UK Families Demand Accountability After Vaccine-Related Deaths

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The parents of Marina Waldron, a 21-year-old woman who died after receiving the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, have accused the NHS of failing to convey known safety warnings about the jab. Their daughter, a budding filmmaker from the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, visited the hospital three times with severe headaches in the week leading up to her fatal collapse from a brain hemorrhage in March 2021. Max and Liz Waldron stated that despite Marina's deteriorating condition, A&E doctors seemed unaware of the emerging side effects associated with the vaccine, as well as the warnings that had been issued about them.

 

 

A second family, who lost their son Oli Akram Hoque to similar complications a few days after Marina, is also calling for systemic changes and accountability. A Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spokesperson responded to the accusations by saying, "Throughout the pandemic, the health system responded quickly to reports of extremely rare cases of complications following vaccination." While the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine was estimated to have saved millions of lives during the pandemic, it caused rare and sometimes fatal blood clots, as seen in Marina and Oli's cases. A spokesperson for AstraZeneca reiterated that the vaccine had been "recognized by governments around the world" as crucial in helping to bring the pandemic to an end.

 

 

Marina was just beginning her career in film when she received her first dose of the AstraZeneca jab on 11 March 2021. By 22 March, she had developed a headache and sickness and visited a London hospital, but she was sent home with migraine tablets, despite mentioning that she had recently been vaccinated. Mrs. Waldron, aged 64, recalled that Marina's condition worsened the following day. She visited an A&E department again, only to be discharged with a migraine diagnosis and without undergoing a brain scan. 

 

By 27 March, Marina's parents were so alarmed that they took her to A&E in Gloucester themselves. She tragically passed away on 31 March at Southmead Hospital in Bristol after suffering a heart attack and brain hemorrhage. Mrs. Waldron shared the anguish of not being allowed to intervene, saying, "We weren’t able to go in. We weren’t able to say 'don’t you understand she hasn’t drunk or eaten.' They [the hospital] just sent her back. But the next day it was worse, and she started having issues with her arm - she was lifting up her arm and holding it, and that’s when it all went mad."

 

At the inquest in December 2023, a coroner determined that Marina's death had been caused by a combination of factors: intracerebral hemorrhage, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, and vaccine-induced immune thrombocytopenia and thrombosis due to the AstraZeneca vaccine. While the coroner found that Marina had died from a recognized but extremely rare complication of the AstraZeneca vaccine, he did not find fault with the NHS for failing to diagnose it quickly enough.

 

However, the Waldrons are seeking answers as to why medical professionals were not informed about the risks associated with the vaccine earlier, particularly when other countries were halting its rollout. They question why appropriate diagnostic measures, such as brain scans, were not promptly undertaken. Mrs. Waldron emphasized that an earlier awareness could have made a critical difference in Marina’s case, stating, "It was only after a couple of days in hospital that they took us to one side and said 'we think it’s the vaccine,' and we said 'we've been banging on about this vaccine right from the beginning and every single person said it wasn’t anything to do with that.' They didn’t even bother to scan her. There was a possibility, a chance she could have been saved."

 

Their solicitor, Lynda Reynolds from the Hugh James practice, highlighted that there appeared to have been a gap between advice being published on the government's public website on 18 March—advising people with concerns to attend A&E—and the date, 7 April, when clinicians were finally informed to investigate any potential symptoms. Reynolds pointed out, "Unfortunately for Marina, she fell in that gap. She's not the only one."

 

The question remains whether doctors could have been warned earlier. On 15 March 2021, Germany, France, and Italy halted their AstraZeneca rollouts following several incidents involving blood clots. However, the World Health Organization did not yet see enough evidence to establish a link. Just a few days later, on 18 March, the UK identified five cases of blood clots in the brain, one of them fatal. Despite these alarming reports, the NHS continued administering the vaccine to young people, although it advised anyone with a headache lasting more than four days after vaccination to seek medical advice.

 

On 25 March, NHS Blood and Transplant issued an alert to specialist staff after observing a rise in organ donors dying from blood clots, stating, "I would ask you to be alert to the possibility of this syndrome in any patient within 28 days of receiving Covid vaccination with thrombosis or unexplained thrombocytopenia."

 

Oli Akram Hoque, a 26-year-old from London, also experienced rare and fatal complications after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine. Oli received his jab on 19 March 2021 and began experiencing headaches from 1 April. His condition worsened progressively, and he visited an A&E department in a London hospital on 4 April. A GP there, however, did not believe an assessment was necessary.

 

 

The next day, he returned to the same London hospital, where Marina had been treated, this time with severe headaches. He was not assessed by the GP, and only after having seizures the next day was he rushed back to the hospital. His sister, Anika Hoque, recalled, "He was saying 'why do I feel like this?' and he was pressing his hands... the doctor didn’t think that it was anything to be concerned about." Oli died from cerebral venous sinus thrombosis on 15 April.

 

During Oli's inquest, the coroner concluded that on his first visit to the hospital, Oli had not presented with symptoms that would have warranted an emergency department assessment. The MHRA, which had identified three cases of blood clots in the brain associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine as early as 25 February 2021, was criticized for not having all the necessary clinical information from hospitals. The coroner raised concerns with the DHSC regarding the MHRA's lack of power to compel hospitals to provide critical information promptly. The MHRA clarified, "Regarding the scope of MHRA’s powers to compel information to be provided by hospitals to patients, the Agency does not have legal powers to compel healthcare professionals to provide additional information."

 

Miss Hoque expressed frustration that information about the risks associated with the AstraZeneca jab was available on the internet and had already led to suspensions in many parts of Europe at the time of her brother's death. She said, "My GP said the exact same thing, so it was clear that information was available at the time but the doctors in A&E said they were not aware, which was surprising... so obviously it cost lives." 

 

The DHSC offered its sympathies to the families of Marina Waldron and Oli Hoque, adding, “This government is committed to learning lessons through the Covid-19 inquiry." Vaccines will be discussed in Module 4 of the Covid-19 Inquiry, with hearings planned to take place from 14 January to 30 January. The DHSC emphasized that the "health system quickly responded to reports from the MHRA of extremely rare cases of concurrent thrombosis and thrombocytopenia following vaccination with the first dose of AstraZeneca." In April 2021, the Joint Commission on Vaccination and Immunisation advised adults under 30 without underlying health issues to be offered an alternative vaccine to AstraZeneca, if available. This recommendation was later extended in May 2021 to adults under 40 without underlying health issues.

 

A spokesperson for AstraZeneca acknowledged the loss felt by those affected, stating, "Our sympathy goes out to anyone who has lost loved ones or reported health problems. Patient safety is our highest priority. From the body of evidence in clinical trials and real-world data, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has continuously been shown to have an acceptable safety profile, and regulators around the world consistently state that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of extremely rare potential side effects."

 

The spokesperson further emphasized AstraZeneca's pride in its role in ending the global pandemic, noting, "According to independent estimates, over six million lives were saved in the first year of use alone, and over three billion doses were supplied globally. Our efforts have been recognized by governments around the world and are widely regarded as being a critical component of ending the global pandemic."

 

The families of Marina Waldron and Oli Hoque continue to seek justice and hope that their tragic experiences will lead to systemic changes to prevent similar cases in the future. Mrs. Waldron remains determined that people should not forget her daughter, whose organs were donated after her death. "We don’t want the amount of people who have died to be swept under the carpet because it's taken over three years to get to the coroner's court," she said. "Her death had not been registered [until then] as a vaccine death.

 

She was an amazing girl. She wasn’t frightened of anything." Mr. Waldron added, "We don’t know how many other people went through the same thing and died from the same thing as Marina." As the Covid-19 Inquiry proceeds, many hope for transparency and a commitment to learning from these heartbreaking cases.

 

Credit: BBC 2024-08-30

 

 

 

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[TallGuyJohninBKK]

The COVID pandemic has claimed many millions of lives since its start in 2020, including some 7 million officially found directly caused by COVID, which is widely considered an undercount. But there also have been many other less direct victims of the pandemic, people who didn't get the medical care they needed for other conditions, and yes, a comparatively much smaller number who incurred injuries and deaths believed related to COVID vaccines.

 

Any death, whether due to COVID itself or due to other factors relating to the pandemic, is sad and regrettable. But considering that the BBC decided to spend some 60 paragraphs (by my count) in their article on two particular deaths believed related to what a government spokesman in the BBC report called "extremely rare" cases of blood clotting associated with the already discontinued Astra Zeneca COVID vaccine, there's a lot of additional context on that topic that could have been, but wasn't, provided. Such as:

 

--More people are dying and have been dying of COVID every week in England, some 200 from the last weekly update, even now 4-1/2 years into the pandemic than ALL of the claimed UK blood clotting deaths believed related to the Astra Zeneca vaccine since the beginning

 

--The blood clotting deaths in the UK that have been attributed to the AZ vaccine, some 80+ in total, occurred out of some 50 million AZ doses that were given in the UK in the late 2020, mostly 2021 period of time, rendering those a very rare side effect of the vaccine, which is why the clotting issue didn't surface in the vaccine's original clinical trials.

 

--Balance against that, COVID vaccines are estimated to have prevented some 400,000 COVID deaths just in the UK, including preventing up to 130,000 UK deaths early in the pandemic thru fall 2021 when the AZ vaccine was being used along with two others.

 

--The COVID virus/illness itself during the pandemic, even with the use of vaccines, still has ended up claiming more than 232,000 lives in the UK.

 

As the UK-based fact checking site Full Fact reported in 2023: "Overall, the vaccines have therefore saved vastly more lives than they have cost."

 

--The risk of blood clots was HIGHER from COVID itself than it was from the AZ vaccine:

 

"The risk of a serious blood clot [from the vaccine] is about 1 in 250,000 people or 4 in 1 million.

 

COVID-19 carries a much higher risk of blood clots: 7.8 percent of people who have had COVID-19 also had a pulmonary embolism, and 11.2 percent experience deep vein thrombosis."

 

https://www.healthline.com/health/adult-vaccines/astrazeneca-vaccine#blood-clot-risk

 

And last, as the BBC report finally adds near the end of its long report -- the AZ vaccine has been credited with saving more than 6 million lives worldwide in the first year of the COVID vaccines rollout.

 

"From the body of evidence in clinical trials and real-world data, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has continuously been shown to have an acceptable safety profile and regulators around the world consistently state that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of extremely rare potential side effects.

...

"According to independent estimates, over six million lives were saved in the first year of use alone and over three billion doses were supplied globally."

 

So, by all means, those believed harmed by COVID vaccines deserve full and fair investigations into their cases, and to have their days in court to seek judgments and compensation for those who choose to pursue that path, if they prevail in their cases.

 

But for every report like the BBC one presented here, let's also not forget or fail to recognize the hundreds of thousands of UK residents and many more around the world who are still living today because they were protected by those vaccines.

 

[save the frogs]

are the jabs saving people or trying to kill us?

 

was covid blown out of proportion? was it just a flu?

 

did we barely miss mass extinction of the human race?

 

we'll never know for sure. this debate will go on forever.

good luck trying to prove who died of what. 

 

well it's alright

even if the sun don't shine

we're goin' to the end of line

 

 

[MicroB]

43 minutes ago, save the frogs said:

are the jabs saving people or trying to kill us?

 

was covid blown out of proportion? was it just a flu?

 

did we barely miss mass extinction of the human race?

 

 

 

The AZ vaccine was based around an adenovirus that was used to replicate

part of the coronavirus spike protein, to induce the immune response, and hence immunity (or prime the body to respond to a real infection).

 

A young child was admitted to hospital in Canada with an adenovirus infection (adenovirus is better known as the Common Cold) and a developing blood clot on the brain. The doctors had heard about similar injuries related to the adenovirus vaccine, but the child was not vaccinated. There was nothing in the literature suggesting this had been observed when developing a cold. But within the medical community, other cases began to emerge.

 

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2307721

 

This is a brand new observed clinical manifestation of common cold infection. The problem is the vast majority of common colds are never reported or diagnosed, and people can get a blood clot that is apparently unexplained.

 

There is a pipeline of adenovirus-based vaccines in the pipeline, vaccines against HIV, Ebola virus, influenza virus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Plasmodium falciparum, rabies virus, dengue virus and MERS. There is going to some concern about establishing risk. Risk being, going back to the article, a combination of the hazard that that might be caused (eg death) and likelihood (how often does death, or the injury, occur. COVID-19 might give the numbers for a previously under reported condition.

 

When people complain they didn't know the risk, that's because no one knew the risk (of any new vaccine). Thats why the UK government assumes liability for all vaccines. Without that, no vaccine will ever be made. Vaccines are unlike other pharmaceuticals, because they are always needed quickly and at scale.

 

The Polio vaccine, based on formaldehyde inactivated polio viruses, was invented by Jonas Salk. It never underwent clinical trials, because at the time, clinical trials, as we know them, didn't exist. Developed in the lab, tested on a few subjects, hundreds of thousands of batches were made and went into the arms of American kids.

 

Unfortunately, one of the companies contracted to make the vaccine didn't really know how to make formaldehyde properly, so batches went out with live virus. Polio cases resulted. That didn't dampen enthusiasm for the vaccine. As a result of this, the FDA was created, to oversee companies making drugs, to make sure they were following proper, tested processes. Also clinical trials.

 

When news about this discovery becomes better known (when we can start assessing the actual risk), perhaps people won't be so blase about the Common Cold.

 

 

[stevenl]

1 hour ago, save the frogs said:

are the jabs saving people or trying to kill us?

 

was covid blown out of proportion? was it just a flu?

 

did we barely miss mass extinction of the human race?

 

we'll never know for sure. this debate will go on forever.

good luck trying to prove who died of what. 

 

well it's alright

even if the sun don't shine

we're goin' to the end of line

 

 

We know for sure. 

[impulse]

11 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

But for every report like the BBC one presented here, let's also not forget or fail to recognize the hundreds of thousands of UK residents and many more around the world who are still living today because they were protected by those vaccines.

 

One more time, adding up all the cases, when what we really need is a breakdown of the benefits and risks by segment, specifically age. 

 

Otherwise, you can't ethically recommend vaccinating toddlers to save grandpas.

 

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Don't believe the UK, the subject of the thread here, has ever recommended COVID vaccines for the entire group of "toddlers" -- which typically means those aged 1 to 3. But as the study below reports, COVID vaccines in the UK have had a "favourable safety profile" among children/young  people in general, and better health outcomes for the vaccinated vs. the unvaccinated.

Safety outcomes following COVID-19 vaccination and infection in 5.1 million children in England

27 May 2024

 

"The United Kingdom (UK) approved COVID-19 vaccination for all children aged 12 and over in September 2021. This was extended to 5–11-year-olds in April 2022 in a one-off programme offering a primary course of COVID-19 vaccination to children who were not in a vulnerable or high-risk group."

...

In the UK, the vast majority of vaccinated children received the BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech) COVID-19 vaccine, as the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) advised against using ChAdOX1 (AstraZeneca) in people under 40 or mRNA-1273 (Moderna/SpikeVax) in children under 18 during the time period that most children were vaccinated³

^...

They have advised to continue vaccinating clinically vulnerable children aged 6 months and above and to vaccinate otherwise healthy children aged 12 years and above living with immunosuppressed individuals⁴.

...

We report a favourable safety profile of COVID-19 vaccination in under-18s."

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47745-z