Before COVID-19, Moderna was in danger of hemorrhaging investors, as persistent safety concerns and other doubts about its mRNA delivery system threatened its entire product pipeline. Fear caused by the pandemic crisis made those concerns largely evaporate, even though there is no proof that they were ever resolved.
Those analyzing the COVID-19 crisis and its effects have mostly focused on how its disruptive nature has led to major shifts and recalibrations throughout society and the economy. Such disruption has also lent itself to a variety of agendas that had required an event of “reset” potential in order to be realized. In the case of the vaccine industry, COVID-19 has led to dramatic changes in how federal agencies manage the approval of medical countermeasures during a declared crisis, how trials for vaccine candidates are conducted, how the public perceives vaccination, and even how the term “vaccine” is defined.
Such shifts, though obvious, have provoked praise from some and sharp criticism from others, with the latter category being largely censored from public discourse on television, in print, and online. However, in objectively analyzing such seismic changes, it’s clear that most of these shifts in vaccine development and vaccine policy dramatically favor speed and the implementation of new and experimental technology at the expense of safety and thorough study. In the case of vaccines, it can be argued that no one benefitted more from these changes than the developers of the COVID-19 vaccines themselves, particularly the pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Moderna.
Not only did the COVID-19 crisis obliterate hurdles that had previously prevented Moderna from taking a single product to market, it also dramatically reversed the company’s fortunes. Indeed, from 2016 right up until the emergence of COVID-19, Moderna could barely hold it together, as it was shedding key executives, top talent, and major investors at an alarming rate. Essentially, Moderna’s promise of “revolutionizing” medicine and the remarkable salesmanship and fund-raising capabilities of the company’s top executive, Stéphane Bancel, were the main forces keeping it afloat. In the years leading up to the COVID-19 crisis, Moderna’s promises—despite Bancel’s efforts—rang increasingly hollow, as the company’s long-standing penchant for extreme secrecy meant that—despite nearly a decade in business—it had never been able to definitively prove that it could deliver the “revolution” it had continually assured investors was right around the corner.
This was compounded by major issues with patents held by a hostile competitor that threatened Moderna’s ability to turn a profit on anything it might manage to take to market, as well as major issues with its mRNA delivery system that led them to abandon any treatment that would require more than one dose because of toxicity concerns. The latter issue, though largely forgotten and/or ignored by media today, should be a major topic in the COVID-19 booster debate, given that there is still no evidence that Moderna ever resolved the toxicity issue that arose in multi-dose products.
In this first installment of a two-part series, the dire situation in which Moderna found itself immediately prior to the emergence of COVID-19 is discussed in detail, revealing that Moderna—very much like the now disgraced company Theranos—had long been a house of cards with sky-high valuations completely disconnected from reality. Part 2 will explore how that reality would have come crashing down sometime in 2020 or 2021 were it not for the advent of the COVID-19 crisis and Moderna’s subsequent partnership with the US government and the highly unusual processes involving its vaccine’s development and approval. Despite the emergence of real-world data challenging the claims that Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective, Moderna’s booster is being rushed through by some governments, while others have recently banned the vaccine’s use in young adults and teens due to safety concerns.
As this two-part series will show, safety concerns about Moderna were known well before the COVID crisis, yet they have been ignored by health authorities and the media during the crisis itself. In addition, in order to stave off collapse, Moderna must keep selling its COVID-19 vaccine for years to come. In other words, without the approval of its booster, which has caused great controversy even among the country’s top vaccine officials, Moderna faces a massive financial reckoning. While the COVID-19 crisis threw the company a lifeboat, the administration of its COVID-19 vaccine, in which the US government has now invested nearly $6 billion, must continue into the foreseeable future for the bailout to be truly successful. Otherwise, a company now worth $126.7 billion, with major investments from the US government, US military, and ties to the world’s wealthiest individuals, will crumble in short order.
A New Theranos?
In September 2016, Damian Garde, the national biotech reporter for the medical media company STAT, wrote a lengthy exposé of the “ego, ambition, and turmoil” plaguing “one of biotech’s most secretive startups.” The article focused on the company Moderna, which had been founded in 2010 to commercialize the research of Boston Children’s Hospital cell biologist Derrick Rossi. The effort to turn a profit by creating Moderna, which intimately involved controversial scientist and close Bill Gates associate Bob Langer as well as Cambridge, Massachusetts–based Flagship Ventures (now Flagship Pioneering), began soon after Rossi published a report on the ability of modified RNA to turn skin cells into different types of tissue.
Between the time of Moderna’s founding and Garde’s 2016 investigation, the buzz around Rossi’s research and its potential to create medical breakthroughs had waned, as had the buzz around its potential to make its investors very wealthy. Despite teaming up with pharmaceutical giants like AstraZeneca and raising record amounts of funding, Moderna still had no product on the market six years after its founding, and, as STAT revealed, the “company’s caustic work environment” had led to a persistent hemorrhaging of top talent, though little of its internal conflicts was publicly known due to “its obsession with secrecy.” Most troubling for the company that year, however, was that Moderna appeared to have “run into roadblocks with its most ambitious projects.”
Aside from the scientific obstacles that Moderna had encountered, one major “roadblock” for the company, per Garde, was none other than Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s top executive, who still heads the company. According to Garde, Bancel was squarely at the center of many of the company’s controversies due, in part, to his “unwavering belief that Moderna’s science will work—and that employees who don’t ‘live the mission’ have no place in the company.” Between 2012 and 2016, Bancel was allegedly a key factor in the resignation of at least a dozen “highly placed executives,” including those who directed Moderna’s product pipeline as well as its vaccine projects.
Bancel, prior to joining Moderna, had spent much of his career in sales and operations, not science, making a name for himself at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly before heading a French diagnostics firm called bioMérieux. His performance there, as well as his ambition, caught the attention of Flagship Ventures, a Moderna cofounder and top investor, which then connected him with the company he would go on to lead.
Although lacking a background in mRNA and the science behind its use as a therapeutic, Bancel has made up for it by becoming Moderna’s salesman par excellence. Under his leadership, Moderna became “loath to publish its work in Science or Nature, but enthusiastic to herald its potential on CNBC and CNN.” In other words, under Bancel, the company came to promote its science through media publicity and public relations rather than by publishing actual data or scientific evidence. When two of its vaccine candidates entered phase 1 human trials in 2016 (trials that ultimately went nowhere), the company declined to list them on the public federal registry ClinicalTrials.gov. The decision not to list, which deviates from common practice by Moderna’s competitors and other more traditional vaccine companies, meant that the information on the safety of these vaccine candidates would likely never be publicly available after the trial’s conclusion. Moderna also refused to publicly comment on what diseases these vaccines were meant to target.
Such secrecy became commonplace at Moderna after Bancel took the helm, with the company having published no data “supporting its vaunted technology” by the time STAT’s 2016 exposé was published. Insiders as well as investors that had committed millions to the company were only granted “a peek” at the company’s data. According to former Moderna scientists who spoke to STAT, the company was “a case of the emperor’s new clothes.” Former employees further charged that Bancel was actually “running an investment firm” and “then hop[ing] it also develops a drug that’s successful.”
Perhaps this is why Bancel was deemed the best executive to steer Moderna. As an ambitious salesman running a highly overvalued company, he would prioritize the company’s image and its finances regardless of any issues with the science underpinning it all. Perhaps it was for that reason that Bancel, per former employees, “made it clear [from the beginning] that Moderna’s science simply had to work. And that anyone who couldn’t make it work didn’t belong.”
As STAT noted in 2016, the people who were tasked with making “the science work” were those who most frequently resigned, which led to Moderna losing two heads of chemistry within a single year, followed shortly by losing its chief scientific officer and its head of manufacturing. Many top executives, including the heads of its cancer research and rare disease research branches, ended up lasting fewer than eighteen months in their respective positions. The abrupt resignations weren’t exclusive to Moderna’s science-focused executive positions either, as the chief information officer and top financial executive role were also affected. Bancel ultimately sought advice from the human resources departments of Facebook, Google, and Netflix on employee retention.
Particularly telling was the abrupt and mysterious resignation of Moderna’s head of research and development, Joseph Bolen, after about two years at the company. A company insider at the time told STAT that the only reason Bolen would have resigned was if “there was something wrong with the science or the personnel.” In other words, Bolen either left because the science underpinning Moderna’s massive valuation did not live up to the hype or Bancel had forced him out, with the additional possibility that both were key in Bolen’s resignation.
Speculation at the time pointed the finger at Bancel, though it’s not clear why the rift between the two men emerged. Bancel asserted that he tried to convince Bolen to stay, though there were contrasting assertions from anonymous employees, and that Bolen had “voted himself off the island.”
Whatever the exact cause of the resignation of the head of R & D, it only added to the mystique around Moderna’s inner workings and its ability to deliver on its promise to “revolutionize” medicine. It also reveals more than a few similarities between Moderna and the now-disgraced company Theranos. Theranos, whose former top executive, Elizabeth Holmes, is now on trial for fraud, was known for its extreme culture of secrecy that kept investors and business partners in the dark, forced nondisclosure agreements on everyone who came in contact with the company, and kept employees “siloed” through an extremely strict need-to-know policy. Like Moderna, Theranos had been praised as revolutionary and poised to “change the medical industry forever.” Similarly, its top executive had no professional health-care or science experience, yet both fired or forced the resignations of employees who disagreed with their perspective or were unable to provide “positive” results. Both companies also failed to publish any evidence in peer-reviewed journals that the science behind their multibillion-dollar valued companies was more than just fantasy and a well-devised sales pitch.
Arguably, the most critical difference between Moderna and Theranos is that Moderna, whose numerous issues and challenges only came to light after the collapse of Theranos had begun, has never faced the same degree of scrutiny from the US government or mainstream investigative journalists. There are many possible reasons for this, including Moderna’s close relationship with the US Department of Defense through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), or concern that its exposure post-Theranos would bring scrutiny to any company existing at the intersection of Silicon Valley and the health-care industry. However, such a reckoning would likely have been inevitable for Moderna had it not been for the COVID-19 crisis, which could not have come at a more convenient time for the company.
Moderna’s “Software” Encounters Bugs
Many of the problems with Moderna that Garde identified in 2016 continued to plague the company right up until the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. Chief among these was Moderna’s struggle to prove that its technology worked and that it was safe. Concerns about the safety and efficacy of the company’s products, which were publicly reported beginning in 2017, evaporated in the wave of panic surrounding COVID-19 and the simultaneous “Warp Speed” race for a vaccine that would “end the pandemic.” Yet, there is little, if any, evidence that these once-well-recognized concerns were addressed prior to the US government’s emergency use authorization of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine and its now widespread use in many countries around the world. To the contrary, there is evidence that these concerns were covered up both prior to and during the development of its vaccine.
The reports that emerged in January 2017 noted that Moderna had “run into troubling safety problems with its most ambitious therapy” and that the company was “now banking on a mysterious new technology to keep afloat.” The “ambitious therapy” in question was meant to treat Crigler-Najjar syndrome and “was to be the first therapy using audacious new technology that Bancel promised would yield dozens of drugs in the coming decade.” Bancel had specifically used the Crigler-Najjar therapy as a major selling point to investors, particularly in 2016 when he touted it at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference.
Yet, employees of Alexion, the company co-developing the drug with Moderna, blew the whistle on the project in 2017, revealing that it “never proved safe enough to test in humans” and that the failure of this therapy and the technology platform it sought to use had been responsible for prompting Moderna to abandon the class of drug therapies that, for years, had justified its sky-high valuation and attracted hundreds of millions in investor cash.
As a result of the problem with the Crigler-Najjar drug, media outlets asserted that Moderna was now “in need of a Hail Mary” that would keep its valuation from imploding and its investors from fleeing. The persistence of problems first noted in the 2016 STAT investigation, such as Moderna’s failure to publish meaningful data supporting its mRNA technology, were only exacerbating the company’s increasingly precarious position. Indeed, not long before the indefinite delay of the Crigler-Najjar therapy, Bancel had dismissed questions about Moderna’s promise by painting mRNA as an easy way to quickly develop novel treatments for a variety of diseases. He stated that “mRNA is like software: You can just turn the crank and get a lot of products going into development.” If that were the case, why did the company have no products on the market after nearly seven years, and why had its most touted project experienced such obstacles? Clearly, in keeping with Bancel’s “software” metaphor, Moderna’s technology had encountered bugs, bugs that were potentially ineradicable.
It turns out that the Crigler-Najjar drug therapy that Moderna had bet on so heavily had failed because of the lipid nanoparticle delivery system it used to transport mRNA into cells. Crigler-Najjar had been chosen as a target condition because Moderna scientists deemed it to be “the lowest-hanging fruit.” First, the syndrome is caused by one specific genetic defect; second, the affected organ, the liver, is among the easiest to target with nanoparticles; and third and most important for the company, treating the disease with mRNA would require frequent doses, ensuring a steady stream of income for the company. Thus, given the first two motives behind the company’s focus on Crigler-Najjar, if Moderna couldn’t develop a therapy for that condition, it meant they wouldn’t be able to develop a therapy for other conditions that, for example, were caused by multiple genetic defects or affected multiple organs or those more resistant to nanoparticle-based treatments. In other words, that “Moderna could not make its therapy [for Crigler-Najjar] work” meant that it was unlikely to make therapies of that entire class work either.
Indeed, media reports on the indefinite delay of this particular therapy noted that “the indefinite delay on the [Moderna] Crigler-Najjar project signals persistent and troubling safety concerns for any mRNA treatment that needs to be delivered in multiple doses.” This issue would soon lead Moderna to only pursue treatments that could be delivered as a single dose—that is, until the emergence of COVID-19 and the advent of the COVID-19 vaccine booster debate. It is also worth mentioning that, due to the extreme rarity of Crigler-Najjar syndrome, even if the therapy had been successfully taken to market by Moderna, it would have been unlikely to bring in enough money to sustain the company.
The specific problem Moderna encountered with the Crigler-Najjar treatment was related to the lipid nanoparticle delivery system it was using. According to former Moderna employees and their collaborators at Alexion, “The safe dose was too weak, and repeat injections of a dose strong enough to be effective had troubling effects on the liver [the target organ of this particular therapy] in animal studies.” This was an issue Moderna had apparently run into with its nanoparticle delivery system in other cases too, according to reports published at the time. Per STAT, the delivery system employed by Moderna had consistently “created a daunting challenge: Dose too little, and you don’t get enough enzyme to affect the disease; dose too much, and the drug is too toxic for patients.”
Moderna attempted to offset the bad press over having to delay the Crigler-Najjar drug with claims that they had developed a new nanoparticle delivery system called V1GL that “will more safely deliver mRNA.” The claims came a month after Bancel had touted another delivery system called N1GL to Forbes. In that interview, Bancel told Forbes that the delivery system they had been using, licensed to them by Acuitas, “was not very good” and that Moderna had “stopped using Acuitas tech for new drugs.” However, as will be explored in detail in this report as well as Part II of this series, it appears that Moderna continued to rely on the Acuitas-licensed technology in subsequent vaccines and other projects, including its COVID-19 vaccine.
Former Moderna employees and those close to their product development were doubtful at the time that these new and supposedly safer nanoparticle delivery systems were of any consequence. According to three former employees and collaborators close to the process who spoke anonymously to STAT, Moderna had long been “toiling away on new delivery technologies in hopes of hitting on something safer than what it had.” All of those interviewed believed that “N1GL and V1GL are either very recent discoveries, just in the earliest stages of testing—or else new names slapped on technologies Moderna has owned for years.” All spoke anonymously due to having signed nondisclosure agreements with the company, agreements that are aggressively enforced.
One former employee, commenting on the alleged promise of N1GL and V1GL, stated that these platforms “would have to be a miraculous, Hail Mary sort of save for them to get to where they need to be on their timelines. . . . Either [Bancel] is extremely confident that it’s going to work, or he’s getting kind of jittery that, with a lack of progress, he needs to put something out there.”
Stephen Hoge, Moderna’s president, and Melissa Moore, Moderna’s CSO for Platform Research Source: Moderna
It seems that those former employees who believed that N1GL and V1GL were new names put on existing technology and that Bancel was overselling their promise were correct, as Moderna appears to have returned to the troubled lipid nanoparticle delivery system it had licensed from Acuitas for subsequent therapies, including its COVID-19 vaccine. As will be explored in this report and Part II of this series, there is no evidence that Moderna ever got their “Hail Mary” save when it came to acquiring the rights for or developing a safe mRNA delivery system.
On top of the much-touted promises of N1GL and V1GL as safer treatments, Moderna additionally vowed to create “new and better formulations” for the Crigler-Najjar therapy that could potentially make it to human trials at a later time. This helped to stave off more bad press, but only for a few weeks. One month after the troubles with the Crigler-Najjar therapy were publicly reported, the head of Moderna’s oncology division, Stephen Kesley, left the company. This was just as Moderna was moving toward its first human trials for its cancer treatment, which forced “a senior leadership team with little experience in developing drugs to sort out the company’s future in the field.” Just weeks before Kesley’s departure, Bancel had boldly claimed in a bid to woo new investors at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, held in January 2017 in San Francisco, that oncology was Moderna’s “next big opportunity after vaccines.”
The same month as Kesley’s departure, Moderna was able to draw media attention elsewhere, as for the very first time they published data in a peer-reviewed journal. In Cell, its scientists published data on an animal trial for its Zika vaccine candidate that positively demonstrated both efficacy and safety in mice. While animal trial results do not necessarily translate into equivalent results in humans, the results were deemed to “bode well” for Moderna’s planned clinical trial of that vaccine candidate in humans. In addition, the results were like the animal trial results published by Moderna competitor BioNTech for their mRNA vaccine candidate for Zika a month earlier.
However, for Moderna, the positive news was muted by a negative ruling on a legal dispute that threatened Moderna’s ability to ever turn a profit on the Zika vaccine or any other mRNA vaccine it developed, a threat that Moderna’s competitors, such as BioNTech, didn’t have to contend with. That ruling, discussed in greater detail later in this report, greatly restricted Moderna’s use of the lipid nanoparticle delivery system licensed to it through Acuitas and directly threatened the company’s ability to create a for-profit product using intellectual property tied to the relevant patents. It would also kick off a years-long legal dispute that has suggested at various times that the promises of V1GL and N1GL were either completely invented or greatly exaggerated, as former Moderna employees and collaborators had stated.
Not long afterward, in July 2017, Moderna was hit with yet another wave of bad press as their partner in the Crigler-Najjar venture, Alexion, cut ties with the company completely. Moderna downplayed Alexion’s decision and claimed it had acquired “extensive knowledge” that would allow it to continue to develop the troubled therapy on its own. Nonetheless, Alexion’s decision came at an inopportune time for the company, as one of Moderna’s top investors had just two weeks earlier slashed its valuation of the company by almost $2 billion, allegedly because Moderna had “struggled to live up to its own hype.” Reports began to circulate claiming that “Moderna’s investors might be losing faith in the company’s future.”
Indeed, the Crigler-Najjar syndrome drug was not the only one that, at that point, had proven “too weak or too dangerous to test in clinical trials,” according to former employees and partners. The persistent issue, which again lay with the nanoparticle delivery system Moderna had licensed from Acuitas, had forced the company, beginning with the delay of the Crigler-Najjar therapy, to “prioritize vaccines, which can be dosed just once and thus avoid the safety problems that have plagued more ambitious projects.”
Yet, these single-dose “vaccines” or therapies were considered not as lucrative as the drug therapies Moderna had long promised and that underpinned its multibillion-dollar valuation, thereby forcing the company to “bet big on a loss-leader.” Also problematic was that Moderna lagged behind its mRNA vaccine competitors and that the supposed promise of its technology to produce viable vaccines was only “proven” at that point by a single, small trial. That trial, as noted by the Boston Business Journal, was an “early-stage human trial that was primarily meant to assess the safety of an avian flu vaccine.” Moderna had claimed, despite the trial being designed to assess safety, that it had “provided evidence that the vaccine is effective, with no major side effects” as well. Furthermore, as will be discussed in a later section of this report, the legal dispute over the Acuitas-licensed lipid nanoparticle system threatened Moderna’s ability to ever turn on a profit on any mRNA vaccine it managed to get through trials and the federal approval process, making the company’s future appear quite grim.
Despite Positive Press, Lingering Questions Remained
In September 2017, at a closed-door investor event meant to prevent more major investors from devaluing the company or jumping ship, Moderna provided more insight into a recently published press release on the trial results of a therapy meant to regrow heart tissue by boosting production of a protein known as VEGF. The press release, which generated positive media headlines, noted that the therapy had been proven safe in a study with a sample size of 44 patients. However, neither the press release nor the data Moderna disclosed to investors at the closed-door meeting revealed how much protein the therapy caused patients to produce, leaving its efficacy a mystery. Indeed, media reports on the investor meeting noted that “since Moderna did not release that crucial data point, outsiders can’t judge how much therapeutic potential there may be.”
The results, though they seemed to mitigate the concerns over the safety of Moderna’s technology, failed to inspire confidence in many attendees. Several attendees later told reporters that they “were not overly impressed” with Moderna’s presentation, which only “underlined lingering questions about whether it can live up to its own hype.”
One of the issues here, yet again, is that Moderna’s valuation was and is underpinned by its promise to produce products for rare diseases that require repeated injections over a patient’s lifetime. The VEGF therapy promoted by Moderna at this meeting was meant to be a one-time-only injection, and, thus, evidence of its safety did not resolve the problem of none of Moderna’s multi-dose products having proven safe enough to test on humans. The closed-door investor event made it clear that Moderna was aiming to avoid that persistent problem by prioritizing single-dose vaccines.
As STAT noted at the time:
The presentation to investors also made clear that Moderna is prioritizing vaccines. They are easier to develop from mRNA because patients need just one dose, which eliminates some of the safety issues that have plagued more ambitious projects such as therapies for rare diseases.
The pivot to vaccines remained a sore point with many investors, however, as vaccines are viewed as “low-margin product[s] that can’t generate anywhere near the profits seen in more lucrative fields like rare diseases and oncology.” These, as previously mentioned, are the very fields on which Moderna’s massive valuation had been based but for which it had been unable to produce safe and effective therapies. Moderna was clearly aware of these concerns among its current and potential investor base and attempted to speak promisingly of its oncology-related efforts at this same event. However, it was silent on trial timing and other key data points, maintaining the company’s long-standing reputation for secrecy towards both insiders and the general public. It is certainly telling that Moderna remained so secretive about key data at an event not only closed to the public and the press, but meant to reassure existing investors and to entice new ones. If Moderna declined to show important data to investors at a time when it was desperately seeking to keep them onboard, it implies that the company either had something to hide or nothing to show.
Moderna’s increasingly troubled internal situation, despite its consistently rosy PR, escalated a month later when reports emerged of the abrupt resignations of its head of chemistry, the leader of its cardiovascular division, and the head of its rare diseases division. These resignations, which occurred toward the end of 2017, followed the high-profile resignations the company suffered that were mentioned in the 2016 STAT exposé by Damian Garde.
A few months later, in March 2018, the chief scientific officer of Moderna’s vaccine business, Giuseppe Ciaramella, also left. This resignation signaled further internal troubles at the company, even more because Moderna had recently and very publicly pivoted to vaccines; and Ciaramella, in addition to leading vaccine development at this critical juncture, had been the first Moderna executive to suggest that the company’s technology could be useful in developing vaccines, a suggestion that the company was now betting everything on. One can’t help but wonder if Bancel’s tendency to force out employees and executives who “couldn’t make the science work” was a factor in any of these high-profile resignations, including that of Ciaramella.
A Years-Long Legal Snafu
Thus far, this report has largely focused on how Moderna’s extreme secrecy appears to have been used to obfuscate and mitigate major issues with its technology and product pipeline and how those issues were reaching a climax following the company’s IPO and immediately prior to the COVID crisis. However, the challenge of creating products that work and can be proven to work in clinical settings is but one of at least two major issues facing Moderna as a company. Indeed, during the same timetable explored above, Moderna was embroiled in aggressive disputes related to intellectual property and patents. Notably, these same legal issues deal with the lipid nanoparticle system that was also reportedly at the root of Moderna’s safety and product-pipeline issues.
As mentioned earlier, the lipid nanoparticle delivery system used in many Moderna therapies was licensed to them by Acuitas. Acuitas, however, had licensed that system from a separate company, Arbutus, which sued in 2016 claiming that Acuitas’s sublicense to Moderna was illegal. Arbutus won the case, which lead to a temporary injunction in 2017 that stopped Acuitas from further sublicensing the lipid nanoparticle technology. A settlement reached between Acuitas and Arbutus in 2018 terminated Acuitas’s license and restricted Moderna’s use of the technology to four vaccine candidates that targeted already identified viruses.
Moderna’s Bancel told Forbes in 2017 that the Acuitas/Arbutus system was barely mediocre and that Moderna was developing its own improved delivery system that would not infringe on Arbutus’s intellectual property (the aforementioned N1GL and V1GL systems). However, soon after Bancel made those claims, Arbutus’s leadership challenged them, stating that the company had reviewed all of Moderna’s patents, publications, and presentations regarding these “new” delivery systems and had found nothing that didn’t involve their own intellectual property. Even former Moderna employees, as mentioned previously, were very doubtful that N1GL and V1GL were any different than the Acuitas/Arbutus system, meaning that—despite Bancel’s claims—Moderna had unresolved legal woes related to these nanoparticles that, along with the toxicity issues, was stalling Moderna product candidates.
It is important to note at this point that, while only Moderna has been locked in a legal battle with Acuitas/Arbutus for years over LNP intellectual property, the other main producers of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, Pfizer/BioNTech and CureVac, also use major aspects of the same Arbutus-derived technology. However, BioNTech licensed the LNPs in such a way as to avoid the issues that have entangled Moderna for years.
Moderna’s legal dispute, in addition to the already discussed safety issues, greatly threatened Moderna’s ability to survive as a company. Having already been forced to settle on the vaccines market and reject the more lucrative and “revolutionary” mRNA therapies it had long promised, Moderna was steadily moving toward a position where it had “no right to sell” vaccine products that depended on the Arbutus-patented and Acuitas-sublicensed technology. This situation has placed pressure on Moderna to negotiate a new license with Arbutus directly, negotiations in which the company would have very little leverage.
Since the first legal case in 2016, Moderna and Arbutus have remained locked in disputes about the nanoparticles and who owns them. Moderna challenged three Arbutus patents with the US Patent and Trademark Office, with mixed results. Yet, simultaneously, Moderna also claimed that its tech was “not covered by the Arbutus patents,” which prompted numerous observers and reporters to ask questions such as—“In that case, why did [Moderna] initiate the legal action against Arbutus to begin with?”
Moderna answered that query by claiming that it targeted Arbutus only because of Arbutus’s past “aggression” against them. However, despite such claims, the effort and cost inherent in the legal challenge reveals that, at the very least, Moderna takes the threat of Arbutus’s intellectual property claims very seriously. The actual answer seems to lie in Moderna being willing to publicly claim that their LNP technology is different enough from the Arbutus-derived system covered by the patents but unwilling to release any proof—whether in court, to its own investors, or to the public—that it is in fact different. The more recent twists and turns of this protracted legal battle, including a pivotal 2020 decision that was very unfavorable for Moderna, are discussed in Part II of this series.
Anything to Aid a Slumping Stock Price
Nasdaq building on the day of Moderna’s 2018 IPO. Source: Nasdaq
Just previous to Ciaramella’s resignation, Moderna had claimed to have “solved the scientific issues that made its earlier mRNA treatments too toxic for clinical trials,” according to media reports. Those reports also claimed that, as a result, “Moderna believes it has steered back on course,” though the company did not provide evidence to support that claim. Nevertheless, the promise allowed the company to complete a new round of financing, during which it raised an additional $500 million from “an investor syndicate uncommon in biotech” that included the governments of Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. Some observers were puzzled as to how Moderna had managed to raise so much money despite the outstanding questions about the science underpinning its high valuation.
The answer came with the publication of Moderna’s confidential investor slide deck by STAT’s Damian Garde, which showed that the company had predicted that drugs that they had only been tested in mice would soon be worth billions and that its vaccine revenue would amount to $15 billion annually. The slide deck, deemed “pretty absurd” and “geared at hopeful generalists that can dream big” per one skeptical investor, made it clear why the company’s last funding round had appealed to “unconventional” biotech investors rather than veteran investors focused on the industry. A veteran biotech investor, who spoke anonymously due to the slide deck’s confidentiality, stated that “it’s a deck designed to tell the ‘we’re going to be huge’ story to a group of rather unsophisticated investors—and it does that beautifully. . . Just enough science and platform stuff to convey the ‘We know what we’re doing’ sentiment, but not enough to engender technical questions.”
Moderna slide deckDownload
Per those who sat through Moderna’s pitch, the company was “very generous on the market-size assumptions for their programs,” with one former Moderna collaborator placing the real-world value of a treatment the company had claimed was worth billions annually at closer to “$100 million to 250 million.” Of course, that revenue estimate comes with the caveat that the treatment, tested thus far only in mice, would someday prove to work in humans. A former Moderna employee in its rare diseases division stated at the time that Moderna “continue[s] to rush forward and over-promise the potential for broad use of mRNA prior to any evidence beyond vaccines or very early experiments in mice.”
Despite Moderna’s ability to convince “unsophisticated” and/or “unconventional” investors to back its early 2018 funding round, it appears that one of its most important promises used to attract investors—that it had solved the nanolipid particle toxicity issue—was not true.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission dated November 2018, months after Moderna had claimed to have fixed the issues with its lipid nanoparticle delivery system, the company made several claims that appear to contradict its purported development of a new, safer nanoparticle technology.
For example, the filing states on page 33:
Most of our investigational medicines are formulated and administered in an LNP [lipid nanoparticle] which may lead to systemic side effects related to the components of the LNP which may not have ever been tested in humans. While we have continued to optimize our LNPs, there can be no assurance that our LNPs will not have undesired effects. Our LNPs could contribute, in whole or in part, to one or more of the following: immune reactions, infusion reactions, complement reactions, opsonation [sic] reactions, antibody reactions including IgA, IgM, IgE or IgG or some combination thereof, or reactions to the PEG from some lipids or PEG otherwise associated with the LNP.
Certain aspects of our investigational medicines may induce immune reactions from either the mRNA or the lipid as well as adverse reactions within liver pathways or degradation of the mRNA or the LNP, any of which could lead to significant adverse events in one or more of our clinical trials. Many of these types of side effects have been seen for legacy LNPs. There may be resulting uncertainty as to the underlying cause of any such adverse event, which would make it difficult to accurately predict side effects in future clinical trials and would result in significant delays in our programs. (emphasis added)
Based on these statements, Moderna appeared to be uncertain as to whether its current lipid nanoparticle delivery system was any safer than that which led to the indefinite delay of its Crigler-Najjar therapy. In addition, the reference to “adverse reactions within liver pathways,” one of the main issues that triggered the specific delay of the Crigler-Najjar therapy, suggests a continued reliance on technology sublicensed from Acuitas. As will be noted in Part II, the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine also appears to use the controversial Acuitas technology that had prompted significant safety, legal, and financial concerns for Moderna for years.
The November 2018 SEC filing makes other statements regarding its supposedly fixed lipid nanoparticle delivery system that are worth noting:
If significant adverse events or other side effects are observed in any of our current or future clinical trials, we may have difficulty recruiting trial participants to any of our clinical trials, trial participants may withdraw from trials, or we may be required to abandon the trials or our development efforts of one or more development candidates or investigational medicines altogether. . . .
Even if the side effects do not preclude the drug from obtaining or maintaining marketing approval, unfavorable benefit risk ratio may inhibit market acceptance of the approved product due to its tolerability versus other therapies. Any of these developments could materially harm our business, financial condition, and prospects.
These statements are significant in that they openly suggest at least one reason for Moderna’s long-standing tendency toward secrecy in publishing data about its treatments, as public knowledge of its technology’s persistent challenges would threaten its ability to attract trial participants, investors, and, later, consumers.
About a month after these troubling admissions were made in fine print, Moderna succeeded in pulling off a record-setting initial public offering (IPO) in December 2018. For that IPO, Moderna had retained the services of eleven investment banks, which is reportedly around “twice the number normally seen in biotech offerings.” However, its stock value tumbled just hours afterward, “a sign the company and its underwriters might have over-estimated demand for the richly valued company.” A month after the IPO, Moderna’s stock continued its downward slide, “doing exactly the opposite of what private investors look for in an IPO.” Those who had predicted this post-IPO outcome before Moderna went public had also warned that this downward trend would likely continue through early 2020 if not longer. Skeptics such as STAT’s Damian Garde had warned right before Moderna’s IPO that that the company’s sliding stock value would likely continue throughout 2019 due to “a seeming lack of impending news,” given that “momentum in biotech, positive or negative, is driven by catalysts” and “Moderna is in for a fairly quiet 2019.”
Meanwhile, media reports warned, as they had for years, that Moderna “is still in the early days of proving [their] technology’s potential,” despite being a nine-year-old company. Such reports also noted that Moderna’s inability to prove its technology’s worth after nearly a decade in business was hampered by its “struggl[e] in its initial efforts to turn mRNA into drugs that can be repeatedly dosed, leading it to pivot to vaccines, which can be administered just once or twice.” Investors at the 2019 JP Morgan health-care conference spoke of concerns that “Moderna [has] yet to rule out the lingering risks tied to mRNA, and, even at its depressed valuation, the company is simply too expensive.” Others confided in reporters that they would be “sitting on the sidelines until Moderna either changes the narrative with promising human data or gets substantially cheaper.”
A few weeks later, Moderna’s Bancel attended the World Economic Forum’s 2019 annual meeting alongside Johnson & Johnson executive Paul Stoffels and other pharmaceutical and biotech leaders in order to “rub elbows with world leaders and one-percenters—and talk about the future of healthcare.” Other health-care figures in attendance included head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and “global health philanthropist” Bill Gates, whose foundation entered into “a global health project framework” with Moderna in 2016 to “advance mRNA-based development projects for various infectious diseases.” The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the only foundation listed as a “strategic collaborator” on the Moderna website. Other “strategic collaborators” include the US government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the US military’s DARPA, and pharmaceutical giants AstraZeneca and Merck.
Moderna first teamed up with the WEF just a few years after its founding back in 2013, when it was named to the Forum’s community of Global Growth Companies (GGC). That year, Moderna was one of just three North American health companies to receive the honor and was additionally recognized by the Forum as “an industry leader in innovative mRNA therapeutics.” “We are honored to be recognized for our efforts to advance our platform and ensure its potential is realized on a global scale, and we look forward to being a member of the World Economic Forum community,” Bancel said at the time.
Stéphane Bancel at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, January 2020. Source: WEF
As a WEF Global Growth Company, Moderna has closely and regularly engaged with the Forum since 2013 at both the Chinese-hosted Annual Meeting of the New Champions and the WEF’s regional meetings, while also having access to the WEF’s exclusive networking platform that provides the company privileged access to the world’s most powerful business and government leaders. Additionally, such carefully selected companies are given opportunities by the Forum “to shape global, regional and industry agendas and engage in meaningful exchanges about ways to continue on a sustainable and responsible path of growth.” Essentially, the roster of such companies constitutes a consortium of corporations that are promoted and guided by the Forum because of their commitment to “improving the state of the world,” that is, their commitment to supporting the Forum’s long-term agendas for the global economy and for global governance.
In April 2019, Moderna published some information on modifications to its lipid nanoparticles (discussed in more detail in Part II). A month later, in May 2019, Moderna published positive results in the journal Vaccine for phase 1 data on mRNA vaccine candidates for “two potential pandemic influenza strains” administered as two doses three weeks apart. The company’s press release on the study stated that “future development of Moderna’s pandemic influenza program is contingent on government or other grant funding,” suggesting that it would use the trial results to lobby the government for funds for a continuation of this particular program.
Notably, at the same time as these results were published, the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, then filled by Robert Kadlec, was in the midst of conducting Crimson Contagion, a multimonth simulation of a global pandemic involving an influenza strain that originates in China and spreads globally through air travel. The strain at the center of the simulation, called H7N9, is one of the very strains used in the Moderna study. Moderna published those results on May 10, just four days before the Crimson Contagion simulation hosted its federal interagency seminar. BARDA, which the ASPR office oversees, is a major strategic ally of Moderna and was co-developing these “potential pandemic influenza” vaccines that are mentioned in this timely press release, that is, for H10N8 and H7N9 influenza infections.
Crimson Contagion is notable for several reasons, most significantly for Kadlec’s own history with the Dark Winter simulations that preceded and eerily predicted the 2001 anthrax attacks. As has been discussed in detail in a previous TLAV – Unlimited Hangout investigation, the 2001 anthrax attacks conveniently rescued anthrax vaccine manufacturer BioPort, now Emergent Biosolutions, from certain ruin, much like the way the COVID crisis did for Moderna.
A month later, in June 2019, Moderna again managed to generate positive headlines on making its debut at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, where it sought to promote its ability to produce the personalized cancer treatments that had been key to wooing investors both before and after its record-setting IPO. It was the first time the company had publicly presented data on a cancer treatment, and this particular treatment was being co-developed with Merck. The data showed positive results in preventing relapses in cancer patients whose solid tumors had been removed via surgery, but the trial failed to show any definitive effect in cancer patients whose tumors had not been removed. Thus, the early data seemed to indicate that Moderna’s treatment would only help cancer patients stay in remission after other medical interventions had been performed. Though the news allowed Moderna to bask in some much-needed positive press and to promote its oncology products in development, some reports rightly noted that it was “still too early for any definitive judgment” on the cancer treatment’s clinical benefit.
Despite this apparent advance, by September 2019, Moderna’s stock price continued to decline, leading to a loss of about $2 billion in market value from the company’s $7.5 billion valuation at the time of its record-setting IPO. The main factors for this were the same persistent problems the company had been facing for years—lack of progress, including lack of products on the market; persistent safety problems with its mRNA technology; and the lack of data showing that advances were being made to make that technology commercially feasible.
In mid-September 2019, Moderna gathered investors together to showcase scientific evidence it claimed would finally prove that its mRNA technology could “turn the body’s own cells into medicine-making factories” and hopefully “turn skeptical investors into believers.” This data, which was derived from a very preliminary study that involved only four healthy participants, had complications. Three of the four participants had side effects that prompted Moderna to state at the meeting that they would need to reformulate the mRNA treatment to include steroids, while one of the participants suffered heart-related side effects, including a rapid heart rate and an irregular heartbeat. Moderna, which asserted that none of the heart-related side effects was serious, could not “definitively pinpoint the cause of the heart symptoms.” Yet, as previously mentioned, it was likely related to the safety issues that had been plaguing its experimental products for years.
The company’s preliminary data, which was promoted in yet another bid to keep investors from leaving, also included the caveat that Moderna had decided to pause trials for this particular product, which was a single-injection mRNA treatment for the chikungunya virus. That treatment was being developed in partnership with the Pentagon’s DARPA. Other more positive data from a preliminary trial were also released at this meeting. That trial, however, was for an mRNA treatment for cytomegalovirus, “a common virus that is usually kept in check by the body’s immune system and rarely causes problems in healthy people,” meaning its mRNA vaccine for that condition was unlikely to ever be lucrative.
Not long after this lackluster investors meeting, on September 26, 2019, the once highly secretive Moderna announced it would collaborate with researchers at Harvard University “in hopes that the research will spur new drugs,” as its product pipeline appeared to have stalled. Moderna president Stephen Hoge described the collaboration as select Harvard researchers receiving “a package of stuff that we put our blood, sweat, and tears in, and then someone’s going to do something with it. We’ll find out afterward how that went.” For a company long known for its extreme secrecy in an already secretive industry, Moderna’s arrangement with Harvard, which it admitted was “unusual,” came across as somewhat desperate.
A month later, at the 2019 Milken Institute Future of Health Summit, there was a panel discussion on universal flu vaccines and how a “disruptive” event would be needed to upset the long-existing bureaucratic vaccine-approval process to facilitate wider adoption of “nontraditional” vaccines, such as those produced by Moderna. Panel speakers including former FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg, a veteran of the 2001 Dark Winter exercise and scientific advisor to the Gates foundation, as well as Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Rick Bright of BARDA, who previously worked for the Gates-funded PATH. The panel discussion notably took place shortly after the controversial coronavirus pandemic simulation called Event 201, whose moderators and sponsors had been intimately involved in 2001’s Dark Winter.
Screengrab from the 2019 Milken Institute Universal Flu Vaccine panel. Full video available here.
During the panel, the moderator—Michael Specter of the New Yorker—asked the question: “Why don’t we blow the system up? Obviously, we just can’t turn off the spigot on the system we have and then say ‘Hey! everyone in the world should get this new vaccine we haven’t given to anyone yet,’ but there must be some way.” Specter then mentioned how vaccine production is antiquated and asked how sufficient “disruption” could occur to prompt the modernization of the existing vaccination development and approval process. Hamburg responded first, saying that as a society we are behind where we need to be when it comes to moving toward a new, more technological approach and that it is now “time to act” to make that a reality.
Several minutes later, Anthony Fauci stated that the superior method of vaccine production involves “not growing the virus at all, but getting sequences, getting the appropriate protein and it sticking in on self-assembling nanoparticles,” essentially referring to mRNA vaccines. Fauci then stated: “The critical challenge . . . is that in order to make the transition from getting out of the tried and true egg-growing [method] . . . to something that has to be much better, you have to prove that this works and then you have got to go through all of the critical trials—phase 1, phase 2, phase 3—and show that this particular product is going to be good over a period of years. That alone, if it works perfectly, is going to take a decade.” Fauci later stated that there is a need to alter the public’s perception that the flu is not a serious disease in order to increase urgency and that it would be “difficult” to alter that perception along with the existing vaccine development and approval process unless the existing system takes the posture that “I don’t care what your perception is, we’re going to address the problem in a disruptive way and an iterative way.”
During the panel, Bright stated that “we need to move as quickly as possible and urgently as possible to get these technologies that address speed and effectiveness of the vaccine” before discussing how the White House Council of Economic Advisers had just issued a report emphasizing that prioritizing “fast” vaccines was paramount. Bright then added that a “mediocre and fast” vaccine was better than a “mediocre and slow” vaccine. He then said that we can make “better vaccines and make them faster” and that urgency and disruption were necessary to produce the targeted and accelerated development of one such vaccine. Later in the panel, Bright said the best way to “disrupt” the vaccine field in favor of “faster” vaccines would be the emergence of “an entity of excitement out there that’s completely disruptive, that’s not beholden to bureaucratic strings and processes.” He later very directly said that by “faster” vaccines he meant mRNA vaccines.
The Bright-led BARDA and the Fauci-led NIAID in just a few months’ time became the biggest backers of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, investing billions and co-developing the vaccine with the company, respectively. As will be explained in Part II of this series, the partnership between Moderna and the NIH to co-develop what would soon become Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine was being forged as early as January 7, 2020, long before the official declaration of the COVID-19 crisis as a pandemic and before a vaccine was proclaimed as necessary by officials and other individuals. Not only did the COVID-19 vaccine quickly become the answer to nearly all Moderna’s woes but it also provided the disruptive scenario necessary to alter the public’s perceptions of what a vaccine is and eliminate existing safeguards and bureaucracy in vaccine approval. (Watch the 2019 Universal Flu Vaccine event here.)
As Part II of this series will show, it was an alleged mix of “serendipity and foresight” from Moderna’s Stéphane Bancel and the NIH’s Barney Graham that propelled Moderna to the front of the “Warp Speed” race for a COVID-19 vaccine. That partnership, along with the disruptive effect of the COVID-19 crisis, created the very “Hail Mary” for which Moderna had been desperately waiting since at least 2017 while also turning most of Moderna’s executive team into billionaires and multi-millionaires in a matter of months.
However, Moderna’s “Hail Mary” won’t last – that is, unless the mass administration of its COVID-19 vaccine becomes an annual affair for millions of people worldwide. Even though real-world data since its administration began challenges the need for as well as the safety and efficacy of its vaccine, Moderna – and its stakeholders – cannot afford to let this opportunity slip through fingers. To do so would mean the end of Moderna’s carefully constructed house of cards.
Author’s Note: Dr. Michael Palmer, Dr. Meryl Nass and Catherine Austin Fitts contributed much-appreciated feedback and guidance on this article. Special thanks to Katy M. for copy-editing help.
October 8, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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The government has refused to release the minutes of the meeting in which its vaccine advisory committee decided not to recommend vaccinating all 12-15 year olds against covid-19.1
The UK Health Security Agency, which replaced Public Health England, rejected a freedom of information request for the document on the grounds that it intended to publish the minutes “in due course.”
The agency argued that it was in the public interest to withhold the information until it could be released in a “simultaneous, coordinated manner” and that disclosing the minutes before they were finalised could “result in a false impression of the contents of the meeting.” The decision is being appealed.
On 3 September the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said that it would not be recommending universal vaccination for 12-15 year olds because although the health benefits of vaccination were “marginally greater than the potential known harms,” the margin of benefit was considered too small.2 The committee did not explain what factors its conclusion was based on, and neither the minutes nor the data behind the decision have been made public.3
The JCVI asked ministers to seek further advice from the UK’s chief medical officers on the wider potential benefits of vaccination. The government later (13 September) accepted the chief medical officers’ recommendation to vaccinate all 12-15 year olds on the basis of an assessment that included transmission in schools and the effect on children’s education.4
In a letter dated 5 October academics from Independent SAGE wrote to the JCVI highlighting the fact that, despite the committee’s own policy stating that draft minutes would be published within six weeks of each meeting, the last publicly available minutes were from February 2021.5
They urged the JCVI to “abide by its code of practice and be open and transparent through rapid publishing of all agendas, supporting papers and minutes,” arguing that “public confidence in vaccination programmes is assisted by clear and consistent processes and messaging.”
They added, “In that spirit, we wish to have a public assurance from JCVI that all future considerations of covid-19 vaccines, including the extension of vaccination to children under 12 years of age, will be conducted openly and transparently.”
Footnotes
- bmj.com View and Reviews—Helen Salisbury: Official hesitancy is not helping (BMJ 2021;374:n2366; doi:10.1136/bmj.n2366)
October 8, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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Americans may be under the illusion that the Hippocratic Oath compels doctors to do no harm to their patients. Unfortunately, that is not an ironclad injunction that protects patients from harm. There are several reasons for this. First, there is not a universal “Hippocratic Oath” to which all doctors must adhere. Indeed, according to the National Institutes of Health, the Hippocratic Oath is not required by most modern medical schools, and doesn’t expressly state “First, do no harm.” Actually, in the oath’s third paragraph, it does state the physician would do no harm. Leaving out the word “first” changes nothing. Interestingly, the oath’s fourth paragraph explicitly states, “I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.”
Putting aside the idea of an oath sworn to mythical characters known as Greek gods and goddesses, and the subject of abortion, why would physicians even need to take any oath to not harm their patients? Up to current times, patients have held their doctors in the highest regard. It would not be a stretch to say people held their doctors and medical staff with inviolate trust at the center of their relationship. Sadly, that almost sacred relationship between doctor and patient has, over the past almost two years, been eroded and blown up by COVID-19 and the Left’s weaponizing of it. Every day we are learning more and more how this virus came about. However, the genesis of COVID-19 is not now the main concern of most people.
What concerns more and more people is the alarming and growing demand being pushed by corporate federal proxies for experimental gene therapies (aka “vaccines”) to be mandated for all Americans. To use the medical profession as a tyrannical tool against the most vulnerable is beyond unconscionable. There are some doctors and medical scientists pushing back and doing what the whole medical profession should be doing.
For full disclosure and trust in the vaccines, the main question is what are all the substances in the vaccines? Are data safety sheets for the Pfizer, Astra-Zeneca, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines being provided to medical personnel and patients? If so, are 100% of the ingredients listed? What about the reported graphene oxide or aborted fetal cells in any of the vaccines? What about all the deaths and injuries caused by these vaccines? These are some of the many questions that must be fully addressed. There is something deadly going on and it is more than a virus with a cure rate of 99% for most people.
While the ugly politics play out, the medical profession must get back to basics and stand united against any and all efforts made to dissuade them from putting patients first. If a patient wants one of the vaccine shots, first, do no harm! Educate yourselves on what is in the vaccines. Then give patients all the information they need for informed consent for the shot. Medical personnel must stand against any order which may mandate all people have to get a COVID shot. Every person has the right to exercise his or her own free will and should never be coerced by government or anyone else to do or not do something that impacts their lives. Allowing medical tyranny to rule the day will have vast consequences for everyone. In Colorado, a woman in stage 5 renal failure is denied a transplant because neither she nor her donor was vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. What a tragedy for this woman whose very life depends on a kidney transplant!
If medical professionals bow to any edict other than their own conscience and good medical practice, they should be shunned. We may need to start taking personal responsibility and making better decisions that affect our well-being. After all, we are the first responders to our own health!
October 8, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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Facebook has not had a shortage of whistleblowers over the past years, but most have been ignored and sometimes vilified by mainstream media and the authorities; however, they now have a “star” one, Frances Haugen, who seems to finally be telling them exactly what they want to hear.
And now European countries seem ready to use Haugen’s claims and her testimony this week before the US Congress as an excuse to promote more regulation that would force tech giants to come up with risk assessments every year regarding issues such as misinformation and hate speech.
The gist of Haugen’s testimony, and the reason why she revealed a number of internal Facebook documents prior to that, is the accusation that the social media giant has a negative and harmful effect on society.
So high is the profile now of this former product manager that straight after the congressional testimony, she was on the phone with European Commissioner Thierry Breton, and he was the one to inform the public about their conversation.
Breton, who is known for advocating very far reaching and strict new regulation of US tech giants, said Haugen “confirmed the importance and urgency of why we are pushing to rein in the big platforms.”
The leaked documents that were first reported in the Wall Street Journal – some of which had to do with the practice of white-listing celebrities and their content – now seem to be used as a catalyst in the EU to speed up the process of adopting new rules that aim to deal not only with the platform’s alleged anticomeptitive behavior stemming from their market dominance – but also make to go for more stringent ways of policing their networks – often a euphemism for unchecked moderation and even censorship.
Reports suggest that Haugen and EU officials drafting this legislation are having something of a meeting of minds, since a number of ideas she now has on how to contain Facebook are in agreement with what Brussels has been deliberating and debating for a year.
One of them, the Digital Services Act, would require transparency and disclosure both to regulators and researchers of services, algorithms and content moderation – but in the same breath, “force Facebook and other tech giants to conduct annual risk assessments in areas such as the spread of misinformation and hateful content,” writes the New York Times.
October 8, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | European Union, Human rights |
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Before we take Frances Haugen’s testimony at face value, it would be useful to know more about her career history – in particular her time working alongside former elite US spies in Facebook’s Threat Intelligence division.
Ever since Haugen testified to the Senate, the media and social media have been abuzz with praise for the Facebook “whistleblower”, endlessly repeating her words and allegations without critique, and enthusiastically endorsing her proposals for greater surveillance, censorship and control of social media and the internet more widely by the US government.
Haugen, who offered ostensible first-hand testimony about her time working for and with Facebook’s counterterrorism and counterespionage teams, has almost universally been taken at face value by journalists, pundits, politicians, and average citizens. Some have nonetheless been surprised to learn that Facebook maintains dedicated units of that kind at all.
Many would likely be similarly shocked to learn that these units form part of the social network giant’s Threat Intelligence division, which is staffed by former Pentagon, CIA and NSA spies.
Little information on the division can be found on the web, although its strategy is known to be led by Ben Nimmo, a former NATO propagandist and alumnus of Integrity Initiative, a secret UK Foreign Office information warfare operation itself staffed by military intelligence veterans.
A paywalled report by elite industry outlet Intelligence Online nonetheless names David Agranovich, ex-Pentagon analyst and intelligence director for the White House National Security Council; Nathaniel Gleicher, former Council cybersecurity chief and Justice Department senior counsel for computer crime and intellectual property; and Mike Torrey, previously NSA and CIA cyber analyst, as occupying senior positions in Threat Intelligence.
Agranovich and Torrey were key authors of Facebook’s State of Influence Operations 2017-2020 report, published in May. The document repeatedly alleged that China, Iran and Russia sought to weaponize the social network for malign purposes. Western cyber warfare operations known to target social media, such as the British Army’s 77th Brigade and Washington’s Operation Earnest Voice, were unmentioned, which is entirely unsurprising when one considers who wrote it.
Job listings for positions in Threat Intelligence make abundantly clear that an extensive espionage background is mandatory for all employees. An ad for an analyst role, posted mere days before Haugen testified to the Senate, states “5+ years of experience working in intelligence (either government or private sector), international geopolitical, cybersecurity, or human rights functions,” and “experience prioritizing tasks, projects, and analytical or investigative needs…with minimal direction or oversight” are absolute “minimum qualifications” for anyone wishing to apply.
A university qualification in “computer science, information systems, intelligence studies [or] cybersecurity,” and “regional knowledge and/or language skills, especially East or Southeast Asia,” are listed as “preferred qualifications”, the latter indicating precisely where the unit’s crosshairs are, and aren’t, trained.
It’s somewhat puzzling, then, that Haugen came to work for this elite, spy-dominated unit. While an extensive clean-up of her web history was conducted prior to going public, her still-extant LinkedIn profile – which somewhat amazingly reveals she helped found dating app Hinge, and served as its Chief Technical Officer – makes no mention of any experience remotely relevant to counterespionage.
Incongruously, though, the listing for Haugen’s Facebook role, unlike all other entries on her CV, offers no details on her responsibilities or achievements, and only the vague job title of ‘Product Manager’. Then again, a cumulative seven years spent at Google may have been sufficient to impress her recruiters.
The search engine monopoly’s own origins trace back to a US intelligence program in the 1990s, under which academics were financed to create a system whereby vast quantities of data on private citizens could be monitored, collected and stored, and individual users identified and tracked.
Throughout the search engine’s development, company cofounder Sergey Brin met regularly with research and development representatives of defense contractors and the CIA – one has since recalled how he would “rush in on roller blades, give his presentation and rush out.” Moreover, Pentagon, CIA and NSA contracts have been absolutely pivotal to transforming Google and other tech giants from small start-ups, literally operating from basements, into the global behemoths they are today.
Still, the composition of Threat Intelligence raises serious questions about Haugen’s narrative – first and foremost, how can Facebook be said to not be doing enough to act against alleged foreign-borne threats? It’s somewhat inconceivable that the best intelligence veterans money can buy, who have a clear and demonstrable bias against Western state-mandated “enemy” countries, are asleep at the wheel.
At the very least, it’s indisputably a strange situation indeed when an individual spends two and a half years in extremely close quarters with former high-ranking spies with an avowed focus on China, Iran and Russia, then very publicly declares that the US government needs greater censorship and surveillance powers – which the very agencies from which her co-workers hail have similarly demanded for years – in order to battle the threat to democracy posed by these countries.
One can’t help but be reminded of 15-year-old Kuwaiti citizen Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥa tearfully addressing the US Congress’ Human Rights Caucus in the lead up to the Gulf War.
“I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital… While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where… babies were in incubators,” she attested. “They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”
Her words travelled the world over, were repeated endlessly on all major Western news networks, endorsed by Amnesty International, and cited repeatedly by US lawmakers and President George H. W. Bush as a rationale for waging war on Iraq, which occurred three months later.
It would not be until 1992 that Nayirah was revealed to be the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington, and her story to be completely untrue. Her Congressional appearance was a publicity stunt organized as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations campaign, run by US propaganda merchants Hill & Knowlton on behalf of the Kuwaiti government.
It’s been said that if Nayirah’s lies had been exposed for what they were at the time, it might’ve prompted the public, journalists and politicians to consider whether they were being manipulated into supporting military action. Given the degree to which Haugen is preaching to the converted, even such a discrediting, debilitating exposure surely won’t hamper the US national security state’s inexorable push to take over the internet for good.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | CIA, Human rights, United States |
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Three US medical certifying boards have warned doctors that they risk losing their certification and licence if they spread covid vaccine misinformation.
Internists, family doctors, and paediatricians received an email on 9 September that quoted a warning from the Federation of State Medical Boards in July1 which read: “Providing misinformation about the covid-19 vaccine contradicts physicians’ ethical and professional responsibilities, and therefore may subject a physician to disciplinary actions, including suspension or revocation of their medical licence.”2
Richard Baron, president and chief executive of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), told The BMJ that the move was an attempt to establish a standard of care. “As standard setting organisations, we thought it was important to be on record, in a public way, to make clear that putting out flagrant misinformation is unethical and dangerous during a pandemic.” Baron said that the statement has been well received—“4 to 1 positive.” But community physicians contacted by The BMJ thought differently.
“When I got that email I thought I’d better not put anything on social media about vaccines,” said Shveta Raju, a community physician in the Atlanta, Georgia, area, who has treated covid patients and led the vaccination effort at her outpatient clinic.
“The email was sent more as a veiled threat to keep doctors on the official, established narrative, and that’s what I find chilling,” said a paediatrician who pseudonymously blogs under the name Elizabeth Bennett. “Pandemic or no, there is a problem with having an ill defined concept of misinformation that’s tied to public health messaging that hasn’t been consistent. How are physicians supposed to figure out what is misinformation when public health messaging swings so wildly?” Bennett asked.
Undefined offence
Baron said that the statement was also intended to signal the certifying boards’ support for physicians “trying to do the right thing.”
“We wanted to support that group and say ‘hey, we do have a standard of care here and you are doing the right thing when you uphold it,’” he said.
Raju responded, “If that was their intent, they should have defined misinformation. By leaving it undefined, the message was that we can’t talk about this at all.” She said that physicians are, by and large, a conservative group. “If they’re not sure what can be deemed misinformation, physicians would rather be quiet.”
Bennett concurred: “The thing I find most alarming is that they don’t define misinformation, but if they strip you of your board certification, you would lose your means of earning a living.”
Doctors spreading misinformation?
Official and social media company efforts to target “vaccine misinformation” predate the pandemic.3 But the new statement from ABIM, the American Board of Family Medicine, and the American Board of Paediatrics is one of several recent statements putting doctors in the spotlight for the first time.
In Canada, warnings about physician information began earlier, when in April the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario declared that physicians “have a professional responsibility not to communicate anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing, and anti-lockdown statements or promote unsupported, unproven treatments for covid-19.”4
The Canadian statement triggered an outcry, leading to a clarification that the statement was “not intended to stifle a healthy public debate about how best to address aspects of the pandemic.” But concerns continued. In June, a Canadian member of parliament held a press conference on censorship of Canadian clinicians and scientists. YouTube removed the video of the meeting.56
The BMJ asked ABIM about the size of the problem of board certified physicians spreading misinformation.
“We don’t have a sense of numbers of physicians spreading misinformation,” Baron said. “We’re at the beginning.” He believed it was only a “small number of doctors.” The medical boards opted to send the statement to all doctors, he said, because focusing on just the offending individuals would “miss the impact they’re having because of how much their voices are being amplified.”
As an example of “unprofessional or unethical behaviour,” Baron cited the case of a Florida doctor offering medical exemptions from mask wearing for $50 (£37; €43).7
Personalised medicine—or one-size-fits-all?
The BMJ asked whether physicians expressing doubt about the need for booster doses or vaccination of patients with natural immunity—two matters that have been the subject of debate and changing official guidance—would qualify as misinformation.8 “I don’t think we have concerns with doctors wrestling with areas where the science is unclear,” Baron said, “but there is no debate about whether people should get a primary vaccination series.”
Raju worries about the impact on personalised care. “The job of physicians is to take guidelines and apply them to the patient in front of them.” But now “physicians are basically being told that when it comes to covid vaccines it’s one-size-fits-all.”
Baron said, “We’re not trying to stifle conversations between doctors and patients. We understand that different people may look at evidence in different ways, but when you have an overwhelming preponderance of medical consensus in a certain area, you need at least to tell patients that there is an overwhelming professional consensus here.”
Cautious approach
Jeffrey Flier, former dean of Harvard Medical School, said that in the context of the pandemic, he was “not opposed to certain levels of misinformation triggering a decision to question somebody’s licence.” He said, “I can see this being an appropriate remedy at a time of public health emergency.
“But this is not how the system for licensure and certification has traditionally worked, and creates many opportunities for mistaken judgment about what is and is not misinformation, and those decisions would have to be rendered with extreme caution.”
Flier added, “We have to remember that there are legitimate areas of debate, and such matters should not fall within the scope of disciplinary actions.”
“There are reasons to be concerned that state boards might be unprepared for these kinds of decisions at a time when so many aspects of covid policy have been enmeshed with political views.”
Footnotes
-
This article was updated on 4 October to make clear that it was medical certifying boards, rather than licensing boards, that emailed physicians. The email quoted an earlier warning from the Federation of State Medical Boards.
-
Competing interests: PD gave a public statement at a 17 September 2021 FDA advisory committee to discuss covid-19 vaccines, where he highlighted the joint statement. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official policy or position of the University of Maryland.
-
Provenance: commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.
This article is made freely available for use in accordance with BMJ’s website terms and conditions for the duration of the covid-19 pandemic or until otherwise determined by BMJ. You may use, download and print the article for any lawful, non-commercial purpose (including text and data mining) provided that all copyright notices and trade marks are retained.
https://bmj.com/coronavirus/usage
View Abstract
October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | Canada, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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How many people have died of COVID-19? The media is reporting CDC data that the death toll is about 640,000 in the U.S., but the answer is nobody knows. Health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci claim that there are likely far more COVID-19 deaths than have been reported, meaning that such deaths are being undercounted.1
Evidence of this, however, is lacking and many believe the opposite is true — that COVID-19 deaths have been overreported, in some cases by as much as 500%. In a Full Measure investigation, host and investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson revealed their findings from around the U.S., which found that “in some documented cases, news that COVID was the cause of death was greatly exaggerated.”2
Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made startling changes in how they track COVID-19 cases, which is muddling the data and making it virtually impossible to track infections among those who have received a COVID-19 injection.3
Homicide, Suicide Counted as COVID Deaths
Grand County, Colorado, has a population of just 15,717 people.4 It’s the type of rural area where coroner Brenda Bock is able to keep tabs on each and every death, including those from COVID-19 — of which, she said, there were none in 2020.5 COVID-19 deaths, however, were recorded in the area, highlighting the problems with how such casualties are counted. Bock told Attkisson:6
“I had a homicide-suicide the end of November, and the very next day it showed up on the state website as Covid deaths. And they were gunshot wounds. And I questioned that immediately because I had not even signed off the death certificates yet, and the state was already reporting them as Covid deaths.”
The reasoning behind counting the homicide-suicide deaths as COVID-19 casualties was that they were listed in a database of people who had tested positive for COVID-19 within 28 days of their death. According to Full Measure:7
“Because there had been no Covid deaths within the geographic boundaries of Grand County in 2020, Bock was in a unique position to challenge the state’s accounting. In many cities and counties, the numbers are too big and the coroners would never know about discrepancies.”
There were other instances in Grand County as well. Bock investigated two “COVID-19 deaths,” which turned out to be people who were still alive. “They just got put in there by accident,” Bock said.8 Attkisson also spoke with Dr. James Caruso, chief medical examiner and coroner for Denver, who said he had also heard from coroners in rural counties that trauma deaths were being counted as COVID-19 casualties:9
“[A]t some level — maybe the state level, maybe the federal level — there’s a possibility that they were cross-referencing Covid tests. And that people who tested positive for Covid were listed as a Covid-related death, regardless of their true cause of death. And I believe that’s very erroneous, and not the way the statistics needed to be accumulated.”
Dying ‘of’ COVID or ‘With’ COVID
The distinction comes down to some tricky wording: deaths “among” COVID-19 cases and deaths “due to” COVID-19, or dying “of” COVID or “with” COVID. Someone who died with COVID-19 may be counted as a death among COVID-19 cases, even if the virus had nothing to do with their death.
When a death is said to be “due to” COVID-19, this is intended when COVID-19 caused or significantly contributed to the death. According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment:10
“The number of deaths due to COVID-19 are not necessarily included in the number of deaths among people with COVID-19. After review, at either the state or national level, some deaths may not be counted as COVID-19 deaths. This is rare, and the expectation is that in the end the numbers will closely align.”
But according to Bock, the inflated numbers could hurt the region’s economy, which is largely dependent on tourism:11
“It’s absurd that they would even put that on there. Would you want to go to a county that has really high death numbers? Would you want to go visit that county because they are contagious? You know I might get it, and I could die if all of a sudden one county has a high death count. We don’t have it, and we don’t need those numbers inflated.”
Caruso told Attkisson that he voiced his concerns about deaths being wrongly attributed to COVID-19 to the Colorado Department of Public Health in April 2020. A coroner from Montezuma County also complained after an alcohol death was deemed a COVID death. Colorado ended up adding categories to their death counts, stating a person died “Of” COVID or “With” COVID, but the counts were still off.
For instance, Bock’s murder-suicide cases were still being counted under “With COVID,” even though they shouldn’t have been tallied at all. According to Bock:12
“And that’s what I complained about. And then when I did talk to the Governor, he told me he didn’t believe it was right, but he wasn’t going to have them remove it from the count because all the other states were doing it that way so we were going to also.”
Full Measure’s investigation found that of the 13,845 COVID-related deaths in Colorado, about half were among people who died “among” or “with” COVID. The media is also contributing to the confusion. In one instance The New York Times inflated the number of people who died from COVID-19 in Grand County by at least 500%.13
This raises questions about COVID deaths being reported nationwide. There have been reports, for instance, of traffic accident fatalities,14 cancer15 and nursing home or hospice deaths16 being attributed to COVID-19. And in Alameda County, California, when they removed deaths that’s weren’t directly caused by COVID-19 from their official count, the number of “COVID” deaths dropped by 25%.17 Attkisson said:18
“The obvious implications are huge. If such a significant number of Colorado’s “Covid deaths” weren’t directly caused by Covid, or even related at all in some cases, and if that bears out in other states, it means the national totals we’ve heard since the start of the pandemic could be largely misleading.”
CDC Isn’t Tracking Most Cases Among the Vaccinated
Media reports keep referring to the pandemic as a crisis of the unvaccinated, which is simply inaccurate, since COVID-19 continues to affect and spread among those who have been vaccinated. The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) posted online July 30, 2021, details an outbreak of COVID-19 that occurred in Barnstable County, Massachusetts — 74% of the cases occurred in fully vaccinated people.19
So-called “breakthrough infections,” which used to be known as vaccine failures, were reported by the CDC far earlier, though, including in their May 28 MMWR, which documented 10,262 breakthrough infections reported January 1, 2021, to April 23, 2021, across 46 states.20
This, they believed, was “likely a substantial undercount,” but rather than continuing to assess the situation, they stopped monitoring most COVID-19 infections among vaccinated people:21
“Beginning May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections to investigating only those among patients who are hospitalized or die, thereby focusing on the cases of highest clinical and public health significance.”
ProPublica detailed the case of Meggan Ingram, a 37-year-old who is fully vaccinated but tested positive for COVID-19. She became sick enough to require oxygen and intravenous steroids in a hospital for three hours, but wasn’t admitted. Her case won’t be counted among the official count, and neither will the seven other people in her household who also tested positive — five of them fully vaccinated.22
The end result is that there’s no way to know how many people have been infected, including among the vaccinated, and how the virus is spreading. As Dr. Randall Olsen, medical director of molecular diagnostics at Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas, told ProPublica, “They are missing a large portion of the infected. If you’re limiting yourself to a small subpopulation with only hospitalizations and deaths, you risk a biased viewpoint.”23
Injection Effectiveness Is Dropping
It’s possible the CDC stopped tracking most COVID-19 cases among the vaccinated in order to obscure just how commonly the vaccines are failing. According to CDC data, the overall COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness declined from 91.8% in May to 75% in July.24 Among nursing home residents, the vaccines are similarly failing, dropping from an effectiveness rate of 74.7% in March-May 2021 to 53.1% in June-July.25
“The vaccinated are not as protected as they think. They are still in jeopardy,” Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told ProPublica.26 As for why the CDC abruptly stopped tracking most breakthrough cases, the agency said it was because the more targeted data collection would be more useful for “response research, decisions, and policy.”27
However, it’s resulted in a lack of consistency and access to the full data for the U.S. public, with each state varying in what data it’s gathering and whether or not to share it. U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., has called on the CDC to track and share information on COVID-19 breakthrough cases. In a letter to CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, he said:28
“The American public must be informed of the continued risks posed by COVID-19 and variants, and public health and medical officials, as well as health care providers, must have robust data and information to guide their decisions on public health measures.”
In July 2021, he asked to CDC to respond to a series of questions, including whether vaccine-derived immunity is decreasing in light of the breakthrough cases and what action they’re taking to monitor breakthrough cases among people who aren’t hospitalized. As of September 2021, he had still received no response, and many remain puzzled over the CDC’s sudden refusal to track such crucial health data.29
“I was shocked,” Dr. Leana Wen, a physician and visiting professor of health policy and management at George Washington University, told ProPublica. “I have yet to hear a coherent explanation of why they stopped tracking this information.”30
Sources and References
October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception | Covid-19, New York Times, United States |
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An open storage for the collection of burnt ammunition containing toxicant agents. © Sputnik / Ilya Pitalev
Russian diplomats have hit out at the US after American officials signed a letter demanding information on the circumstances of the purported poisoning of opposition figure Alexey Navalny, accusing Washington of double standards.
On Tuesday, Moscow’s embassy in Washington issued a fiery statement after the US and 44 other countries presented a series of answers from Russia over the incident as part of a missive passed over to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Navalny and his German doctors insist that he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok last year. The envoys blasted the allegations as “unfounded,” and the Kremlin has argued that all requests for evidence from Berlin have gone unanswered.
In response to the allegations, the embassy argued that Russia “is committed to its obligations” under chemical weapons treaties and, “in 2017, our country destroyed all national stocks of chemical warfare agents, which was documented by the OPCW.”
However, the envoys argue that “the US continues to be the only country in the world that has not destroyed its impressive arsenal of chemical weapons.” In 1991, then-US President George H.W. Bush committed to destroying its stockpiles of lethal agents, but progress has since been hampered by a number of issues and decommissioning is still underway, leaving large quantities of chemical munitions, including mustard gas shells.
In March, the US slammed Russia with sanctions, urging Moscow to get rid of the country’s chemical weapons stockpile following the allegations of the use of Novichok against Navalny. Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, however, maintained that “Russia declared and verified the destruction of all chemical weapons on its territory many years ago and fully complied with international conventions… Russia has no chemical weapons.”
“By the way,” Peskov added, “we expect that our counterparts will also comply with these conventions.”
This is not the first time that Russia has called on the US to dispose of its chemical weapons. In 2018, the spokesperson for the country’s Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, responded to former US President Donald Trump’s request for Russia to “stop the arms race” developing between the two nations. “Great idea,” Zakharova said. “Let’s start by getting rid of chemical weapons. American ones.”
In response to the US’ latest accusations regarding Russia’s supposed chemical warfare capabilities, the embassy said that it is in the world’s interest that Washington complies with the UN’s international regulations surrounding disarmament. “We call on Washington to complete the chemical demilitarization program as soon as possible and fulfill international obligations, making the world safe from the potential use of this type of weapon,” the embassy added.
October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Russophobia | Russia, United States |
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Because People were not Afraid Enough of the Flu Virus
Last night Alex Jones of Infowars.com did a special broadcast regarding an October, 2019 video that they had just become aware of that was a panel discussion hosted by the Milken Institute discussing the need for a Universal Flu Vaccine.
The video clip that they played of this event was a 1 minute and 51 second dialogue between the moderator, Michael Specter, a journalist who is a New Yorker staff writer and also an adjunct professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and Rick Bright, the director of HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).
In this short clip, which was extracted from the hour long panel discussion, Anthony Fauci explains that bringing a new, untested kind of vaccine like an mRNA vaccine, would take at least a decade (“if everything goes perfectly”) to go through proper trials and be approved by the FDA.
He would know, because he had been trying to do it for about a decade already by then (October, 2019), trying to develop an mRNA based vaccine for HIV.
But now they were discussing something much bigger than just a vaccine for AIDS patients. They are talking about a “Universal Flu Vaccine” that everyone would have to take – a huge market for Big Pharma!
Rick Bright, the director of HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), then speaks and states that what could happen is that “an entity of excitement that is completely disruptive and is not beholden to bureaucratic strings and processes” could change that.
Here is the short clip which I put on our Bitchute and Rumble channels last night:
Alex Jones spent over 50 minutes covering this on his show last night, and it looks like he covered it on his show today as well.
I have not had a chance to watch these yet, as I went and found the original 1 hour panel discussion video, and spent the day listening to and analyzing that, so that I could supply this report to our readers.
Joining Fauci, Rick Bright, and Michael Specter at this event were:
- Margaret Hamburg, Foreign Secretary, National Academy of Medicine
- Bruce Gellin, President, Global Immunization, Sabin Vaccine Institute
- Casey Wright, CEO, FluLab
In short, this panel discussion focused on what they perceived as the need for a universal flu vaccine, but they admitted that the old way of producing vaccines was not sufficient for their purposes, and that they needed some kind of global event where many people were dying to be able to roll out a new mRNA vaccine to be tested on the public.
They all agreed that the annual flu virus was not scary enough to create an event that would convince people to get a universal vaccine.
And as we now know today, about 2 years after this event, that “terrifying virus” that was introduced was the COVID-19 Sars virus.
And so now we know why the flu just “disappeared” in the 2020-21 flu season. It was simply replaced by COVID-19, in a worldwide cleverly planned “pandemic” to roll out the world’s first universal mRNA vaccines.
This was always the goal, and previous efforts through various influenzas, AIDS, Ebola, and other “viruses” were all unsuccessful in leading to the development of a universal vaccine to inject into the entire world’s population.
Margaret Hamburg stated regarding getting a “Universal Vaccine” into the market:
“It’s time to stop talking, and it’s time to act.”
“I think it is also because we haven’t had a sense of urgency.”
Michael Specter asks:
“Do we need lots of people to die for that sense of urgency to occur?”
Hamburg replies that: “There are already lots of people dying” from the flu each year.
Bruce Gellin states that basically people just are not afraid enough of the term “the flu.”
There are so many things that are revealed about how Big Pharma and government health authorities think in this panel discussion. For example, they bemoan the fact that if they do too good of a job in public health, then they lose funding to develop products that fight viruses.
Michael Specter states: “It seems to me that one of the curses of the public health world is, if you guys do your job well, everyone goes along well and healthy.”
Hamburg: “And they cut your funding.”
Rick Bright complains that the yearly distribution of flu vaccines is inefficient in terms of collecting data, and in the process actually admits that some vaccines just don’t work well:
“We distribute 150 million doses of the seasonal (flu) vaccines every year, we don’t even know how many people are being vaccinated from the doses that are delivered to the people, which doses they got, and what the real outcome was, so that we can learn from that knowledge base on how to optimize or improve our vaccine. So there are opportunities that we have today…”
I think if we uncloaked the poorest performing vaccines in the market place today, it might be very revealing to tell us which of the technologies we have, and allow us to go deeper into those technologies to determine why they are more effective. There are vaccines licenses today that are more effective. I think that we’re just afraid to admit the truth.”
So much for the public mantra that is espoused by Big Pharma and government that the “science” of vaccines is “settled,” and that they are completely “safe and effective.”
Casey Wright repeats the mantra that was publicized every year, before COVID, about just how deadly the flu virus was: “650,000 people die every year from the flu.”
As we have documented many times over the past decade here at Health Impact News, this is simply not true. This is an estimate because actual laboratory confirmed cases of influenza each year are very small, probably less than 1000 in the U.S.
Most flu-like symptoms are never tested in a lab to determine what is causing the symptoms. They were always just classified as “flu” to inflate the numbers to justify the very profitable flu shot each year. Some of our previous coverage of this issue:
Did 80,000 People Really Die from the Flu Last Year? Inflating Flu Death Estimates to Sell Flu Shots
So as they have inflated the COVID-19 cases since last year, they are simply continuing their policy of inflating flu numbers each year in order to sell their vaccines. They obviously could not have done both last year, as the public would have quickly seen that the math doesn’t work.
And yet, so many in the public bought the lie that the COVID-19 measures got rid of the flu, but not COVID-19.
Ultimately, this panel discussion can be boiled down to: Nobody wants to fund research for a universal flu vaccine. So how do we change that? Create a pandemic of fear over the flu (but they couldn’t call it the “flu” because people are no longer afraid of influenza, and the fear over “AIDS” had also subsided.)
Fauci then addressed this “perception problem.”
There’s this perception (about the flu), if it’s so serious, how come people get the flu each year and it isn’t a catastrophe?
When you’re dealing with a disease like HIV, if you get HIV, it’s serious. Whether you’re young, whether you’re middle aged, or whether you’re old. If you get cancer, that’s bad. Whether you’re young, whether it’s intermediate… whereas if it’s influenza, some people, they go throughout life and it doesn’t impact them at all.
There isn’t anyone who is afraid of influenza. You go into a focus group and you say: Are you afraid of getting HIV if you’re at risk? Oh, absolutely.
Are you afraid of getting cancer? Absolutely. Are you afraid of the flu? Don’t bother me.
That’s the reality of how people perceive flu.
And it is going to be very difficult to change that, unless you do it from within and say, I don’t care what your perception is, we’re going to address the problem, in a disruptive way…
Specter then asks:
In the long run, over time, if the 2009 pandemic had been much more deadly, would that have ended up being a better thing for humanity?
Everyone is silent as they obviously were thinking about how to answer that, and Specter says: “Come on gang.”
Fauci ultimately answers and says “No” because there were other years that were worse than 2009 and it didn’t change a thing in terms of creating a universal vaccine.
Hamburg then states:
The sad truth is that when there is a major crisis, it focuses attention and usually resources and some significant mobilization follows.
We need, #1, this time to be different, and we also need to really organize ourselves in a way where there will be accountability for sustained action, and not just response.
Specter states:
Craig Venter, who is a controversial person, but interesting to me, has written that he thinks we ought to have a vaccine, such that, if you take off in a plane from Hong Kong, and are infected, by the time your plane lands in New York, there ought to be a vaccine assembled and deliverable to you.
How crazy is that? How far are we from that? Are we ever going to get there?
Bright replies:
I’m not going to say how far away, but I don’t think that’s too crazy.
I think that if we move towards the era of synthetic-based vaccines, I think we remove the dependencies of thinking the vaccine that has be grown into something else, an egg, a cell, or insect cell – any type of dependency embryo.
If we can move into more synthetic, the nucleic acid based, messenger RNA based, those sequences can be rapidly shared around the world.
He then goes on to talk about using a 3D printer to print out a “vaccine patch” that people use to administer the “vaccine.”
We also learn in this panel discussion why Anthony Fauci is so opposed to natural immunity, because natural immunity for influenza, according to his view, translates to an immune response against other strains of a particular influenza virus, which will interfere with what they are trying to do with the vaccines.
That is why he wants to inject infants as young as 6 months old with a universal vaccine, as he states here, to prevent that “confused” natural immunity from happening before the child grows older.
So the big question that this panel was tackling, was how do they implement their strategies, and what is holding them back?
Certainly the government/regulatory issue is a big one, and now two years later we can see exactly how they did that, by controlling the FDA and the CDC to promote the “killer virus pandemic” narrative as long as possible to justify taking emergency measures that short-cut the normal procedures for bringing novel, new drugs to the market.
It also clearly explains the vicious opposition to existing, cheap therapeutics that very easily treated what is really just the seasonal flu “virus,” which stood in their way of rolling out a universal vaccine.
Casey Wright then made a rather remarkable comment about “philanthropy” and its role in this effort:
There’s a potential role for philanthropy to play there… we are in a position to take on a little more risk (she smiles eerily as she says this), to be open to a little bit more experimentation and methods in how we do things. That’s what I think is unique about FluLab, and its unique about other philanthropies.
I think they can play a really important role there, and fund a set of bolder, maybe earlier promising concepts.
Bingo! Think Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and other “philanthropies” that are “unburdened” by regulatory issues as they spend their money pretty much unchecked, with no accountability, all in the name of “science” and the “greater good.”
We have seen most certainly how the Gates Foundation has done this in India by luring poor people into highly questionable ethical experimentations with vaccines, such as the Gardasil vaccine which we have covered so often over the years here at Health Impact News.
Bruce Gellin then talks about a report published by his organization that called for an “entity” that would make these decisions and bring everyone together to collaborate to create this universal vaccine, and eliminate those who oppose.
The report was published in 2019, and here is the press release.
He states:
They called for this “entity” which is the collaboration we talked about. They called for the need to infuse innovation, to find some of these people who we don’t know might be part of the problem to come into this. And to try to think about how we talk about this differently so that your stomach flu doesn’t keep us from making progress. (everyone laughs…)
I assume that this “entity” is Gellin’s group, The Sabin-Aspen Vaccine Science & Policy Group.
Today, this is the main group fighting “vaccine hesitancy” and trying to silence any dissenting voices that get in their way of rolling out this universal vaccine, which of course we now know is the COVID-19 vaccine.
Watch the entire panel discussion to learn just how arrogant these people are. This is on our Bitchute and Rumble channels… Further analysis at Health Impact News.
October 5, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation |
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- Nick Karl, Pfizer Scientist: “When somebody is naturally immune — like they got COVID — they probably have more antibodies against the virus…When you actually get the virus, you’re going to start producing antibodies against multiple pieces of the virus… So, your antibodies are probably better at that point than the [COVID] vaccination.”
- Chris Croce, Pfizer Senior Associate Scientist: “You’re protected for longer” if you have natural COVID antibodies compared to the COVID vaccine.
- Croce: “I work for an evil corporation… Our organization is run on COVID money.”
- Rahul Khandke, Pfizer Scientist: “If you have [COVID] antibodies built up, you should be able to prove that you have those built up.”
[NEW YORK – Project Veritas released the fourth video in its COVID vaccine investigative series today which exposed three Pfizer officials saying that antibodies lead to equal, if not better, protection against the virus compared to the vaccine.
Nick Karl, a scientist who is directly involved in the production of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, said that natural immunity is more effective than the very vaccine he works on, and Pfizer produces.
“When somebody is naturally immune — like they got COVID — they probably have more antibodies against the virus… When you actually get the virus, you’re going to start producing antibodies against multiple pieces of the virus… So, your antibodies are probably better at that point than the [COVID] vaccination,” Karl said. Notwithstanding, Karl still believes that vaccine mandates are positive for society.
“The city [of New York] needs like vax cards and everything. It’s just about making it so inconvenient for unvaccinated people to the point where they’re just like, ‘F*ck it. I’ll get it.’ You know?”
A second Pfizer official, Senior Associate Scientist, Chris Croce, corroborated Karl’s assertion about COVID immunity derivative of antibodies:
Veritas Journalist: “So, I am well-protected [with antibodies]?”
Chris Croce, Pfizer Senior Associate Scientist: “Yeah.”
Veritas Journalist: “Like as much as the vaccine?”
Croce: “Probably more.”
Veritas Journalist: “How so? Like, how much more?”
Croce: “You’re protected most likely for longer since there was a natural response.”
Croce expressed dismay with his company’s direction and moral compass:
Veritas Journalist: “So, what happened to the monoclonal antibody treatments?”
Croce: “[It got] pushed to the side.”
Veritas Journalist: “Why?”
Croce: “Money. It’s disgusting.”
…
Croce: “I still feel like I work for an evil corporation because it comes down to profits in the end. I mean, I’m there to help people, not to make millions and millions of dollars. So, I mean, that’s the moral dilemma.”
Veritas Journalist: “Isn’t it billions and billions?”
Croce: “I’m trying to be nice.”
Veritas Journalist: “No, I hear you. I hear you. I do. I mean, I’ll still give you a hard time about it.”
Croce: “Basically, our organization is run on COVID money now.”
The third Pfizer scientist, Rahul Khandke, admitted his company demands that its employees keep information from the public.
“We’re bred and taught to be like, ‘vaccine is safer than actually getting COVID.’ Honestly, we had to do so many seminars on this. You have no idea. Like, we have to sit there for hours and hours and listen to like — be like, ‘you cannot talk about this in public,’” Khandke said.
Khandke also signaled that proof of antibodies is on par with proof of vaccination.
“If you have [COVID] antibodies built up, you should be able to prove that you have those built up,” he said.
Project Veritas will be releasing more Pfizer tapes in the very near future. To receive updates straight into your email inbox, click here.
October 5, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | COVID-19 Vaccine, Pfizer |
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The UK government’s Winter Plan is rife with nudges
There’s a chill in the air. Not from the changing seasons, it’s still beautifully balmy, but because the behavioural scientists’ fingertips have traced a hoar frost of psychocratic nudge on the government’s “Autumn and Winter Plan”.
The UK government’s Winter Plan plan contained some welcome news. The most draconian schedules of the Coronavirus Act will be revoked, including the powers to close schools, allow potentially infectious people to be detained, and restrictions on gatherings and events. The language around the plan’s launch was thankfully more cool-headed. The times are “challenging” but it is no longer claimed that Covid is the “biggest threat this country has faced in peacetime history”.
But the plan is also rife with “nudges” – sneaky ways to prime, prepare and prod you into the desired mindset and course of action.
The contents are freighted with the sunk cost fallacy; we’ve come so far, we mustn’t allow our good work to be undone. This also taps into people’s innate sensitivity to loss.
The trigger from Plan A to Plan B will be “unsustainable pressure” on the NHS rather than deaths. It’s under serious pressure every winter so consider yourselves to be put on notice.
There are other indications of the inevitability of Plan B. I spoke to behavioural scientist Patrick Fagan, who observed that:
“the Plan A / Plan B approach is a classic example of the foot-in-the-door technique. Firstly it makes us accept Plan A because, compared to Plan B, it looks more reasonable; then, once we have accepted and acclimatised to Plan A, we are more likely to then accept Plan B, because it is just one extra step on top of the commitment we’ve already made. The announcement of Plan B may also be an example of the mere exposure effect: simply by talking about the measures (even if, ironically, saying they won’t be implemented), the government makes them more familiar and therefore more psychologically acceptable.”
Bizarrely, after 18 months we’re trapped in a Groundhog Day of modelling and worst case scenarios. Almost a year ago, on the 21st September, Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance warned of infections hitting 50,000 per day by mid-October in their “Shock and Awe” presentation. When the day arrived, the moving average was 16,228.
According to the doom-mongers at SAGE, up to 7,000 people could be hospitalised per day within the month. And this September the modellers were wrong once again – hospitalisations peaked at about a 1,000 a day and are now falling.
Source: The Telegraph
The big numbers both fuel the policies and justify them. It doesn’t matter that there are more optimistic scenarios, or that the modelling has limitations, because the first supine headline sticks in the brain. The behavioural psychology principle of “salience” draws your attention to what is novel and risky.
Dr Alex De Figueiredo, who conducts mathematical and statistical analyses for the Vaccine Confidence Project, told me that:
“Since the beginning of the pandemic it seems many modelling assumptions, such as the infection fatality rate, have been quite pessimistic. I think this has been why many of the predictions — such as hospitalisations and deaths — have been overstated. It also appears there has been little effort to validate forecasts out-of-sample, such as applying the models to Sweden or Florida, who have had far fewer restrictions.”
There are no quantifiable measures for what justifies each step from Plan A to Plan B. The parameters are fluid, unspecified. This creates confusion and stress, which infantilises people and makes them look to the government for direction. Essentially, confusion increases compliance.
The threat of lockdown hangs like a Sword of Damocles. Will we, or won’t we? It seems unlikely that the public and businesses could be persuaded again. Regardless, the threat of lockdown might be leveraged to justify the introduction of Covid Passports, in what is known as a “reciprocation nudge” – we appear to be given a concession in return for reduced resistance to another option.
Covid Passports have been vigorously opposed by MPs and civil liberties groups, and there hasn’t been a vote in Parliament yet. Despite this, they squat in Plan B as a fait accompli, in the denouement of the “door in the face” technique. This is when a huge request is made, then refused, to be followed by a second smaller request, in this case relegation to Plan B and for limited venues only. Boris Johnson said that it’s “not sensible to rule out this kind of option now when it might still make the difference between keeping businesses open or not.” But why would it be sensible when the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee produced a damning report against them and found the government could make no scientific case in their favour?
Covid Passports appear to be a behavioural science tool, used to increase vaccine uptake. This may backfire. ‘A Cross-Sectional Study in the UK and Israel on Willingness to Get Vaccinated against COVID-19’ found that vaccine passports deter a significant minority of people who want autonomy over their bodies. This also chimes with the research conducted by De Figueiredo and colleagues at The Vaccine Confidence Project. The bullying and resultant mistrust may impact Covid-19 vaccine uptake as well as other public health initiatives.
When my book A State of Fear: how the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic was published some people believed, quite quaintly, that public health measures and messaging were unrelated to behavioural science. I think that the book and the writings of other academics and journalists have moved the dial. Once nudge is seen it can’t be unseen. The public increasingly see the nudge. If the behavioural scientists have been dazzling people with card tricks they have over-played their hand.
As such, there is more honesty about the purpose Covid Passports serve. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, said that the passport scheme
“will not eradicate transmission completely but it will help reduce it in some higher risk settings, and it will maximise protection against serious illness. And we believe – as we have seen already in some other countries – it will help encourage take-up of the vaccine.”
Similarly, Linda Bauld, Professor of Public Health and Interim Social Policy Adviser to the Scottish Government, also admitted that Covid Passports are “to increase uptake in vaccination” and the “rationale” is that it particularly boosts vaccination in 18 to 29 year olds.
While Covid Passports are in Plan B, Ministers say different things about them each day. Within the space of a week, Sajid Javid scrapped them but also didn’t rule them out for pubs. Javid admitted there’s “no evidence” for them but Boris Johnson called them “sensible”. Does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing? Or maybe a big behavioural science brain lurks in between. The epidemic management is reminiscent of the uncertainty created by Vladislav Surkov in the Soviet Union to deliberately turn politics into a performance of confusion – you don’t know what’s real anymore.
There are never-ending question marks over travel, although double-vaccinated travellers will no longer need expensive and inconvenient PCR tests. The double-jabbed will delight in the news, and it sounds sensible on the surface. However, this is not about “following the science”, since the previously infected do not benefit from the exemption. This is an incentive, a classic nudge, to encourage jabs. The vaccinated are rewarded and the unvaccinated are punished. Bearing in mind that negative tests and prior infection could suffice, this decision reeks of disdain for personal autonomy.
Vaccines for 12 to 15 year olds have been authorised. Politicians have stirred up debate amongst all corners regarding whether children should be jabbed with their parents’ consent or not. This utilises what Patrick Fagan calls “the leapfrog effect”. He says,
“it leapfrogs one stage of the debate and in doing so, sets the baseline assumptions which become accepted implicitly. Specifically, by having people debate whether or not parents’ consent should be sought, they are establishing the unspoken assumption that children should receive the jab in the first place. Those who think they are debating the government, arguing that parents’ consent is needed, are actually accepting its true goal, to jab kids.”
The government might be more in control of the narrative than many people like to believe. (Of course, chaos and confusion are alternatives…)
Worryingly, can teens truly provide informed consent? Throughout 2020 they were exhorted not to “kill granny”, which would provoke fear, shame and stress. Ads on Tiktok tell youngsters that the way to get back to normal is to take the vaccine. The vaccine will be rolled out in schools which will create peer pressure, in a particularly egregious use of “norms”. Finally, if the JCVI found the decision difficult, how is a 12 year old supposed to weigh up the evidence? (Nudging teens is the subject matter of my next article.)
Since the Cabinet reshuffle, Michael Gove has been informally dubbed the ‘Minister for Christmas’. Boris Johnson joked that he “didn’t want to have to cancel Christmas again”. Did you know Christmas might be cancelled and needs saving? You do now, the idea has been “seeded”.
Although it is ostensibly supply chains which threaten Christmas, the joke draws a comparison with last year’s Covid reasons. Again, you are put on notice. The nudges are still focussed on increasing vaccination, for now, but the threat to Christmas might hint at the beginning of a behavioural science approach to meet green targets.
We must be good boys and girls if we want Santa to come. And be aware, the nudgers are drafting our collective New Year’s Resolutions.
October 5, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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