Stop this nonsense already, people are not ‘suddenly dying’ because of COVID-19 vaccines or due to some grand modern medical conspiracy
The Indian Council of Medical Research has conducted two extensive studies that have shown that the cases of ‘sudden deaths’ due to cardiac arrests have no link to COVID-19 vaccines. These studies have been carried out with vast data, covering thousands of cases across multiple hospitals, spread across 19 Indian states and Union Territories.
These studies by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) affirm that COVID-19 vaccines in India are safe and effective, with extremely rare instances of serious side effects. Sudden cardiac deaths can result from a wide range of factors, including genetics, lifestyle, pre-existing conditions, and post-COVID complications, and these factors vary from case to case.
Every time someone dies, especially when that someone is famous and rather young, wild conspiracy theories are spread all over social media, and mainstream media. After the recent death of entertainer Shefali Jariwala at the age of 42, these speculations and conspiracy theories touched a new level, with even media platforms fuelling the fire.
“Covid vaccines are deadly. They are causing deaths. Shefali Jariwala died. She had taken this vaccine too”, claimed one handle on X, using a similarly misinformed and fearmongering video by an alleged media platform, that seemed to ‘confirm’ the handle’s claim. The video was about Astrazeneca ‘admitting’ that their vaccine may cause blood clots as a side effect. The video used the news of AstraZeneca to claim that people are dying because of the alleged blood clots, totally ignoring the fact that the adverse effect of blood clots happens only in extremely rare cases.
As per the data submitted by the The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the UK, where the court case was going on, the risk of Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS) possibly after taking the Covid-19 vaccine was seen only in 309 cases, resulting in 56 deaths, out of a staggering 23 million first doses and 9 million second doses. On average, the risk of TTS was suggested in approximately 12.3 cases per million.
In the global level, A 2022 study in Lancet Global Health reported rates of 8.1 TTS cases per million first doses and 2.3 per million second doses, that too with sharp geographic variations. Data from Nordic countries showed TTS risk in 17.6 cases per million, and in Asia, the TTS risk was seen in only 0.2 cases per million doses administered. In short, for an average person, there are far more chances of dying in a road accident (120 deaths per million in India, in 2023), or obesity (424 per million in India) than of dying due to a COVID jab.
It is notable here that not only are the risk factors extremely rare, even when they occur in one of the rare cases, they occur in the first 6 weeks of the jab, not years later. Linking a celebrity death to the COVID vaccine taken years ago is not only profoundly stupid, it is dangerous and helps to spread a larger anti-vaccine propaganda among the gullible people.
Billions of doses of the Covishield (Oxford-AstraZeneca)vaccine have been administered to billions of people around the world. If the vaccines were ‘bad’, a chunk of the global population would have dropped dead long ago. 3 billion doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were administered in the first year alone. Did we see a reduction in the global population?
Why do people spread misinformation against Vaccines?
The fear-mongering against COVID-19 vaccines, and the general anti-vaxxer rants against all vaccines are all stemmed from the larger propensity among uninformed, unscientific and superstitious masses against modern medicine. Unfortunately, in India, a large part of the anti-vaccine propaganda has been done by politicians and fraudulent ‘researchers’ misusing academic facilities.
There is a frenzied crowd that thinks the modern governments, with all their modern scientific tools, are out to get them, and they need to time-travel back to ancient times ASAP. In their minds, the ancient times were exactly like landscape paintings with rural themes, idyllic and full of natural beauty, where people look all delighted about manual labour and everyone is ecstatic for no particular reason at all.
They forget that the old days were the days when half of the women died at childbirth, and half the children succumbed to (now) preventable diseases, a breakout of cholera often wiped out entire villages, and a single missed or scarce monsoon caused millions of deaths by starvation.
In India, the life expectancy has improved from a dismal 20-25 years in the early 1900s to 30-32 years in the 1940s, 50+ years in the 1980s to current levels of 70 years+ in the 21st century. When one looks at hard data ‘objectively’, without idiotic and romanticised notions of ‘golden olden days’ the facts are there for all. We have been living healthier, happier and better in modern times. Women are not dying by droves in childbirth, babies have grown up nicely to become insufferable GenZ, the elderly live up to ripe old ages to torment their children and fix weddings, and a simple outbreak of cholera no longer wipes out entire villages.
All those people, including the countless idiotic fear-mongering doomsday peddlers on social media who claim 24×7 that pharma companies and government are hand in glove in a grand conspiracy to kill them, are kept alive by modern medicine, modern technology that provides us with an abundance of crops to eat and supplies to enjoy.
Vaccines have saved more than 154 million lives in the last 50 years
By rough estimates, the COVID-19 vaccines prevented nearly 20 million deaths globally by 2022. When one considers the overall life saving numbers of all essential vaccines that are given to children across the globe, humanity should worship the vaccine researchers, manufacturers and suppliers as Gods. But no, we would rather believe an awful-tasting tea made from some pretty flower will make us healthy because the pretty influencer on Insta says so, than believe the countless scientists who spend years researching, conducting studies, trials and ensuring quality control to save the Earth’s humans.
A WHO estimate, calculated by analysing tons of data across the world, says that globally, childhood vaccines alone have prevented 154 million deaths in the last 50 years. That is the equivalent of 6 lives saved every minute of every year.
the 14 main vaccines given widely in many countries, with a few regional exceptions, diphtheria, Haemophilus influenzae type B, hepatitis B, Japanese encephalitis, measles, meningitis A, pertussis, invasive pneumococcal disease, polio, rotavirus, rubella, tetanus, tuberculosis, and yellow fever, have brought down global infant mortality by a drastic 40%.
| Vaccine | Estimated Lives Saved Globally |
| Measles (part of MMR) | ~94 million |
| Tetanus (including maternal & neonatal) | ~28 million |
| Pertussis (Whooping Cough) | ~13 million |
| Tuberculosis (BCG) | ~11 million |
| Haemophilus influenzae type B | ~2.8 million |
| Polio | ~1.6 million lives saved + ~20 million from paralysis |
| Rotavirus | ~139,000 (since 2006) |
| Hepatitis B | ~1 million+ (varies by source, due to liver disease prevention) |
| Other routine childhood vaccines (DTP, rubella, etc.) | ~3.8 million combined |
source: WHO dataDeath and human stupidity
The superstitions around death are many, and human stupidity and human fear are fraternal twins. Widespread internet usage has made information abundance, rather, information overload, a consistent feature in our lives. Most of us are not smart, or sane enough to keep thinking rationally through the relentless newsflow, and hence we try to process similar sounding news by connecting imaginary dots.
People die. thousands of people die every day without us knowing anything about them. They become a part of a massive database that grows every hour, every minute. We hear about a Shefali Jariwala, or a Siddharth Shukla, only because they were celebrities and only because the media and social media keep repeating their names for days. Falling victim to superstitious beliefs and believing conspiracy theories, trying to see patterns in death statistics stems from our own myopic worldview and personal fears.
Ask a doctor, a policeman, a mortuary worker, or a cremation home staff member, and they will give some hard truths we all need to hear from time to time. Death is regular, relentless, and most important of all, death is ‘normal’.
Conclusion
Humans have been trying to outrun death for centuries. The entire pursuit of science and technology, knowledge and alchemies across civilisations through millennia has been focused on that single goal, to be able to look into the eyes of the God of Death and say, ‘Not Today’. Vaccines are our tools to help in that very endeavour, so is everything from modern medicine, surgery and all pursuits of technology, in one way or the other.
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