I haven’t commented on the vaccines nor on COVID before, and I have a lot to say on the topic. So I am going to split this into two posts. Today I’m going to deal with the above article only; in my next post I will give you my thoughts more broadly on COVID and on the vaccines, as somebody who worked on the “front lines” during the COVID pandemic and has experience treating thousands of COVID cases.
Therefore I ask you: please hold off on any judgement regarding COVID or the vaccines or my views on them until after my next post. What I’m about to say does not imply that the vaccines work or don’t work; or are safe or aren’t safe. I’m only today going to comment on the very shoddy journalism of the Daily Mail in this particular article, and make the point that no matter what side of a debate you are on, it’s good to read health coverage in the media with a skeptical eye.
As the article reports, “On Wednesday, a team from Yale University known for their rigorous work revealed the mRNA shots can cause a previously unknown condition known as ‘post-vaccination syndrome.’” However, I would challenge anybody to read the actual research paper (which the Daily Mail conveniently does NOT link to in their article, but which I link to here) and come to the conclusion that this is in fact what the study says.
What the study (which by the way is in “pre-print”, meaning it has yet to go through the peer review process and might still be found to have flaws that invalidate it) did do was take a group of people who have been vaccinated against COVID and who self-report that they have experienced post-vaccine symptoms. It then took a control group of people who have also been vaccinated but who do not report any post-vaccine symptoms. The researchers drew blood samples from both groups and found differences in certain biomarkers between the groups, specifically different ratios of a type of immune cell called T cells that circulate in the blood and help fight off infection.
I want to be clear that I am not dismissing people who state they have been harmed by the vaccine, nor am I suggesting that this study does not provide helpful information about such folks. But when we discuss science, it is important to be rigorous and understand what studies do and do not demonstrate, no matter what our personal beliefs on the subject may be. Specifically in this instance:
The study shows that compared to people who do not experience post-vaccine side effects, people who do experience side effects have a different population of immune cells.
The study does not prove that this altered immune signature, nor the accompanying symptoms, were caused by the vaccine. Perhaps, for example, the findings were caused by a bout of COVID itself and these are folks who actually have “long COVID,” not a vaccine reaction. There are many other possible explanations. The study does not use any techniques that would tease out these possibilities, because that was not what the study was designed to do.
The study does not offer any evaluation of how common post-vaccination syndrome may or may not be.
The study certainly does suggest a possible biological mechanism by which vaccine injury may have occurred, and provides a path that scientists can now follow up on via further study to tease all of the above out.
In other words, this is a really helpful initial study in the area, and one that is in my opinion long overdue. But it’s only the start of research into this question, not the end of it.
None of this stops the Daily Mail from suggesting that the study proves the existence of post-vaccine syndrome. Nor has it stopped the Daily Mail in other articles that they have run recently from stating that post-vaccine syndrome is affecting millions of Americans.
I will flesh my own views on the vaccines out more in my next post, but let me just briefly summarize them here as saying they are complex and nuanced. I do believe the vaccines have saved lives, but also that they have probably caused more side effects than have been heretofore acknowledged by the powers that be. At the very least, when a patient receives a vaccine and shortly after starts experiencing mystery symptoms, I’m not comfortable just dismissing it as a coincidence, nor saying it’s “all in their head” without more rigorous investigation.
Perhaps most importantly, I believe that COVID vaccines are being overused, as they are of minimal benefit to many people. This is for the simple reason that – in the year 2025 – most people are no longer at risk for severe COVID, and will suffer no worse than a bad cold when infected. We know that the vaccines do not stop people from getting infected with COVID, nor from spreading it, and that their main benefit is in increasing the likelihood that when you get COVID, it will be a mild case. What then is the benefit if you are already virtually guaranteed to only have a mild case?
Accordingly, I try to treat my patients like adults, lay out the pros and cons of the vaccines for them, and help guide them to whatever decision they are most comfortable with. For many but by no means all of my patients that has included the decision to forgo vaccination, and I have absolutely no problem with that.
