliamentarians to have raised concerns about the safety of the vaccines, and joins a growing clamour for the so-called “record level data” to be released by the ONS.
Such data would show the dates of vaccine doses followed by the dates of deaths and hospital admissions with serious or new health conditions, and this could then be compared to the dates for people who declined to take the jabs.
Public Access to Data Denied by ONS
Sir Ian denied the request because “these additional breakdowns would result in volatile and imprecise estimates, with some cells having very low counts of death and population.”He also cited “confidentiality” and “disclosure risk” as reasons for denying the request, and said the data could be open to “misinterpretation.”
“The attribution of excess deaths is incredibly complex, and beyond the current scope of the ONS' methodology,” he wrote, adding that in his view, the data sets requested would not add “substantial, high quality evidence” to that already available.
Countries including New Zealand have made such data sets available anonymously, and qualified researchers such as Professor Norman Fenton—an expert in statistics at Queen Mary University of London—who have asked for the datasets have had their requests refused.
The Labour peer, Lord Watts, backed the government line in Tuesday’s debate, and called for the minister to go further, urging him to improve “public awareness of vaccines and their benefits.”
Lord Watts claimed, “All sorts of people out there are spreading malicious tales about the implications of taking them, whether for mumps or COVID.”
Lord Markham agreed, referring to “myths” around the MMR jab, and suggesting that ethnic minority groups needed more persuading to accept “the message” on vaccines.
Lord Farmer was not able to come back in the debate to challenge the government’s claim that the data he has asked for has already been made available.
‘Jabs Might Reduce Overall Life Expectancy by 4 Months’
A number of studies have established the link between the vaccines and heart disease. A recent reanalysis of an Italian paper has suggested that the jabs might reduce overall life expectancy by around four months, although this finding has not yet been peer-reviewed.In a January debate on excess deaths, Conservative peer the Earl of Leicester called on the government to release the data on which the Department of Health rests its claim that the vaccines are “safe and effective,” following the large number of excess deaths. Government minister Lord Evans of Rainow said he could not commit to providing any such data but insisted the jabs were “very safe, and have saved millions of lives.”
