Does lack of aspiration explain covid vaccine adverse reactions?
Yes - according to Marc Girardot's bolus theory
What is aspiration and why is it important?
If a vaccine is intended to be injected into a muscle (“intramuscular IM”) rather than into a vein (“intravenous/intravascular IV”, i.e. directly into the blood stream) then, to avoid accidental injection into a vein, the technique of aspiration has traditionally been applied. This very short video by John Campbell explains what the technique is:
But aspiration was NOT recommended for the covid vaccines
Remarkably, aspiration was not recommended when the covid vaccines were rolled out world-wide at the start of 2021. In the following video the eminent Danish Professor Niels Høiby talks about the serious adverse reactions that can result from accidental IV of the covid vaccines. As a result of a case (early in 2021) of exactly such a serious adverse reaction, Prof Høiby convinced the Danish Government to recommend aspiration for all covid vaccines in March 2021. Sadly, when John Campbell wrote to the then UK Health Minister Sajid Javid in 2021 asking for aspiration to be used to administer the covid vaccines, Mr Javid replied negatively, saying it was not needed.
Data showed significantly lower instances of myocarditis/pericarditis where aspiration was used
Prof Høiby looked at the publicly available data on recorded instances of myocarditis and pericarditis in vaccinated people in Denmark (where aspiration was used) compared to neighbouring Norway (where it wasn’t). In October 2021 these data were:
Denmark: 129 formally recorded instances of myocarditis/pericarditis among 4,304,581 vaccinated people
Norway: 274 formally recorded instances of myocarditis/pericarditis among 3,766,080 vaccinated people
The population demographics and timings of the vaccine rollouts are reasonably similar for the two countries. Hence, Prof Høiby believed that the difference was highly significant and asked me at the time to check this. Using the Bayesian method and assumptions as described in this video showed (in summary) that the (Bayesian) 99% confidence interval for the true vaccinated population rate of myocarditis/pericarditis was between 23.8 to 37.5 per million in Denmark compared to between 62.1 to 85 per million in Norway. This is a highly significant difference - there was less than a one in a million probability that the true rate was not lower in Denmark than Norway.
This analysis did not take account of possible confounders such as: different vaccines used (a higher proportion of the population in Norway received the Moderna vaccine than the proportion in Denmark); different policies of testing for (and recording of) myocarditis and pericarditis; different extent to which aspiration was or was not genuinely applied in each country. However, despite not taking such confounders into account, the evidence - along with the expertise and experience of people like John Campbell and Prof Høiby - should have been sufficient to convince all countries to follow the Danish example.
How common is accidental intravenous injection when aspiration is not used?
The public health officials all over the world who decided that it was not necessary to recommend aspiration for the covid vaccines presumably believed it was very rare for an accidental intravenious injection to happen. But, according to Marc Girardot, it is not:
He shows that, even when aspiration is applied, intramuscular shots go intravascular 1.5-2% of the time and that the overall the rate is at least 5%. With the covid mass vaccination programme many of the vaccinators were extremely inexperienced (often receiving minimal training) and it is likely the rate was significantly higher still. But even, more worrying, is the fact that what also really matters is how fast the plunger is pushed.
Marc Girardot’s bolus theory
If an accidental intravenous injection of a covid vaccine is administered with a fast push of the plunger then a serious adverse reaction is very likely. This is explained in summary here and in more detail here:
As he explains in his interview with John Campbell, Marc believes that almost all serious adverse reactions to the covid vaccines can be explained by the bolus theory and that this would also explain why only a small proportion of people with similar physiology given vaccines from the same batch suffer serious adverse reactions while the rest appear to be unscathed:
There are, however, many who claim that the mRNA vaccines and the spike protein have the potential to cause serious adverse reactions independently of how and where the injection is delivered. We are not qualified to make a judgement on this. There have also been attempts like this one to dismiss the theory, but as it is written by David Gorski it can probably be taken with a pinch of salt. Hopefully, Marc’s interview with John Campbell will help you make your own judgement.
Public health officials need to ensure aspiration is applied for all intramuscular vaccines
After the above interview John Campbell, who has been a long-time advocate of the need to aspirate, said of Marc’s work:
This evidence and analysis demands a response from regulators around the world. If this is not forthcoming, I consider the regulators negligent.
Irrespective of whether the bolus theory does explain most vaccine injuries, it seems increasingly inexplicable that aspiration, (together with slow delivery) is not required of all intramuscular vaccines.
My issue with Marc's bolus theory is that it is one part of the picture, albeit an important one, but it allows a simple narrative to explain the harms which those who negligently pushed this crap into people can latch onto as some sort of “excuse” (“if only they’d have aspirated everything would have been OK”), when the truth is much more complex.
For one thing, as you acknowledge, though IV injection may be particularly dangerous, aspiration does not in any case eliminate it from happening so the danger exists whatever the injection methodology.
Then there's the fact that even if the bolus theory was correct it would only account for a subset of the harms. It is (IMO) inconceivable that something incredibly dangerous is then made acceptably safe by avoiding a blood vessel.
The immune dysfunction in particular would logically seem not to depend on this.
One small correction, the whole aspiration question comes down to the WHO recommending in 2004 following Plotkin and Orenstein's Paediatric vaccination paper of the same year to the National health bodies around the world, most National bodies simply took the easy option and applied it to ALL IM injections.
When I had my AZ jab the retired Dr. was more than happy to aspirate when I asked for him to do so, and delivered the dose slowly having proven the location, he commented he was more than happy to do so as that's what he'd done with IM throughout his career. The young 'administrator' supervising however tried to object to it being done that way, and called the vaccination centre manager over to admonish the Dr. for not following the protocol.