Dr. Anthony Fauci promoted the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which granted pharmaceutical companies immunity from liability when vaccines cause injury or death. Tax dollars have funded billions of damage payouts through the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Pharmaceutical companies have been fined billions over the years due to faulty drugs and outright lying to the public. Why should they be trusted with vaccine safety/efficacy studies?
The lockdowns have caused more deaths than the official virus numbers due to gaps in treatment for heart disease, cancer, etc. coupled with suicides and alcohol/drug abuse spikes. The lockdowns have devastated the economies of nations, wiping out many middle class businesses and transferring wealth to the top. Lockdowns may double world poverty.
We hear constantly of surges in cases. A “case” is simply a positive test result. The late Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis stated that the PCR test that he had invented was never intended to be used as a diagnostic test for viruses.
Imperial College in the UK hypothesized hyperbolic death numbers. All sorts of deaths are put in the COVID column. Influenza is not even being independently tallied by the CDC this year. Among school age children, the COVID-19 death rate is statistically zero. The virus has proven no more lethal than the seasonal flu.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense makes it clear why we should be skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccination push. Off-Guardian out of the UK presents evidence from experts around the globe contrary to the official COVID-19 narrative. GlobalResearch.ca provides unbiased information and excellent commentaries. Sources such as these allow for discerning what benefits public health from profit agendas and policies not supported by the data.
BERNARD DALSEY, Whitewater, WI
Editor notes: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 32 million cases of COVID-19 through April 28, with 2 million requiring hospitalization and 571,297 deaths. While many skeptics claim health officials are mischaracterizing deaths as being COVID-related, an analysis of CDC data showed an increase of about 574,000 more Americans dying from March 15, 2020, through Feb. 20, 2021, than would have been expected in a normal period, the New York Times reported. So COVID isn’t just killing people who would have died anyway. And even among COVID-19 patients who were not hospitalized, about 33% are “long haulers,” who continue to complain months later of symptoms, such as fatigue, loss of smell or taste and “brain fog,” University of Washington researchers reported in February, according to . Some of these “long haulers” have reported improvements in their condition after taking the vaccines.
The Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were approved by the FDA for use in the US, under Emergency Use Authorization, and the European Union also has authorized them. Both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use a relatively new messenger RNA (mRNA) technology that researchers have been developing since the 1990s. Both brands have shown they are about 95% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID infection after two doses. The Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine, which uses a different approach to trigger an immune response, is 66% protective against confirmed COVID infections overall, but it was 85% protective against severe disease. When the FDA issued guidelines for emergency use authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines, it set the efficacy threshold at 50%.
COVID can still infect vaccinated people, as 95% efficacy implies, but the symptoms usually are much less serious. As of April 26, 95 million Americans had received a COVID-19 vaccine. Among vaccinated people, there were 9,245 breakthrough cases, with 835 hospitalizations and 132 deaths, the CDC reported. Meanwhile, more than 170,000 unvaccinated Americans have died from COVID since Joe Biden was inaugurated. And variations of the coronavirus that spread among the unvaccinated are infecting younger people than the original COVID-19.
There have been reports of severe allergic reactions to the mRNA vaccines. The CDC reports that anaphylaxis occurs at a rate of about 2.5 cases per one million doses of the Moderna vaccine, and 4.7 cases per million doses of the Pfizer. Many of the people who have developed anaphylaxis have a history of severe allergies and some have had previous episodes of anaphylaxis. The J&J vaccine had a different problem as, out of eight million people vaccinated with J&J, at least 16 women — most between the ages of 18 and 48 — and one man in his 30s experienced clotting problems; three women died.
In February 2020, Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, a former pharmaceutical executive, invoked the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act of 2005, which empowers the HHS secretary to provide legal protection to companies making or distributing critical medical supplies, such as vaccines and treatments, unless there’s “willful misconduct” by the company. The protection lasts until 2024, CNBC reported Dec. 17, 2020. The PREP Act included the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), which provides benefits to eligible individuals who suffer serious injury from one of the protected companies.
That means that for the next four years, these companies “cannot be sued for money damages in court” over injuries related to the administration or use of products to treat or protect against COVID. If you experience severe side effects after getting a COVID vaccine, the federal government is supposed to take responsibility, but the program rarely pays, covering just 29 claims over the last decade.
COVID vaccine injury claims could have been sent to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which handles claims for 16 routine vaccines. Known colloquially as “vaccine court,” the program paid on about 70% of petitions adjudicated by the court from 2006 to 2018. Since it began considering claims in 1988, the VICP has paid approximately $4.4 billion in total compensation. That dwarfs the CICP’s roughly $6 million in paid benefits over the life of the program.
The VICP also gives you more time to file your claim. You have three years from the date of the first symptom to file for compensation, instead of the one year the CICP gives you. Congress could change those terms.
In summary, Pfizer, Moderna and J&J might be making excessive profits off the pandemic, but that’s not enough of a reason to pass up the highly-effective vaccines and take the risk of contracting COVID-19. Many COVID skeptics have learned the consequences the hard way.
Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out — among other things — that our “modern age” invents more gadgets and gizmos faster than can be absorbed by our human brains. And we don’t get to vote on them; they just appear and we are left to figure out how and why to use them. The telephone, the radio, the airplane, sonar, the rocket, the atomic bomb and, of course, now the ubiquitous computer and internet. Space exploration makes ever more satellites and spyware and drones for soldierless warfare possibilities. As the internet gets cheaper and more available (and faster and more available) people go to all these things. Meanwhile, the mail goes from 18 cents to 55 cents a letter (over several decades until now). Newspapers originally got free mailing or at leaste cost only pennies to mail, on purpose, because what they conveyed was deemed essential to governing and uniting our nation. A “free” tweet or a 55-cent letter are the choices now. Guess which usually wins — and why? That’s where we’re at today. Hence the decline of letter writing (5/1/21 TPP). And we didn’t vote (exactly) to get here.
Once we had commercials introduced to all of this they took off as Influencers and Money-makers. Authoritarian governments love these communication marvels, as well as capitalist business. Competition for eyes and ears never gets too much of it all, so, of course, everything becomes political. We’re at a point, it seems, that it’s also exhausting, where it’s not just a lot of confusion.
We historically have education for all in this country in order to have citizens who can contribute to the common good as well as to their own benefit. More citizens means greater need for their services, but this also creates needed jobs. If the greater good of society as well as the individuals is not tended to things fall apart and now one “wins.” So it is unwise to focus on only society or individuals. We all do well with what amounted to good government. Each new generation has the opportunity to enhance or destroy its own environment and situation.
We have to decide what’s good or bad and we have to live with the results. It behooves us to to choose what’s the best. Sometimes what was once best no longer is. Having the freedom to choose and define what is best is our responsibility and opportunity. We today have thousands of years and civilizations to look at and try to learn from. Writings passed down will always be important, now and in the future. You may be able to store things electronically now, but what does one do when the way to retrieve it is gone?
I am very thankful for your paper and how helpful it is in these electronic times. May you continue.
CHERYL LOVELY, Presque Isle, Maine
I want to make people aware of a social problem which seems to receive very little attention. nnThat social problem is “ageism” and “age-discrimination.” I never understood why I feel that I have not been treated well by a lot of people I have known in the world of politics in recent years.
More and more of them seem to have no interest in my participation and involvement and in what I think and believe and have to say. I don’t think that I have become dumber in my senior years. So, what’s different about me now? My wife said to me “Stew, you are about to turn 71 years of age. It is not that you have somehow become an unlikable idiot who doesn’t know what he is talking about. You are old. The #1 complaint and grievance of the elderly is that they feel that they have become “INVISIBLE” to younger people, especially to people under the age of 50.”
Ouch ! That hurts.
STEWART B. EPSTEIN, Rochester, N.Y.
“Race,” according to Roget’s Thesaurus, is also referred to as “blood” and also “alliance.” In between are “tribe,” “stock” and “sovereignty,” among others. It seems racism has been with us from the beginning of time.
God help the Martians. We’re already intimidating the Man in the Moon. It’s only a matter of time and tide …
FLORA ORMSBY SMITH, Marblehead, Mass.
From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2021
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