from The Epoch Times:
Germany’s Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach, who once claimed that COVID-19 vaccination is free of side effects, admitted last week that he was wrong, saying adverse reactions occur at a rate of one in 10,000 doses and can cause “severe disabilities.”
On Aug. 14, 2021, Lauterbach said on Twitter that the vaccines had “no side effects,” further questioning why some Germans refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
During an interview on ZDF’s “Heute Journal” on March 12, Lauterbach was asked by anchor Christian Sievers about the claim he made in the summer of 2021, confronting the health minister with his previous tweet that stated the shots are virtually free of side effects.
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Lauterbach responded that the tweet was “misguided” and an “exaggeration” he made at the time, noting that it “did not represent my true position.”
“I’ve always been aware of the numbers and they’ve remained relatively stable … one in 10,000 [are injured],” Lauterbach said. “Some say that it’s a lot, and some say it’s not so many.”
Lauterbach’s remark on vaccine adverse events came after the German network played a segment of several Germans who’ve been seriously injured after getting the shot, including a 17-year-old gymnast who previously competed in the German Artistic Gymnastics Championships before she was hospitalized for more than one year shortly after receiving the second dose of the BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
“What do you say to those who have been affected [by vaccine injuries]?” Sievers asked Lauterbach.
“What’s happened to these people is absolutely dismaying, and every single case is one too many,” Lauterbach responded. “I honestly feel very sorry for these people. There are severe disabilities, and some of them will be permanent.”
Steve Kirsch, executive director of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, did not agree with Lauterbach, but he commended the health minister for making “progress” when comparing his latest remark to his previous comments regarding the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.
“The true rate of serious adverse events is approximately 100 times greater than the figures Lauterbach cited—’closer to 1 in 100 doses’ and ‘For death, it is ~1 in 1,000 doses,’” Kirsch said on Twitter.
By Oct. 31, 2022, the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut received a total of 333,492 individual case reports on suspected COVID-19 vaccine adverse reactions or vaccine side effects in Germany, according to official data (pdf) released in December 2022 by the medical regulatory body that researches vaccines and biomedicines.
“The number of individual case reports per month peaked in December 2021 and continued through the summer,” according to the federal agency, which is subordinate to the German Ministry of Health.
Despite these findings, the country’s health ministry website states, as of March 16, that “modern vaccines are safe and adverse effects only occur in sporadic cases.”
Lawsuits Pending
As the subject of post-vaccine injuries has started to be more widely covered by some German media outlets, lawsuits have begun to roll out against BioNTech, and also against other COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers.
BioNTech has denied all responsibilities, ZDF reported.
Vaccine manufacturers such as Pfizer and Moderna have immunity from liability if something unintentionally goes wrong with their vaccines, putting them in a very strong legal position.
“It’s true that within the framework of these EU contracts, the companies were largely exempted from liability and that the liability, therefore, lies with the German state, so to speak … with the federal states,” Lauterbach said.
Yet, in spite of this, the health minister noted that it would “definitely” be a good idea if biopharmaceutical companies would “show a willingness to help” those affected by vaccine adverse events, especially due to their profits being “exorbitant.”
