Justin Bieber announced he would take a time-out from his touring schedule because he now suffers from partial facial paralysis, which may be due — some speculate — to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine.
“It is from this virus that attacks the nerve in my ear and my facial nerves and has caused my face to have paralysis,” the 28-year-old pop star explained on June 10 in a candid video posted to Instagram.
“As you can see, this eye is not blinking. I can’t smile on this side of my face; this nostril will not move. So there’s full paralysis on this side of my face.”
Bieber said he believed he was diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome (RHS), which, “occurs when a shingles outbreak affects the facial nerve near one of your ears,” the Mayo Clinic wrote about the extremely rare condition on their website.
“In addition to the painful shingles rash, Ramsay Hunt syndrome can cause facial paralysis and hearing loss in the affected ear,” it stated.
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About the gigs he was planning to do on tour, Bieber said he is “physically, obviously, not capable of doing them.”
Rumors abound
Soon after Bieber’s revelation, the Internet was brimming with rumors that Bieber would have attracted RHS as a side-effect of the COVID gene therapy injections.
However, most mainstream media only highlighted Bieber’s miserable condition, and kept shut about the proverbial elephant in the room, while those that did mention the vaccination option, like Rolling Stone, sought to discredit the possibility.
“To be clear, there is no evidence that Bieber’s diagnosis is an adverse effect of getting the Covid vaccine, in large part because there is no evidence that he has been vaccinated to begin with,” postulated the media.
Whether Bieber is vaccinated, we don’t know, for sure, but the outlet did acknowledge, however, that Bieber’s tour management required all his fans to get vaccinated if they wanted to see their idol live in concert — no exceptions, not even for negative PCR test holders.
Furthermore, Bieber is Canadian, and Canadians are obliged to take the vaccine in order to be allowed to travel — as in, going on a world tour — so in principle, he simply must have been vaccinated.
What further added fuel to the suspicion is the fact that Bieber’s wife, 26-year-old Hailey, suffered a stroke that forced her to undergo emergency heart surgery earlier this year in March.
Doctors speculated a blood clot was released from her heart and traveled to her brain after passing through a 12 to 13 millimeter hole in her heart that had caused the brain hemorrhage.
Both RHS and strokes are extremely rare in people in their twenties.
Media in debunk mode
The magazine continues to quote physicist Katrin Wallace, or Dr. Kat, as she playfully refers to herself as a TikTok influencer, seeking to debunk the the-vaccine-dunnit allegations flooding social media.
Wallace contended, “Current evidence is insufficient to attribute a definitive link between the shingles (VZV reactivation) and the Covid-19 vaccine.”
However, the outlet continues to dismiss the claims as “vaccine-related misinformation” without providing sound evidence to substantiate that avowal.
What statistics say
One researcher that does support his charges with sound evidence and logic, however, is Steve Kirsch.
Kirsch, an American entrepreneur widely labeled as “a promoter of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines,” according to Wikipedia, simply does what many others have refrained from doing so far: math.
Kirsch also presents two medical studies, a BMJ paper, and one in Spanish, Enfermedades Infecciosas y Microbiología Clínica, that support his claim of an established connection between COVID vaccines and the occurrence of RHS.
What are the odds that someone in his twenties attracts Ramsay Hunt, Kirsch questioned, and what are the odds it could be attributed just to bad luck?
According to VAERS, the official vaccine-side-effects database in the U.S., Kirsch points out, six RHS — or Herpes Zoster Oticus as it’s referred to in the VAERS database — cases were reported in the past 32 years for all vaccinations combined, five of which happened after the COVID vaccination campaign began last year.
He also refers to a physician, Neil Chesen M.D., who has come across four Herpes Zoster Oticus cases in one month after having met with none in his 32 years of practice. All were COVID-19 vaccinated shortly before.
The only non-COVID vaccine-related case was one of a veteran who had likely attracted the syndrome from the anthrax shot. “So that’s a 32*5=160X higher incidence rate per year,” Kirsch stated.
“And if you exclude the anthrax vaccine from that comparison, the likelihood is (of getting RHS after COVID vaccination) simply too high to calculate (0 cases in 32 years),” Kirsch continued.
Kirsch also points out the established fact of the severe under-reporting factor (URF), which he calculates at about 128 percent, “There are likely around 500 people just like Justin ages 20 to 30, who suffer from the same thing.”
