Will You Get Vaccinated for Coronavirus (COVID-19)? Can It Make Tinnitus or Hyperacusis Worse?

If posts like #207 are considered "creative" and "genius" then the bar at Tinnitus Talk has been set so low it's scraping the floor.

I'm posting a link here to a podcast that was released in the last couple of days. This two-hour conversation between adults is the kind of conversation about the concerns I have that I wish I could have had here. But in the end it is exhausting trying to hold a discussion when surrounded by a pack of digital hyenas posting juvenile memes, making personal attacks and speaking about others in third person. I'm not going to counter anybody's points from now on. I've said and posted all that I wanted to.

 

I’ve never seen that particular prank before, so I rated it genius because it made me laugh. After all, it's true.

I thought we were having a sensible debate about it? I haven't personally attacked you, I was only interested in hearing what your thoughts were on the subject, nothing more, nothing less.

I think we've already covered everything there is to talk about now anyway.

 

I think mRNA vaccine technology is similar to the Scottish dish, haggis. Ignoring actual Scots, there are two kinds of people in the world: people who know and understand how haggis is made, and people who enjoy eating it.

Similarly, I have yet to encounter anyone who has a better-than-bio101 understanding of how an mRNA encoding of the COVID-19 spike protein provokes an immune response, who is also more scared of the vaccine than they are of COVID-19. The reasons for this are pretty self explanatory, again, given a basic understanding of how an mRNA transcription of a foreign protein works, combined with a basic understanding of what the COVID-19 spike protein is, how it functions, and what if any specific health issues are related to the spike protein itself and not to the actual COVID-19 infection. (This is a nonzero box of things but it appears to all be cardiac effects and the way the vaxx is administered is not capable of creating alarming amounts of the spike protein in cardiac cells... again, context!)

This is the CDC's current page: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/hcp/mrna-vaccine-basics.html

I don't like it, it's not really "basics", it doesn't explain the basics of how transcription works, it doesn't explain what a spike protein is, and knowing both of those things is fundamentally necessary to understanding how the vaccines work!!

Eh, yes it is. I am not accusing you specifically of this because of the posts of yours I've read, I do not think you're in the "non reality based" camp, even if I disagree with you on some stuff. However, over the past 6 months we've had everything from people claiming this doesn't exist, or still claiming in 2021 that the CFR/IFR are remotely comparable to flu, or that vaccines are fundamentally unsafe and "inferior to supplements". Those arguments are more or less the same as a flat-earther take: we have more than sufficient objective information to disprove each of these things very trivially.

So -- all that said, I think when tempers get heated (or people have just watched a loved one die of a terrible disease), they might be prone to pigeonholing anyone who disagrees with them into the most extreme caricature possible. I try to avoid this: there is plenty of room for discussion around a lot of the uncertainties here, or the degree to which it's appropriate for governments or corporations to mandate that vaccines be administered. Those aren't "flat earther" comments. Saying "actually COVID-19 isn't any more dangerous than a bad flu" is a flat earther comment, because it's a clearly falsifiable premise, which can also easily be falsified using any one of thousands of available data inputs, and it can only be "substantiated" by relying on QAnon bullshit.

Saying "regardless of the risks that COVID-19 poses, I personally do not want to get a vaccine / wear a mask / whatever", is an opinion so it's not falsifiable even if I don't agree with it, so it's also not very useful to try to have an argument about.

The cool thing about the COVID-19 vaccine compared to flu or even measels vaccines, is, they are incredibly protective to the person who gets the vaccine (over 95%, and basically 100% at preventing serious illness). To me this means that once my own family and friends are vaxxed, I can relax a lot about people who decide not to get it, because while I might still personally think they're irresponsibly being death vectors for old people and the immunocompromised, once my own risks are off the table then life starts to return to normal for us.

Measles vaccine is only ~88%, flu much less. This is why handfuls of anti-vaxx parents have been able to create infection pockets over the last few years despite generally good vaxx rates in the US.

 

29 people died just days after taking the Pfizer vaccine in Norway. 10 died just a few days after taking it in Germany. There's 32 cases in Finland of side effects after taking the vaccine. There are many cases of getting facial paralysis after taking one of the vaccines.

I feel empathy for the elderly who are forced to take one of these experimental vaccines but not for those who voluntarily take it.

 

That's an interesting take on it. I think being outside the UK you need to consider that here, unlike in large parts of the US (although with Biden's inauguration could this change?) we are still in lockdown. The only reason for that is, SARS-CoV-2. So eventually the debates will inevitably pivot between suppression policies and lethality of the disease.

At the beginning of lockdown last year we were told that it would be just "3 weeks to flatten the curve". Nearly one year later and all our government is hinting at is that it might start easing lockdown at the end of March but that restrictions will not lift completely because we'll then return to Tiers, which as I explained in a previous post is just hopping from one lockdown to another for many people depending on which Tier one lives in.

There's obviously a lot of water gone under the bridge since January 2020 but the all-mortality figures for 2020 are now in. In a pandemic it's the all-mortality figures that are what I've come to understand will ultimately be the main metric we should concern ourselves with. Off of those stats the point that has been made by Dr. Mike Yeadon and Dr. Clare Craig among many others is that the pandemic is over in the UK. It was over by June last year. The winter spike of the dominant virus is high but it is within the envelope given the circumstances (there are excess deaths every winter). To that point, debating what's real and what's not becomes largely immaterial in my view because the data cant lie, even if the media can spin it.

Some stats I've seen just today (although I've not been able to verify them) is that population adjusted mortality rates in the UK were more or less the same for 2020 as they were in 1999. We've had a rough year and we know COVID-19 is nasty but this continuing armageddon upon which brutal locking down resides; bodies "piling up", collapse of the NHS (which if you'll pardon my sarcasm has been collapsing every other year since time began) continues to fuel the news cycle that is driving the hysteria that ultimately perpetuates lockdown because of public support. And that is the critically important point in my view.

Conversely the stats on the damage lockdown is causing are eyewatering. But believe it or not, there seems to be a cohort of people in the UK who dismiss those figures out of hand because "we don't have a reliable model for what the stats would've been if we didn't lock down". The problem here is, people have very short memories. And as Ivor Cummins pointed out, there's a lot of sophistry at play. Government/media already told us (projection or prediction it doesn't really matter any more) that if we didn't lockdown there could be 500,000 deaths due to COVID-19. That was the figure the media ran with and set a ball rolling that hasn't stopped.

One year later we now have a pretty reasonable understanding of the other side of that model. We now know that lockdown has caused a huge backlog of elective surgeries (that we all pay for in our taxes here in the UK) being denied in 2020.

We know that thousands of people were denied routine (and non-routine) cancer screening during 2020. We can only imagine at this point how many of those numbers will translate into an avoidable cancer death.

We know that ONS are being reticent about things like elevated suicide figures, which is why people are looking at other data like, Ambulance call out data, to gauge what is happening regarding that. I heard Dr. Clare Craig state that in London alone, the call out rate for suicide has elevated by about circa 30% during lockdown.

We know that self-harm is up during lockdown.

We know that domestic abuse is up during lockdown.

We know that 250,000 businesses will collapse as a result of lockdown.

We know that generations of our kids and their kids will be burdened with the cost of furloughing 10 million people during lockdown.

Having said all of that, we know that mortality rates, that spiked during the pandemic (which is over), are now within the seasonal envelope. Given all of this, I do not believe that COVID-19 has been the Biblical end times plague that the media whipped up during 2020 and is still whipping up. But I do believe that the vicious policies continually being enacted as a result are outrageously and tragically disproportionate.

To be honest, I think everything else is academic. In my view, at this point in time, if someone is a virus supporter and maintains the narrative hook, line and sinker that is driving the hysteria which our media delights in telling us is "ripping" through the nation then we're never getting out of this mess. I don't like to go the emotional leverage route but if large numbers of people don't seriously began to challenge this then lockdown deaths are ultimately going to be on them. The situation is that serious.

I'd rather not get into the vaccine debate. As I say, I'm beginning to find this process exhaustive and quite honestly, what I wanted to do at the beginning was put the other perspective out there in as few posts as possible and then let people make up their own minds. The only thing I'll say is that I'm not entirely convinced at this point that it's even right to refer to the mRNA jab as a vaccine. Irrespective, my main concern right now is whether or not it's appropriate to deploy novel technology like this on such a grand scale during a period of mass hysteria.

You raised a point about the flu, and the only thing I'd say about that is that I understand why people assimilate the flu with COVID-19. @Ed209 stated himself that he felt like he had the flu. It's a natural comparison for people to make when things like the flu and various other respiratory viruses do the rounds each year. Also, we know how serious flu is for the elderly, immuno-compromised etc. At the end of the day there's a lot of academics and medics out there who are making the same flu comparison because I suppose as far as mortality, endemicity, infectiousness etc are concerned, it makes sense in their eyes for them to do so.

There are 4 people that I've followed a lot during this past year:

Dr. Mike Yeadon
Dr. Clare Craig
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
Ivor Cummins

Craig, Kendrick and Cummins have recently done podcasts with a guy called Steve Katasi who I think has done an excellent job of conducting fact based balanced interviews. Those audio (totalling about 6 hours worth) are on his site and between all three I feel there is a useful counter-balance to every aspect of what's been discussed in these threads recently, from the outbreak itself, to the data, PCR, and also the situation regarding things like flow-control through the NHS. If anyone wishes to get a bit more technical, Yeadon is an interesting source on that and there's plenty of stuff out there with him talking.

I'll leave it at that. Suffice to say, these are not conclusions on my part; they're perspectives I suppose. I've also not arrived at them by diving straight in. It's been a long process. And as I said to Ed209 a while ago, if our media had done it's job we wouldn't even be having this conversation. I don't mean to patronise but I sincerely hope that you in the US don't end up en-masse in the mess we're in here because if you do I think there's a good chance your viewpoints may change a bit. Take it easy.

 

Post links to the sources of this information because I just don't believe you.

 

Unfortunately @PeteJ is telling the truth. I know about the 23 people dying in Norway after having the Pfizer vaccine. Apparently these people were quite elderly and not in the best of health due to underlying medical conditions. The others I don't know of.

Saying that, I will be having the vaccine when offered.

 

23 Died After Getting Covid Shot in Norway. Here's the Rest of the Story

After a striking headline circulated over the weekend -- that 23 patients in Norway died after getting a Covid-19 shot -- TheStreet reached out to the Norwegian Medicines Agency to find out more details of what happened.

Norwegian health officials say they have now revised guidelines on who should get the Covid-19 shots made by Pfizer (PFE), after 23 deaths among the frail and elderly were believed to be "associated with" recent Covid-19 vaccinations. More than half of those who died, 13, have been assessed. The agency believes those fatalities might be linked to common adverse reactions from the vaccine, known as BNT162b2.

A Pfizer spokesperson said that the company and its partner, BioNTech, are "aware" of the deaths and are working with the Norwegian agency to collect necessary information. Pfizer's "immediate thoughts are with the bereaved families," said Jerica Pitts, Pfizer's director of global media relations, in an email to TheStreet on Sunday. But Pitts pointed out that the number of incidents is so far not alarming and to be expected, according to Norwegian health officials.

For perspective, 42,003 people have been given the first dose of the vaccine in Norway as of Friday, so the deaths are a tiny fraction of the total vaccinated. Also, Norway, which has a population of slightly more than 5 million, has fewer than 58,600 total known cases of Covid-19 and under 517 deaths attributed to the virus, according to Johns Hopkins data. That ratio alone appears far worse one than that of the vaccinated vs. deaths potentially linked to the vaccine.

 

This is an accurate chart of the population-adjusted mortality rates based on the ONS data:



The reason why they use a 5-year average is to account for the advancements in modern medicine. More lives are saved as medical breakthroughs are discovered, and this is why going back 20-years or more is not a fair comparison.

This excerpt explains it:

This doesn't quite sound so bad, does it? Fewer people dying per 1,000 than in 2003, and pretty much any year before. But there's a clue here as to why this isn't an especially meaningful comparison.

Crude mortality rates, which is what we're talking about here, have been falling for most of the 20th and 21st century as medical science has advanced and people have lived longer. So casting this number as telling us "it's only as bad as 2003" isn't quite right.

A far better yardstick (since we're trying to judge this year versus similar years) is to see how this crude mortality rate compares with the years before it. Are things getting better or worse, in other words? These are what the ONS calls excess death rates (a term you're doubtless already familiar with), and when you look at these population adjusted excess death rates, a very different picture presents itself.

In 2020 the number of excess deaths, as a proportion of the population, rose by 12.1% compared with the average of the previous five years.​

This is the population-adjusted excess death chart, which is the only meaningful comparison:



Here you can see the impact it has made. You have to go back to 1940 to encounter a worse year. The people who compare the deaths to 1999, or 2003, are not statisticians, and they do not understand what they are talking about.

The rest of your post I can't argue with. I've been saying all of the same things in my previous posts. However, I can understand the pressure the government must be under when the hospitals start to become overwhelmed, and the mortality rates start to spike again. It's a very difficult situation that is often made light of. That's the only part I take exception to; people saying it's just the flu, or it's all fake, etc.

Our hospital has 700 beds, and 324 of those are COVID-19 patients. Because of this, many elective surgeries were cancelled. You cannot just allow bodies to pile up.

The government have to take a lot of responsibility for this, because it was them that drastically cut the number of beds in the first place.

 

29 deaths among elderly people with underlying conditions, out of 40,000+ vaccinated.

What's the normal expected death rate over that timeframe for this demographic? If it's a problem with the Pfizer vaccine, why is Norway the only country witnessing this?

Yeah, and these aren't even clearly "linked to the vaccine".

The same people who wanted to tell us that "dying with COVID-19" isn't the same thing as "dying of COVID-19", are now also telling us that "dying after receiving a vaccine" and "dying as a result of the vaccine" are the same thing, and they're incapable of seeing the cognitive dissonance there. @PeteJ loves to divebomb in here with unscientific takes, refuse to substantiate them, and then will put you on ignore if you're too aggressive about pointing out all the ways they are massively wrong in falsifiable ways that can clearly be falsified using noncontroversial data...

@UKBloke you raise some good food for discussion and it deserves more of a reply than I can give right now. However, my tl;dr response is lockdowns have, in the US and UK, generally been handled badly, both in terms of doing economic harm but also not really taking the more radical steps that would reduce transmission to R < 1, and allow actual eradication. (How possible this even is for countries that aren't literal islands, is debatable, but the UK does have Island status, and yet has mucked this up in ways AU and NZ have not).

So, I think the economic questions about lockdowns are different from the scientific ones, and generally the thing that's reducing transmission where I am is people being careful and staying home, well past what is legally mandated.

All that said -- we should be all eyes on Norway, and open to the idea that there are unknown risks here, or even potentially risks to certain ethnic groups which leads to clustering in Scandinavian countries. All these things are possible, but the current data from Norway is not nearly sufficient to come to any real conclusions.

 

A nurse in Portugal died the day after having the Pfizer vaccine, and she was only 41. In Mexico another nurse got a serious brain problem the day after getting vaccinated.

 

Again Ed, this is absolutely a clinical case (if you'll pardon the pun) of what I've been saying. The slides and excerpts you're posting are from Sky News, which means the data is editorialised data, oftentimes mass propagated first.

When people start to look at it and say, hold on, there's quite a few holes in these statements; instead of acknowledging that we now have both sides of an argument in the domain that could be some food for thought, people repost the original editorial and state that no one else knows what they're talking about (my mate who I mentioned to you that I spent 9 months playing email table-tennis with on these matters does exactly the same).

I agree. The social distancing of beds, i.e. in plain language, reduced capacity in the NHS, combined with staff outage due in large part to track-and-trace self-isolating is a scandal.

The cynical part of me wonders whether or not once the enquires begin someone is going to make the statement that had the NHS been in private hands this kind of "blunder" (because it's likely that's how they'll refer it) would not have happened. And then of course the door opens to privatisation.

 

Whilst I agree that corporate news groups are not an ideal source of information - I prefer to cite journals - but in this instance, the source for the data on those charts is the ONS.

I've followed the raw data sheets for this year, directly from the source, but there's no way I've got time to verify the last 60 years. If these are inaccurate, then I'd expect to have heard about it by now, as there would be a forced retraction and a correction would have to be issued. With the amount of scrutiny surrounding this, they just wouldn't get away with it.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. The data we have objectively show there was a problem last year. I can't see how anyone can argue against this. It is very clear cut.

They have been reducing the bed capacity for the last decade or more.

A few friends and I have said this before. Break the system, and then offer privatisation as the saviour. I think the backlash would be too strong for this to really happen, though, but who knows. Anything is possible with this government.

 

If going back 20 years isn't a fair comparison why is it fair to cite Spanish Flu?

I think, all-cause mortality, for the past 20 years is a reasonable metric to give some context to 2020 and it's policies. Why do you say that people who cite these stats, "do not know what they're talking about"?

You know that the context here isn't about the past 10 years, it's about 2020's social distancing, ICU capacity and the news cycle.

 

It's not. I already pointed that out in my other post. The news report that stated this (that I posted) used the raw unadjusted data, but a better comparison is the population-adjusted excess deaths for the reasons I've already said.

Because most people don't. Even you and I don't fully understand the intricacies because we're not statisticians. Interpreting data can be a minefield, even for experts. I guess I've seen too many people incorrectly using stats to validate their arguments during this pandemic. There is a reason why the 5-year average is used for excess deaths, and it's because you have to account for the sharp decline in all-mortality rates across a larger period. Some variables have to be acknowledged, like the introduction of vaccines, antibiotics, medical breakthroughs, better road safety, etc, etc. You can research this for yourself to see how the overall mortality figures continue to fall, and how people continue to live longer.

Again, I'm not really sure what you mean. I was just stating that our government have been reducing beds for over 10 years in all of our hospitals, and this pandemic has highlighted how idiotic this decision has been. We have one of the worst beds-per-capita figures in all of Europe.

ICUs are full, and people are dying. The government's response when this first hit was appallingly bad. They should admit that they got a lot of stuff wrong. They were far too slow to get mass testing underway, and by the time they took it seriously, the horse had well and truly left the stable. It has been one blunder after another.

 

Powerful Governments: well known for admitting when they got a lot of stuff wrong; also well known for being able to move quickly and pivot on a dime based on science-based observations of changing ground conditi...

Oh I can't even finish typing this without laughing hysterically.

 

This was sent by a friend today:



There's no way of knowing if this was related to the vaccine, but because it is hearing related, I figured it was worth sharing.

 

Isabella,

I am sorry to read that you got a severe spike in your tinnitus loudness after your first Pfizer vaccine injection. Has the loudness returned to the pre-vaccine level? If not, is the spike gradually improving?

Regards,
Derek

 

Can one of you more scientifically inclined people help me out with something?

There's an ingredient in the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine called Tromethamine. I did some googling and it appears that there is a drug with Tromethamine in it called Toradol (Ketorolac Tromethamine) that is known to cause or worsen tinnitus.

I'm scientifically illiterate, but my understanding is that Tromethamine is just one element of this drug, and that there are many other elements of it that are the likely culprit in causing/worsening tinnitus.

Is Tromethamine something that us tinnitus folks ought to be worried about with regards to the Moderna vaccine moving forward?

I had a spike after my first Moderna jab that fluctuated the first 5 or 6 days, and has finally settled back to normal. I've been trying to figure out what may have caused it an this Tromethamine is all that I have come up with aside from stress, wax, and my focus being 100% on my tinnitus after the jab.

I'm worried about getting my second dose in 2 weeks time and want to make sure I'm not taking a dumb risk before going through with it.

 

I can't speak to the specifics, and none of us are experts in any of this because it's all so new, but my own opinion, for whatever it's worth, is that the risk of worsening my tinnitus through COVID-19 is so much greater than the risk of worsening it through the vaccine, that I wouldn't hesitate to get both shots.

 

Had my first Pfizer jab yesterday.

Feel okay so far.



My tinnitus is loud today but no more so than it is on other loud days, so I thought I would post this to reassure people.

For the science, over here in the UK, I have found Professor Devi Sridhar to be a good source of information, along with this site:

https://www.covidfaq.co/

Don’t really do the politics but have found journalists like Toby Young and Allison Pearson to be completely and utterly full of shit. But then they are on pretty much everything they write about.

 

RN here. Both. Moderna.

 

Has anyone here got vaccinated with Szputnyik V or the Sinopharm vaccine? If so, what is your experience?

 

I haven't decided yet one way or another, but I am leaning towards the option of not getting vaccinated. I know a lot of people who have suffered from COVID-19 and they did not experience any major symptoms, it just passed like an ordinary cold or flu.

I think pharma companies have not yet provided enough info on potential side effects from the vaccines. I am also skeptical about the vaccination process because the vaccines, to be effective, have to be stored at very low temperatures, and administered fast and correctly. Many vaccines also require a second dose to be administered within a certain time frame.

 

The AstraZeneca vaccine is barely effective for people over 55 years old, one of the risk groups, so what's the point of having that vaccine?

I agree with you that there is not enough information on side effects from the vaccines. Now there are a lot of different vaccines to choose from, the only problem being that in some countries people cannot choose at all and they have to take the vaccine that is provided to them. Maybe some people get the Pfizer vaccine and others that unreliable AstraZeneca vaccine... it's like the lottery.

 

Yep, we have no say in what vaccine we get offered here, and I'll most likely be offered the AstraZeneca, as I'm in the group of people of "young people with no risks of a severe case of COVID-19". I'll probably say no if that's the case. I have no interest in a vaccine that's only about 60% effective. The benefit doesn't outweigh the risk then imo.

I'm only interested in the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.

 

That's because it is like an ordinary cold or flu.

It is also reported that vaccines WON'T STOP the virus. Lol. Yes, you still need to practice these insane measures that apparently don't work. Self-isolate even if you "tested negative. " Practice social distancing, wear a mask OR TWO... lol.... use plexiglass to divide yourself from people in stores and schools. Cops can arrest you and drag you away to Quarantine Prisons.

But, vaccination is still not enough and now a "new variant strain" is coming. Lol. Of course, it came from South Africa or Brazil. Uh oh. So, your Pfizer and Moderna vaccine will be insufficient against this too. Prepare yourself to be covered in glass costumes or be anal swabbed everywhere you go. Lol. ****ing ridiculous.

No, not doing any vaccine.

 

Yes, politicians have warned that we will have to continue wearing masks even when most of the population is vaccinated.

They actually do not know for how long the vaccine can prevent being infected by COVID-19.

 

Yep. Politicians are not medical experts and Doctors/Health professionals are split on the narrative. Despite what you are told from "official sources," it is perfectly reasonable to be hesitant and question what to do.

 

No it's not.

No they're not.