In these times, small talk also includes inquiring about the state of health after the most recent vaccination shot. You can then hear amazing stories, of being in a state of malaise for days, of tingling in various parts of the body, of pain in that arm that no needle could get through. Anyone who has a slight doubt about these descriptions is probably not entirely wrong: Not everything that vaccinated people perceive as side effects has to come from the vaccine.
A new work in which scientists looked at the complaints of people who took part in Covid vaccine studies and were assigned to the placebo group also supports this view. Unknowingly, these subjects were injected with a harmless substance such as saline. And yet, 35 percent of nearly 23,000 subjects reported at least one side effect after the first dose. Headaches and severe fatigue were the classics. Joint pain, nausea, chills and other complaints followed.
Of the test persons who actually received the vaccine, 46 percent complained about such side effects – not a very big difference. Overall, the research team concludes, up to two-thirds of the reported side effects are more likely to come from the head of the vaccinated than from the vaccine vial. Psychologists call the phenomenon the nocebo effect. It’s the unwelcome sibling of the placebo effect, in which people feel an improvement in their condition despite having taken a drug as effective as a sugar pill. Both are examples of the power the psyche can have over the body.
It should be noted: “Every healthy person can develop a nocebo reaction,” says Winfried Rief, psychology professor at the University of Marburg and co-author of the journal Jama Network Open published study. Affected people mistake existing everyday complaints for side effects or they perceive even slight signals from the body as strong and disturbing due to their tense attention. Those who already have negative expectations, have had unpleasant experiences with medicinal substances and have a tendency to be anxious are more susceptible, says Rief.
The circumstances of administration and even the mere appearance of a drug can also have an impact on the reactions. That’s the experience of regulators in New Zealand when a manufacturer changed the shape and color of a thyroid pill but not the active ingredient. In the months that followed, the number of side effects reported rose steadily. When the media reported on the increasing numbers, there was no stopping them; the reports climbed to two thousand times the original values.
Because public communication also plays a role in the formation of nocebo reactions. Therefore, the authors of the current study recommend classifying the number of vaccine side effects. Or even simpler: to emphasize that no side effects can occur.