Family members of those harmed by vaccines told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry they were forced to form their own support systems after being ignored by the authorities and made to feel like “an uncomfortable truth” of the rollout.
Kate Scott, speaking on behalf of the group Vaccine Injured and Bereaved UK (VIBUK), said they felt they were “almost being pushed into the shadows” as the overwhelming official message continued to be that the jabs were ”safe and effective” in spite of their experience.
Wednesday’s hearing also heard from a victims’ group in Scotland which raised concerns that the vaccine had been rolled out at such speed that public safety had been sacrificed.
Module 4 of the long-running inquiry, chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett, is examining issues relating to the development of COVID-19 vaccines and other drugs.
Scott, whose husband Jamie was left severely disabled by the vaccine, said: “We are an uncomfortable truth, but we are a truth, and the truth is for everyone in our group, the vaccine caused serious harm and death.”
Jamie Scott spent over a month in a coma after suffering the life-threatening side effect known as vaccine-induced immune thrombosis and thrombocytopenia after taking the now withdrawn AstraZeneca jab.
‘Too Little, Too Late’
He received the maximum payout of £120,000 from the government’s Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS) which is given to those who are assessed as being left 60 percent disabled as a result of a vaccine.The inquiry will consider whether the VDPS should be reformed after some vaccine-injured people were left without the payment because they were assessed as not being severely disabled enough, even when left with life-changing health problems.
Kate Scott said, “The scheme is inadequate, insufficient, and offers too little too late and to too few.”
She told the hearing that victims of vaccine damage were made to feel that were “the only ones, or the unlucky ones, and just get on with it, and that’s impossible when you’re grieving a loved one, or your husband is in intensive care.”
A Freedom of Information request made by VIBUK showed that, as of November 2024, victims or their family members have made 17,519 claims to the scheme.
Of these, just 194 have so far been told that they are entitled to the payment, while 1,027 people have had to wait more than 12 months to hear if their claim was successful, and 126 people are still waiting for a decision more than three years after submitting their claim.
‘Traumatic Process’
Ruth O'Rafferty, from the Scottish Vaccine Injury Group, said the VDPS application process was “traumatic” for all those who went through it, with some members having to move house or use food banks because of the waiting time or the refusal.“A lot of us are neurologically impacted, so we find it difficult to communicate. Some are so severely injured that they can’t actually write,” she said.
O'Rafferty, who suffered a brain injury following the jab, told the inquiry that many of the 750 members of her group have said there was no informed consent before they or their family members took the vaccines.
“A lot of our members were not given a leaflet until after they had the vaccine, which means they didn’t really ... know what they were consenting to, and we now know the level of damage and breadth of injury that can result and even [some types] not listed in the leaflet.”
She added that the support groups are aware of a greater variety of injuries caused by the jabs than those acknowledged by official sources, such as the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, which administers the Yellow Card reporting scheme, or the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA), which is responsible for the Green Book of immunisation information for health professionals.
“We feel that the Yellow Card [system] is not fit for purpose,” O'Rafferty said, because too many people were not aware of it, and often doctors were not reporting vaccine side-effects and injuries to it because the Green Book did not recognise a particular condition as being caused by a jab.
“The Green Book only mentions myocarditis, thrombosis, and Guillain-Barre syndrome, really,” she said.
Kate Scott said that in terms of pharmacovigilence, she wants to see it become mandatory for medical staff to ask if those rushed to A&E have recently been vaccinated in case it is a factor in their condition.
She added that if the vaccine-injured and bereaved had been allowed to share their stories with the media or online without censorship, lives could have been saved as some people might have been aware of the side-effects and sought medical treatment more quickly.
Censorship
“You were not allowed to even suggest that vaccines cause injury or bereavement ... posts were removed online of death certificates,” she said, because social media giants were labelling these posts as “misinformation.”The hearing was also shown a 15-minute video of people sharing a variety of experiences around vaccination, including those who welcomed the jabs as the only way they felt life could return to “normal,” and from COVID-19-bereaved people who felt earlier access to the jabs might have saved their loved ones.
Counsel for the UKHSA told the inquiry that the vaccines had prevented over 100,000 deaths in the UK alone, while former Health Secretary Matt Hancock said it was only through the rollout of the jabs that the country had been released from lockdown.
Hancock praised those involved in the vaccine rollout, saying, “The question ... is whether it is net positive in terms of taking it,” adding that, “The vaccines were valid and safe and saved lives.”
The former health secretary, who stood down as an MP at the last general election, told the inquiry on Thursday that he “of course” accepted there had been serious side-effects and deaths, and that the systems for flagging up complications were imperfect.
“We came to see the pharmacovigilence systems as effectively like a Phase 4 trial,” he said, when questioned by Anna Morris, KC, acting for the vaccine injured and bereaved.
The fourth module of the inquiry is set to run until the end of January.
