5 in south korea died after getting flu shot

[VteckiCk]

Five South Koreans die after getting flu shots, sparking vaccine fears
Read more at https://www.todayonline.com/world/five-south-koreans-die-after-getting-flu-shots-sparking-vaccine-fears

SEOUL — Five people have died after getting flu shots in South Korea in the past week, authorities said, raising concerns over the vaccine's safety just as the seasonal inoculation programme is expanded to head off potential Covid-19 complications.

Authorities said there was no reason to believe the deaths were linked to the vaccine but an investigation, including post mortems, was underway.

"It makes it hard for us to put out a categorical statement," South Korean Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip told a briefing on Wednesday (Oct 21) about the deaths, which include a 17-year-old boy and a man in his 70s.

Coming just weeks after the rollout of the national vaccine programme was suspended over safety worries, the deaths have dominated headlines in South Korea.

Officials last month announced plans to procure 20 per cent more flu vaccines for the winter than the previous year to inoculate 30 million people in a bid to prevent the health system being overloaded by patients with flu and Covid-19 exposure.

However, the start of a free jab programme for around 19 million eligible people was suspended for three weeks after it was discovered that some five million doses, which need to be refrigerated, had been exposed to room temperature while being transported to a medical facility.
 

Boosting public trust in vaccines has become a major global challenge this year, as some countries rush to approve experimental Covid-19 vaccines before full safety and efficacy studies have been completed.

South Korea's flu vaccines are supplied by different drugmakers, including LG Chem Ltd and Boryung Biopharma, a unit of Boryung Pharm. A Boryung official said the company was aware of the reported deaths, but had no immediate comment. LG Chem said the company would follow government advice.

A 17-year-old boy who died on Friday was the first death noted by officials to follow receipt of the vaccine. The boy died two days after receiving the flu shot in Incheon, near the capital Seoul.
 

A man in his 70s, who had Parkinson's disease and arrhythmia, was the most recent case. He died in Daegu on Wednesday, a day after receiving the flu vaccine. Daegu officials said the man had received vaccines since 2015 with no prior adverse reactions.

Officials said 8.3 million people have been inoculated with the free flu vaccine since it resumed on Oct 13, with around 350 cases of adverse reactions reported.

The highest number of deaths linked to the seasonal flu vaccination was six in 2005, according to Yonhap news agency.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, trust in vaccines was a growing challenge for public health bodies. The World Health Organization named vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 global health threats for last year.

In South Korea, a poll earlier this month found that 62 per cent of 2,548 respondents in Gyeonggi province, near Seoul, would not get vaccinated against Covid-19, even if a vaccine is approved, until all safety questions are fully answered. REUTERS
 

[Lala81]

10 minutes ago, VteckiCk said:

Five South Koreans die after getting flu shots, sparking vaccine fears
Read more at https://www.todayonline.com/world/five-south-koreans-die-after-getting-flu-shots-sparking-vaccine-fears

SEOUL — Five people have died after getting flu shots in South Korea in the past week, authorities said, raising concerns over the vaccine's safety just as the seasonal inoculation programme is expanded to head off potential Covid-19 complications.

Authorities said there was no reason to believe the deaths were linked to the vaccine but an investigation, including post mortems, was underway.

"It makes it hard for us to put out a categorical statement," South Korean Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip told a briefing on Wednesday (Oct 21) about the deaths, which include a 17-year-old boy and a man in his 70s.

Coming just weeks after the rollout of the national vaccine programme was suspended over safety worries, the deaths have dominated headlines in South Korea.

Officials last month announced plans to procure 20 per cent more flu vaccines for the winter than the previous year to inoculate 30 million people in a bid to prevent the health system being overloaded by patients with flu and Covid-19 exposure.

However, the start of a free jab programme for around 19 million eligible people was suspended for three weeks after it was discovered that some five million doses, which need to be refrigerated, had been exposed to room temperature while being transported to a medical facility.
 

Boosting public trust in vaccines has become a major global challenge this year, as some countries rush to approve experimental Covid-19 vaccines before full safety and efficacy studies have been completed.

South Korea's flu vaccines are supplied by different drugmakers, including LG Chem Ltd and Boryung Biopharma, a unit of Boryung Pharm. A Boryung official said the company was aware of the reported deaths, but had no immediate comment. LG Chem said the company would follow government advice.

A 17-year-old boy who died on Friday was the first death noted by officials to follow receipt of the vaccine. The boy died two days after receiving the flu shot in Incheon, near the capital Seoul.
 

A man in his 70s, who had Parkinson's disease and arrhythmia, was the most recent case. He died in Daegu on Wednesday, a day after receiving the flu vaccine. Daegu officials said the man had received vaccines since 2015 with no prior adverse reactions.

Officials said 8.3 million people have been inoculated with the free flu vaccine since it resumed on Oct 13, with around 350 cases of adverse reactions reported.

The highest number of deaths linked to the seasonal flu vaccination was six in 2005, according to Yonhap news agency.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, trust in vaccines was a growing challenge for public health bodies. The World Health Organization named vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 global health threats for last year.

In South Korea, a poll earlier this month found that 62 per cent of 2,548 respondents in Gyeonggi province, near Seoul, would not get vaccinated against Covid-19, even if a vaccine is approved, until all safety questions are fully answered. REUTERS
 

So there needs to be autopsy results for these people.

And also what's the rate of random people dropping dead every single day in Korea. They vaccinated 8.3 million people in 1 week. So what's the normal death rate in Korea during this 1 week period. Is it out of proportion?

If i go paste a Fu talisman on 8.3million people's head, i also suspect 5 people will die within 1 week. It's all the Fu's fault. 

Edited October 21, 2020 by Lala81

[noobcarbuyer]

19 minutes ago, Lala81 said:

So there needs to be autopsy results for these people.

And also what's the rate of random people dropping dead every single day in Korea. They vaccinated 8.3 million people in 1 week. So what's the normal death rate in Korea during this 1 week period. Is it out of proportion?

If i go paste a Fu talisman on 8.3million people's head, i also suspect 5 people will die within 1 week. It's all the Fu's fault. 

To be fair, this is a yearly effort and I am quite sure the deaths were reported simply because the cases are above the baseline of the yearly flu vaccination campaigns.

Anyway this recalls the tainted Cutter Salk Polio Vaccine that was developed in 1953 and rushed out in 1955 and given to 120,000 children despite warnings and indications of a failure in the manufacturing process. After being vaccinated, roughly 40,000 got “abortive” polio, with fever, sore throat, headache, vomiting and muscle pain. Fifty-one were paralyzed, and five died. Not only did some people injected with the tainted vaccine get sick, but some who got the vaccine went on to infect family members and neighbors. Instead of successfully vaccinating the children, it lead to a man-made polio epidemic instead. 

The fastest vaccine developed to date has been for mumps, and even that took four years just for the developmental stage.

With COVID-19 and the relentless pressure to develop, manufacture and deliver enough for all 7 billion humans, there are multiple stress points along the research, trials, approval, manufacturing and delivery time line. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/04/14/cutter-polio-vaccine-paralyzed-children-coronavirus/

[Mustank]

32 minutes ago, Lala81 said:

So there needs to be autopsy results for these people.

And also what's the rate of random people dropping dead every single day in Korea. They vaccinated 8.3 million people in 1 week. So what's the normal death rate in Korea during this 1 week period. Is it out of proportion?

If i go paste a Fu talisman on 8.3million people's head, i also suspect 5 people will die within 1 week. It's all the Fu's fault. 

Heng you got come and say  if not i also tio pian 😞

Edited October 21, 2020 by Mustank

[mersaylee]

Is this something like the challenge trial UK is having - To administer controlled minimum infection to volunteers of younger age group to hasten the COVID vaccine clinical trial process? 
 

 

[Lala81]

1 hour ago, noobcarbuyer said:

To be fair, this is a yearly effort and I am quite sure the deaths were reported simply because the cases are above the baseline of the yearly flu vaccination campaigns.

Anyway this recalls the tainted Cutter Salk Polio Vaccine that was developed in 1953 and rushed out in 1955 and given to 120,000 children despite warnings and indications of a failure in the manufacturing process. After being vaccinated, roughly 40,000 got “abortive” polio, with fever, sore throat, headache, vomiting and muscle pain. Fifty-one were paralyzed, and five died. Not only did some people injected with the tainted vaccine get sick, but some who got the vaccine went on to infect family members and neighbors. Instead of successfully vaccinating the children, it lead to a man-made polio epidemic instead. 

The fastest vaccine developed to date has been for mumps, and even that took four years just for the developmental stage.

With COVID-19 and the relentless pressure to develop, manufacture and deliver enough for all 7 billion humans, there are multiple stress points along the research, trials, approval, manufacturing and delivery time line. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/04/14/cutter-polio-vaccine-paralyzed-children-coronavirus/

There's only one scanty news report which has no verifiable evidence. And the fact that this just has happened it's likely even the countrys drug safety board has not reviewed the autopsy reports and confirm a linkage. 

2nd. The influenza vaccine in its current form has been more or less unchanged for many years. 

3rd. Like I mentioned. Before singapore even smell the vaccine. Its likely tens of millions would have been vaccinated worldwide. Not to mention the participants in the phase 3 trials. 

 

[Lala81]

Number of people dying in a week is a fairly random number. Over a year or many months, the data set would smooth out the variability. 

Even if u say that this week. 5 people more died compared in this week compared to any other week in a year of full data (say 2019). This may not actually mean anything statistically cos this could be just one weird week in the grand scheme of things. 

Random Variability is under estimated in a normal lay person's understanding of the world. 

It could be that its related. Or it may not.

Look at how long our own coroners case for a single unnatural death takes to conclude (even excluding extra paperwork). We often see cases being discussed in the news that died last year. Long after public memory has moved on. 

 

Edited October 21, 2020 by Lala81

[noobcarbuyer]

9 minutes ago, Lala81 said:

There's only one scanty news report which has no verifiable evidence. And the fact that this just has happened it's likely even the countrys drug safety board has not reviewed the autopsy reports and confirm a linkage. 

2nd. The influenza vaccine in its current form has been more or less unchanged for many years. 

3rd. Like I mentioned. Before singapore even smell the vaccine. Its likely tens of millions would have been vaccinated worldwide. Not to mention the participants in the phase 3 trials. 

 

1) Agreed on point one. But for the red flag to be raised, it would indicate that there are an excess deaths above the expected baseline.

2) Yes, but what has been changed is the stretched supply chains and fatigued research / manufacturing / delivery staff due to the pressures of COVID-19. It just takes one mistake along the entire manufacturing / supply chain to affect millions. 

"However, the start of a free jab programme for around 19 million eligible people was suspended for three weeks after it was discovered that some five million doses, which need to be refrigerated, had been exposed to room temperature while being transported to a medical facility."

3) Well, most likely advance shipments of the COVID-19 vaccines will probably reach S'pore mid 2021 to early 2022. Those will be for the frontline medical staff / high risk population segments. The general population will probably have to wait until end 2022 at the earliest.

Anyway it is a moot point because the failure of the Salk Vaccine at the early years was due to a manufacturing fault (and not through any fault in the efficacy of the vaccine itself). Such manufacturing faults can occur at any point in time. So earlier batches could be manufactured to specs but latter batches could be rushed out and failures in QC might happen.

Conclusion : Honestly I am just very disappointed at the failures of the international community to work together on COVID-19. Instead we have national vanity projects with each side's scientists working in silos. And the WHO and USCDC which were supposed to be running point on this, are being sidelined and belittled. That is why I am not optimistic about the possiblity of a safe and effective vaccine in the short to mid term. 

[noobcarbuyer]

2 minutes ago, Lala81 said:

Number of people dying in a week is a fairly random number. Over a year or many months, the data set would smooth out the variability. 

Even if u say that this week. 5 people more died compared in this week compared to any other week in a year of full data (say 2019). This may not actually mean anything statistically cos this could be just one weird week in the grand scheme of thanks. 

Random Variability is under estimated in a normal lay person's understanding of the world. 

 

Yes agreed, the blip may not be statistically significant. 

But it does raise a couple of red flags about why is there is sudden blip right now in a routine annual flu vaccination campaign. 

And all this in the midst of another pandemic just calls into question about how ready is the world to push out the greatest vaccination campaign (at such short notice) in recorded human history to date.

[ToyotaShuttle]

36 minutes ago, noobcarbuyer said:

1) Agreed on point one. But for the red flag to be raised, it would indicate that there are an excess deaths above the expected baseline.

2) Yes, but what has been changed is the stretched supply chains and fatigued research / manufacturing / delivery staff due to the pressures of COVID-19. It just takes one mistake along the entire manufacturing / supply chain to affect millions. 

"However, the start of a free jab programme for around 19 million eligible people was suspended for three weeks after it was discovered that some five million doses, which need to be refrigerated, had been exposed to room temperature while being transported to a medical facility."

3) Well, most likely advance shipments of the COVID-19 vaccines will probably reach S'pore mid 2021 to early 2022. Those will be for the frontline medical staff / high risk population segments. The general population will probably have to wait until end 2022 at the earliest.

Anyway it is a moot point because the failure of the Salk Vaccine at the early years was due to a manufacturing fault (and not through any fault in the efficacy of the vaccine itself). Such manufacturing faults can occur at any point in time. So earlier batches could be manufactured to specs but latter batches could be rushed out and failures in QC might happen.

Conclusion : Honestly I am just very disappointed at the failures of the international community to work together on COVID-19. Instead we have national vanity projects with each side's scientists working in silos. And the WHO and USCDC which were supposed to be running point on this, are being sidelined and belittled. That is why I am not optimistic about the possiblity of a safe and effective vaccine in the short to mid term. 

It's better to have multiple teams working on it separately. More competition creates more progress.

[noobcarbuyer]

Anyway much of the historical aversion to flu vaccination can be traced back to the swine flu outbreak in the USA back in 1976 and the fears that it could lead to an epidemic, which lead to a rush to create a vaccine in less than a year.

That is why I brought up the possibilities on how the rush in creating a new vaccine will lead to multiple stress points, each of which can negatively affect the efficacy or safety of the vaccine.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-public-health-legacy-of-the-1976-swine-flu-outbreak

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-shadow-1976-swine-flu-vaccine-fiasco-18096199

"Within 10 months, nearly 25% of the US population, or 45 million citizens, was vaccinated, but serious problems persisted throughout the process. Due to the urgency of creating new immunizations for a novel virus, the government used an attenuated “live virus” for the vaccine instead of a inactivated or “killed” form, increasing the probability of adverse side effects among susceptible groups of people receiving the vaccination."

"The Swine Flu Program was marred by a series of logistical problems ranging from the production of the wrong vaccine strain to a confrontation over liability protection to a temporal connection of the vaccine and a cluster of deaths among an elderly population in Pittsburgh. The most damning charge against the vaccination program was that the shots were correlated with an increase in the number of patients diagnosed with an obscure neurological disease known as Guillain–Barré syndrome. Of the 45 million people vaccinated against the 1976 swine flu, four hundred and fifty people developed the rare syndrome Guillain-Barré."

[Jamesc]

How to get?

For my MIL.

[Jellandross]

Maybe this is like ppl who crash their cars during 7th month then blame ghost fault.

[Windwaver]

Were there any cases of adverse effects after getting a flu jab in Singapore before COVID?

 

[Kopites]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-54634518

 

[Watwheels]

Surely it's quite chaotic to get so many vaccinated in a short time frame. Who knows whether the hospital staff got cockup and gave some of the ppl the wrong jab?

[Lala81]

13 hours ago, noobcarbuyer said:

Anyway much of the historical aversion to flu vaccination can be traced back to the swine flu outbreak in the USA back in 1976 and the fears that it could lead to an epidemic, which lead to a rush to create a vaccine in less than a year.

That is why I brought up the possibilities on how the rush in creating a new vaccine will lead to multiple stress points, each of which can negatively affect the efficacy or safety of the vaccine.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-public-health-legacy-of-the-1976-swine-flu-outbreak

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-shadow-1976-swine-flu-vaccine-fiasco-18096199

"Within 10 months, nearly 25% of the US population, or 45 million citizens, was vaccinated, but serious problems persisted throughout the process. Due to the urgency of creating new immunizations for a novel virus, the government used an attenuated “live virus” for the vaccine instead of a inactivated or “killed” form, increasing the probability of adverse side effects among susceptible groups of people receiving the vaccination."

"The Swine Flu Program was marred by a series of logistical problems ranging from the production of the wrong vaccine strain to a confrontation over liability protection to a temporal connection of the vaccine and a cluster of deaths among an elderly population in Pittsburgh. The most damning charge against the vaccination program was that the shots were correlated with an increase in the number of patients diagnosed with an obscure neurological disease known as Guillain–Barré syndrome. Of the 45 million people vaccinated against the 1976 swine flu, four hundred and fifty people developed the rare syndrome Guillain-Barré."

I'm not really into vaccine studies. And i never really studied this swine flu event or the vaccine development back then.

Talking about GBS, GBS incidence is roughly around this. 

Quote

The worldwide incidence of GBS is reported to be 0.6-2.4 cases per 100,000 per year 

It has an autoimmune origin. From my own understanding, you can get GBS out of nowhere, or it may be sparked by a viral infection or yes, a vaccination. So whether the triggering is done by the virus vs the act of vaccination is unclear.

So if u extrapolate this random incidence to 45million people over a 1 year period, u are likely to see anywhere from 200+ to 1000+ cases of GBS per 45million people per year. 

Generally speaking, the risk of eliciting GBS in vaccination is roughly estimated as ~1 in a million vaccinated people. So while GBS is often touted as one of the major fears, no evidence has been found to the contrary that the benefits of vaccinating one million people from influenza majorly outweigh the cons.

 

[Lala81]

Auto-immune reactions and triggering factors are very random.

So in Covid-19, we know that kids and young adults are usually very likely to feel the least effects. Even eliciting a fever may not happen in kids. I think it has only a 60+% incidence of fever in kids with Covid-19.

However, paradoxically, some of these least affected population has very severe auto-immune mediated damage to their body. Both in kids and even healthy 20-30 year olds (some are very fit individuals).

Edited October 22, 2020 by Lala81