‘Misleading’ claims in article on Covid vaccinations

I AM a frequent reader of both The Herald and The Herald on Sunday and have always appreciated the quality of its reporting and opinion pieces and the broad views expressed within.

However, for the first time, I have felt compelled to raise an issue directly in relation to Joanna Blythman’s opinion piece (“Making vaccine compulsory is immoral – and it doesn’t even work”, November 20).

I feel that Ms Blythman’s summary of the MHRA’S Yellow Card report statistics was misrepresentative and misleading.

In her summary of the Yellow Card report she states that “it recorded a total number of deaths caused by Covid vaccines, to date, of 1,766 people”.

The MHRA clearly state in their weekly reporting of the Yellow Card system: “The MHRA has received 611 UK reports of suspected ADRS to the Covid-19 Pfizer/biontech Vaccine in which the patient died shortly after vaccination, 1,122 reports for the Covid-19 Vaccine Astrazeneca, 19 for the Covid-19 Vaccine Moderna and 32 where the brand of vaccine was unspecified.

“The majority of these reports were in elderly people or people with underlying illness.

“Usage of the vaccines has increased over the course of the campaigns and as such, so has reporting of fatal events with a temporal association with vaccination.

“However, this does not mean that there is a link between vaccination and the fatalities reported. Review of specific fatal reports is provided in the summaries above.

“The pattern of reporting for all other fatal reports does not suggest the vaccines played a role in these deaths.”

Kevin Murphy, Kilwinning.