Note: This post has been edited to remove an error.
A shoot-out between Moderna and Ephedra sounds a lot like a Godzilla movie (e.g., Mothra versus Rodan versus MechaGodzilla), where a deadly monster which originated in East-Asia creates havoc.
FDA issued the final rule to ban US sales of ephedra-containing dietary supplements in February of 2004, after a review of 22 months of the MedWatch safety database (a system similar to VAERS) revealed 10 deaths.
Ephedra dietary supplements were used primarily for weight-loss, but it competed with sales of Meridia (sibutramine) and Xenical (orlistat), two pharmaceutical weight-loss drugs on the market at that time.
The FDA said that, even though a causal role isn’t established from passive surveillance systems, ephedra dietary supplements presented an “unreasonable risk.”
In 1999 alone, 3 billion doses of such supplements were sold inside of the United States. The 22-month survey of adverse event reports went up to 31 Mar 1999, and a reasonable assumption is that background intake of ephedra dietary supplements over those same 22 months would have been 4 billion doses.
That’s a rate of death reports of 2.5 per billion doses. Here is how it compares to the rate of death reports for Moderna:
With 251.85 million doses administered by 22 Mar 2023, and 8,075 death reports in VAERS, the Moderna death reporting rate was 32.06 death reports per million doses (32,060 per billion).
Such a “dose vs. dose” comparison makes Moderna roughly 13,000 times more dangerous than ephedra dietary supplements, though Moderna has been deemed “safe and effective.” But dosing of ephedra is more frequent, so we have to adjust to that.
Even if you took 150 doses of ephedra for every shot of Moderna, then Moderna is still over 80 times more dangerous than ephedra dietary supplements. Even comparing apples-to-apples — Moderna vs. typical vaccines (1.1 death reports per million doses), Moderna is 29 times more dangerous.
If something 80 times more dangerous isn’t banned, that represents a double-standard.
Reference
[10 death reports filed during a time-window involving ~4 billion ephedra doses] — Haller CA, Benowitz NL. Adverse cardiovascular and central nervous system events associated with dietary supplements containing ephedra alkaloids. N Engl J Med. 2000 Dec 21;343(25):1833-8. doi: 10.1056/NEJM200012213432502. PMID: 11117974. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11117974/
[FDA final ruling] — FDA. Food and Drug Administration, HHS. Final rule declaring dietary supplements containing ephedrine alkaloids adulterated because they present an unreasonable risk. Final rule. Fed Regist. 2004 Feb 11;69(28):6787-854. PMID: 14968803. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14968803/
[251.85 million Moderna doses in USA by 22 Mar 2023] — OWID. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
[8,075 Moderna death reports in USA up to March 2023] — MedAlerts. https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php
Agreed! Thank you! It’s all about who is making how much money and as aging their agenda of works-wide domination; it’s not about health or reducing deaths.