Anyone who got sick after being vaccinated against the coronavirus thought that maybe the vaccine was to blame. For a long time, such suspicions were dismissed out of hand. Now, the potential effects of vaccines are being taken seriously, even by German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, while lawsuits have been filed against some vaccine companies. The issue is multifaceted and complex. However, its essence lies in causation.

What are the legal proceedings about?

The first civil trial was originally scheduled for the end of April, but was postponed to July 7. The content of the action directed against the Biontech company includes claims for compensation for moral and physical damage. Also, two major law firms are reportedly representing three figures in related lawsuits, with various vaccine companies as defendants.

The same liability rules apply to coronavirus vaccines as to other medicines. The company can be held responsible if for example there are manufacturing defects. The crux of the matter is causation: can the harm be causally attributed to vaccination?

What are the companies saying?

The company Biontech emphasizes that “so far no causal connection between the presented health damage and vaccination can be proven in any of the cases examined.” A spokesperson for the company told the German News Agency that “we take our responsibility as vaccine manufacturers very seriously.” Biontech will carefully consider each case, provided that sufficient documentation has been submitted. “When evaluating the case, we can rely solely on the medical data to assess whether or not there is a causal relationship. Unfortunately, such data are often missing.”

What are the effects of vaccines?

The terms are often confused. On the one hand, there is the “vaccination reaction”. These are typical symptoms such as redness, swelling or pain at the injection site. Fever, headache and aches in the limbs are also considered normal, as they are an expression of the immune system’s desired reaction to the vaccine.

The Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), which is responsible for vaccine safety, considers a “vaccine complication” to be an adverse reaction that occurs after vaccination, which, firstly, may be causally related to the vaccination and, secondly, goes beyond reaction symptoms. “Vaccine injury” in the narrowest sense refers to “the health and economic consequences” of this complication.

“Serious side effects” are legally defined as vaccine effects “that are fatal or life-threatening, require hospitalization or prolonged hospitalization, result in permanent or severe disability, incapacitation, and congenital or birth defects.”

What effects are known?

The PEI lists the following serious complications of vaccination: the heart disease myopericarditis, possible blood clots in the brain or elsewhere, facial paralysis, a type of muscle weakness called Guillain-Barré syndrome, and hearing loss. According to the PEI data, all are “rare” (one case per 1,000 to 10,000 vaccinations) or “very rare” (less than one case per 10,000 vaccinations).

According to the institute’s latest detailed report, there were 120 cases in which a “probable or possible causal relationship” was identified between a death and the coronavirus vaccination.

How many suspected cases were counted?

Since vaccination began, a total of 183,000,000 vaccinations against the coronavirus have been given, according to the Robert Koch Institute. The rate of reports was 1.8 per 1,000 doses of vaccine, while for suspected cases of serious adverse side effects and complications it was 0.3 reports per 1,000 doses of vaccine.

Time and again, the media reports dramatic incidents, such as the case of a teenage former athlete who died after the second dose of vaccination and is now in a wheelchair. “However, according to current data, cases like this are so rare that they do not register as a statistical phenomenon,” Leif Eric Sander, vaccine researcher and head of the infectious disease clinic at Berlin’s Charité, told Die Zeit newspaper. explaining that if there had been an accumulation of such incidents, this would have been seen in the PEI data and – with more than 13 billion vaccination doses worldwide – even more so in the international data. And that’s not happening.

Are incidents being swept under the carpet?

Opponents of coronavirus vaccines claim yes. In 2022, for example, it was claimed that private practitioners had perceived side effects of vaccinations 2.5 million times. This would cause problems in 1.5% of all coronavirus vaccinations. With conventional vaccinations before the use of mRNA, the corresponding figure was 0.3%.

The fact-checkers concluded that different things were equated here and wrong conclusions were drawn. For example, harmless vaccine reactions, which are common, and serious vaccine complications, which are very rare, were pooled.

Have refunds been given so far?

Several hundred people have received pension rights. These are not compensations, but benefits from the competent state pension services. If the relevant application is rejected, the applicant can appeal against the decision in court. Here again, the question is whether the damage was causally caused by him. According to an investigation by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, by mid-March 2023, 6,600 applications for pension benefits due to vaccine damage against the coronavirus had been filed in 13 of the 16 federal states. Of these, 284 were accepted.

What is Post-Vac?

The term Post-Vac refers to the effects after vaccination. In general, these are symptoms that can also appear after other infections. Professor Bernhard Schiffer, head of the outpatient clinic at the University Hospital of Marburg, explains that “it is impossible to draw a conclusion from the first examination as to whether the symptoms are really due to the vaccination”. Moreover, not only the causal relationship should be checked, but also the distinction made between those who were simply vaccinated and those who, in addition to vaccination, had also contracted the coronavirus.

How does politics react?

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach promised that the state would take care of those who experienced long-term damage from infection or vaccination against the coronavirus. Lauterbach announced in March on ZDF’s “heute journal” that a program would be set up to investigate the effects of Long-Covid and Post-Vac and improve patient care. The long-term effects of a vaccination should be recognized more quickly. Commentators, however, considered this to be a 180-degree turn by the minister, who in the past emphasized the safety of vaccines against the coronavirus.