CONTROL GROUP

CONTROL GROUP NEWSLETTER – MARCH 2024

Whether you have joined the Control Group in the last four weeks or whether you have been with us since the start of pandemic era, we are delighted to have each and every one of you in the study!

Currently around 50 new people join the study every week. The steady increase in the number of participants who keep their records up to date every month is making a real difference to the kind of data the Control Group can produce.

As more people contribute data over a longer period of time, initial findings may change or remain the same – this is, after all, a long-term study! Either way, we are interested in hard, unbiased data to help us – and the wider public – understand what kind of impact COVID interventions have had and continue to have upon our health going into the future.

In this newsletter we will be recapping some of the additions made to the database over the last few weeks to help us to achieve this goal, including:

• reporting on death
• new items added to the database
• support with your account
• how to submit a question to our analytics team

A big THANK YOU to everyone for your continued support and contributions – none of this would be possible without you!

The Control Group Team

AN URGENT NOTICE REGARDING PAYMENT DISPUTES

If you took out an ANNUAL subscription with us, it will no longer renew automatically.

Why are annual subscriptions expiring?

The number of payment disputes raised by renewed annual subscriptions has triggered our payment provider Stripe to issue a cancellation and penalty warning to us if we do not take action to reduce them. Therefore, we have made the difficult decision to disable the auto-renew on all annual subscriptions in order to stop any potential disputes.

From now on, if you have an annual (rather than monthly or quarterly) subscription with us, we will require you to login and confirm the renewal manually to avoid cancellation. You will be sent an email with instructions on how to do this before the renewal date.

What are payment disputes?

A payment dispute is raised when a payee tells a payment provider that they do not agree with a payment that has been taken from them; this may be because the payee does not recognise who the payment is going to, or does not remember the subscription payment they set up.

Stripe charge $50 per dispute if the dispute threshold is breached and a review fee of $25,000, prior to complete cancellation.

Please understand, this could mean the end of the Control Group and then end of the study!

If you do wish to raise a dispute about your subscription

If you are:

• not sure if it is the us – ‘CG Coop’ – drawing money from your account,
• having trouble cancelling your subscription
• need help cancelling your subscription
• or wish to contest a payment

Please do NOT flag this as a dispute in Stripe!

Instead, please contact either support@controlgroup.coop or gemma@controlgroup.coop and we will aim to resolve any issues within 3 working days.

Need help logging in?

If you cannot remember your password, request a magic link with this link https://prod.controlgroup.coop/account/magic_link, which will enable you to login and update your password.

If you do not receive the link or continue to struggle to get into your account, contact us at support@controlgroup.coop, or fill out a support form here: https://prod.controlgroup.coop/support

We appreciate you

The generosity of Associate members — like you — is the sole reason the Control Group is able to continue collecting data on the safety of efficacy of COVID vaccines and have supported people around the world in their time of need.

REPORTING UPON DEATHS

The founding purpose of the Control Group is to understand whether those who refused the COVID-19 vaccines die at a similar — or a different — rate in the years following the pandemic era as those who took one or more of the COVID vaccines.

The general public were assured that to refuse the COVID vaccine was as good as a death sentence, whereas the COVID vaccines, as well as “stopping transmission”, would prevent serious disease, and in a way that was “safe and effective”.

To serve as a long-term ‘control group’ to the COVID vaccinated, a comprehensive record must be kept, of the number of deaths occurring each month and year, as well as the cause of death, to build up a picture of potential health disparities between these two groups.

There are two methods by which you can record your death, or the death of a loved one in your ‘participant household’, in the Control Group database:

1. The ‘Notify us of a participant death’ button, or,
2. The ‘Death Notification Letter’

‘Notify us of a participant death’ button

Many people in the Control Group do not just have a profile for themselves, but include their spouses, children, parents, or friends as participants in their Control Group ‘household’. Before, if a participant died, another participant or a family member would have to email us to record their bereavement and the cause of death.

Now, a death can be registered with the Control Group within the participant’s account by clicking the ‘Notify us of a participant death’ button — this is located on the profile(s) page when you login, on the left-hand side, underneath the ‘Add participant’ / plus sign button.

STEP-BY-STEP

1. Click the ‘Notify us of a participant death’ button, a short questionnaire will appear on screen

2. Select the name of the participant that has died from the drop down menu

3. Select the cause of death — if the cause of death is unknown, click ‘Undetermined’; if the cause of death is not listed, please pick ‘Other’ and type the cause of death in the box that appears below.
4. Put the date of their death
5. Click ‘Save’

Once a death has been registered, if you refresh the page, this participant’s profile turns from green to grey, and their profile can no longer be edited. The information they gave about their health whilst they were alive, and the information relating to their death, will still be included in the study and be included in our data findings.

At the top of the page – underneath the ‘Participant Household’ box — is a toggle switch which says ‘Show deceased participants’. If the switch is ‘on’ (blue) you will see any participant registered as deceased on screen in the greyed-out box. If you would like to keep these profiles but hide them from view, turn the switch to the ‘off’ (grey) position.

Once a participant is registered as deceased, you CANNOT undo this from within your account.

If you accidentally register a participant as deceased, please fill out a support form on our website to request the participant is reinstalled: https://prod.controlgroup.coop/support

Death Notification Letter

We recognise that the pandemic era has left many people isolated —through bereavement, social ostracism, family fights, depression and anxiety, injury, illness and more. You may not have anyone close to register your death on your profile, or you may not have anyone in your life who is familiar with the Control Group and the study.

For this reason, we have created the ‘Death Notification Letter’.

Like the ‘Participation Certificate’ and ‘Participant Letter’, any participant in the study can go to the ‘Resources’ page from within their Control Group account and download a personalised, ‘Death Notification Letter’.

The letter expresses your desire to have your death registered with the Control Group for the purpose of the COVID study, and gives a brief set of instructions on how to register a participant as deceased. It includes your participant ID number and a unique QR code which allows the executor of your estate to register your cause of death with the Control Group.

We recommend you print out the letter, sign and date the letter at the bottom, and keep it among your personal paperwork.

As with the ‘Notify of us of a participant death’ button, the data you contributed to the study, and the information relating to your death, will still be included in the study and be included in our data findings.

ITEMS ADDED TO THE DATABASE

Can’t find your health condition or medication?

If you have a health condition, allergy, or take a medication or supplement that does not appear when you try to add it to your health record, write to us and let us know! We will happily add it to the database catalogue!

Follow the link below to fill out a request form – select ‘NEW LIST ITEM’ on the form and tell us what you would like us to add.

https://prod.controlgroup.coop/support

Added to the Database: New Medication and Supplements

In the last month, the following items have been added to the database after participants’ requests.

MEDICATIONS AND SUPPLEMNTS

• Carbocisteine (Mucodyne) (Mucolytic) [TR-PHA357]
• Cardamom [TR-SUP369]
• Colecalciferol (high dose vitamin D) [TR-PHA362]
• Depo-Medrone injection (Corticosteroids ) [TR-PHA372]
• Diltiazem (Adizem, Angitil, Tildiem, Viazem, Zemtard) (High blood pressure) [TR-PHA355]
• DMSO (Dimethyl Sulfoxide) [TR-SUP359]
• Glutamine [TR-SUP371]
• Glutathione [TR-SUP370]
• Kenalog injection (Corticosteroids) [TR-PHA373]
• Levaquin (Levofloxacin) (Antibiotic) [TR-PHA368]

ALLERGIES AND INTOLERANCES

• Adhesives [HC-ALG287]
• Blood transfusion reaction [HC-ALG288]
• Lisinopril (Zestril) (Ace inhibitor) [HC-ALG289]
• Levaquin (Levofloxacin) (Antibiotic) [HC-ALG290]

HEALTH CONDITIONS

• Umbilical hernia [HC-GAS1104]
• Umbilical hernia [HC-GAS1104]
• COVID-19 – Arturus [HC-FEC1105]
• COVID-19 – BA.2.86 (Pirola) [HC-FEC1106]
• COVID-19 – Epsilon [HC-FEC1107]
• COVID-19 – Eris [HC-FEC1108]
• COVID-19 – Eta [HC-FEC1109]
• COVID-19 – Fornax [HC-FEC1110]
• COVID-19 – JN.1 [HC-FEC1111]
• COVID-19 – Kappa [HC-FEC1112]
• COVID-19 – Lambda [HC-FEC1113]
• COVID-19 – Theta [HC-FEC1114]
• COVID-19 – Zeta [HC-FEC1115]
• Rotator cuff injury (tear) [HC-JUR1116]

• Levothyroxine (Hypothyroidism, thyroid, hormone) [TR-PHA360]
• Lisinopril (Zestril) (ACE Inhibitor) [TR-PHA367]
• MasterPeace (Marine Plasma) [TR-SUP374]
• Oral vitamin K (injection alternative) (at birth) [TR-PHA366]
• Oramorph (Morphine, Opioid analgesics) [TR-PHA354]
• Residrenate (osteoporosis) [TR-PHA361]
• Uniphyllin Continus (Theophylline, oral bronchodilator) [TR-PHA356]
• Vitamin K injection (New born injection) [TR-PHA358]
• Vitamin K1 [TR-SUP363]
• Vitamin K2 [TR-SUP364]
• Vitamin K3 [TR-SUP365]

HOW TO BUILD YOUR PROFILE

Have you logged into your Control Group account since the summer?

Having trouble building your profile in the new 2.0 system?

Diny provides a full walkthrough tutorial of the Control Group’s health database!

This video shows you how to establish user profile (or “participant profile”) on the database, how to add your basic information, such as your lifestyle choices, blood group, and location type.

She then walks you through how to add your medical history, present conditions, illnesses, medications and supplements, how to amend any details should any of the information change in time, and how to complete your monthly update.

WATCH NOW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsYLKf5dMCw

LOGIN: https://prod.controlgroup.coop/account/login

For more support, visit our website where we have a series of how-to guides, live Q+As, and email support: https://controlgroup.coop/support/index.html

DIRECTION OF CONTROL GROUP RESEARCH

The Control Group analytics team are preparing the second edition of our Quarterly Report. The Quarterly Report is a publication that reviews of the last three months of health data contributed by you – the committed participants in the Control Group study!

It is your data and the database is your resource. We want you to put your questions to the analytics team.

Follow the link to our online survey to ask a question: https://forms.gle/yjKTf3RHsrc5oQZ67

Examples of questions you might ask:

• “What is the most common health complaint had by vaccinated people?”
• “Has the prevalence of cancer increased among the unvaccinated as well as the vaccinated?”
• “Is one sex experiencing more side effects from the vaccine than another?”
• “What is the average age of those who are experiencing vaccine side effects?”

Please submit one request at a time. Questions must be brief but you can send as many as you like.

Your questions will help broaden our understanding of the ways in which health outcomes may differ between those who did and those who did not take the COVID-19 vaccines. It is not just the longevity of life between vaccinated versus unvaccinated people that concerns the Control Group — it is the quality of that life.

ASK YOUR QUESTION HERE: https://forms.gle/yjKTf3RHsrc5oQZ67

STEFANIE HILGER’S INSPIRING MEDITATION SESSIONS

Stefanie Hilger helps to inspire us with her grounding and uplifting meditation sessions!

Stefanie is a psychologist whose coaching method combines reflection and inspiration with concrete action. We can’t recommend her lovely, interactive sessions enough; she fills us with positivity, strength and offers practical solutions to our individual concerns and then energizes us with a beautiful meditation.

THE THEME FOR THE NEXT SESSION IS: Creating a world that works for everyone

These sessions are free and are open to everyone who participates in the Control Group study.

Next session: 25/03/2024 6:30 pm (GMT)

Time zones: Vancouver 11.30am, New York 2.30pm, Paris 7.30pm, Kuala Lumpur (next day) 2.30am, Auckland (next day) 7.30am

Learn more: https://controlgroup.uk/newsletter/meditation050324/

We continue to wish all of you the very best! Do take advantage of Stefanie’s meditation sessions, and keep a look out for the next Quarterly Report – due for publication in early April 2024!

Diny
Co-founder
Control Group