A proof that vaccines are unsafe: trembling and with sprained legs, a woman stumbles through her London home. But it seems that she is afflicted with the condition that occurs in sporadic cases and has everything to do with anxiety or stress.
Georgia-Rose Segal is only in her early 30s. And yet, she is so ready. “Three weeks ago, I was still in the rings in a gym. Now I’m on a walker,” Segal writes cynically, with one of the videos she posted on Instagram.
The cause: the second Pfizer vaccine, Segal understood. “Please make your own choices”, she concludes her speech, which has now gone viral and is widely shared by vaccine doubters. “These symptoms are NOT a conspiracy. The proof is here.”
“Functional neurological disorder” is the name her doctors use for her condition, according to Segal. And, the complicated part: that is a condition that has nothing to do with a substance in the vaccine, but everything to do with fear, fear, predisposition and expectation. In sporadic cases, the condition also occurs after other vaccinations, after various medical procedures, after injury, traumatic events, and occasionally after injections of sugar water—a kind of placebo effect, but in reverse.
This certainly does not mean that Segal is pretending or fabulating, emphasizes psychologist Lars de Vroege, who does a lot of research into the phenomenon. However, something is really wrong with that brain. And the image is very intense, with legs and arms falling out or uncontrolled movements.
Segal is therefore not alone. According to a British study published last week, about 4 in 22,000 people who received the Pfizer vaccine and 3 in 15,000 who received it from Moderna suffer from ‘conversion disorder’, as the phenomenon is also known. “That’s pretty much the same as what we see in the general population,” says De Vroege. “I am therefore not concerned that this is specifically a side effect of this vaccine.”
Patients like Segal often have to get back on their feet with rehabilitation and behavioural therapy and explanations about how the brain works, says De Vroege. Often with success. It already makes a difference if one knows that the condition exists, according to three American and Canadian neurologists in a scientific review published recently in the journal JAMA. “Then maybe the fear and terror will be less”, thinks De Vroege.
Georgia-Rose Segal has meanwhile started a fundraiser on the Internet. She wants to be treated by an alternative healer in Los Angeles, she writes. Anything to “be able to be outside with her dogs, around the horses and running around like a headless chicken again,” Segal said.
