More than 60 percent of the reported side effects of the vaccine may be psychological in nature. This is the conclusion of a large study of 45,000 people.
There would be the nocebo effect, which is closely related to the well-known placebo effect. The bottom line is that people experience negative side effects from a treatment because they expect there to be.
In a meta-analysis from 12 earlier studies Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston conclude that up to 64 percent of vaccine side effects can be attributed to the nocebo effect.
In the study, some of the people were given a placebo and some were given a real vaccine. Remarkably, a large part of the placebo group experienced general complaints such as fatigue and headache. A smaller group also said they had a sore arm. At the second injection, this percentage was slightly lower.
“Non-specific symptoms such as headache and fatigue – which mainly affected people in the placebo group – are among the most frequently reported side effects of the Covid vaccination,” says placebo researcher Ted J. Kaptchuk from BIDMC and Harvard Medical School.
“Evidence suggests that this kind of information causes people to mistakenly attribute normal day-to-day feelings to the vaccination and be hyper-alert to signals from their bodies.”
People who are critical of the vaccines will therefore experience more side effects than people who do have a lot of confidence in the corona shots.
