A research study indicates

February 26, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – The mainstream media have inaccurately reported that Pfizer’s and Moderna’s new COVID-19 vaccine trials found no potential risk of Bell's palsy, a condition that causes the faces of patients to be paralyzed and droop on one side. 

The “observed incidence of Bell's palsy in the vaccine arms is between three to five times and seven times higher than would be expected in the general population,” researchers from the Precision Vaccines Program in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Boston Children's Hospital in Boston said in a paper published Wednesday in The Lancet. 

“Combining data from both trials, among nearly 40,000 vaccine arm participants, there were seven Bell's palsy cases compared with one Bell's palsy case among placebo arm participants,” wrote Harvard Medical School infectious disease and pediatric specialists Al Ozonoff, Etsuro Nanishi, and Ofer Levy. 

The researchers looked at publicly available data from the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccine trials that they said “suggested an imbalance in the incidence of Bell's palsy following vaccination compared with the placebo arm of each trial.”

Comparing the trial data to that of the general population in detail, they reported that “this finding signals a potential safety phenomenon and suggests inaccurate reporting of basic epidemiological context to the public.”

Bell’s palsy is a condition often mistaken for a stroke because many of the symptoms are similar, but it is not as serious. The condition results from dysfunction of a cranial nerve that directs the muscles on one side of the face, including those that control eye blinking and smiling, according to National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. 

Most symptoms, including pain, distorted facial features, watery eyes, and inability to close one eye or speak, drink or eat normally, will improve within a few weeks and a complete recovery is usually anticipated within six months.

In some cases, people have lingering effects, however, and others may be burdened with symptoms for life. Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien suffered Bell’s palsy as a child and was permanently affected.

Mainstream media reports have dismissed the higher incidence of Bell’s palsy in the trials as comparable with the normal rate of the condition.

In December, the CBC interviewed Pfizer Canada president Cole Pinnow, who said, “I can appreciate the concern, but I’m going to defer to scientific experts who look at the data in totality. From what I understand, they say that that incidence is on par with the general population and therefore isn’t considered to be statistically significant.”

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