On the 12th of August 2022 the Dutch far right party leader Thierry Baudet of opposition party Forum Voor Democratie responded to an article of Danish news website DR. The article was about three Danes who received compensation because of the rare side effect the three suffered from after being vaccinated with the AstraZeneca. Baudet tweeted to his 273.000 followers the following: ‘whoever has been injected with that scary ‘vaccine’ can claim compensation in Denmark. “Blood clots AstraZeneca-vaccine: all three of these Danes worked as frontline healthcare personnel. Camilla is the only one of the three that survived.”’ His claim about receiving compensation after being vaccinated with AstraZeneca in Denmark is mostly false.
In this factcheck we will first be focussing on the first part of the tweet, namely: ‘whoever has been injected with that scary ‘vaccine’ can claim compensation in Denmark’. In the tweet Thierry Baudet references to ‘that scary ‘vaccine’’. We assumed that he meant AstraZeneca with this statement, because the article also writes about the AstraZeneca vaccine. It is unclear who Baudet is talking about, because who will be receiving compensation? After that we will be looking at the second part of the tweet. Is Baudets information right about the three Danes?
In Denmark the population can claim at Patienterstatningen compensation after suffering from side effects. This is an institution that processes compensation claims from patients. These patients got hurt while receiving treatment in the hospital, by their doctor or as consequence of side effects from receiving medicine. The ministry of Public Health pays for this drugdamage (Patienterstatningen, w.d.). The people who qualify for the compensation must have been treated in Denmark. In this case the people who have been vaccinated. This means that the Dutch do not qualify for the compensation in Denmark when they’ve been vaccinated in the Netherlands.
Not everyone who has been vaccinated in Denmark with the AstraAzeneca vaccine can receive a compensation. Only the cases who had a severe and rare injury due to the side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine (Patienterstatningen, w.d.). The article that Thierry Baudet used as source for his tweet originates from independent news website DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation). It was written by Isabella Tvede, Marie Allerslev Eriksen and Jim Bregendahl, journalists active by DR. In the article the three Danes that are mentioned receive compensation because of the side effects they experienced. The three Danes suffered from the VITT-syndrome. This abbreviation stands for Vaccine-Induced-Immune-Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia. This is a rare side effect that leads to a combination of severe thrombosis and thrombocytopenia (NHG, 2021). Baudet mentioned in his tweet that the three were frontline healthcare staff and that two out of three hadn’t survived. The article also confirms that the three Danes worked as frontline healthcare staff.
On the 7th of April, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) made the conclusion that the there is a connection between the COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca (Vaxzevria) and the development of the VITT-syndrome (NHG, 2021). Much earlier on the 11th of March 2021 Denmark stopped using the AstraZeneca-vaccine (NOS, 2021).
Thierry Baudet called the AstraZeneca a ‘scary ‘vaccine’’. To bring things in perspective, we put the numbers side by side. Approximately 151.000 people had at least one vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine (Danish Health Authority, 2021). According to Patientersatingen (2022) they received 212 reports in the case of the AstraZeneca vaccine. From these reports 130 were rejected and 75 are still being processed. In total seven cases have been recognised and they have the right for compensation. This amount has risen since the tweet and the article. The numbers have last been updated on March 29 2022.
Conclusion
The claim of Thierry Baudet is mostly false. Whoever has been vaccinated with AstraZeneca does not automatically have the right to claim compensation in Denmark. For this the person must suffer from a severe and rare side effect from the vaccination. The person also must have been vaccinated in Denmark. The information Baudet gives about the three Danes is correct.
RESEARCH | ARTICLE: Fia van den Bogert, Haile Flapper, Windesheim University of Applied Sciences, Zwolle, The Netherlands
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