Fact Checking The Fact Checkers: Could Aussie MP's Bell's Palsy Come From AstraZeneca COVID19 Shot? Gov Data Says Yes.

An Australian MP who was shown with an eye patch and a diagnosis of Bell's Palsy (facial paralysis) 3 months after his 1st COVID19 shot, has angrily claimed that his palsy was not caused by the COVID19 shot - proudly tweeting a photo of his 2nd shot. 'Fact checkers' claim that Bell's Palsy is only associated with Pfizer shots, not the AstraZeneca shot that he received. Let's look at the data to see if they're right (they aren't).

Victor Dominello is an MP in NSW, Australia and made headlines recently after images of him circulated online wearing an eye patch, having received a diagnosis of Bell's Palsy. His drooping face matches the symptoms seen in may people who have been confirmed as now suffering with Bell's Palsy following receiving a COVID19 shot - so it was natural that people would claim that he too was a victim of an effect of the shot he received. However, this idea was angrily rejected by the MP in a series of tweets in which he linked a fact checking site which claimed to debunk the idea that his symptoms could be connected to the shots.

Mr Dominello was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy on August 18, according to an announcement on that date, after he said a number of people noticed his “droopy eye” during a press conference. The news was widely covered in the media at the time (see examples here, here and here).

The diagnosis came nearly three months after he reported receiving his first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine for COVID-19.

In a phone interview, Mr Dominello told AAP FactCheck the suggestion that his diagnosis was linked to the vaccination was “outrageous”, adding he had been given medical advice that there was no evidence the two were connected. His second dose of the vaccine had been delayed due to the diagnosis, he said.

“There is heaps of medical evidence saying (that) the biggest reason for Bell’s palsy is stress,” Mr Dominello said.

They also state that:

There is no evidence that Victor Dominello’s Bell’s palsy diagnosis is linked to his receipt of an AstraZeneca dose nearly three months earlier. This vaccine has not been linked to increased cases of the condition, which is thought to be triggered by factors such as stress and minor illness.

and

There have been some indications that mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, such as the Pfizer vaccine, may lead to a slightly increased risk of Bell’s palsy, but there is no evidence to suggest the AstraZeneca vaccine, which uses a viral vector platform, may trigger the condition.

Data Analysis

I first looked at the US VAERS data for Bell's Palsy, confirming that Bell's Palsy is indeed a likely effect of the COVID19 shots. The US database does not contain data on AstraZeneca. I compared the level of reported incidence of Bell's palsy in Influenza vaccines (from 2015) to the data we have so far for all COVID19 shots in the US in 2021.

There were 3553 adverse events logged for Bell's Palsy in response to COVID19 shots in 2021. There was only 1 such event logged for the whole year of 2015 in response to all flu shots combined in the US.

It's hard to really explain this other than to say that (possibly some of the) COVID19 shots correlate to triggering Bell's Palsy - which agrees with the fact checker's statement since many of the shots in the US were from Pfizer.

This means that the rough risk of logging a Bell's palsy adverse reaction in the US is around 1 in 44982 in the US.

The risk of logging Bell's palsy in response to a flu shot is 1 in 146 Million!

So clearly there is a huge difference between the two types of shots.

If we factor in that it is well known that VAERS and other reporting databases are wildly under-reported by a factor of between 10 and 100 times (as explained in my previous article and backed up by this US government report).

Then the actual number of cases of Bell's palsy in the US is obviously much higher and may mean that chances of developing it following a COVID shot is closer to: 1 IN 450.

However, as the fact checker states, the man in question received an AstraZeneca shot, which they say is not associated with increased risk of Bell's palsy.

I decided to try to check this, but just as when I put together my recent article showing that the number of people killed by COVID19 shots in Australia may already exceed the number killed by the disease - I found that the Australia adverse reaction tracking system is broken again:

So, my next best option was to look at the data from the UK government, who have also used the AstraZeneca shots in large numbers.

It took a while to locate because the media and government seems to totally ignore the issue of how many of each manufacturer's shots have been used - but I eventually found the answer on this page:

This safety update report is based on detailed analysis of data up to 18 August 2021. At this date, an estimated 21.3 million first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and 24.8 million first doses of the COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca had been administered, and around 16.6 million and 23.9 million second doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca respectively. An approximate 1.4 million first doses and approximately 0.7 million second doses of the COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna have also now been administered.

So 23.9M people have received 2 shots of AstraZeneca in the UK.

I then looked up the number of cases of Bell's Palsy reported to the UK's adverse reaction database for AstraZeneca specifically and discovered that: 554 cases have been logged so far:

Bare in mind here that the UK's system is known to be similarly under-reported (as explained by this courageous UK doctor who has since been sacked!).

So now we know how many people have received AstraZeneca in the UK and how many Bell's Palsy cases were logged, we can calculate the risk of a possible Bell's palsy reaction from AstraZeneca... Which is:

1 in 43933 (if we accept the data 'as is' from the UK database)
or
1 in 439 (if we multiply it up by a factor of 100 due to probable under reporting).

These figures are very close to the accepted figures for Pfizer (1 in 44982 up to 1 in 450), which the fact checkers themselves stated HAS been associated with Bell's Palsy.

Conclusion

This took me about 4 hours to look into but I am confident that the data presented here fairly conclusively debunks the fact checker claim that AstraZeneca shots are not associated with Bell's Palsy, whereas Pfizer shots are.

The data from the flu shots from the US shows that in a similar situation, the flu shots do not generate Bell's palsy cases - making it reasonable to say that the Pfizer shot does generate these cases.

The data from the UK shows that AstraZeneca probably also generates cases of Bell's Palsy at a similar rate to Pfizer.

Additionally, when under-reporting is factored in (something which government and media sources never do), it is likely that such cases are NOT rare at all.

Comment

I highly suggest everyone spends a few hours reviewing the numerous well researched articles I have posted in the last few weeks because within them you will find a wealth of information and evidence to contradict a great deal of what you have been spun during COVID19 about the shots, their manufacturers and their trustworthiness.

Also note that I don't get paid by anyone for producing this work, I do it because I want people to know the truth and be safe.

May truth prevail.

Wishing you well,
Ura Soul

I am founder of an ethical Digital Marketing Agency called Hive account@crucialweb. We help our clients to grow and innovate online and offer discounts for decentralised projects. Get in touch if you'd like to work with us.