Notes From the Upside Down XV: German Legacy Media Now Discusses Vaxx Under-Reporting

Based on the (in-) famous BKK letter, MSM now asks about the under-reporting factorand provides estimates of the 'true' number of Covid-19 injection-associated AEs: thus begins the MSM's blame game

Editorial introduction: I’m back, dear readers, hence it’s time to return to more serious issues, I daresay. To mark my ‘return’, here’s something I spotted over the past weekend that made me scratch my head: Germany legacy media, in particular Focus magazine, begins to smell something funny in the Covid mess, so, without much further ado… (references omitted; as always, emphases mine, incl. the brief concluding commentary at the bottom).

Apologies for the crappy illustrations below, but the formatting of these illustrations in the original article was so bad I had to split them into three parts (but they still look bad).

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Extent remains unclear: are many injection-related adverse reactions never recorded? Health Ministry stalled important data collection

Experts believe that many possible side effects of Covid-19 vaccines are not reported. The fact that the authorities do not have a clear picture is not only due to the complex reporting procedure. It seems that important data has not been compiled.

Most adults and adolescents in Germany have now been vaccinated against Covid-19, and many have also received a booster shot. It has long been known that in rare cases these vaccines can have serious side effects in addition to the usual, harmless vaccination reactions—especially myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) in younger men and adolescents. According to the safety report of the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), the reporting rate of suspected vaccine side effects is 1.64 reports per 1000 vaccine doses, for serious reactions 0.20 reports per 1000 vaccine doses.

Corona Vaccination Side Effect: Experts Note Too Low a Reporting Rate

The problem: the reporting rate logically only includes those cases that were detected and reported. Against the background of the imminent vote on compulsory vaccination in the Bundestag [which was voted down], the question arises whether the federal government has a sufficiently reliable overview of the extent of these suspected side effects. There are increasing indications that this is not the case.

Both MDR and the ARD magazine Plusminus recently reported that vaccine damage was rare according to current knowledge, but that those affected had problems being taken seriously by doctors. On the website of the Plusminus report, there are currently 69 pages [as of 5 April 2022] of user comments reporting similar experiences.

Doctors Want a ‘Low-Threshold AE Reporting System’

In March, FOCUS Online also reported on doctors who registered a comparatively high number of side effects, including neurological problems, and also reported them to the PEI. They also reported that the reporting system was very time-consuming and could therefore probably fall by the wayside for many doctors. A ‘low-threshold reporting system’ would be better.

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A probable under-recording of vaccine-induced side effects was further confirmed by Harald Matthes, medical director of the Havelhöhe Community Hospital and endowed professor at the Institute for Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics at Charité [Medical University] Berlin. Based on a study, he assumes that adverse reactions are under-reported by at least 70%, but nevertheless, severe and persistent side effects are rare.

Are 70% or More of All Side Effects Not Recorded?

Even if not all cases are serious and lead to permanent damage, in some cases they at least mean that those affected are on sick leave for a certain time. This is then to be expected with every new vaccination and booster campaign.

Ill. 1: Share of Insured [of BKK] with Covid-19 Vaccine AEs

Ill. 2: The same as above, but in tabular form. Columns indicate (from left to right): year; number of insured (V) with the given ICD codes; number of Covid-19 vaccine-associated AEs; number of other vaccine-associated AEs; % of Covid-19 vaccine-injured of the total no. of vaccine-associated AEs

Ill. 3: estimates of the ‘true’ no. of Covid-19 vaccine-associated AEs based on BKK data

It becomes problematic when warning signs of probable under-reporting are not even investigated. For example, the head of the BKK Provita, Andreas Schöfbeck, was dismissed after he had analysed the data of all BKK health insurance funds and warned in a letter to the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI) that there was a higher-than-expected number of reported side effects, some of which required treatment. The BKK umbrella organization’s argument: Schöfbeck had misinterpreted the data and had not acted on behalf of the BKK.

BKK Board Member Warned—And Dismissed

FOCUS Online had already contacted Schöfbeck shortly after his letter. He was aware that time pressure and the short deadline for replying that he had set with his letter had been a mistake in retrospect, said the now-dismissed head of the health insurance fund. In terms of content, however, he stuck to his statements. The latest media reports on side effects show that Schöfbeck’s warning should at least have been examined impartially.

‘Not Formulated Carefully Enough’

Harald Matthes from the Charité also criticises the way the Schöfbeck incident was handled. In an interview with FOCUS Online, he said:

If Andreas Schöfbeck can be accused of anything, it is perhaps that he did not formulate things carefully enough. He should have said that there is a clue here, but the causality still has to be examined. It was not quite clear whether he was making a political statement or whether he simply wanted to do his due diligence and say: Here is a signal that needs to be investigated more closely, please. That little differentiation cost him his job.

Instead, the BKK board member was verbally attacked in an unusually aggressive manner, including by Dirk Heinrich, the federal chairman of the Association of General Practitioners (Virchowbund). Heinrich accused Schöfbeck of ‘embarrassing ignorance or intent to deceive’ and indirectly described him as belonging to the Querdenker scene [an designator commonly used to smear anyone who disagrees with the self-identified ‘acceptable consensus’]. Not every suspected AE is confirmed—but they must still all be reported

It is true that Heinrich’s statement is correct that not all suspected AEs are also proven vaccine side effects and that not only serious complications, but also rather harmless vaccine reactions were included in the reports. However, with new vaccine technology, such as mRNA delivery techniques, the self-restriction threshold to also report unspecific side effects in order to exclude underreporting should be rather low, if only because of the doctors’ obligation towards their patients.

This is shown by the famous Pandemrix example. In the ‘Impfbuch für alle’ [Vaccination Information Booklet for Everyone] published by the Robert Koch Institute and the Federal Health Centre for Health Education, which is distributed to German pharmacies for the Corona vaccination, there is the following entry on the subject of swine flu vaccination:

A total of five vaccines had been approved against this [swine] flu virus. With one of them, Pandemrix, cases of narcolepsy occurred later, namely in one out of 181,000 vaccinated adults and in one out of 18,400 vaccinated children. Those affected suffer from uncontrollable episodes of falling asleep and frequent falls.

Long-term Effects Are Rare, but Possible

According to the Ärzteblatt, narcolepsy is an autoimmune disease directed against certain brain receptors. Antibodies in the blood are responsible for this AE. What is important here is the time lapse: the first complications occurred in 2010, but a total of around 1,300 cases were reported by 2015, according to the Ärzteblatt.

In a hypothesis, scientists explain subsequent illnesses by the fact that the so-called blood-brain barrier briefly became permeable during another illness or severe inflammation, which normally does not allow antibodies to pass through. ‘This event would not have to coincide with the vaccination, since the antibodies are present in the blood for life. This would explain why vaccinated people can still develop narcolepsy years after vaccination’, the journal continues.

How AEs Are Recorded

So how can Covid-19 vaccines, which after all work according to a novel mechanism of action, ensure that rare side effects and possible long-term effects are not overlooked? In fact, in Germany it is the task of the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI) to do everything in its power to record all [!] side effects. According to the German Medicines Act (AMG), [the PEI] must take all appropriate measures to identify suspected cases of reported AEs. It is sufficient if indications, clues, or conclusions lead to the assumption that the medicinal product is involved in the occurrence of any given side effect; a proven causal relationship does not have to exist according to the law.

The PEI commented on the mentioned BKK data to FOCUS Online as follows:

From the point of view of the Paul Ehrlich Institute, general ICD codes for vaccination side effects—such as those used in the query of the health insurance company BKK ProVita (T88.0, T88.1, Y59.9 as well as U12.9)—are not very suitable for examining the side effect profile of the individual vaccines. Thus, no robust statements can be made about certain, vaccine-specific side effects (e.g., myocarditis after mRNA [BioNTEch/Pfizer, Moderna] vaccines, immune thrombocytopenia after adenoviral vector vaccines [J&J, AstraZeneca]). It is also impossible to distinguish with certainty between serious and short-term, transient adverse reactions. For this reason, the Paul Ehrlich Institute favours a detailed evaluation of patient data in order to continuously further investigate the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines. This should be done in anonymised form in order to comply with data protection.

‘So far, data from the health insurance companies are not available’

But then the PEI virtually plays the ball back to the health insurance companies:

A corresponding safety study for the COVID-19 vaccines based on anonymised health insurance company data has already been planned by the Paul Ehrlich Institute in 2020 and funding has been promised by the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG). The Paul Ehrlich Institute has requested the data. So far, these data from the health insurance funds are not yet available to the Paul Ehrlich Institute.

The PEI obviously knew very early on that it would not be possible to comprehensively assess the spectrum of AEs of the Covid-19 products with the available data—but the important compilation of the data was delayed: in contrast to Sweden [or Norway, for that matter], for example, there is no vaccination register in Germany.

Responsibility is Passed Back and Forth

The public health insurance carriers [Krankenkassen] also point to this data problem. For example, in response to a question from FOCUS Online, AOK said in March:

The scientific institutes of the state-run health insurance carriers have therefore already, at the beginning of the vaccination campaign, jointly advocated to the Federal Ministry of Health that the data on vaccinations be transmitted to the health insurance funds so that they can support the Paul Ehrlich Institute in evaluating the safety of vaccination…even if the health insurance carriers had information on vaccinations that had been carried out, it would only be possible to assess the frequency of severe side effects (sinus vein thrombosis, myocarditis, pericarditis) in comparison to suitable control groups. This is because only these severe side effects can be expected to be documented in a differentiated manner in the billing data.

Somewhat casually, one could say: this is a classic case of responsibility ping-pong.

PEI Provides Data for Several Studies

Despite the lack of health insurance data, however, the PEI says it is collaborating on or conducting several studies on vaccine safety that are still ongoing, for example:

• The ‘SafeVac App 2.0’ study, which looks at the long-term safety of vaccines: ‘The current number of participants is more than 730,000 vaccinated persons, the observation period covers 12 months’, says the PEI.

• A collaboration with the registry for children and adolescents with suspected myocarditis (Mykke)—for this there is an investigation that includes long-term follow-up of suspected cases of myocarditis after Covid-19 vaccination in children and adolescents, according to the authorities.

• An investigation into the safety of Covid-19 vaccines in pregnancy; here, the agency is working together with the Berlin-based Charité.

Self-Reporting of Side Effects Now Possible

Finally, vaccinated persons or their relatives can also report observed side effects themselves, for which a special portal has been set up for some years now, i.e., also for other vaccinations and medicines even before the start of the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic (www.nebenwirkungen.bund.de). When reporting, one has to indicate, among other things, the batch number of the vaccine, which can be found in the vaccination certificate (printed or digital).

No less complicated than the possible under-reporting of side effects is the question of how vaccinated persons can prove at all in the event of damage that the vaccination was also the cause of their complications. After all, especially in the case of heart problems or vascular diseases, all possible causes come into consideration.

How Does One Prove Whether Vaccination [against Covid-19] Was Really the Cause?

FOCUS Online legal expert Marco Rogert from the Cologne-based law firm Rogert & Ulbrich assumes that the so-called ‘easing of the burden of proof’ [Beweislasterleichterung] applies in this case:

According to these [lesser standards of proof], it is assumed that a medicinal product has caused an illness if it is ‘suitable’ for this disease in any individual case. Relevant factors include the composition of the drug, its dosage, the temporal association to the AEs, and the patient’s overall bill of health. The damage pattern and the health condition of the injured party at the time of use as well as all other circumstances that speak for, or against, causation of damage in any individual case must also be taken into account.

However, this is not good enough:

Pharmaceutical companies may undermine the presumption of causality again if they only name one possible other cause of damage. The use of another medicinal product that could have caused a similar, or comparable, damage [AE], on the other hand, cannot be used to invalidate the presumption of causality.

Courts Must Decide Every Individual Case

It would be advantageous for injured parties to have a right to information from the manufacturer of the vaccines about the side effects and interactions known to [the manufacturer]. ‘According to case law, an undefined suspicion is not sufficient. However, the injured party does not have to prove causality in the proceedings for the right to information. In this respect, the judge is responsible for a plausibility check, whereby the serious possibility of a connection is sufficient for the right to information’, says Rogert.

Meanwhile, the Federal Minister of Health’s own handling of the issue seems disconcerting. [Health Minister] Karl Lauterbach repeatedly emphasised that vaccinations are ‘virtually free of side effects’ [quasi nebenwirkungsfrei]. Since even his own ministry has to admit that there is a lack of data, this sweeping statement is hardly tenable—and is not likely to go down well with those affected.

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Brief Commentary

This is an important, if very much belated piece. It might just indicate that legacy media is beginning to turn on politicians and health authorities to deflect any possible backlash against its own malfeasance. Accurate reporting by legacy media people has become a little bit more widespread after a two-year hiatus, but some of the assertions of the above piece warrant more comments.

The data collection mess is obvious to anyone who paid even the slightest bit of attention in recent years. Still, it’s very much disingenuous for FOCUS Online to note this now: the fourth estate is notoriously important for the functioning of republican-democratic polities, and I won’t go down this particular rabbit hole here and now.

Speaking about better-organised data systems—the above piece cites the Swedish case, and I’d add Norway and Denmark, too—the numbers coming out of Germany may only be deemed completely unreliable. As I’ve documented in great detail based on Norwegian data (see part 1, part 2, and part 3, as well as part 4 on the Swine Flu episode and part 5), the official numbers cited in the above piece aren’t even the proverbial tip of the iceberg. They are, I’d propose, malfeasance, perhaps with criminal intent behind them, hence an issue for the courts.

This is particularly true for the Swine Flu episode of 2009-12, whose main ‘medicinal product’, Pandemrix, had a much, much better safety profile—which was still very bad—than any of the currently available Covid-19 injections. It is beyond any thinking individual as to why people such as the Gerrman Health (sic[k]) Minister Lauterbach or the Austrian crazies are still (!!!) pushing these bad products onto people. J’accuse.

Finally, a word about a specific lacuna mentioned in the above piece: what about a useful control group? The only one that comes to mind are—‘the unvaccinated’ individuals, which make up about 20-25% of the total population. They come in all age brackets and with a wide variety of health conditions, so it should, technically, be possible to actually do a couple of solid studies.

Final Thoughts: Treason, Anyone?

But then, again, this would require both political will to authorise it and successive legal accountability. After all, knowingly pushing defective biological products onto the public is certainly a case for the courts.

In my opinion, there’s really only one appropriate indictment that I could think of: high treason.

It is said that ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’, which is quite true, I suppose, but I’d add a caveat: without accountability and personal consequences for such (alleged) behaviour while in public office, nightfall—consequences for the (suspected) perpetrators will never come.