Features Australia
Covid vaccine rules are heartless and senseless
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25 February 2023
9:00 AM
Vicky Derderian is a fighter. For seven years her heart has struggled to pump blood around her body, stretching thinner and growing weaker, a condition called dilated cardiomyopathy. In 2020, she was fitted biventricular assist devices, implantable pumps that help both sides of her heart function while she awaits a transplant.
There’s only one obstacle. The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne insists she get a Covid vaccine even though Vicky has a permanent exemption provided by the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) because of the well-known risk that Covid vaccines can trigger heart inflammation.
Dr Peter McCullough, one of the most published cardiologists in the world, has been in Australia this month speaking at sold-out events about treating Covid. He says that under no circumstances should Vicky, or any heart transplant patient, get a Covid vaccine because of the damage it can do to the heart.
That’s what happened to Natalie Boyce. She was only 21 and a competitive netball player. Yet she died of heart failure at the Alfred in March 2022, six weeks after receiving a Moderna booster.
Natalie had been diagnosed with antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), an autoimmune disorder that can cause the body to make antibodies that attack the cells lining blood vessels causing blood clots. People with a history of autoimmune disorders were excluded from the Covid vaccine clinical trials because it was recognised the vaccine might trigger dangerous clotting. Sure enough, in March 2021, a 27-year-old woman with undiagnosed APS developed catastrophic clotting and kidney failure. She survived thanks to the expert care she received and her case was published in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Rheumatology on 7 December 2021.
Tragically, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) failed to warn Australians of the risk Covid vaccines pose to people with APS. Three months later Natalie died after the Moderna booster triggered catastrophic clotting causing kidney and heart failure.
The TGA has also refused to warn Australians that the Pfizer Covid vaccine triggered fatal myocarditis in Roberto Garin, a healthy 52-year-old father of two who died a week after his first jab. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) accepted that Roberto’s death was caused by a Covid vaccine. It lists a total of 15 deaths in this category. The TGA only lists 14. The ABS explains the difference by noting that it accepts expert reports while waiting for a coronial finding, which can take years. Despite repeated approaches, the TGA refuses to explain, on the record, why it has not accepted the findings of the expert forensic pathologist Bernard l’Ons.
L’Ons found that Roberto had an undiagnosed sarcoidosis, a benign inflammatory condition affecting his heart. The heart also showed a clear transition from cardiac sarcoidosis to fulminating myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle so rapid and severe that it is frequently fatal. Critically, l’Ons dates the time of transition to the time of Covid-19 vaccination.
So concerned was l’Ons that he suggested sarcoid patients receive an echocardiogram prior to a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccination to check whether the sarcoidosis affected their heart so that if it did, alternative vaccination types could be considered.
In the context of a pandemic caused by a novel pathogen and the use of novel vaccines which have only provisional approval, why is the TGA sitting on this vital information? Dr l’Ons’ warning is acutely important to Vicky. She has already been diagnosed with ‘chronic heart inflammation suggestive of untreated myocarditis’ and ‘likely cardiac sarcoidosis’. Dr McCullough says if Vicky’s heart sustains any more damage it is almost certainly going to be lethal.
Desperate to get the authorities to respect Vicky’s vaccine exemption, her husband John asked Victorian Senator Ralph Babet of the United Australia Party to raise her case in the Senate, which he did. It led to national television coverage. On the Today program Dr Nick Coatsworth, Australia’s former deputy chief medical officer, told Vicky she should get a Covid vaccine because if she got Covid after her transplant not only might she die, her transplanted heart would die with her.
This makes no sense. Everybody from Bill Gates to Albert Bourla has admitted that Covid vaccines don’t stop infection. More importantly, vaccination is more dangerous for Vicky than infection. This is because the vaccine is injected into the body and circulates in the blood stream where it can enter the cells of any tissue or organ in the body – including her heart – and create spike proteins which are always inflammatory.
A respiratory infection, on the other hand, starts in the mucous membranes of the nose, giving Vicky a chance to fight it off with her innate immune system aided by nasal sprays, antivirals and anti-inflammatory drugs before it gets into her lungs and from there into her blood stream.
It has also now been admitted, in a study published in the Lancet on 16 February and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation no less, that vaccine immunity wanes far more rapidly than infection-acquired immunity. That is hardly surprising since it is true for every other infection yet this fact has been denied for most of the pandemic by US and Australian health authorities.
Not only does vaccine immunity wane rapidly, it isn’t triggered until the virus gets into the blood, whereas infection immunity kicks in in the nose. In addition, a study conducted in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Freiburg and published in the peer-reviewed journal Pathogens this month shows that in heart transplant recipients natural infection gives superior immunity compared to vaccination.
A last problem for Vicky is that there are studies in corneal and lung transplantation which show that vaccination in either the donor or the recipient can increase the risk of organ rejection or failure. There is no data yet on heart transplants but in an ideal world, says Dr McCullough, it would be better to receive a donated organ from an unvaccinated person.
Nobody knows better than Vicky that this is not an ideal world as she battles on in search of doctors and regulators with a heart and a brain.
Nelle's journey 