Many Dutch people still have doubts or say they will not take a corona vaccine in the future. Reasons for this are that they say they do not trust vaccines or are afraid of the side effects. RTL News researched the facts and looked for figures about how often people get sick from vaccines.
Mapped risks
In the past five years, 15.7 million influenza vaccines have been administered, especially for the elderly and people with fragile health, and more than 11 million injections from the National Immunization Program for babies and young children. In addition to sorting out these figures, RTL Nieuws spoke with a large number of independent experts in order to map the risks of side effects of vaccines.
If someone has to go to hospital after a vaccination, doctors or citizens can report this to Lareb, the National Registry of Adverse Reactions. This registration is not completely watertight, says Lareb director Agnes Kant. “Not every side effect that leads to hospitalization is reported to us. Vice versa: not every report of an side effect is also an adverse reaction.”
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The most common side effects leading to hospital admissions are a high fever, febrile seizures, and nausea or vomiting, which can cause people to become dehydrated. “The fact that a child suddenly becomes limp and pale after an injection and no longer responds properly, occurs about 10 to 15 times a year”, says Kant. “These are well-known and sometimes fierce-looking reactions for parents, from which almost everyone recovers.” According to Kant, a severe allergic reaction or spinal cord inflammation occurs in ‘rare cases’.
Slight side effects such as head and muscle pain or a painful arm from the injection are more common, but are temporary.
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Swine flu vaccine
If you look beyond the past five years, you will find another example. In 2009, the drug Pandemrix was used against swine flu. This vaccine has been admitted to the market via an accelerated procedure, just like now with corona vaccines.
According to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), an estimated 320 people in ten EU countries have developed the sleeping sickness narcolepsy, after a total of 31 million vaccinations. In the Netherlands, half a million children under the age of 5 have received the drug and ten of them have contracted narcolepsy, says Miriam Sturkenboom, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at UMC Utrecht.
“That is actually very little, although narcolepsy is a nasty disease”, says Sturkenboom. “Yet the number of serious side effects is a lot lower than, for example, with ibuprofen for headaches or menstrual pain. Then you are talking about 3 serious side effects in 10,000 cases, such as stomach bleeding.” Sturkenboom leads a European project Access that should identify possible and unexpected side effects of the corona vaccines.
The Medicines Evaluation Board (MEB) says that a link between narcolepsy and the Pandemrix vaccine has never been demonstrated. But the scientists are not yet in agreement about this. In any case, the drug was withdrawn from the market as a precaution, says the MEB.
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The Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (IGJ) says it has received six reports in the past ten years about possible serious side effects as a result of a vaccination. In one case, this led to a very rare complication with little permanent damage, the IGJ says. The cause was that the health care provider probably had not acted properly.
More pros than cons
The RTL Nieuws investigation also shows that there is no evidence that vaccines cause epilepsy, infertility or autism. Critical followers of the pharmaceutical industry, such as the Danish researcher Peter Gøtzsche, also see more advantages than disadvantages to vaccinations. He wrote the book ‘Vaccinations Truth, Lies and Controversy’.
“If I only had the choice between never having a vaccination or all, I would choose the latter.” This is despite his position that he thinks governments should stop the flu vaccine because it is not effective enough.
Professor Miriam Sturkenboom does not expect any large-scale side effects from the corona vaccines. “We see from those trials in those large groups of people that there are hardly any serious side effects, so I don’t expect that if we roll it out among the entire population.”
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