ABC health expert Norman Swan has admitted the Covid vaccines caused unexpected side effects, but sees them as “winning the lottery three times in a lifetime”.
Dr. Swan was commenting on the largest ever study into side effects of Covid vaccines, which was published last week.
“They uncovered side effects that they didn’t quite expect and that showed up as a signal,” Dr. Swan told ABC interviewer Jeremy Fernandez on Monday.
Dr. However, Swan stressed that the side effects seen in the 99 million subjects who received Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca shots were “rare.”
ABC health expert Norman Swan has admitted there were unexpected side effects from the Covid vaccines, but said they were rare
He said Guillain-Barre syndrome was a side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine that received particular attention in the study.
He described it as a ‘descending paralysis of the body affecting the nervous system’.
‘It’s usually a temporary phenomenon in most people, but it can be quite serious at the time,’ said Dr Swan.
An unexpected side effect of the Moderna vaccine was acute disseminated encephalomyelitis.
“So this is essentially an inflammation of the brain that is usually seen in children, but in this case in older people, these are largely 20 to 60 year olds,” Dr Swan said.
‘He described the condition as ‘self-limiting and quite annoying’.
Dr. Swan said the condition was still extremely rare, with only seven cases seen out of 10 million injections.
He compared the chance of getting it to “winning the biggest lottery three times in your life.”
When asked how applicable the research was to Australians, Dr Swan said it included Australians as well as people from similar countries such as Canada.
The largest ever study into Covid vaccine side effects has found rare conditions linked to the Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccinations
Dr. Swan has been a strong supporter of getting the Covid vaccines, despite initially dismissing their likely efficacy and saying those using them were “guinea pigs”.
In July 2022, the Scottish-born medical commentator revealed he had caught Covid for a second time, despite having four jabs.
In the research that Dr. Swan cited involved an international coalition of vaccine experts who looked for 13 medical conditions among 99 million vaccine recipients in eight countries.
They confirmed that the shots made by Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca are linked to a significantly higher risk of five medical conditions, including Guillain-Barre syndrome.
But the study also warned of several other conditions that they said warranted further investigation, including links between a brain swelling condition and the Moderna shot.
The increased risk of 12 conditions that may be linked to different Covid vaccines. Among the most troubling were inflammation of the heart muscle and swelling of the brain
However, the team says the absolute risk of developing either condition remains small.
They said 13 billion doses of vaccines had been administered and there were only 2,000 cases of all conditions.
Their research was published in the journal Vaccine.