Nando’s Joins Response to Vaccine Side Effects Video

As #VaccineSideEffects and #Pfizer tweets go viral in South Africa, trending in the top two spots, SA’s fast food peri-peri chicken outlet Nando’s has joined the thousands of South Africans on Twitter, with its own tweet in response. “Nando’s never fails,” said one social media user. “Nando’s does it again,” said many others.

The restaurant chain – which is so famous worldwide that its peri-peri chicken and chips are considered a traditional British dish in the UK – tweeted: “With all the conspiracy in the air, we wanted to clear something up… #VaccineSideEffects” They posted an image on which the words “the only effect our sides have is a full stomach”.

With all the conspiracy in the air, we wanted to clear something up… #VaccineSideEffects pic.twitter.com/wtWZisLo8S

— NandosSA (@NandosSA) March 8, 2022

Many South Africans who were scared of taking the vaccine because of conspiracy theories, have posted on Twitter today, feeling vindicated by American conservative commentator Liz Wheeler’s comments in a video that’s gone viral. In the video, posted a couple of days ago, Wheeler reads off a list of adverse effects that Pfizer had listed a year ago, taking the list out of context.

Wheeler also does not mention the millions of people who died because of not taking a Covid-19 vaccine, nor the hundreds of thousands of others whose lives were saved because they did take it.

The podcaster is well known for distorting truths, or using incorrect and outdated data; and for those who take the time, there are pages like this and this (The Whoppers of 2021), dedicated to fact checking much of her scare-mongering.

Reuters fact checked one of the allegations related to pregnant women and the vaccine, arising from the release of the Pfizer FDA document (“Cumulative analysis of post-authorization adverse event reports”), and concluded: “Pfizer FDA document does not show COVID shot caused miscarriages or neonatal deaths in ‘all injected mothers’.”

The Pfizer document, investigating adverse reports between December 2020 and February 28, 2021, is part of Pfizer-BioNTech’s Biologics License Application to the FDA.

Last year another of Wheeler’s videos was debunked. In the video Wheeler “falsely claims the (US’) top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, repeatedly “lied” to the American public about the COVID-19 pandemic. She also misleads about COVID-19 vaccination prioritisation and distorts the findings of a scientific paper to argue that face masks do not need to be worn by healthy people”, according to FactCheck.org.

In other vaccines news…

In other vaccine news, a large study into rare blood clots linked to AstraZeneca’s vaccine has found between just one and three cases per million, and only after the first dose. The study was published today in the PLOS Medicine journal, and looked at health records of 46 million adults in England between December 2020 and March 2021, to assess the risk of clots in the month after vaccination with either AstraZeneca or Pfizer, compared with unvaccinated people.

Another major new study between December ’20 and June ’21, published on Monday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases – involving millions of participants – has revealed most side effects (92%) from mRNA COVID-19 vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) were mild and faded substantially after one day. The most common side effects were pain at the site of injection, headaches, fever, chills and fatigue.

Tom Shimabukuro from the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention said the data is “reassuring that reactions to both mRNA vaccines are generally mild and subside after one or two days – confirming reports from clinical trials and post-authorization monitoring”.

The BBC reported that the study, which looked at ‘adverse events’ from almost 300 million vaccine doses administered in the US, found no link between the mRNA vaccines and the number of deaths recorded after vaccination. According to the BBC, about 4,500 people died after being vaccinated, in the US, up to June 2021 of which over 80% were aged over 60.

The CDC said the results “follow similar patterns of death rates for people in this age group following other adult vaccinations”.

The BBC also explains: “Because Covid jabs were originally authorised in the United States under emergency-use provisions, healthcare providers are required to report all deaths following vaccination, whether a doctor suspects a “plausible” link or not.”

The Lancet reports that of more than 22,000 events which were recorded as serious, the most common effect was ‘shortness of breath’. Another rare serious event recorded includes a form of heart inflammation known as myocarditis.

A medical professor told the BBC that “although approximately one in 1,000 individuals vaccinated may have an adverse effect, most of these are non-serious.”

The full Pfizer document can be read here. See also the CDC’s list of reactions and adverse events.