The Israeli MOH had no adverse events reporting system for the entire year of 2021. They commissioned a research team to analyse the reports from a new system instituted in December 2021. 6 months later the study’s findings indicated long-term side effects, including some not listed by Pfizer, and a causal relationship—so the MOH publish a manipulative report, lying that no new signal was found.
“Here we will have to really think medical-legal. Why medical-legal? Because for quite a few adverse events we said: ‘OK, it exists, and there is a report, but still get vaccinated’. I mean, we have to think about how to write it and how to present it correctly. So this will not yield lawsuits later: ‘Wait, wait, wait, you said everything will pass, and you can get vaccinated. And now look what happened to me. The phenomenon continues’”.
The speaker is Prof. Mati Berkowitz, a paediatric specialist, head of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology unit at Shamir Medical Center, and head of the research team appointed by the Israeli Ministry of Health (IMOH) to examine the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine. This crucial study was based on a new adverse event reporting system the MOH launched in December 2021 – 12 months AFTER rolling out the vaccines to the public, since the one instituted in December 2020, as they now officially admit, was dysfunctional and did not allow an analysis of the data. In an internal Zoom meeting in early June, the recording of which was leaked to the press, Prof. Berkowitz warned MOH seniors that they should think carefully how to present his study’s findings to the public, otherwise they may be sued, since they completely contradict the MOH’s claims that serious side effects are rare, short term and transient. After analysing the reports received over a period of 6 months, the research team found that many serious side effects were in fact long-term, including ones not listed by Pfizer, and establish causal relations with the vaccine. Yet, instead of publishing the findings transparently to the public, the MOH withheld them for nearly two months, and when it finally released an official report, it misrepresented and manipulated the findings, minimizing the extent of reports, and stating that no new adverse events (“signals”) were found, and that the events that were detected were not necessarily caused by the vaccine, even though the researchers themselves said the exact opposite.
Background: “The world’s laboratory” had no reliable monitoring system
As is well known, Israel was crowned, by none other than Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla, “the world’s laboratory”. And for a good reason. Indeed, Israel has a very high vaccination rate and was the first in the world to give boosters to everyone. In fact, Pfizer’s request for the approval of the boosters was at least partially based on the so-called study conducted in Israel. Israel was also one of the first countries in the world to vaccinate pregnant women.
Yet, as the MOH now admits, during this entire critical year in which the vast majority of Israelis were vaccinated, most of them with 2-3 doses, the vaccine adverse events reporting system was dysfunctional and did not enable a reliable analysis of the data.
In fact, since the beginning of the vaccination campaign, many Israeli experts have expressed serious concerns regarding the ability of the IMOH to monitor the safety of the vaccine and provide reliable data to the world. Nevertheless, the IMOH told the Israeli public, to the FDA, and to the entire world, that they have a surveillance system, and that they are closely monitoring the data. For example, Prof. Retsef Levy from MIT, an expert in health systems and risk management, voiced serious criticism during a Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting on September 17 which focused on the approval of the booster dose, stating that the system is dysfunctional and that the safety of COVID-19 vaccines is not monitored properly. In response, Dr. Sharon Alroi-Preis, the Health Ministry’s head of public services and a top COVID adviser to the Israeli government, claimed that she is “pretty surprised with Retsef Levi’s comment that Israel doesn’t follow adverse events”. Dr. Alroi-Preis stated: “It’s our data. I’m in charge of it. So I know exactly what is being reported to us”.
Only at the end of December 2021, a year after starting the vaccine rollout did the MOH finally institute a proper system, to coincide with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in children aged 5-11. The new system is based on a non-anonymous digital reporting form, which the Ministry asked all public HMOs (Health Management Organizations) to distribute among all patients after they had been vaccinated, so that those who suffered side effects could report them. At the same time, the ministry appointed Prof. Mati Berkowitz and his staff members to analyse the reports. The analysis was done on reports received from the HMOs in Israel over a period of 6 months –- from the beginning of December 2021 to the end of May 2022.
The team examined both the close categories of side effects that were set by the MOH (there were 7 such categories), and the free text (they identified 22 categories of side effects). Due to limited time and resources, they decided to first analyse only the 5 most common side effects they identified:
1. neurological injuries;
2. general side effects;
3. menstrual irregularities;
4. musculoskeletal system disorders;
5. digestive system/kidney and urinary system.