The results are in from the world's largest study into the side effects of COVID vaccines. The study involved almost 100 million people from across 8 countries.
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00:00 99 million people, 183 million doses of vaccines, looking at Astra, Moderna and Pfizer. And
00:10 they've done it in eight countries with very reliable data, places like Australia, New
00:14 Zealand, Canada, Denmark, Finland. And the results show that, well, first of all, they
00:21 uncovered side effects that they hadn't quite expected, and they did show up as a signal
00:28 there. All the side effects were rare. And it takes me a little bit just to explain the
00:36 data, because what they were doing was they were saying, look, what's the base rate of
00:41 these problems in the community? And what's the rise above the base rate? How many cases
00:46 would be expected over this period of time in this group of people? And then how many
00:51 cases appeared? And what they showed was that they were rare. So let's start. And they only
01:00 chose significant side effects if they were confident that they were side effects. So
01:05 Guillain-Barre syndrome is one that's been talked about a lot. You and I have talked
01:08 about it on the virus on the news channel. And so this is an ascending paralysis of the
01:14 body, a bit like-- well, it's not really like multiple sclerosis, but it affects the nervous
01:22 system. Usually, in most people, it's a temporary phenomenon, although it can be quite serious
01:27 at the time. Guillain-Barre seemed to be only a problem with the Astra vaccine. Rare, but
01:33 only with the Astra vaccine, not with the mRNA vaccines. Myocarditis, pericarditis,
01:39 inflammation of the heart, that showed up as a significant side effect. And no surprises
01:44 there with the mRNA vaccines. Then there was a side effect called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis.
01:52 So this is essentially a brain inflammation, usually seen in children, but in this case,
01:58 in older people. These are largely 20 to 60-year-olds. And again, in most people, self-limiting,
02:06 but acute can be quite nasty. But to give you an idea of how-- and it was only with
02:10 the Moderna vaccine. They didn't see it with Pfizer, and they didn't see it with Astra.
02:14 So out of 10 million doses of Astra, 1 million-- well, I think 10 million doses of Moderna,
02:22 I should say, they expected to see two cases in that population of this brain inflammation,
02:30 and they saw seven. So you can see how rare it is, but it needs more investigation.
02:37 So out of that cohort of 99 million participants who were the subject of this study, how many
02:42 people came up with side effects? I've been asked this question before in terms
02:52 of how many people. If you just take the brain inflammation, out of 99 million people, seven.
02:59 Because this was-- I mean, the whole-- So it's not a lot of people.
03:01 Yeah. But the thing about side effects is that a lot of people around the world were
03:04 wondering, what if I'm one of the seven, right? But proportionality is really, really
03:08 important here. That's right. So it's vanishingly rare, but
03:12 it does exist. And it's all about transparency so that you know what the risks are. And this
03:19 would be like winning the biggest lotto three times in your life, something like that.
03:27 As we mentioned, this was-- eight countries was the scope. How much can that be extrapolated
03:33 to the rest of the world population, other recipients of these vaccines?
03:36 It's a good question because you might well get different genetic susceptibilities in
03:40 different populations. But in terms of a representative population for Australia, particularly Canada
03:50 was heavily involved. It's a very similar population to Australia's. I think Australians
03:54 can take it away that, from their point of view, it gives a good understanding of the
03:58 risk of side effects. I want to turn now to another study, this
04:01 time into a type of blood fat that's been linked with heart disease and strokes. Tell
04:07 me about that. We all know about cholesterol. And if you've
04:11 thought about cholesterol, you've heard about there's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol.
04:16 Bad cholesterol is called LDL. And that's the one that they target to reduce the risk
04:22 of heart attack and stroke and so on. It's been known for a long time that on the side
04:26 here, there's another blood fat. It's not part of cholesterol. It's a separate blood
04:30 fat. And it goes by the name lipoprotein little a, 'cause there's a little a next to it, the
04:36 way the experts describe it. And it's been known for a while that LP little a increases
04:43 the risk of heart attack and stroke. But cardiologists have been trying to find all sorts of reasons
04:48 why they shouldn't measure it. One of the reasons is that they haven't got effective
04:51 treatments for it. It turns out, and it's just getting stronger and stronger and stronger,
04:56 that LP little a is a strong risk factor for heart attacks and strokes in its own right.
05:01 And it should be measured in people who are at high risk. 'Cause there are ways of bringing
05:06 it down and reducing your risk. And there are new treatments on the horizon. And it's
05:10 as potent in terms of heart attack and stroke as LDL cholesterol.
05:14 How do you get about working out if you are at high risk or not?
05:18 You get a simple blood test. It's that easy?
05:20 Yeah, it's that easy. The trouble is it's not reimbursed at the moment. So it'll cost
05:23 you anywhere between 25 and 50 bucks.
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