With apologies to the nervous flyer, I'm sorry to tell you that flying became less safe on December 8th 2020 when MHRA authorised Pfizer's Covid vaccine in the U.K. Let me explain.
Last month I wrote about Pfizer's latest analysis of millions of patients' data from a range of European national healthcare systems including the NHS. The data are segmented by categories like age, sex and, importantly, the Covid vaccination status of each patient (the very data which governments around the world continue to refuse to make public). Pfizer's results include a 'Hazard Ratio' (HZ) which is a measure of the relative frequency of a serious adverse event between the Covid vaccinated and unvaccinated groups. As I said last month, Pfizer itself is now reporting to medicine regulators that its Covid vaccine has significantly increased the occurrence of a range of heart conditions. Here's a screenshot :
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
What I didn't say at the time is that I had also written to Sir Stephen Hillier, the Chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority, asking for his comments about the implications for aviation safety, and in particular the increased likelihood of a Covid vaccinated pilot being incapacitated in-flight by a cardiac issue. I didn't mention that in my article because I had decided to give the CAA a chance to respond to my letter. However, a month on, it still hasn't replied despite being chased - hence this further article.
"Not so fast," you might say. "Even if Pfizer itself is now saying that its Covid vaccine increases the frequency of heart problems, the affected pilots will no longer be flying because they will have been screened out by the regular medicals which pilots have to pass to keep their licence." And it's true, the number of U.K. pilots failing their aero medicals (all causes) has soared. Shout out to Sally Beck for reporting on that late last year:
Unfortunately, the CAA has just refused my FOI request for data on what proportion of those medical 'fails' were for heart conditions. It would only give me data for 2021 onwards - which of course prevents any pre/post-vaccine comparisons.
However, there is still a major problem. The periodic medical examinations required by aviation regulators don't eliminate the risk of in-flight incapacitation. They never did. In fact, aviation regulators have, for years, scaled the periodicity and depth of those medicals against the frequency of sudden incapacitation in the general population. For dual pilot flights, aviation regulators use a '1% rule': the probability of one of the pilots becoming incapacitated mid-flight must be less than 1% per year.