The Vaccine Was “95% Effective” How?
By Robert Blumen | Brownstone Institute | March 8, 2023
The 1840 Treaty of Waitangi between the British Crown and Maori chiefs was a landmark event in the history of New Zealand. Drafted in English, a Maori translation was prepared, ostensibly to ensure that Maori could have an accurate understanding of the terms. In retrospect, it is less clear that a meeting of the minds was intended:
The English and Māori texts differ. As some words in the English treaty did not translate directly into the written Māori language of the time, the Māori text is not a literal translation of the English text. It has been claimed that Henry Williams, the missionary entrusted with translating the treaty from English, was fluent in Māori and that far from being a poor translator he had in fact carefully crafted both versions to make each palatable to both parties without either noticing inherent contradictions.
“The covid vaccine is 95% effective” is a contemporary Treaty of Waitangi. The original is in the language of clinical trials. It was never translated. The public interpreted this phrase in their native language, normal English. What Pfizer said and what the public heard were quite different. The public would have been far more skeptical of these products had the clinical trial results been translated into normal English.
What we need is a proper translation and an explanation of how miscommunication happened.
The Injections Did Not Stop Infection
By now, everyone knows that the Pfizer and Moderna products did not stop people from getting Covid. Covid disease has mowed a wide strip through the double and triple-masked talking heads who told everyone that the shots would make them immune.
What is less well known is that:
- The products were never expected to stop infection or transmission.
- The clinical trials did not test for their ability to do so.
A clinical trial is designed to test a drug for effectiveness, which is strictly defined by one or more endpoints. An endpoint is a measurable outcome that can be assessed for each participant. With that in mind, prevention of infection was not an endpoint of the BioNTech/Pfizer injection clinical trials. And, this was known in 2020 before the products were approved for emergency use and distributed to the public starting in 2021.
In this New England Journal of Medicine research summary, Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine, under Limitations and Remaining Questions, we find that “whether the vaccine protects against asymptomatic infection and transmission to unvaccinated persons” remains unanswered by the clinical trial.
What did the clinical trial test for, if not the ability of the mRNA vaccine to stop transmission and/or infection? The trial was designed to test the ability of the injections to prevent “symptomatic Covid 19 cases” defined as one or more of a number symptoms and a positive test (see page 7 of the supplementary appendix for details).
@pfizer tweeted in Jan 2021 that stopping transmission was their “highest priority”. Their product does not do that, nor did the tweet make a claim that it did so. But it was their highest priority nonetheless. That, and getting as many people injected as possible.
Failure to Prevent Infection Was Known Before the Rollout
In October 2022, a Pfizer executive testified to an EU body that Pfizer had not tested the ability of the vaccine to stop transmission. This story was shocking to some and generated accusations that Pfizer had lied about the capabilities of the shots. But this information had been available since the trial results were released early in 2021. Pfizer had already been criticized for this.
Dr William A Haseltine PhD, wrote in Forbes in September 2020:
What would a normal vaccine trial look like?
One of the more immediate questions a trial needs to answer is whether a vaccine prevents infection. If someone takes this vaccine, are they far less likely to become infected with the virus? These trials all clearly focus on eliminating symptoms of Covid-19, and not infections themselves. Asymptomatic infection is listed as a secondary objective in these trials when they should be of critical importance.
On October 21, 2020 the editor of the BMJ (British Medical Journal) Peter Doshi asked:
Will covid-19 vaccines save lives? Current trials aren’t designed to tell us
Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said, “Ideally, you want an antiviral vaccine to do two things . . . first, reduce the likelihood you will get severely ill and go to the hospital, and two, prevent infection and therefore interrupt disease transmission.”
Yet the current phase III trials are not actually set up to prove either. None of the trials currently underway are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus….
Is It Even a Vaccine?
A vaccine that prevents infection is known as “neutralizing” or “sterilizing”. I am a software engineer with no training in medicine, pharmacology or clinical trials. I consider myself a good barometer of what the average untrained person would think about such things. Prior to 2021 I had thought that immunity was a necessary condition for a drug to earn the title of “vaccine”. If anyone had asked me, I would have told them that the Covid injections were a treatment, not a vaccine.
The Wikipedia article about vaccines (Mar 5 2023) aligns with my untrained understanding:
A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease. … A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize the agent as a threat, destroy it, and to further recognize and destroy any of the microorganisms associated with that agent that it may encounter in the future.
Cornell Law provides the following legal definition of vaccine, sourcing 26 USC § 4132(a)(2), which is consistent with the above:
The term “vaccine” means any substance designed to be administered to a human being for the prevention of 1 or more diseases.
The definition published by the CDC prior to 2021 said much the same. But the CDC website changed the definition on or after August 2021. The older version found on the internet archive is here (emphasis added):
Immunity: Protection from an infectious disease. If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected.
Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.
Here is the new version (emphasis added):
Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.
The earlier pair of definitions is quite easy to understand. The latter, much more difficult. What exactly is a “preparation”? Does a vaccine stimulate the body or only prepare the body? What is or is not a vaccine according to the new definition?
While the CDC may think that they can change the meanings of words whenever they like, public memory retains the original meaning. The assumption of immunity permeates almost all non-expert level discussion of vaccines. A web search for “why are vaccines good” shows results that assume or imply immunity.
Even the CDC did not finish the job of memory-holing the old language. On the very same CDC website, under 5 Reasons It Is Important for Adults to Get Vaccinated, we read “By getting vaccinated, you can protect yourself and also avoid spreading preventable diseases to other people in your community.” And then, “Vaccines Can Prevent Serious Illness”.
The timing of the CDC’s edit suggests to me that prior to 2021, the CDC had the same understanding of vaccines as I do. I believe that they wanted a new definition because they knew that the products being developed at warp speed were not vaccines in the original sense of the word. And it was important that those products be called “vaccines” for reasons that I will explain later. This incident brings to mind a meme that I no longer have a link to. captioned: “We changed what ‘definition’ means so you can’t say that we redefined anything.”
What Does “95% Effective” Mean?
The “95% effective” message was repeated in nearly all reporting on the clinical trials. But the question, “effective at doing what?” was rarely asked. To answer this requires walking down the links of a chain of terminology from the world of clinical trials.
The first link in the chain is “risk”. Risk is the probability of a bad outcome. These are assumed to happen randomly within a group. A clinical trial must define in advance the bad outcomes that the drug intends to avoid. The next link is “endpoint”. Each distinct bad outcome is an “endpoint”. The trial compares the endpoints between a control group who did not take the drug and a test group, who did.
The purpose of a clinical trial is to determine the ability of a drug to reduce risk. A drug that reduces risk is “effective”. There are two ways of quantifying risk reduction. From the NIH glossary:
Absolute risk reduction (ARR) or risk difference
the difference in the incidence of poor outcomes between the intervention group of a study and the control group. For example, if 20 per cent of people die in the intervention group and 30 per cent in the control group, the ARR is 10 per cent (30–20 per cent).
the rate (risk) of poor outcomes in the intervention group divided by the rate of poor outcomes in the control group. For example, if the rate of poor outcomes is 20 per cent in the intervention group and 30 per cent in the control group, the relative risk is 0.67 (20 per cent divided by 30 per cent).
The difference between the ARR and RR (also known as “RRR”, to align with ARR) is in the denominator. The ARR divides by the number of participants in one of the groups. The RRR divides by the number of people with bad outcomes in the control group – a necessarily much smaller number.
The ARR is the number most relevant for a drug – such as the Pfizer injections – that was to be given to everyone. But the RRR is the preferred method of presentation for pharma when they want to exaggerate the effectiveness of a drug because it will always be a much larger number. Would you take a drug that could reduce the incidence of a rare disease by 50%? From 10 per 1 million to 5 per 1 million is an 50% RRR and an 0.0005% ARR.
The 95% figure cited for the covid injections is the relative risk. The absolute risk reduction was 0.84%. In a slide deck from the Canadian Covid Care Alliance (CCCA), slide 11 shows how the 91% was achieved (it is 91%, not 95%, because the it refers to an earlier version of the study):
The research paper COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and effectiveness—the elephant (not) in the room puts the ARR in the 1% range. The CCCA slide deck gives an ARR of 0.84%, though it is not clear how they reached this number, based on the other numbers in their slides.
A clinical trial finding of a 1% ARR means that 99% of the people who take the drug either did not experience the condition that the drug treats, or they did experience it, but were not helped by the drug. The 1% both had the condition and were helped by the drug. Another way of saying this is the Number Needed to Treat (NNT). NNT is the reciprocal of the ARR and is the number of people who must take the drug to help one person reach the endpoint. An ARR of 1% corresponds to an NNT of 100 people.
We can now answer the question of the meaning of vaccine effectiveness. The endpoint of the trial was a severe confirmed case of covid at least 7 days after the second dose. This endpoint requires the participant in the trial to have covid symptoms and a positive covid test. “95% effective” means that 95% of the patients who had Covid symptoms and a positive test were in the control group. Five percent were in the test group.
Here’s what “95% effective” did not mean: if you take the shots, then you will have a 95% lower chance of getting covid. But that is how most people understood it because that is what the words mean in normal English.
Then the Lying Started
Once the public had their hopes raised by the false translation of the “95% effective” message, the pandemic-industrial-complex went into high gear to amplify it. They stated the incorrect message loudly, frequently, and as if it were fact. The injections would – with 100% certainty (perhaps 200%) – protect you from infection. Many of the people who said this were doctors or scientific researchers who must have understood how to interpret clinical trials.
Here are some choice quotes that did not age well:
- “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.” Joe Biden, CNN Town Hall July 2021
- “Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person. A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus, the virus does not infect them, the virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else,” she added with a shrug. “It cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to go get more people. [Vaccines] will get us to the end of this.” – Rachel Maddow, March 2021
- “When people are vaccinated they can feel safe that they won’t get infected, whether they’re outdoors or indoors.” – Dr. Anthony Fauci, May 2021 (outdoors: seriously?)
- “Vaccination against COVID-19 prevents breakthrough infections, Stanford researchers find.” – Stanford Medicine, July 2021
- Vaccinated people become “dead ends” for the virus – Anthony Fauci, May 2021
Demonizing the Unvaxxed
The public has consistently over-estimated the infection fatality rate of Covid. Some even believed the fatality rate to be above 10%. They believed that we were in great danger. They also believed that the “95% effective” vaccine would bring the pandemic to a quick end, once everyone had taken it. Anyone who refused to do so was therefore risking not only their own life, but everybody else’s as well.
Dr Anthony Fauci estimated herd immunity would emerge when around 60% of the population had taken the vaccine … or perhaps 70, 80, no wait … 85%. Or maybe 100% (which would include large numbers who already had natural immunity). Bill Gates extended that to everyone on earth.
The narrative then turned to demonization of those who refused to submit to vaccine coercion. The selfish anti-social behavior of the anti-vaxxers with their stubborn attachment to “free dumb” that was keeping everyone locked indoors and forcing us all to wear diapers on our faces. Yale University behavioral researchers tested messaging strategies to determine whether shame, embarrassment or fear was most effective.
President Biden said that we the nation was experiencing a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”. Later, Biden ominoulsy warned the unvaccinated that he had been waiting a long time for them to get injected, but “our patience is wearing thin”. In December of 2021 the White House issued a cheery year end greeting to the vaccinated. The unvaccinated, on the other hand, were “looking at a winter of severe illness and death.” Merry Christmas.
Even South Park, which I consider a reliable source of contrarian political opinion, ran a storyline set in the year 2050 in which every single character had to be vaccinated for the 30-year pandemic to end. This episode featured one lone holdout who would not get vaccinated due to a crustacean allergy i.e. for “shellfish reasons”. This gag took aim at people who considered the vaccine to be a violation of body autonomy, and those who objected to components used in its development for religious reasons, thereby scoring a “two for one”.
Volumes can, and will, be written about the intense onslaught of propaganda aimed at getting two needles in every deltoid. I will provide one more example that represents no more than the median level of insanity; plenty of people called for the same or worse. @ClayTravis, in February 2023, tweeted the results of a Rasmussen poll from 2022:
Last January 60% of Democrats wanted to lock everyone who didn’t get the covid shot in their houses. Over 40% of Democrats wanted those who rejected the covid shot sent to quarantine camps. Over 40% also wanted anyone who criticized the covid shot fined & imprisoned. Over a quarter wanted those who didn’t get the covid shot to have their kids seized.
While there were many agendas driving the madness, the Treaty of Waitangi effect was a critical part in carrying it out. If the message had been that “everyone is going to get exposed to covid – injected or not”, then it could not have happened. The misunderstanding convinced the public that mass vaccination would stop the pandemic; and that the holdouts were prolonging it. Without this belief, none of the coercion made any sense: employment mandates, school mandates, quarantine camps, or vaccine passports. As the hysteria fades, the last remaining mandates are being dropped as the reality sinks in that the shots do not stop the spread.
Welcome to Waitangi World. I hope that you have a pleasant stay.
Robert Blumen is a software engineer and podcast host who writes occasionally about political and economic issues.
‘We Just Showed the Truth’: Russian Pranksters Vovan and Lexus React to YouTube Ban
Sputnik – 06.03.2023
One of the pranksters, Alexey Stolyarov (Lexus), said he does not believe that their videos on YouTube violated the digital platform’s guidelines, suggesting instead that the “truth” the prankster duo shared “probably was not convenient for western officials.”
Western Big Tech has once again demonstrated just how much it “cares” about freedom of speech as video-hosting platform YouTube, which is owned by Google, banned the channel of Russian prankster duo Vovan & Lexus over alleged violation of community guidelines.
During an interview with Sputnik, one of the pranksters, Alexey Stolyarov (Lexus), pointed out that the ban came shortly after they pranked William Hague, the UK’s former foreign secretary.
“We got a letter that we have broken the rules of YouTube because of the prank with the ex-Foreign Secretary William Hague,” Stolyarov said. “And they wrote that they had to remove it, but probably after 2 hours they removed the whole channel without explanation.”
He noted that this is far from the first time their channel has been blocked on YouTube, and that the last time they got banned, the British government and the UK Ministry of Defense actually sent a letter to the video hosting’s management, naming the pranksters as “real threats to the UK national security.”
“This time we have pranked ex-Foreign Secretary William Hague. It was in all Russian media, but it wasn’t in the UK media. Because since the last prank call with the defense secretary, they noted in the letter that other contributors of information have already agreed not to spread our pranks,” he said. “At first, YouTube kept silent for about three days. And then they blocked us.”
The prankster also expressed his skepticism about allegations of their pranks violating YouTube’s community guidelines.
“We just spread the statements of their western officials. It’s not our words. It’s their words,” he said, referring to the admissions those officials made during prank calls with Vovan and Lexus. “We just showed the truth and this probably was not convenient for western officials.”
Stolyarov added that they have already moved to platforms such as RuTube, Telegram and VK, over which Western governments and tech corporations hold no sway.
“It’s good that it works in Russia and nobody could ban it because of political reasons but also we have a reserve channel on the Reddit platform. It’s also available in the West.” Stolyarov a.k.a. Lexus remarked.
Vovan and Lexus have gained considerable fame in recent years as they prank a number of prominent western politicians, including current UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, tricking them into making rather frank admissions about poignant geopolitical matters.
The Strange Case of Jacob Anthony Chansley
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | March 8, 2023
On January 9, 2021, Jacob Anthony Chansley was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona for allegedly committing the following offenses:
Civil Disorder; Obstruction of an Official Proceeding; Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building; Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building; Violent Entry and Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building; Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building.
If the unarmed Chansley (known in the mainstream media as the “QAnon Shaman”) indeed committed these offenses, why was he escorted around the Capitol Building by armed police officers, at one point standing in the midst of NINE of them? If the strangely-clad young man bearing an American flag was trespassing and behaving in a “violent, disorderly, and disruptive” way, why didn’t the officers arrest him on the spot?
In reviewing the strange case of Jacob Anthony Chansley, the American people should consider that this country has a longstanding tradition of civil disobedience. In its relationship with the citizenry, the United States government has always had to contend with the somewhat awkward fact that the Republic was founded by men who, legally speaking, committed treason. Thomas Jefferson justified their conduct as follows:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Jefferson’s sentiments sound good and reasonable to a citizenry animated with classical liberal principles of government, but they are problematic for men in power who have little patience or tolerance for pesky dissenters like Jacob Anthony Chansley.
While the surveillance tape shows that many of the January 6, 2021 protestors did indeed commit acts of violence and vandalism, where is the evidence that Jacob Anthony Chansley was one of them?
As Tucker Carlson points out (starting at 2:50 on the tape) multiple cameras from multiple angles show that he is completely unarmed, calmly walking around carrying an American flag in his left hand and a bullhorn in his right.
Since November 17, 2021, Chansley has been serving his sentence of 41 months in prison. Does he really deserve this severe punishment?
Mainstream media pundits have made him—presumably because of his visually arresting and outlandish costume—the face of what it has characterized as an insurrection, but what kind of insurrectionist shows up with no weapons or incendiary devices?
People who identify themselves a Democrats and despisers of Donald Trump will doubtless claim that by posing this question, I am expressing my own partisan political sympathies and attachments. I am NOT.
I write this post out of concern that those who are currently holding power (and their propagandists in the media) can no longer be trusted to tell us the truth about ANYTHING, whether it be the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the purported safety of the COVID-19 vaccines, the war in Ukraine, the events that transpired in the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or anything else of importance.
January 6 committee should be ‘tried for treason’ – Trump
RT | March 8, 2023
Former president Donald Trump has declared that the Democrat-led panel formed to investigate the January 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill should be “tried for fraud and treason.” The committee portrayed the riot as a “violent insurrection,” while video footage released by House Republicans showed more orderly scenes inside the Capitol.
“The Unselect Committee of political hacks and thugs has been totally discredited,” Trump declared on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, repeating a label he has often used to describe the House committee formed to investigate the riot.
“They knowingly refused to show the videos that mattered,” Trump continued. “They should be tried for fraud and treason, and those imprisoned and being persecuted should be exonerated and released, now!”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently shared more than 40,000 hours of security camera footage with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who aired a selection of clips on Tuesday night. The clips show Capitol Police peacefully escorting a number of Trump supporters through the Capitol building during the riot, including so-called ‘Qanon Shaman’ Jacob Chansley, while suggesting that a man called Ray Epps – who some Trump supporters allege was a federal agent tasked with inciting violence against police officers – lied about leaving the Capitol before violence broke out.
The committee’s final report, on the other hand, declared the riot a “violent insurrection” aimed at “overthrowing our democracy.” The committee recommended in December that Trump be criminally charged with inciting an insurrection attempt, obstructing Congress, and conspiring to defraud the United States, arguing that a speech he gave to the crowd before the riot had instigated the riot.
Trump, who is running for office again in 2024, has not been criminally charged, but faces numerous civil lawsuits over his alleged role in fomenting the riot. More than 100 police officers say they were injured on the day, while four Trump supporters died. Two died of natural causes and one of an accidental overdose, while Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot by a Capitol Police officer near the entrance to the House chamber.
In an earlier Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump said that the footage shown by Carlson “sheds an entirely different light on what actually happened” on January 6, 2021. Carlson said that while there were some “hooligans” in the crowd that day, the majority of so-called “insurrectionists” were “sightseers.”
Out of more than 950 people charged in connection with the riot, 351 have been sentenced and 192 incarcerated. Around three quarters of those who pleaded guilty did so to misdemeanor offenses, according to the Department of Justice.
Mother Sues D.C. Doctor Who Gave Kids COVID Vaccines Without Consent
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 6, 2023
The mother of two children who were given COVID-19 vaccines without the mother’s consent is suing the doctor who administered the vaccines.
An attorney representing NaTonya McNeil last week filed a lawsuit in Superior Court for the District of Columbia against Janine A. Rethy, M.D., M.P.H.
According to the complaint, on Sept. 2, 2022, McNeil took her two older children, ages 15 and 17, to the KIDS Mobile Medical Clinic/Ronald McDonald Care Mobile clinic, operated by Georgetown Hospital, to complete their required annual physical exam for the 2022-2023 school year.
The lawsuit alleges Rethy, director of the mobile clinic, held the children in the examination room longer than necessary for a regular check-up and vaccinated them against COVID-19 over their objections and without consulting their mother
In order to attempt to obtain the children’s consent — which they are not legally able to provide without a parent or guardian — the doctor falsely informed the children the COVID-19 vaccine was mandatory for school attendance and told them they could not lawfully decline it if they wanted to attend school.
The suit, filed by D.C. Attorney Matthew Hardin, seeks damages for false imprisonment, battery and fraud.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) is financing the lawsuit because, according to CHD President and General Counsel Mary Holland, “CHD couldn’t just sit still and not allow this wrong to go unpunished and not bring this to the public’s attention.”
In an exclusive conversation with The Defender, McNeil explained why she is suing the the doctor:
“I just feel like people shouldn’t be able to do whatever they want to do to other people and especially not to children. As a mother, I feel like, ‘You all just took all my rights away from me to do what you wanted to do to my kids.’
“I do want justice to be done in this case. I feel like something needs to be done. This can’t just continue to happen.”
‘I feel violated’
According to the complaint, Rethy’s stated goal is to vaccinate all children against COVID-19. The complaint quotes her statement to the press:
“Our goal is to increase vaccination rates in children here in D.C. . . . For more than 30 years our role has been to be in the community to help address the problem of health disparities, bringing families care where they are.
“For this particular effort, we are glad to be partnering with DC Health to provide both regular childhood vaccines and COVID-19 vaccines to all children.”
In addition to her role as director of the mobile clinic, Rethy is chief of MedStar Georgetown University Hospital’s Division of Community Pediatrics and assistant professor of pediatrics at Georgetown University School of Medicine.
McNeil said that when she took her older children to the clinic, she stayed outside the examination room to care for her infant. As soon as the children entered the doctor’s office, she called her daughter’s cellphone to let Rethy know she was just outside the door if the doctor needed to consult her for anything.
According to McNeil, the doctor did not ask or inform her about any vaccinations, and did not ask her to sign anything. At the end of the physical, Rethy came out to talk to her.
McNeil said the doctor explained her son’s asthma treatment plan, but that’s all they discussed.
As they were heading home, McNeil said she was shocked when her daughter complained that her arm hurt “pretty bad.” When McNeil asked her why it hurt, her daughter said she was given the COVID-19 shot, even though she told the doctor she didn’t want it.
When McNeil asked her why she allowed the doctor to administer the shot, her daughter said:
“When she had the needle in her hand and she was coming towards me, I backed up and I asked her what is that needle, and she said it was the COVID shot and I … told her I didn’t want it and she said, ‘Well it is mandatory, you have to get it in order to go to school.’”
Rethy allegedly administered the shot to her daughter, and then to her son. McNeil said:
“He’s 14 and he said they didn’t even ask him if he wanted it or not, but when they gave it to him, he said he thought he had to get it because his sister got it.”
According to the complaint, both children received the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, authorized for emergency use, and the meningococcal vaccine. Her son was also injected with TDaP.
Both children were upset and angry they had been coerced into vaccination, the complaint says.
No school mandate, despite what clinic and doctor alleged
When she got home, McNeil said she called the doctor’s office, and asked them why they vaccinated her children without her consent.
“I would have never consented to you all vaccinating my children,” she said. “I’m not vaccinated and I’m not getting vaccinated and my kids were never supposed to be vaccinated for COVID period, under no circumstances.”
She said the person on the phone said they were supposed to get them for school.
After hanging up, McNeil said she was “so irritated I even started crying” because she couldn’t believe “they put this poison” into her children’s bodies.
In July 2022, D.C. public schools imposed a vaccine mandate for schoolchildren ages 12 and up for the 2022-2023 school year. But on Aug. 26, just weeks after imposing the mandate, officials walked it back, postponing it until 2023.
That means when McNeil’s children saw the doctor, there was no school vaccine mandate in place, despite what the Rethy allegedly told the children.
The age of consent
The District of Columbia in March 2021 enacted the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccination Amendment Act of 2020 (D.C. Minor Consent Act), allowing children 11 and older to consent to the administration of any vaccine — including COVID-19 shots — recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) — without parental knowledge or consent if the medical provider believed “the minor is capable of meeting the informed consent standard.”
The law also required healthcare personnel to provide accurate immunization records to the Department of Health and to the student’s school, but not to parents with religious exemptions.
CHD and Parental Rights Foundation filed a lawsuit seeking a court order to declare the D.C. Act unconstitutional.
A judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on March 18, 2022, granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the D.C. mayor, Department of Health and public schools from enforcing the law.
That means at the time McNeil’s children visited the clinic, they could not legally provide consent to be vaccinated without their mother’s consent.
McNeil said:
“To do that to my little children, my innocent children. They took her rights. When she backed away from you [the doctor] and said she didn’t want it, that should have been the end of it.
“Or you [the doctor] should have called me on the phone to find out what I feel about the situation. But you [the doctor] basically told my child a lie so you [she] could do what you [she] wanted to do to my kid.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Dr. Kirk Moore Insists He Did NOT Sell Fake COVID-19 Vaccine Cards
Utah doctor claims federal indictment contains fundamental falsehood
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | March 7, 2023
A week ago I reported the story of Dr. Kirk Moore—a plastic surgeon who was recently indicted by a federal grand jury in Utah for conspiracy to defraud the US; conspiracy to convert, sell, convey, and dispose of government property; and conversion, sale, conveyance, and disposal of government property and aiding and abetting.
The government’s indictment and mainstream media are highlighting the assertion that Dr. Moore and his colleagues received $50 per procedure in which they disposed of a COVID-19 vaccine dose instead of injecting it into the patient, and then issued a fake vaccine card to the patient. This is deemed to prove that Dr. Moore—a plastic surgeon by trade—”benefitted” from his actions.
I initially assumed the federal investigators and prosecutors involved in the case must have found evidence to support their assertion in the indictment that Dr. Moore had “benefitted” from these transactions—that is, that HE received all or part of the $50 per procedure.
However, shortly after I posted my essay, I was contacted by people familiar with the matter who claimed that the indictment’s assertion is false. To check their assurance, I contacted Dr. Moore and conducted a long interview with him.
Dr. Moore insists that never received a single dollar for administering early treatments to COVID-19 patients or for issuing COVID-19 vaccine cards to patients who feared the mRNA gene transfer injections are not safe. A plastic surgeon by trade, he insists he administered early treatment and issued the cards solely as a charitable endeavor—that is, to help the sick stay out of hospital and to help his fellow citizens who were mandated to receive the injections in order to retain their student and job positions.
In other words, according to Dr. Moore, the federal indictment’s assertion that HE benefitted from the $50 per procedure is FALSE. Because most patients expressed their desire to pay him at least some fee for his invaluable service, he adopted the practice of instructing each to make a $50 donation to a medical freedom charity from which he received no funds. He assumed that keeping this practice strictly charitable would protect him from the charge that he received financial benefits for his actions. He claims the evidence presented in his forthcoming trial will prove that he received no benefit.
An especially intriguing detail he related in my interview is the strange fact that—though he knew he was under investigation because HHS and DHS agents visited him at his office and served him a search warrant to seize his cell phone—he was NOT subsequently served with notice that a federal prosecutor had impanelled a grand jury and secured an indictment.
He only learned about this alarming action in a press report, from which he also learned the date and time of his arraignment.
We encourage our Substack readers to learn more about Dr. Moore’s case by visiting his website: https://www.standformoore.com
Florida GOP Declares War On The First Amendment to ‘Combat Anti-Semitism’
By Chris Menahan | Information Liberation | March 5, 2023
“The Free State of Florida” is set to have the most oppressive hate crime laws in America in order to “combat anti-Semitism.”
“There is no First Amendment right to conduct,” Jewish Florida State Rep. Randy Fine told the media earlier this week. “If you graffiti a building, it is a crime now, but if your motivation is hate, it will be a third-degree felony and you will spend five years in prison. If you want to litter, it’s a crime right now, but if you litter and your motivation is a hate crime, it will be a third-degree felony and you will spend 5 years in jail.”
The bill was put forward by the GOP to silence the “Goyim Defense League” who’ve been sharing anti-Semitic flyers in Florida neighborhoods and holding up anti-Semitic banners over bridges which are critical of Jews.
Florida Rep. Mike Caruso told reporter Chris Nelson on Friday that the bill “makes anti-Semitism a hate crime.”
“If we do nothing we are going to have 1933’s Nazi Germany all over again,” Caruso said.
The Florida GOP is expected to pass their new hate crime bill this legislative session.
If Governor Ron DeSantis signs the bill into law, Florida will have worse hate crime laws than California, New York, Connecticut and every other state in the Union.
FBI Whistleblowers Nail the Bureau at House Panel on Weaponization Hearings
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 05.03.2023
The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, dubbed by some lawmakers a new Church Committee, is pushing ahead with its investigation of alleged misconduct and political bias by US government agencies.
Just the News, a media outlet founded by award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon, obtained some transcripts of the committee’s hearings which demonstrate that a growing number of FBI whistleblowers have stepped forward to expose the agency’s alleged misdeeds.
In particular, retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst George Hill testified that the Washington Field Office exerted pressure on other field offices to probe US citizens for activities protected by the First Amendment.
Hill revealed that the Washington office pressed his own Boston Field Office to open cases on 140 people who, according to the retired analyst, were “guilty” of riding buses to DC in order to attend then President Donald Trump’s rally on January 6, 2021.
The former FBI employee noted that on a nationwide phone call of all 56 FBI field offices, then-chief of the Domestic Terrorism Operations Center Section Steve Jensen asked the Philadelphia Field Office about the status of a lead on American individuals that had been sent by the agency’s DC office. The individuals in question posted on social media about being pro-Second Amendment and anti-abortion. According to Hill, Jensen described those persons as “bleeping terrorists” even though social media posts appeared to be their only fault.
FBI whistleblower Garret O’Boyle testified before the House GOP committee that he was suspended by the agency after making “protected disclosures” to Congress.
O’Boyle also told the House GOP committee that following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade (which used to regard abortions a constitutional right in the US), the FBI prioritized possible threats against the justices from “pro-lifers,” i.e. those who are against abortions.
The whistleblower wondered at the time as to why the bureau was targeting pro-lifers when it was “pro-choice” people who threatened violence in front of justices’ houses. “I was like, why would this person know about those threats? He’s pro-life. Like, he’s not the one going and threatening the Supreme Court Justices,” O’Boyle testified.
Former FBI special agent Steve Friend, a former SWAT team member, testified before the committee that the bureau apparently misused heavily armed SWAT teams to arrest January 6 defenders who were not accused of violent crimes and did not have a criminal record. He particularly referred to a January Sixer who was cooperating with the FBI and willing to surrender voluntarily. Friend was concerned that the bureau wasn’t using the least intrusive methods possible to arrest them.
When Friend met with two senior officers he was “pushed back on” his concerns and was told that even though he had a right to raise them, he also should “follow through on the orders” which he was given.
Friend filed a whistleblower complaint to the US Office of Special Counsel last year concerning the apparent misuse of SWAT teams to arrest January Sixers accused of misdemeanors. He was suspended from his duties by the agency after that.
Speaking to Sputnik in January, Friend highlighted that “any objective observer can see that the FBI is concentrating its attention and resources to investigate and prosecute citizens holding opposing views to the current administration.”
Following his interview with Sputnik, Friend was forced to leave the FBI after he had been denied a paycheck for 150 straight days as his security clearance was placed under review in the wake of his whistleblower complaint. Speaking to US journalists in February, the former FBI agent said that after leaving the bureau he had accepted a job offer from a private nonprofit organization that will be conducting investigations of the FBI.
According to the US media, House Judiciary Democrats on Friday lashed out at the FBI whistleblowers in a 316-page report. The Democratic lawmakers claimed that the whistleblowers had “limited firsthand knowledge” and “did not present actual evidence of any wrongdoing at the Department of Justice or the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” In response, the House GOP committee on weaponization lambasted their Democratic peers for disclosing the content of confidential witness depositions.
The House GOP’s new “Church Committee” follows in the footsteps of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, which was a congressional body that investigated abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and IRS in 1975.
The shocking revelations back in 1975 reportedly included Operation MKULTRA, human experimentation on mind control involving the drugging and torture of unwitting US citizens; COINTELPRO, which envisaged the surveillance and infiltration of American political and civil rights organizations; and Operation Mockingbird, a propaganda campaign run by the CIA in coordination with domestic and foreign journalists and US media outlets, to name but a few.
Most Americans believe feds helped incite Capitol riot – poll
RT | March 4, 2023
More than six in ten Americans believe it’s at least “somewhat likely” that federal government agents helped provoke the January 2021 Capitol riot, a new poll has revealed, suggesting that legacy media outlets have largely failed to brand the incident as an insurrection incited by then-President Donald Trump.
The poll, released this week by Rasmussen Reports, shows that among the 61% of US voters who think the feds probably helped spur Trump supporters to breach the Capitol, most see that scenario as “very likely.” Just 30% of Americans believe it’s unlikely that undercover agents were involved in the riot, including 18% who say it’s “not at all likely.”
Rasmussen said its findings reflect a dramatic shift in public opinion in the two-plus years that have passed since the riot. For instance, a survey done during the week immediately after the incident found that half of Americans believed Trump should be removed from office and jailed for causing his supporters to storm Congress and disrupt certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory. By the end of 2021, 58% of voters believed the congressional panel appointed to investigate the riot had become a “partisan committee weaponized against innocent Americans.”
More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes for their alleged involvement in the riot. Many of the defendants have been held in jail, allegedly under harsh conditions, without being given the option of posting bail. Republican lawmakers have suggested that undercover government agents were involved in the riot and have questioned why an Arizona man named Ray Epps, who was seen on video urging Trump supporters to go into the Capitol, hasn’t been indicted.
The latest poll found that 70% of Republicans and 57% of both Democrats and independent voters now believe it’s likely that feds helped provoke the riot. Around 80% of all voters agree that all video footage of the riot should be released to the public. Earlier this week, US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, gave riot video footage that had been withheld by the congressional panel to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
A separate Rasmussen poll this week showed that 34% of US voters believe Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s idea of a “national divorce” between Republican- and Democrat-controlled states. Only one in three believes Biden is keeping his campaign promise to unite the country.
WHO moves forward with plans to target “misinformation” “infodemics” through international pandemic treaty
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | March 4, 2023
The global health agency, the World Health Organization (WHO), this week held a meeting to advance the international pandemic treaty — a legally binding instrument that will enhance its powers to target anything that it deems to be “false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation” if passed.
The scope of the WHO is vast and its 194 member states (which account for 98% of all the countries in the world) will have to comply with the treaty under international law if it passes.
During this meeting, which began on February 27 and ended on March 3, a WHO intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) discussed a zero draft of the pandemic treaty that was released earlier this year.
This zero draft empowers the WHO to target so-called misinformation and disinformation via Article 17 (“Strengthening pandemic and public health literacy”).
Specifically, WHO member states are instructed to “tackle false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation, including through promotion of international cooperation” and manage “infodemics…through effective channels, including social media.” Infodemics is a term that the WHO uses to describe “too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak.”
Additionally, Article 16 (“Whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches at the national level”) recommends that WHO member states collaborate with non-state actors and the private sector when carrying out their obligations under the treaty.
As the treaty has progressed, it has faced increased political pushback from elected officials in member states, with US Republican Senators recently introducing a bill that would require the treaty to be approved by two-thirds of the Senate.
But despite this pushback, the Biden administration committed to the international pandemic treaty on the first day of the recent WHO meeting.
And the WHO is continuing to discuss the treaty and plan for its future. The global health agency has another meeting to discuss the treaty scheduled for April 3 to April 6, plans to present the treaty to its decision-making body, the World Health Assembly (WHA), in May, and hopes to finalize the treaty by May 2024.
The WHO intends to adopt the treaty under Article 19 of the WHO Constitution through an international lawmaking process where a group of mostly unelected diplomats vote on the treaty.
If the treaty passes, WHO member states will be required to “raise financial resources for effective implementation” of the treaty and commit to allocating at least 5% of their annual health expenditure to “pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and health systems recovery.” Additionally, the treaty tells member states to commit an undisclosed amount of their gross domestic product (GDP) to “international cooperation and assistance on pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and health systems recovery.” This equates to billions of dollars in annual expenditure for many WHO member states and hundreds of billions of dollars per annum for some.
We obtained a copy of the zero draft of this international pandemic treaty for you here.
This WHO push to crack down on speech via this international pandemic treaty is being made in tandem with another WHO effort that targets “misinformation” and “disinformation” — proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005).
Like the treaty, these proposed amendments will be legally binding under international law if finalized. The amendments include provisions for the WHO to “counter misinformation and disinformation” at “the global level” and to develop member states’ capacities to gain “leverage of communication channels to communicate the risk, countering misinformation and dis-information.”
In a report that was released alongside the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR), the WHO suggested it would use its new misinformation and disinformation targeting powers to go after content that could “undermine public trust in health agencies and impede public confidence in, and compliance with, governmental or WHO guidance.” It also called for “a balance between ensuring more accurate scientific information on one hand and freedom of speech and the press on the other.”
We obtained a copy of this report for you here.
As the WHO makes its move to take action against alleged misinformation and disinformation via international law, more and more evidence is being made available that supports the perspectives of those who were censored by Big Tech after being accused of spreading misinformation or disinformation. This evidence includes admissions about the Covid vaccine’s ability to prevent infections and growing support from officials for the Covid origins lab leak theory.
While many were censored by tech platforms for making these claims, the WHO was allowed to freely amplify a misleading claim from Chinese authorities that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” of the coronavirus.
The WHO’s attempt to curb speech is just one part of the power grab the unelected health agency is vying for with this treaty and the proposed IHR amendments. It’s also planning an expansion of its surveillance powers and laying out plans for global vaccine passports.
Featured Video
The Destruction of Libya in 2011
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
On Herd Mentality
By Jeb Smith | April 14, 2026
I no longer trust “we the people,” because of the powers influencing them. Media and government schooling form their general ideas on reality and governance. Therefore, it’s not a case of the voter choosing the politicians. Instead, the system is conditioning and conforming the voter to the authorities’ desires.
In democracies, the people are kept occupied working and paying taxes, too busy to acquire information outside the approved sources. You will find they know and care far more about the next iPhone than political philosophy. Of those who hold some interest, 95% just toe the party line, holding the same opinion as the primary media source they listen to. They lack both the desire and time to expand their horizons.
Media’s purpose is to conform people’s thought to a preferred goal, which is why Republican and Democratic voters both firmly hold their parties’ general stances, reciting the same talking points. The people do not originate ideas; their thoughts are fed to them by the media so they can consume, digest, and parrot back whatever they are served. When it comes to politics, we rarely think for ourselves. We are told what to think.
Watch PBS, MSNBC and read your local newspaper for six months, and you will receive a particular view and understanding of the world. Then listen to The Mike Church Show, The Blaze, and The Daily Wire, and you will get not just another perspective but a whole different world of facts and events. The world people believe they live in can be entirely different depending on their news sources.
We enjoy seeing the enemy humiliated, which describes why those engulfed in politics love their preferred media sources; they keep returning for more like a drug addict. Networks ensure their “experts” align with the worldview they and their audience desire. The people who watch PBS, BBC, and so forth expect a specific perspective to be presented. Fox News watchers demand the same. In doing this, we both encourage and assure we are misled.
In their book Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, professors Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels argue, based on substantial research, that voters do not decide the party platform and agenda. Instead, the parties control the “ideologies” of the voters. When the party the voter identifies with changes its position, the individuals also change theirs. They discovered the individual would quickly adopt the views of their group; they will ignore or change their own opinions over time to fit in with the collective they identify with. Achen and Bartels wrote “group memberships largely drove policy views, not vice versa.” … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- The new assault of the Zionist lobby in Brazil
- Italy suspends defense deal with ‘Israel’ over war on Iran, Lebanon
- Indonesia Agrees to Receive Oil, Gas Supplies From Russia – Indonesian Energy Ministry
- Saudi Arabia Urges US Back to Iran Talks as Other Oil Routes Face Risk
- Iran demands reparations from Arab states
- Tankers transit Strait of Hormuz amid US attempt to impose blockade, data shows
- US Strikes Kill Five in Alleged Pacific Anti-drug Campaign
- EU Defense Agency head says compulsory military service could be necessary
- France To Vote On Bill That Would Criminalize Criticism Of Israel
- There are No Ceasefires with Israel, Only Opportunities for Later Attacks
- If Americans Knew
- ‘Not Acceptable’: President of Iran Condemns Trump For His ‘Desecration of Jesus, the Prophet of Peace’
- We Are the Barbarians
- Netanyahu Says the Trump Administration Gives Him Reports on Iran Talks Every Day
- Second Contractor Steps Forward to Blow the Whistle on Israeli Attacks at Gaza Aid Site
- Mighty Israel wants all of its neighbors to be defenseless – Daily Update
- Emergency waivers move arms for Israel, UAE to speed lane
- Caitlin Johnstone: Nobody’s “Obsessed” With Israel — It’s Just A Uniquely Horrible Country
- Israel’s Ben Gvir says he feels like the ‘owner’ of Al-Aqsa Mosque
- History of flotilla campaigns to end Israel’s siege of Gaza
- Humanitarian Scorecard: Six Months In, Gaza Ceasefire is Failing
- No Tricks Zone
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
Aletho News 
