mRNA Vaccine Safety and Risks: A One-Year Update From the U.S., U.K., and Israel
Although new risks of mRNA vaccines have been discovered, they are not a cause for alarm.
It has been almost a year since the BioNTech-Pfizer’s and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines received emergency use authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for public use amidst the Covid-19 pandemic in December 2020. These two vaccines are the earliest ones we started using, so they have also been studied very closely.
At present, the FDA has given the first full approval for Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine. Three massive studies on mRNA vaccine safety were also published during the past month, which have made important and somewhat unpleasant discoveries. Let’s see what they are with a critical eye.
1. Data from Israel (Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine)
In a population-based observational study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on 25 August 2021, titled “Safety of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine in a Nationwide Setting,” researchers from Israel capitalized on the Clalit Health Services database that contains medical data of 52% of Israel’s population (>4.7 million out of 9 million persons).
