If it were possible to say with absolute scientific authority that vaccinations are the best way for the planet to escape from the Covid-19 death grip, then it might seem plausible – albeit still highly arguable – for governments to demand proof of ‘the mark’ for participating in the global economy. As things stand, however, nothing to date indicates that there are not more effective and reliable means of moving forward.

The relentless push for vaccine passports by opportunistic authoritarians around the globe took a broadside this week as Israeli researchers discovered what had been suspected by many all along: natural immunity acquired via infection, as opposed to vaccinations, provides the best defense against Covid-19 and its seemingly endless array of Greek-coded variants.

The study, which examined up to 32,000 individuals, found that the risk of developing Covid-19 was 27 times higher among the vaccinated (with the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine), and the risk of hospitalization eight times higher, as compared to those individuals who had acquired natural immunity.

Equally shocking, individuals who were administered two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were almost six-times more likely to contract the Delta variation and seven-times more likely to have symptomatic disease than those who recovered from the disease naturally, according to the study, which is up for peer review.

“This analysis demonstrated that natural immunity affords longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization due to the delta variant,” the researchers said.

So what grounds are left for forcing vaccine passports on people? The simple answer would seem ‘none.’ As a thought experiment, let’s imagine that a radical new mode of transportation still in the early test stages – perhaps some brainchild from the quirky mind of Elon Musk, for example – had proven to have a better than average chance of exploding for no apparent reason.

Under such grim conditions it is doubtful that governments would coerce their subjects into driving such a flawed vehicle since the product itself would be deemed too dangerous to enter the mainstream. So why isn’t the same sort of logic being employed when it comes to being forced to carry a vaccine passport for a vaccine, which has also demonstrated itself to be dodgy at best, disastrous at worst?

The efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine in treating the Delta strain has been measured at just 42 percent, and in some cases even as low as 17 percent. At the same time, thousands of otherwise healthy people have suffered horrible side effects after taking these jabs, up to and including death.

Australian journalist Denham Hitchcock is one of thousands of people who got much more than he bargained for when he got the shot.

“The first week was like any vaccine. Feeling off,” Hitchcock wrote on his Instagram page.

“But nearing the end of the second week my heart started to race, I was getting pins and needles in the arms, extreme fatigue and a very strange sensation of dizziness…By the end of the third week i was getting steadily worse – sharp chest pain – cold shivers and chills – and the dizziness was intense.

“25 days after the shot and probably a little late to hospital – but here I am – diagnosed with pericarditis – or inflammation of the heart due to the Pfizer vaccine.”

Since being in the hospital, Hitchcock says he’s contacted health professionals in Sydney who told him that while his reaction to the vaccine is rare – it’s certainly not isolated.

“One hospital has had well over a dozen cases like me,” he revealed.

 

Посмотреть эту публикацию в Instagram

 

Публикация от Denham Hitchcock (@denhamhitchcock)

Meanwhile, a coroner this week has determined that the death of Lisa Shaw, who worked for BBC Radio Newcastle and passed away in May, was “due to complications of an AstraZeneca Covid vaccination.”

And lest anyone think the Moderna vaccine is without its own problems, Japan this week removed around 1.6 million vials of the vaccine from use after contamination was reported by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. While such things do occasionally happen, the ministry revealed that the substance found in the vials “reacted to magnets and…could be metal.”

Moderna suggested the problem may have come from a “manufacturing issue” from a plant in Spain.

“The company is investigating the reports and remains committed to working transparently and expeditiously with its partner, Takeda, and regulators to address any potential concerns,” a Moderna spokesperson told Nikkei, saying the drugmaker believed a “manufacturing issue” at a plant in Spain was to blame.

Incidentally, the very inventor of the mRNA vaccines, Dr. Robert Malone, who could be providing governments much-needed guidance during the pandemic, has largely been shunned from polite society from the Western hemisphere’s very own medical Taliban as a conspiracy theorist who peddles in “misinformation.”

When we finally get past all of this, the legitimacy of both the federal public health infrastructure and the legacy media will have been destroyed. And what happens then? Force your mind to think 9-12 months ahead. What do things look like then, based on current trends?

— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) August 27, 2021

Getting back to Pfizer, its own lackluster performance apparently means little to regulators as the drug maker just won approval by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to administer its vaccine, which will be distributed under the brand name Comirnaty. Now pressure will certainly ratchet up against those who have second thoughts about the magic juice as many public and private institutions – from schools and workplaces to government agencies – push for a mandatory vaccine regime. This would include society’s youngest and most vulnerable demographic, the children.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, for example, is pressuring the National Health Service to begin vaccinating children as young as 12, and despite the fact that the youth have shown amazing imperviousness to the virus. The UK looks set to join the United States, Spain, France and Germany as countries where inoculating the young is quickly becoming standard operating procedure – and with zero democratic debate.

Nobody, however, should be led to believe that things will return to normal once everyone has rolled up their sleeves for the shot. After all, these ‘vaccines’ do not prevent people from getting infected by Covid, and, as studies have shown, may actually precipitate infection. This shocking shortcoming of the jabs, far from sidelining their use in favor of other preventive measures, has allowed the vaccine makers to roll out an endless supply of booster shots, as gleefully discussed at a recent Pfizer stockholder meeting.

Albert Bourla, Pfizer Chairman of the Board & CEO, remarked that “the dynamics in the COVID more and more indicate a potential that we will have a clearly repeated business…Now we still don’t have data about the immunity of our vaccine because it is early. But we do see that the people that have the disease, more and more publications indicate that after several months, the immune response goes down. So there is a need to boost.” Those giddy remarks were made back in February, before the Pfizer vaccine has acquired FDA approval.

In other words, the sky is the limit for Big Pharma as far as profits from vaccinations go. And despite the inherent risks of getting the jab, the Western world’s assembly of petty tyrants, short-sighted leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden are pushing ahead with plans for vaccine passports.

Such an initiative, which flies in the face of freedom and liberty, denies individuals the right to refuse medical treatment – and treatment that is loaded with unacceptable risk. And just because one of the drug makers has secured FDA approval for their product, this will not help individuals who are injured, or worse, from the vaccines. The drug makers are indemnified from any lawsuits that may arise from the victims of their product.

This dire situation has placed the citizens of so-called democracies into the unenviable situation where they must choose between signing up to a lifetime of imperfect shots and boosters to participate in a large swath of the economy, or remain something of a social pariah for the rest of their lives. It is a choice that no citizen of a democratic system should ever be forced to make.

By Joe LAURIA

The United States has rejected a plea from Australia for Pfizer vaccines as Sydney remains in lockdown with an expanding Delta variant outbreak, desperate for vaccine doses after a disastrous domestic rollout.

The Australian newspaper reported on Friday, “Australia has ‘made representations’ over the course of several weeks for access to America’s excess Pfizer ­vaccines. All of Australia’s requests have so far been unsuccessful.” Meanwhile, The New York Timesreported this week that a million vaccine doses have gone to waste in the U.S.

Australia’s largest city has been locked down since June 26 after a major outbreak of the Delta variant that caught Australia unprepared. The country had been relatively virus free for more than a year before the sudden outbreak. That contributed to a lack of urgency by the federal government in Canberra to garner necessary vaccine supplies for a country of just 25 million people.

From the Second World War, when the U.S. defended the northern coastal city of Darwin under Japanese attack, Australia has been an extremely loyal U.S. ally to the point where critics say it hurts its own self-interests in following Washington’s dictates.  When Prime Minister Gough Whitlam stood up to the U.S. in the Vietnam War era he was removed from office in 1975 in what has been called a coup engineered by the CIA in conjunction with Buckingham Palace.

Since then no Australian prime minister has dared stray too far outside the lines laid down by Washington, even if detrimental to Australia’s interests. The most recent example has been the conservative government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison damaging relations with its leading trade partner, China, by ramping up U.S.-directed tensions with Beijing.

A ‘Five Eyes’ Ally

Pine Gap, a key U.S.-run listening post in Australia’s Northern Territory. (Mark Marathon/Wikimedia)

The Murdoch-owned Australian quoted Republican members of Congress who acknowledge Australia’s loyalty and back sending U.S. supplies of Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines in the midst of Sydney’s Covid-19 crisis.

“Australia is not only an ally but a Five Eyes ally,” the paper quoted Rep. Michael McCaul as saying. “I’ve been pressuring this ­administration through the Covax program to give more of these ­vaccines that are just sitting in warehouses in the U.S. They will expire if we don’t get them out the door.” The Five Eyes is an alliance of the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand that shares electronic intelligence.

The co-chairman of the Friends of Australia congressional caucus, Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher, said: “The United States has vaccine doses set to expire at the same time our Australian mates need extra doses. The Biden administration should be doing everything in its power to get these doses to ­Australia.”

The newspaper said the Biden administration is sensitive to criticism that it would be helping a rich country while it has made commitments to send vaccines to developing nations. The U.S. might also be holding on to excess supplies as the Delta variant makes its way through the U.S. population, the paper said.

Australia’s mess was of its own making, with Morrison early on betting alone on the Astra Zeneca shots, which have become unpopular in Australia after reports of it causing rare blood clots.  Several Australians have died of such clots after taking the AZ vaccine.

Amidst Pfizer shortages, only 21 percent of Australians have been fully vaccinated, second lowest among OECD countries. That number stood at nine percent before the current outbreak.  Drive-thru vaccination centers, common for months in the U.S., were only announced this week in Sydney.

While for months Australia stood at around 30,000 cases during the entire duration of the pandemic — the U.S. had more than 300,000 cases in a single day — there have been more than 5,000 infections in New South Wales in just the past six weeks. Three hundred Australian Defense Force soldiers are in Sydney to help with enforcing the lockdown.

consortiumnews.com

Pfizer has been accused of “bullying” Latin American governments during negotiations to acquire its Covid-19 vaccine, and the company has asked some countries to put up sovereign assets, such as embassy buildings and military bases, as a guarantee against the cost of any future legal cases, according to an investigation by the U.K.-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

In the case of one Latin American country, demands made by the pharmaceutical giant led to a three-month delay in a vaccine deal being reached. For Argentina and Brazil, no national deals were agreed to at all with Pfizer. Any hold-up in countries receiving vaccines can lead to more people contracting Covid-19 and potentially dying.

Officials from Argentina and the other Latin American country, which cannot be named as it has signed a confidentiality agreement with Pfizer, said the company’s negotiators demanded more than the usual indemnity against civil claims filed by citizens who suffer serious adverse events after being inoculated. They said Pfizer also insisted the governments cover the potential costs of civil cases brought as a result of Pfizer’s own acts of negligence, fraud, or malice. In Argentina and Brazil, Pfizer asked for sovereign assets to be put up as collateral for any future legal costs.

Campaigners are already warning of a “vaccine apartheid” in which rich Western countries may be inoculated years before lower-income regions. Now, legal experts have raised concerns that Pfizer’s demands amount to an abuse of power.

Protection against liability shouldn’t be used as “the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of desperate countries with a desperate population,” he added.

Pfizer, which partnered with BioNTech, a German biotech, to make the vaccine, has been in talks with more than 100 countries and international bodies, and has supply agreements with nine countries in Latin America and the Caribbean: Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay. The terms of those deals are unknown.

Pfizer declined to comment on the allegations about its demands in negotiations, citing “ongoing negotiations which are private and confidential.”

The company told the Bureau in a statement: “Pfizer and BioNTech are firmly committed to working with governments and other relevant stakeholders to ensure equitable and affordable access to our COVID-19 vaccine for people around the world.” The company said that in addition to the nine Latin American countries with which it has struck supply agreements, it has “allocated doses to low- and lower-middle-income countries at a not-for-profit price, including an advance purchase agreement with COVAX to provide up to 40 million doses in 2021.” COVAX is a global initiative to pool purchasing power and ensure vaccine access for low-income countries. “We are committed to supporting efforts aimed at providing developing countries with the same access to vaccines as the rest of the world,” Pfizer said.

Most governments are offering indemnity — exemption from legal liability — to the vaccine manufacturers they are buying from. This means that a citizen who suffers an adverse event after being vaccinated can file a claim against the manufacturer and, if successful, the government would pay the compensation. In some countries people can also apply for compensation through specific structures without going to court.

This is fairly typical for vaccines administered in a pandemic. In many cases, adverse events are so rare that they do not show up in clinical trials and only become apparent once hundreds of thousands of people have received the vaccine (a 2009 H1N1 flu vaccine, for example, was eventually linked to narcolepsy). Because manufacturers have developed vaccines quickly and because they protect everyone in society, governments often agree to cover the cost of compensation.

However, the government officials from Argentina and the unnamed country who spoke to the Bureau said Pfizer’s demands went beyond those of other vaccine companies, and beyond those of COVAX, which is also requiring its member countries to indemnify manufacturers. This presents an additional burden for some countries because it means having to hire specialist lawyers, and sometimes pass complex new legislation, so manufacturers’ liabilities can be waived.

‘An extreme demand’

Pfizer asked for an additional indemnity from civil cases, meaning that the company would not be held liable for rare adverse effects or for its own acts of negligence, fraud or malice. This includes those linked to company practices — say, if Pfizer sent the wrong vaccine or made errors during manufacturing.

“Some liability protection is warranted, but certainly not for fraud, gross negligence, mismanagement, failure to follow good manufacturing practices,” said Gostin. “Companies have no right to ask for indemnity for these things.”

Mark Eccleston-Turner, a lecturer in global health law at Keele University in England, said Pfizer and other manufacturers have received government funding to research and develop the vaccines and are now pushing the potential costs of adverse effects back on to governments, including those in low- and middle-income countries. (Pfizer’s partner, BioNTech, was given $445 million by the German government to develop a vaccine and the U.S. government agreed in July to preorder 100 million doses for nearly $2 billion, before the vaccine had even entered Phase 3 trials. Pfizer expects to make sales of $15 billion worth of vaccines in 2021.)

In Eccleston-Turner’s opinion, it looks like Pfizer “is trying to eke out as much profit and minimize its risk at every juncture with this vaccine development then this vaccine rollout. Now, the vaccine development has been heavily subsidized already. So there’s very minimal risk for the manufacturer involved there.”

The Bureau spoke to officials from two countries, who all described how meetings with Pfizer began promisingly but quickly turned sour, and reviewed a report by the Brazilian Ministry of Health.

The Argentinian Ministry of Health began negotiating with the company in June and President Alberto Fernández held a meeting with the company’s general manager for Argentina the following month. During subsequent meetings Pfizer asked to be indemnified against the cost of any future civil claims, said an official from the president’s office. Although this had never been done before, the country’s Congress passed a new law in October allowing for it. However, Pfizer was not happy with the phrasing of the legislation, according to the official, who declined to be identified because the negotiations were confidential. The government believed Pfizer should be liable for any acts of negligence or malice. Pfizer, said the official, disagreed.

The government did offer to amend the existing law to make it clear “negligence” meant problems in the distribution and delivery of the vaccines. But Pfizer was still not satisfied. It asked the government to amend the legislation through a new decree; Fernández refused.

“Argentina could compensate for the vaccine’s adverse effects, but not if Pfizer makes a mistake,” said the official, who has detailed knowledge of the negotiations. “For example, what would happen if Pfizer unintentionally interrupted the vaccine’s cold chain [of -70 Celsius during transport and storage] … and a citizen wants to sue them? It would not be fair for Argentina to pay for a Pfizer error.”

The official said talks soon became tense and complicated: “Instead of giving in on some points, Pfizer demanded more and more.” In addition to the changes sought in the new law, it asked Argentina to take out international insurance to pay for potential future cases against the company (countries were also asked by vaccine makers and the WHO to do this during the H1N1 outbreak).

In late December, Pfizer made another unexpected request: that the government put up sovereign assets — which might include federal bank reserves, embassy buildings, or military bases — as collateral.

“We offered to pay millions of doses in advance, we accepted this international insurance, but the last request was unusual: Pfizer demanded that the sovereign assets of Argentina also be part of the legal support,” the official said. “It was an extreme demand that I had only heard when the foreign debt had to be negotiated, but both in that case and in this one, we rejected it immediately.”

The failed negotiations mean Argentinian citizens, unlike those in neighboring countries, do not have access to Pfizer’s vaccine, leaving them with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, AstraZeneca’s vaccine, and those delivered through COVAX. The government is also negotiating to acquire vaccines from Moderna, Sinopharm, and CanSino.

“Pfizer misbehaved with Argentina,” said Ginés González Garcia, Argentina’s former minister of health. “Its intolerance with us was tremendous.”

‘Good cop, bad cop’

The same demands were made of Brazil’s Ministry of Health, according to a ministry statement. Pfizer asked to be indemnified against all civil claims and asked the ministry to put up sovereign assets as collateral, as well as create a guarantee fund with money deposited in a foreign bank account. In January, the ministry refused these terms, describing the clauses as “abusive.”

An official from the Latin American country that cannot be named described talks unfolding similarly. This person said the government began negotiating with Pfizer in July, before the vaccine was approved. There was a perception that Pfizer’s negotiators had a “good cop, bad cop” routine, with the “bad cop” pressing the government to buy more doses.

“[At that time] there was not a single drug or vaccine in the world with this kind of technology that had been shown to be safe and effective. … You had this lady putting pressure saying: ‘Buy more, you’re going to kill people, people are going to die because of you,’” the official said.

Negotiations became fraught when the company asked for additional indemnity, for civil cases alleging Pfizer’s acts of negligence, fraud, or malice. The government had never awarded any kind of indemnity before and did not want to waive liability, but Pfizer said this was non-negotiable. Negotiations continued and eventually a deal was signed that included the additional indemnity provisions, but after a delay of three months.

As Pfizer has only 2 billion doses to sell across the world this year — apparently on a first-come, first-served basis — the official is angry about a delay that likely pushed the country further back in the queue.

One of the reasons the government wanted Pfizer’s vaccines was because the company said they could be delivered quickly. Yet in the contract, Pfizer wanted to reserve the right to modify the schedule. There was no room for negotiation. “It was take it or leave it,” said the official.

The official added: “Five years in the future when these confidentiality agreements are over, you will learn what really happened in these negotiations.”

Based in the U.K., the Bureau of Investigative Journalism is an independent, not-for-profit organization. This story was produced by its Global Health desk.

statnews.com

Was it the great Groucho Marx who once said, when asked about whether he was a member of a club, “I wouldn’t want to join a club which would accept me as a member”?

Is this perhaps the dilemma now for many member states of the European Union who are beginning to wake up to some harsh realities about the project? Italy, for sure, will be counting its dead and wondering why or how the EU managed to take so long to get around to buying vaccines when a non-EU member state – Britain – surged ahead and was the first in the queue. Germany also succeeded in buying its own vaccines, in a stark defiance of EU rules which dictated that it would be only Brussels which would roll out a pan-EU program. Hungary went even further and ordered the Russian vaccine leaving many aghast in the Belgian capital.

The vaccine which Germany bought ahead of the EU program was BioNTech-Pfizer. Presently, there are now 600 million doses of this vaccine available to member states.

Pfizer previously said it could only produce up to 1.3 billion doses this year, Reuters reported.

The commission, on behalf of member states, has sealed deals with Moderna, AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, BioNTech/Pfizer and CureVac for up to 2.3 billion vaccine doses.

Currently, BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are the only jabs authorised in the EU though, which is causing real problems both for the EU executive’s credibility as a pseudo superstate but also for the strength of the project itself, particularly in the wake of the sour grapes narrative coming from Germany which, it would seem is to pay its debt back to Brussels for its rule-breaking, is leading the cavalcade of disinformation and rank propaganda.

And chief amongst its main targets for criticism is, of course, the UK, which, bereft of its ties with Brussels, surged ahead and bought its stocks straight off the mark and is currently boasting of having vaccinated 10 percent of its adult population. The best any EU country can do to come close to that is 3% and so the European Commission is feeling the heat of a PR strategy which is based on the mantra “when in hole, keep digging” and just keep spouting drivel and hope that EU citizens won’t notice that it will be the UK in the summer which will have all of its over 50s vaccinated, when most EU member states would have only just begun theirs.

What is especially self-defeating is the antagonism towards the UK, which not only manifests itself with fish deliveries by British fisherman being blocked from entering EU markets, but the drive to destroy the credibility of AstraZeneca vaccine which is made in the UK and is both the target of ridicule from Brussels and Berlin yet whose bosses are under fire for delivering stocks late to the EU, due to Brussels red tape taking so long to sign off the first order.

And herein lies the essence of the EU and all its foibles. A wannabe superstate which struggles with the real big issues facing it and is forced to be a tough dictator of draconian rules, while its bureaucracy grinds forward with its banal committees, working groups, parliamentary motions, white papers, directives and god knows what else.

The dwindling credibility is surely with Ursula von der Leyen and her European Commission, painfully lowering itself onto its own sword as each decision, day by day, makes it look like a loser who just can’t accept the reality. There is a dire lack of unity and dynamism in the EU in recent years. It appears quite nimble at adopting regulations over mobile roaming rates, or the sizes of European citizens’ windscreen wipers, but can’t tackle the really big issues when it needs to.

Brexit made it look ridiculous. Even the most stalwart supporters of the project are licking their wounds now and reflecting on how the big picture alluded the call-centre politicians who whined over fish quotas and pulled every cheap trick in the book to try and intimidate Boris Johnson.

But now the EU looks even a bigger loser than ever with these post-Brexit stunts and the attacks on the UK. Can the EU not see how its policies are sinking it at an alarming rate? Just recently, the six-year EU budget was both agreed by member states and signed off by the European parliament. But not without a fight from Poland and Hungary who both surely watch closely now how the EU deals with what some policy wonks are calling its “worst policy ever” – the catastrophe of the Covid rescue plan, which started off by putting politics first, by awarding a huge contract to France’s Sanofi group, which failed to deliver, followed by bungling orders and delays, which has now left the EU wide open for a blowback from its erstwhile supporters who, it is afraid, will block its aims towards “further integration” – which is euro jargon for decentralisation of power away from member states towards a federal eurostate based in Brussels. The budget which now the EU operates with is somewhere in the region of 2 trillion euros for six years – three times what the EU was working with when the author left Brussels in 2006. Each time, the EU loses credibility, amasses failure and hesitation, each time it fuels far-right groups at the ballot in EU elections, and each time it fails in all of the big issues, the EU has only one default setting. Get more money and give the European people more of what the EU does.

But is it too late? With the deaths rising in countries like Italy, which has long battled with the idea of leaving the eurozone and taking back control of its economy, many are wondering if the EU will run out of time to claw back the credibility that the European Commission and Ursula von der Leyen badly needs. Covid fiasco will force many citizens in countries who are sceptical about the EU as a federal superstate, to watch the UK and see how it wrestles – but survives – the petty, puerile stunts which the European Commission plays with it every day and decide for themselves who are the winners and who are the losers. The Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Hungary and even France all have an itch to scratch. But most likely it will be Italy which this year makes the first move towards some kind of Brexit. With Italy leaving the eurozone though, the Groucho Marx quote about the club and its members is no longer valid. The club will simply no longer be there.