by Frank Chung, senior reporter News.com.au

In an explosive submission to Parliament’s Long Covid inquiry, the former Australian Medical Association (AMA) president and politician Dr Kerryn Phelps has broken her silence about the “devastating” experience — emerging as the most prominent public health figure in the country to speak up about the taboo subject.

She suggested the true rate of adverse events is far higher than acknowledged due to under-reporting and “threats” from medical regulators.

“This is an issue that I have witnessed first-hand with my wife who suffered a severe neurological reaction to her first Pfizer vaccine within minutes, including burning face and gums, paraesethesiae, and numb hands and feet, while under observation by myself, another doctor and a registered nurse at the time of immunisation,” the 65-year-old said.

“I continue to observe the devastating effects a year-and-a-half later with the addition of fatigue and additional neurological symptoms including nerve pains, altered sense of smell, visual disturbance and musculoskeletal inflammation. The diagnosis and causation has been confirmed by several specialists who have told me that they have seen ‘a lot’ of patients in a similar situation.”

Dr Phelps married former primary school teacher Jackie Stricker-Phelps in 1998.

“Jackie asked me to include her story to raise awareness for others,” she said.

“We did a lot of homework before having the vaccine, particularly about choice of vaccine at the time. In asking about adverse side effects, we were told that ‘the worst thing that could happen would be anaphylaxis’ and that severe reactions such as myocarditis and pericarditis were ‘rare’.”

Dr Phelps revealed she was also diagnosed with a vaccine injury from her second dose of Pfizer in July 2021, “with the diagnosis and causation confirmed by specialist colleagues”.

“I have had CT pulmonary angiogram, ECG, blood tests, cardiac echogram, transthoracic cardiac stress echo, Holter monitor, blood pressure monitoring and autonomic testing,” she said.

“In my case the injury resulted in dysautonomia with intermittent fevers and cardiovascular implications including breathlessness, inappropriate sinus tachycardia and blood pressure fluctuations.”

Dr Phelps said both reactions were reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) “but never followed up”.

She revealed she had spoken with other doctors “who have themselves experienced a serious and persistent adverse event” but that “vaccine injury is a subject that few in the medical profession have wanted to talk about”.

“Regulators of the medical profession have censored public discussion about adverse events following immunisation, with threats to doctors not to make any public statements about anything that ‘might undermine the government’s vaccine rollout’ or risk suspension or loss of their registration,” she said.

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), which oversees Australia’s 800,000 registered practitioners and 193,800 students, last year warned that anyone who sought to “undermine” the national Covid vaccine rollout could face deregistration or even prosecution.

AHPRA’s position statement said that “any promotion of anti-vaccination statements or health advice which contradicts the best available scientific evidence or seeks to actively undermine the national immunisation campaign (including via social media) is not supported by National Boards and may be in breach of the codes of conduct and subject to investigation and possible regulatory action”.

Earlier this year, Australian musician Tyson ‘tyDi’ Illingworth said he had been told privately by doctors that they feared being deregistered if they linked his neurological injury to the Moderna vaccine.

Dr Phelps said she had heard stories of vaccine injury from “patients and other members of the community”.

“They have had to search for answers, find GPs and specialists who are interested and able to help them, spend large amounts of money on medical investigations, isolate from friends and family, reduce work hours, lose work if they are required to attend in person and avoid social and cultural events,” she said.

“Within this group of vaccine injured individuals, there is a diminishing cohort of people who have symptoms following immunisation, many of which are similar to Long Covid (such as fatigue and brain fog), but who have not had a Covid infection. These people would be an important subset or control group for studies looking into the pathophysiology, causes of and treatments for Long Covid. It is possible that there is at least some shared pathophysiology between vaccine injury and Long Covid, possibly due to the effects of spike protein.”

She added that “in trying to convince people in positions of influence to pay attention to the risks of Long Covid and reinfection for people with vaccine injury, I have personally been met with obstruction and resistance to openly discuss this issue”.

“There has been a delay in recognition of vaccine injury, partly because of under-reporting, concerns about vaccine hesitancy in the context of managing a global pandemic, and needing to find the balance between risks and benefits on a population level,” she said.

“Reactions were said to be ‘rare’ without data to confirm how common or otherwise these reactions were. In general practice I was seeing cases, which meant other GPs and specialists were seeing cases too. Without diagnostic tests, we have to rely largely on clinical history.”

In July this year, the independent OzSAGE group of which Dr Phelps is a member issued a position statement calling for better systems and management of Covid vaccine adverse events and “recognition of the impact of vaccine injury”.

Dr Phelps, who was heavily involved in crafting the statement, wrote in her submission that the OzSAGE document “outlines the scope but not the scale of the problem because we do not know the scale of the problem”.

“This is partly because of under-reporting and under-recognition,” she said.

According to the TGA’s most recent safety update, there have been a total of 137,141 adverse event reports from nearly 64.4 million doses — a rate of 0.2 per cent.

There have been 819 reports “assessed as likely to be myocarditis” from 49.8 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna. Fourteen deaths have officially been linked to vaccination — 13 after AstraZeneca and one after Pfizer.

Cairns News: This data from the TGA is at odds with VAERS data from the US where there have been many thousands of reported deaths.

From the VAERS website: “From December 14, 2020, through December 7, 2022, VAERS (US) received 17,868 preliminary reports of death (0.0027%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine.”

The long term adverse affects are now beginning to emerge in Australia as emergency wards fill with those who have been injured by the mRNA vaxx. Many of these hospital admissions for vaccine damage are unreported or reported as Covid infections.