Anti-vaccine campaigners stage protest in Fareham denying severity of coronavirus pandemic

The handful of conspiracy theorists positioned themselves along the footpath of the A32 Gosport Road in Fareham yesterday.

Holding yellow signs, the campaigners claimed the Covid vaccine was ‘seriously hurting people’ and asked ‘can we trust the media?’.

The protest appeared to be exactly the same as a similar bizarre rally staged weeks ago on the bridge onto Hayling Island.

Justifying their rally, one of the protesters – who did not provide his name – insisted ‘thousands of people were dying’ as a result of the vaccine.

The man said: ‘Have you heard of the yellow card reporting scheme? In America they have theirs – the VAERS – which is a vaccine adverse event report system. There are tens of thousands of deaths over there.

‘Loads of reactions: blindness, deafness, people being paralysed, I’ve heard – although I’m not sure about that one. People have had Bell's palsy, which is like a stroke. This is just from the vaccine.’

The VAERS is an American-based system for people to report any potential side-effects following a vaccination.

So far, more than 350 million Americans have been vaccinated since December 2020.

As of August 26, VAERS had received 6,968 reports of death with 28 days of being vaccinated, according to the CDC.

However, these figures offered no insight into the cause of death of those people – which could include deaths in road traffic collisions, murders, cancer and previously-diagnosed terminal illnesses.

Likewise, the UK has its own similar ‘Yellow Card’ reporting system to track vaccine side-effects.

Run by the government, the site has received and analysed 113,312 UK yellow cards from people who have received the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. These reports include a total of 320,570 suspected reactions.

However, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). which oversees the monitoring system,- said reports did ‘not necessarily mean’ the side-effects were ‘caused by the vaccine, only that the reporter has a suspicion it may have’ been.

The MHRA said: ‘Underlying or previously undiagnosed illness unrelated to vaccination can also be factors in such reports.

‘The relative number and nature of reports should therefore not be used to compare the safety of the different vaccines.’

This week a study by the Office for National Statistics revealed that fully vaccinated people are much less likely to die with Covid-19 than those who aren't, or have had only one dose.

Out of more than 51,000 Covid deaths in England between January and July 2021, only 256 occurred after two doses.

They were mostly people at very high risk from illness from Covid-19.

The figures show the high degree of protection from the vaccines against illness and death, the ONS said.

Among those who died after two doses, 13 per cent were immunocompromised, 61 per cent were male and more than 75 per cent were clinically extremely vulnerable.

In the UK, 80 per cent of people aged 16 and over have had two doses and nearly 90 per cent have had one dose.

More than 135,000 people in the UK have died from Covid-19, with the worldwide death toll standing at more than 4.55 million.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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