Tuesday, May 02, 2023
Texas Attorney General to Investigate Whether COVID-19 Vaccine Makers Misled Public
The highest-ranking prosecutor in Texas is launching an investigation into whether the three top COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have misled the public.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is probing whether Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson misrepresented the efficacy of their COVID-19 vaccines, the Republican announced on May 1.
The companies may have violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, Paxton said. That state law bars people from disseminating a statement that they know “materially misrepresents the cost or character of tangible personal property, a security, service, or anything he may offer” for the purpose of selling a product or service.
It also prohibits representing that goods are “of a particular standard, quality, or grade … if they are of another.”
Most of the COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the United States have been manufactured by Moderna or Pfizer and its partner, BioNTech, according to federal data. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine has been the third most popular in the country. No other vaccines were available until 2022.
Also at issue is whether the companies engaged in research to make a virus or pathogen more dangerous by increasing its transmissibility or pathogenicity and misleading the public about doing so.
Paxton sent civil investigative materials to all three companies that demand the production of documents and information within 30 days, including whistleblower reports and concerns regarding COVID-19 vaccine trials.
The materials also demand documents showing the rates of side effects for each vaccine and when the companies became aware of “unexpected or additional adverse events, side effects, injuries and/or deaths” related to their COVID-19 vaccines.
The companies also were told to hand over documents showing all investigations that were opened by federal, state, county, and local agencies, including law enforcement officials, related to representations made about the safety and effectiveness of the shows.
“The development of the Covid-19 vaccine, and the representations made by and knowledge of Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, are of profound interest to the public’s health and welfare. This investigation aims to discover the truth,” Paxton said in a statement.
“This pandemic was a deeply challenging time for Americans. If any company illegally took advantage of consumers during this period or compromised people’s safety to increase their profits, they will be held responsible. If public health policy was developed on the basis of flawed or misleading research, the public must know. The catastrophic effects of the pandemic and subsequent interventions forced on our country and citizens deserve intense scrutiny, and we are pursuing any hint of wrongdoing to the fullest.”
While the manufacturers are largely shielded from lawsuits because of the Trump administration’s Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act in 2020, there’s an exception for actions or failures to act that constitute “willful misconduct.” That’s an act or omission that’s taken “intentionally to achieve a wrongful purpose,” “knowingly without legal or factual justification,” and “in disregard of a known or obvious risk that is so great as to make it highly probable that the harm will outweigh the benefit.”
While being recorded without his knowledge, a senior Pfizer employee said in video footage released in January that Pfizer was aiming to “preemptively develop new vaccines” by mutating COVID-19.
“If we’re going to do that though, there’s a risk of like, as you could imagine—no one wants to be having a pharma company mutating [expletive] viruses,” Dr. Jordon Walker, a director of research and development at Pfizer, told nonprofit Project Veritas.
He said scientists at Pfizer were “optimizing” a process to mutate COVID-19 but were going slow “because everyone is very cautious.”
Pfizer later acknowledged that it had been conducting experiments that involved using the original COVID-19 virus “to express the spike protein from new variants of concern.”
“This work is undertaken once a new variant of concern has been identified by public health authorities,” the company stated. “This research provides a way for us to rapidly assess the ability of an existing vaccine to induce antibodies that neutralize a newly identified variant of concern. We then make this data available through peer reviewed scientific journals and use it as one of the steps to determine whether a vaccine update is required.”
Dr. Robert Malone, who helped develop the messenger RNA technology on which Pfizer’s vaccine is based, said that the experiments Pfizer described met the definition of gain of function.
“What they’re describing is almost identical to what was apparently done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology”—the laboratory from which some experts believe that COVID-19 escaped—Malone told NTD.
The Chinese laboratory was conducting risky experiments on mice, U.S. authorities have said, and is located in the same city where the first COVID-19 cases were detected.
Walker used the term “directed evolution” while speaking to Project Veritas, which Malone said is so similar to gain of function as to be irrelevant.
Paxton’s civil demand requests all communications and documents related to Pfizer engaging in either gain of function or directed evolution “in the study, analysis, trials, or preparation of the COVID-19 vaccine.” The same demand was made to Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.
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CDC Eases COVID-19 Vaccination Requirements for Foreign Travelers
A single dose of the most widely utilized COVID-19 vaccines is sufficient for international travelers to meet the requirements to enter the United States, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an update.
Foreign travelers who receive a single dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines meet the requirements, according to the CDC.
“Because some traveler vaccine records might not specify whether recent Moderna or Pfizer doses received were bivalent, CDC will consider anybody with a record of a single dose of Moderna or Pfizer vaccine issued on or after August 16, 2022, to meet the requirements of the Amended Order to board a plane to the United States,” the CDC website reads.
The bivalent vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer were first introduced in the United States as boosters in the fall of 2022. They’re now available as a one-dose primary series for most Americans, replacing the old vaccines. The CDC does recommend that some people get an updated shot as a booster even if they already received one, despite fleeting protection against hospitalization and poor shielding against infection.
The United States has required noncitizen nonimmigrants to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination since 2021, under a proclamation issued by President Joe Biden. Exceptions are given for certain reasons. No religious exceptions are accepted.
The vaccination requirements state that a traveler arriving by air must be fully vaccinated, defined as two weeks after receiving a dose of an accepted single-dose vaccine or the second dose of an accepted two-dose series.
The CDC previously required two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines to meet the requirements. A single dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines is now acceptable, alongside a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, available in the United States and elsewhere, or a single dose of the Convidecia vaccine, which isn’t available in the United States.
Two-dose vaccines include Novavax’s vaccine, available in the United States; AstraZeneca’s vaccine, available in Europe and some other countries; and Sinopharm, a Chinese vaccine. People who received a two-dose series of the old Moderna or Pfizer vaccines can still travel to the United States.
To present proof of vaccination, a person must show a digital or paper record such as a vaccination certificate from the European Union.
The United States is one of a small number of nations that still require proof of vaccination to enter the country.
It’s not clear whether the foreigner vaccination requirements will remain in place beyond May 11, when the U.S. public health emergency over COVID-19 is set to expire. The COVID-19 national emergency was already rescinded after Biden signed legislation that was approved by Congress.
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Washington Post Editorial Points to Covid Vaccine’s Disruption of Women’s Menstrual Cycle
In a recent editorial in the Washington Post, Kate Clancy, a biological anthropologist and professor at the University of Illinois, wrote about how after she received her first dose of the Covid vaccine she got her period and the bleeding was so heavy she “was swapping out overnight-strength pads every hour.”
Clancy tweeted out her experience and expected a response of only about 500 people. Instead, she heard from 165,000. The responses spoke volumes. After the vaccinations women had changes in their periods. “Changes in menstruation were uncomfortable and often painful, people reported. Strangers described bleeding through their clothes at work.
Postmenopausal people were terrified they had cancer.” What seemed to surprise Clancy the most was the response of the medical community. “It is medical scientists’ duty to predict, look for and, if found, disclose side effects — and here is where I believe some in the medical community fell short.” In fact, Clancy cites medical authorities who claim excessive bleeding after Covid vaccination was a result of ‘pandemic stress”. Dr. Melissa Viray, Deputy Director for the Richmond City and Henrico County Health Districts doesn’t believe there’s a physiologic link between the vaccine and a woman's menstrual cycle, and would not classify it as a side effect of the Covid vaccine. “That’s just not how these vaccines work -- so I’d be very surprised," said Dr. Viray.
However, Viray did concede the Covid vaccine puts stress on the body. "Any time you put a stressor on the body, there are definitely -- there are definite changes that occur," Dr. Viray said. "...I could see where it might have, it might influence menstrual cycles in a little way, but just in the way that any stressor or any change to the environment for some individuals can change their menstrual cycles."
Medical Community “Fell Short”
According to Clancy, there is no question the vaccine saved lives. TrialSite has concurred with this point of view, although the products first rapidly authorized after less than a year of clinical development did come with rare side effects that may not seem so rare given that over 270 million people in America alone received the primary vaccination dose.
Clancy points out “clinical trials of the coronavirus vaccines did not ask questions about menstruation beyond inquiring about date of last menstrual period at the start of the study, to ensure participants were not pregnant. A participant in one of the trials emailed me to say it took two tries to persuade her trial site to include anything in her chart about her menstrual changes — the first time, they refused on the grounds that she was probably just perimenopausal.” In September of last year the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released an article about a study which confirmed a link between the Covid-19 vaccination and an increase in a woman’s menstrual cycle.
However, the NIH report claimed the increase in length, post Covid vaccine, was temporary. The study didn’t answer all the questions women had about the corona vaccine and the connections to women’s periods. Specifically, that the vaccine can make a woman’s period worse. But Clancy raises a bigger problem.
‘Menstrual changes matter to millions of people, and pharmaceutical companies, medical professionals and politicians need to invest in research and provide incentives for redesigning research so that it accommodates menstruation. Medical treatments and vaccine trials — for coronavirus and other maladies — will continue to disserve those bodily systems about which they ask no questions. We deserve better than to be surprised when a new treatment makes us bleed on our office chair.”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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