Recently, many parts of South Korea are being hit by the third wave of the neo-crown pneumonia epidemic. As of December 8, the number of new cases in a single day has remained in the triple digits for 31 days in a row, and the Metropolitan Area Response Level has been raised to 2.5.
Under the pressure of the neo-coronary pneumonia epidemic, South Korea is also experiencing a “flu vaccine controversy” – more than a hundred deaths have been reported, causing intense panic among the public.
Local people receive a flu vaccine at a hospital in Goyang City, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, November 2, 2020. Photo / People’s Visual
So, is the Korean flu vaccine really the “real” culprit in human deaths?
What is the root cause of this storm?
What are the implications of this for future vaccination of Korea with the Neocon vaccine?
D. Student of Political Diplomacy, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea
1
A Glimpse of the Vaccine Storm
Korea has been active in promoting vaccination and awareness.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in 2017, Korea ranked first among OECD member countries in influenza vaccination rate of 84.4% for people over 65 years of age (compared to only 7% for the same population in Korea).
In 2017, Korea’s influenza vaccination rate among people over 65 years old was 84.4%, ranking first among OECD member countries. Photo|People’s Visual
Influenza vaccination has been vigorously promoted in Korea this year due to the impact of the new coronary pneumonia epidemic. The government plans to provide free influenza vaccination to about 19 million people, mainly adolescents, pregnant women, and the elderly, starting from the end of September. The flu vaccine is a quadrivalent vaccine provided by eight domestic pharmaceutical companies and two overseas pharmaceutical companies.
In August, a survey conducted by Realmeter, a Korean polling organization, showed that 89.3% of Korean people support influenza vaccination under the dual threat of fall and winter influenza and neo-crown pneumonia.
On October 16, a senior high school student in Incheon died about 40 hours after receiving the flu vaccine. This was the first case of death in Korea this year after receiving the flu vaccine. Since then, the number of deaths has been increasing and the flu vaccine has been brought to the forefront of public opinion.
To date, 108 people have died after receiving the flu vaccine in Korea. Among them, 98 or more than 90% were over 60 years old, 19 died within 24 hours of receiving the flu vaccine, and 53 died more than 72 hours after receiving the vaccine.
In terms of regional distribution, deaths have occurred in all regions of the country except Ulsan and Sejong, but there is no concentration of cases. The number of deaths in a single region did not exceed 20, and only 4 regions in the country had more than 10 deaths, including 15 in Gyeonggi Province and 14 in Seoul.
In fact, this is not the first time in Korea that an abnormal reaction, or even death, has occurred after receiving an influenza vaccine.
According to data from the Korea Disease Management Agency (KDMA), in the last 5 years, there were 1,000-3,000 cases of abnormal reactions to influenza vaccination in Korea each year, with a peak of 3,743 cases in 2015.
In the past 10 years, the number of deaths following influenza vaccination in Korea has been less than 10 per year, and in 2009, there were 8 deaths from influenza vaccination in Korea. Seven of these deaths occurred between October 5 and 22, and all were over 70 years of age and had an underlying illness.
The eighth case was a 65-year-old woman who received the influenza vaccine on October 19 of that year, developed symptoms of Miller Fisher syndrome on October 21, and died four months later.
Note: Miller Fisher syndrome is one of the definite side effects of the flu vaccine. Patients can suffer from symptoms such as movement disorders, paralysis of the extraocular muscles, and severe respiratory paralysis, autonomic dysfunction, and even life-threatening conditions.
This death is the only case of flu vaccine death acknowledged by the Korean government in the last 10 years.
2
“Deadly” Doubt, Controversy
The frequency of such incidents has raised serious concerns about vaccine safety in Korea.
On October 22, the Korean Medical Association recommended that the government suspend the influenza vaccination program until the safety of the vaccine is determined.
A hospital that was previously overcrowded with flu vaccines becomes deserted in Seoul, South Korea, October 23, 2020. Photo|People’s Visual
On the same day, the director of the Korea Disease Management Agency (KFDA), Jung Eun-kyung, responded to the case of death after influenza vaccination, saying that a clear causal relationship between the death and the vaccine has not been established yet. The influenza vaccine itself has a very low mortality rate. Most of the deaths were associated with underlying illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease, and it is possible that the underlying illnesses could have worsened suddenly and caused death.
Therefore, the investigation team concluded that a direct link between the deaths and the influenza vaccine was unlikely and that it would be inappropriate to discontinue the government’s call for vaccination.
It is well known that no vaccine has ever been proven to be completely free of side effects. However, the number and percentage of deaths in Korea after receiving the flu vaccine, which is more than 100, is rare.
In addition, the Korean government’s negligence in the storage and delivery of the influenza vaccine has amplified the public’s anxiety.
According to the Guidelines for Storage and Transport Management of Influenza Vaccine in Korea, influenza vaccines should be stored and transported under 2-8°C environment, and the integrity and cleanliness of the vaccine should be guaranteed. However, in practice, some batches of vaccine were briefly exposed to room temperature (20-30°C) during delivery. In addition, some of the vaccine injections also showed the presence of an unknown white substance.
The issues of “room temperature exposure” and “white substance” have prompted the public to draw a causal link between the flu vaccine and the deaths. Some Korean public opinion and opposition parties even suspect that exposure to room temperature or a “poisonous vaccine” with an unknown substance was the direct cause of the vaccine recipient’s death.
The explanation given by the Korean medical community is that prolonged exposure to “room temperature” may lead to protein deterioration or decreased efficacy of the vaccine. However, decreased efficacy does not mean that the vaccine is ineffective or toxic.
It has been investigated that the white substance found in some of the vaccine injections in Korea is the result of poor control during the storage and transportation of vaccines. This white substance has been confirmed to be non-hazardous and cannot be introduced into the body by the puncture-type self-destruct syringe used for vaccination, so it does not affect the health of the vaccine recipient.
Currently, the following developments have been made in the investigation into the “death” of the Korean flu vaccine.
First, the vaccines involved in the deaths were not supplied by the same company, nor were they from the same batch. The vaccines were identified as being supplied by five pharmaceutical companies, namely GC Pharmaceuticals, SK Biotechnology, and Ilsang Pharmaceuticals in Korea, as well as Sanofi in France and GlaxoSmithKline in the United Kingdom.
Secondly, none of the reported deaths have been associated with specific side effects of the influenza vaccine. On the one hand, since it is impossible to force all the families of the deceased to consent to the autopsy, the case reports have to make an overall judgement that no specific side effects were observed. On the other hand, considering the underlying diseases of the deceased, whether the deceased had taken other drugs before and after vaccination, and whether there were any interfering factors such as physical fatigue or anaphylaxis, it is difficult to determine the causal relationship.
Accordingly, the Korean government believes that although there is a temporal relationship between the influenza vaccination and the frequent deaths, at best it can be considered a correlation, but not a cause-and-effect relationship.
On December 5, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the results of its investigation into the incident and found that there were 108 cases of death following influenza vaccination, and that the cause of death was not directly related to influenza vaccination.
3
Misrepresentation and confusion
On the one hand, the Korean media, without in-depth investigation and objective analysis, biased their reporting to create a breaking point, causing public opinion to deviate from rationality.
A commercial district in Seoul, South Korea, on November 23, 2020, is sparsely patronized. Photo|Xinhua
In response to the influenza vaccine controversy, Korean media coverage as a whole can be divided into three categories.
*The headlines were rewritten based on specific numbers of post-vaccination deaths, “normothermic exposure,” vaccination with white matter, and daily data released by official agencies.
*In the headlines and content, some of the media emphasized “problems with government-provided vaccines” and focused on sensitive issues such as “whether to continue to trust the government” to amplify the unease.
*They overplayed the “causal relationship” between the flu vaccine and the deaths.
Most of these reports fail to provide an accurate, detailed, and scientifically validated account of the vaccine story, and most of them are “bad news” without follow-up reports, disrupting the public’s ability to receive important information in a complete and accurate manner.
On the other hand, the discussion of the truth about the vaccine controversy has become a political tool for different parties to denounce each other, which has seriously affected the truthfulness and accuracy of the news.
In the current Korean report, it is not uncommon to see radical content such as “must get a vaccine,” “only 19% of civil servants above level 4 in the Ministry of Welfare have received the flu vaccine,” and “the ruling party is leading the Republic of Korea into an abyss,” etc. It is reported that the Korean government intends to make the vaccine available by the end of the year.
It has been reported that the Korean government wants to introduce a vaccination program for purchased neocon vaccines by the end of the year. The aftermath of the influenza vaccine is likely to affect the public’s acceptance of the NeoCrown vaccine, making the epidemic prevention situation even worse.
4
The government loses faith and disorganizes the people
Along with the deaths and the fermentation of public opinion, the rate of influenza vaccination in Korea has slowed down, and there is even a momentum similar to the “anti-vaccination movement” in Europe and the United States.
What is intriguing is why, in the face of so many irrational reports, the public has been deeply affected instead of questioning the vaccine.
A very important reason was the lack of credibility of the government.
Korea’s early economic prosperity was based on the power of government-backed plutocrats. As a result of long-standing policy preferences, Korean plutocrats have now developed into “monsters” who kidnap the economy and influence the government.
According to statistics, 85% of Korea’s GDP is in the hands of the top 5 plutocrats. As a result of their strong economic power, the plutocrats have become an entrenched privileged class in Korean society, and are even deeply involved in public opinion, elections, and other spheres of influence over the government. In recent years, Korean politics has been plagued by scandals.
In recent years, Korean politics has been plagued by scandals, and the disease of collusion between government and business, abuse of power, and privilege has been hard to cure. The accumulation of negative images of politicians has deepened the Korean people’s doubts about whether government policies are truly beneficial to the people.
When the MARS epidemic broke out in South Korea in 2015, people doubted whether the government was the first to report the outbreak. They believed that the political elite and plutocrats would deliberately delay notification to avoid disadvantages to themselves.
In the current flu vaccine controversy, many people did not believe the government’s statement and even asked the head of the Korea Disease Management Agency and the Minister of Health and Welfare to take the initiative to get a flu vaccine to “prove that the vaccine is fine”.
In addition, social justice in Korea has been severely undermined by the long-term control of the plutocrats.
In the field of education, for example, there are 415 accredited higher education institutions in Korea, mainly national, public, and private. Among them, private education is rich in resources, abundant in money and solid in human resources, and its educational level far exceeds that of other types. According to the 2019 National University Ranking released by Joongang Ilbo, private universities account for 9 out of the top 10 universities in terms of overall ranking and teaching achievement.
Moreover, Korea’s education is overly dependent on the Seoul region, with a serious imbalance in resource distribution. In the public prosecution system, the percentage of law majors at Seoul National University is over 60%.
The unequal distribution of educational resources and opportunities makes it difficult to guarantee the quality of education, which in turn affects the overall level of education and general knowledge of the people.
According to the Korean education ministry, more than 70% of students in Seoul believe that they have learned valuable knowledge during their time at university. In other regions, this figure is only 47%.
The unfair distribution of educational resources and unequal opportunities have, to some extent, led to a decline in the overall level of education of the Korean people, which has become a breeding ground for group irrationality. In the flu vaccine controversy, the Korean people did not trust the government and were held hostage by false reports, which is a concrete manifestation of this educational inequality.
The Korean influenza vaccine controversy has gone beyond a mere medical incident to become a multi-dimensional and multi-level social issue. The rational choice of the public, objective media coverage, and effective government response are all essential if the controversy is to be completely calmed down.
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