Replies

Usually, these kinds of scare blogs misrepresent a real study. They are usually intentionally vague about study details, since they don't want anyone to actually read the study. However, someone who is familiar with medical literature can usually find the original (misrepresented) study.

In this case, I cannot find a real study published by James Gill on Feb 14, 2022.

In Feb, 2022, using PubMed, I found a handful of publications with a Gill listed among the authors, using the search term "Gill covid vaccine" and the publication date set to between 1/1/2022 and 3/30/2022:

A case series of vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia in a London teaching hospital. This author is Dipender Gill. All of the three patients described in this study recovered. They had all received the ChAdOx1 nCoV‐19, which is the AstraZeneca adenovirus vaccine which is no longer available due to its association with these rare cases of thrombocytopenia.

Safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy of a COVID-19 vaccine (NVX-CoV2373) co-administered with seasonal influenza vaccines: an exploratory substudy of a randomised, observer-blinded, placebo-controlled, phase 3 trial"> None of the authors of this study are named Gill. There is a Harjeevan Gill listed among study group participants. No deaths occurred during this study.

Infant deaths from respiratory syncytial virus in Lusaka, Zambia from the ZPRIME study: a 3-year, systematic, post-mortem surveillance project. One of the authors is Christopher J Gill, and this study obviously has nothing to do with Covid.

Transient Myopericarditis Following Vaccination for COVID-19. The first author of this British study is Jashan Gill, and (obviously) this study does not describe a death.

Differential immunogenicity of homologous versus heterologous boost in Ad26.COV2.S vaccine recipients. An author of this British/Singaporean study is Upkar S Gill, and no deaths are reported or described.

Casirivimab and imdevimab in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial. No authors are given for this study, but two of the thousand or so collaborators are Mandy Gill and Lynne Gill. Since this is a clinical trial of treatments, not vaccines, the deaths in this study were caused directly by Covid disease.

Having been unsuccessful in finding a study that fits the Epoch Times description, I tried a different search strategy. I searched for author James Gill, with results limited to publications between Jan 1, 2022 and Mar 30, 2022. There were three publications within that time frame, but only one February publication.

Surgical interventions for treating extracapsular hip fractures in older adults: a network meta-analysis. This author James Gill is an orthopedic surgeon in Cambridge, UK. And the study has nothing to do with Covid.

Among these three results was, in fact, a study published by author James Gill who is affiliated with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Farmington, CT. He seems to be the medical examiner mentioned in the Epoch Times blog. But the study has nothing to do with Covid or Covid vaccines: Epidemiology and autopsy findings of 500 drowning deaths. To my knowledge, not even the most ludicrous antivax propagandists claim that drowning is an adverse effect of vaccination. I wonder if medical examiner Dr. Gill is aware that his name is being used for propaganda purposes.

I really wish people would take the time to fact-check before posting antivax screeds that are easily proven false. In this case, the supposed study does not appear to exist at all.

As always, I have explained my search methods and have provided several links. I invite anyone who wishes to prove antivax claims true by debunking me to peruse the articles at the links or to provide a search term that will provide a link to the article allegedly described in the Epoch Times blog. I will only accept search results published in the medical/scientific literature. Blogs, tweets, youtube videos, fake journal sites and the like are not acceptable sources.