Rebel News journalist Avi Yemini is having to defend himself after deciding not to remove an online video the police in Australia’s state of Victoria want taken down.
Yemini revealed that he had a letter, signed by a Victoria Police Crime Squad detective sergeant, sent to his home, threatening that unless he complied and deleted the video, he could end up serving two years in prison.
The journalist published photos of the letter, which notified him of committing an “apparent” breach of the Surveillance Devices Act.
The letter asserts that information protected under this act appeared in a video Yemini uploaded to his YouTube channel in September, under the title, “Police bodycam proves the mainstream media is HIDING the truth.”
The police letter further states that knowingly publishing information obtained from police bodycams is an offense, and demands that he immediately remove the video from all public forums, or face charges.
If found guilty, Yemini could be sent to prison for two years maximum, be forced to pay a fine, defined as “240 penalty units maximum” – or both.
But Yemini, who says he has previously been arrested, assaulted, and intimidated by the police for his work, has decided to fight back, as another letter, this one penned by his legal representative, shows. It reads that under a subsection of the act the police refer to as being violated, the footage used in the report was already in the public domain.
“In a free country, that would be the end of it. In fact, in a genuinely free country, I never would have received that threat letter from the police in the first place,” Yemini writes.
But the journalist doesn’t expect this outcome, and is instead ready to engage in a legal battle with the Victoria police, whom he says have “unlimited resources to bully anyone who doesn’t submit to them.”
“We’ve never lost a case yet, and I’ve never removed a story, even when a gangland lawyer tried to sue me. With your help, I promise not to cower in 2022 either,” Yemini concludes.
After several years in being at the forefront of Western mainstream media’s coverage of the war on Yemen, describing it as being between the Saudi-led coalition and the “Iranian-backed Houthi rebels”, the news agency Reuters appears to have stopped using this phrase, and even ceased referring to the Houthis as “rebels” altogether.
With the exception of some image captions, the last time the news agency used the phrase in a body of text was as recent as a month ago, with subsequent articles now referring to the group as the Iran-aligned “Houthi movement“(formally the Ansar Allah). Though they have on occasion previously referred to the group as such, throughout the course of the seven-year war the dominant narrative has been that of troublesome “rebels”. Reuters, of course, is not alone in this regard as a plethora of news sites and agencies continue with this slant, including the Associated Press. Leading news services such as Reutersinfluence other news organisations and therefore how we perceive events, in effect acting as “wholesale news providers”.
While this slight editorial amendment may not seem like that much of a big deal, for those of us who have been monitoring the developments of the conflict over the years, including its coverage in the media, this is quite a significant step forward in how members of the international community perceive and understand the war in Yemen. Crucially, this also could be a nod towards the eventual recognition of the Houthi-led National Salvation Government (NSG), which has been the de facto revolutionary government for most of the densely populated north of the country since it was established in 2016.
The shift away from the framing of the Ansar Allah movement as a rag-tag bunch of rebels is important, because contrary to what has often been stated, the conflict wasn’t sparked by the mere seizing of the capital Sanaa by Houthi militiamen alone in 2014. They had the support of most of Yemen’s armed forces – once long-time former foes following six round of wars since 2004 when the Houthis were indeed a rebel faction. Many of these armed forces were loyalists to the late President Ali Abdullah Saleh and have remained in this alliance despite Saleh’s demise at the hands of Houthis over attempts to return to the Saudi fold.
This event, the fall of Sanaa, is referred locally and popularly at least in the north, as the September 21 Revolution and itself was ignited by the failures of the so-called Gulf Initiative whereby President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi was to serve as an interim leader for two years (which was extended to the present after he won an uncontested election), and the fateful decision by Hadi to cut fuel subsidies, which the Houthis and other oppositionists united against in mass protests.
This was actually the region’s sole genuine “revolution” in so far as post-Arab Spring political upheavals are concerned, despite being incomplete and not supported in the south, which has its own complex history and political aspirations. The potent mix of military support and alliances with the majority faction of political elites of the old order belonging to Saleh’s former ruling General People’s Congress (GPC) party has helped explain and maintain the Houthis’ hold on power over the capital and elsewhere in the north, with most of the media attention focused on an exaggerated role of Iran, which recognises and supports the NSG authorities.
However the fact that Yemeni armed forces are fighting against the Saudi-led coalition and its disparate mercenary and militia forces on the ground is more often than not overlooked or omitted from reports by press agencies who tend to simplify the conflict as being one between the Saudi-led coalition – which was called upon by the Saudi-based, exiled President Hadi – against an Iranian-backed rebel group. While it could be that the average consumer of these reports are not looking for in-depth, political analysis, which of course can be found elsewhere, it certainly doesn’t help in our comprehension of who is who, and therefore obscures the political reality and helps prolong the conflict.
The obfuscation caused by painting the joint military and Houthi “popular committees” forces as mere “Houthi rebels” in the mainstream media is an issue I have raised and have written about on several occasions since writing for MEMO and it is promising to finally see this being corrected.
What really caught my attention recently on this change, was a Reuters explainer piece on the war in Yemen, which has also been republished on the MEMO site. It states: “In late 2014, the Houthis seized Sana’a with help from pro-Saleh army units, initially forcing Hadi to share power, then arresting him in early 2015”, which as far as I’m aware is the perhaps the closest the agency has come to acknowledging the Yemeni military’s role in the revolution.
It has only been a month since Reuters has dropped the “Houthi rebels” trope and is still early days, but there is a chance that discontinuing this unhelpful and inaccurate narrative will be replicated in other news sites and international organisations. The recent retaliatory attacks against coalition partner the UAE – an important global hub, by Yemen’s Houthi-aligned armed forces, has brought the world’s attention back onto the movement and their increasingly sophisticated military capabilities. They are clearly being taken more seriously, with further warnings that the Dubai Expo could be targeted if the Emiratis continue their war efforts against Yemen, which includes occupying Socotra and backing the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC). Strategically and a major escalation for the Houthis, the UAE is also supporting the formidable Giants Brigade forces who have been undermining the Houthi advance onto Marib city, the last pro-Hadi stronghold in the north.
This all contributes to the renewed interest in the Houthis, who they are and where they stand in this war. As the NSG wields the most power and authority in the country, and most of the armed forces are fighting with the Houthis against foreign aggressors amid continued war crimes and a humanitarian crisis, it becomes more imperative than ever for the world to be more informed and at least get a better idea of the conflict. Moving on from the idea that this is a war against a group of rebels is a start in the right direction, albeit long overdue.
Yesterday the U.S. State Department submitted written responses to Russian negotiating positions in the ongoing U.S.-Russia negotiations over the Ukraine crisis. The exact text and details of the responses are confidential. However, Secretary of State Blinken’s statement regarding the content of the U.S. response is disturbing. At a press briefing, Blinken reaffirmed the U.S. refusal to engage with the core Russian position that the Ukraine should not be permitted to enter NATO, adding that in the written response “we make clear that there are core principles that we are committed to uphold and defend — including Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and the right of states to choose their own security arrangements and alliances.”
This is problematic from several perspectives. At the most basic level, it indicates that the U.S. is refusing to seek compromise regarding what Russia believes to be a core national security interest, namely that the U.S. should not make an alliance commitment to the military defense of Ukraine. Russia views Ukraine as a strategically critical nation due to its location directly on the Russian border and deep historical and cultural ties to Eastern Ukraine.
As Secretary Blinken must understand, NATO membership is not a decision made by Ukraine alone, and his claim that NATO membership is simply a matter of the Ukraine’s “right to choose” its own security arrangements is deeply misleading. NATO membership involves a two-way commitment, not simply the free choices of the entering member. Current alliance members must commit to mutual defense of the new member. Since the U.S. has by far the largest and most effective military forces in NATO, the most vital element of NATO membership is the American commitment to defend member borders. So Russia’s negotiating position is directed at a potential American commitment to defend Ukraine. Rather than engage honestly with the question of whether such an American military commitment really makes sense, Blinken deflects and reframes it as a matter of “core principles” around Ukraine’s choices and sovereignty.
In the long term, this indicates an unwillingness to grapple with the question of how to align American military commitments and resources with our long-term strategic interests, and whether Ukraine represents a core interest which justifies the placement of many tens or even hundreds of thousands of new troops in Europe and risking a major war with another nuclear power.
More importantly in the short term, it digs the U.S. into a position “on principle” that no compromise whatsoever is available on the critical question of Ukrainian membership in NATO. This is particularly confusing because the Biden Administration has been clear that it is currently unwilling to directly commit the U.S. military to the defense of Ukraine – which is precisely what would be immediately required if Ukraine became a NATO member. A credible defense for Ukraine would require a massive increase in U.S. forces in Europe, possibly approaching Cold War level ground and air forces. It is hard to see any domestic appetite for expending this level of resources, and internationally an immediate beneficiary would be China.
The US became increasingly Zionist subverted in the 1960s after Apartheid Israel gained nuclear weapons and after the assassinations of JFK and Robert Kennedy. Support for Apartheid Israel (and hence for the repugnant crime of Apartheid) is now a pillar of US politics, with anti-racist critics of Israeli Apartheid ferociously attacked, side-lined, and falsely defamed as anti-Semitic. However Zionist control and hubris are now blatant: 32 percent or about one third of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet are Jewish Zionists and the remainder are moderate Christian Zionists.
(a). Jewish Americans are an astonishing 17-fold over-represented in the Biden Cabinet. Jewish Americans total 6.4 million people, or 1.9% of the total US population of 333 million. However Jews represent 8 of the 25 people in President Joe Biden’s Cabinet (including Joe Biden himself) or 32% of the Cabinet. If we consider people who are Jewish or have Jewish spouses we must add Kamala Harris to get 9 out of 25 or 36% of the Cabinet. Thus Jews are over-represented in the Biden Cabinet by an astonishing factor of 32%/1.9% = 16.8-fold. The sine qua non of US politics is fervent support for theism, America first, neoliberalism and Apartheid Israel (and therefore for Apartheid) — accordingly the non-Jewish 68% of the Biden Cabinet fervently support Apartheid Israel, albeit as moderate Christian Zionists as opposed to the ferocious, Biblical literalist, and genocidal evangelical Christian Zionists who support Trump. If we realistically assume that 50% of Jewish Americans are anti-racist and reject the genocidal racism of Zionism and Israeli Apartheid, then Zionist Jewish Americans are 34-fold over-represented in the Biden Cabinet.
(b). African Americans are about 2-fold over-represented in the Biden Cabinet. African Americans total 46,936,733 or 14.2% of the total US population, but comprise 6 out of 25 or 24% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus African Americans are over-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a factor of 24%/14.2% = 1.7-fold.
(c). Hispanic and Latino Americans are equitably represented in the Biden Cabinet. Hispanic and Latino Americans total 65.3 million or 19.5% of the overall US population, but comprise 4 out of 25 or 16% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus Hispanic/Latino Americans are under-represented in the Biden Cabinet by an unexceptionally modest degree of 16%/19.5% = 0.8-fold i.e. their representation in the Biden Cabinet is a modest 0.8 times less than expected.
(d). Asian Americans are equitably represented in the Biden Cabinet. Asian Americans (mainly Chinese, Indian, and Filipino Americans but also notably including Korean, Vietnamese, Afghan, Arab and Japanese Americans) total 24 million or 7.2% of the US population, but comprise 2 out of 25 or 8% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus Asian Americans are over-represented in the Biden Cabinet by an unexceptionally modest factor of 8%/7.2% = 1.1-fold. Chinese, Indian, and Filipino Americans total 5 million, 4.3 million, and 4 million people, respectively, or 1.5%, 1.3% and 1.2% of the total US population.
(e). Indigenous Americans are equitably represented in the Biden Cabinet. Indigenous Americans total 9,666,058 or 2.9% of the total US population, but comprise 1 out of 25 or 4% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus Indigenes are over-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a modest factor of 4%/2.9% = 1.4-fold (the lowest figure possible short of having no Indigenous people in the Biden Cabinet).
(f). Non-Jewish and non-Latino White Americans are 2.5-fold under-represented in the Biden Cabinet. Thus from the 2020 US Census, 61.6%, or 204,277,273 people, were White alone, and 71.0%, or 235,411,507 people, were White alone or combined with another race. Non-Latino White Americans totalled roughly 191,697,647, or 57.8%. White Latino Americans totalled about 12,579,626, or 3.8% of the population. Non-Jewish and non-Latino White Americans total 191,697, 647 – 6,400,000 = 185,297,647 or 55.6% of the US population, but comprise only 6 out of 25 or 24% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus non-Jewish and non-Latino White Americans are substantially under-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a significant degree of 24%/55.6% = 0.4 fold i.e. their representation in the Biden Cabinet is 0.4 times less than their “fair share.” However the even more remarkable thing about these 6 non-Jewish and non-Latino White members of the Biden Cabinet is that they are all Catholics. Of the 17 non-Jewish members of the Biden Cabinet all but 5 (i.e. 12) are Catholics.
(g). Female Americans are slightly under-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a factor of 0.9. Thus females represent 50.5% of the American population, but comprise 11 out of 25 or 44% of the Biden Cabinet. Women are thus slightly under-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a factor of 44%/50.5% = 0.9.
(h). Catholic Americans are 3-fold over-represented in the Biden Cabinet. The US has the world’s largest Christian population. About 48.9% of Americans are Protestants, 23.0% are Catholics, and 1.8% are Mormons. In 2016, 74% of Americans identified as Christians while 18% claimed no religious affiliation. However, all (100%) of the 6 non-Jewish and non-Latino White members of the Biden Cabinet are Catholics. Of the 17 non-Jewish members of the Biden Cabinet, 12 (71%) are Catholics, i.e. while Catholics are 23.0% of the US population they are 71% of the non-Jewish members of the Biden Cabinet, and thus are disproportionately over-represented by a factor of 71%/23% = 3.1-fold.
(i). Protestant Americans are 2–fold under-represented in the Biden Cabinet. While Protestants are 48.9% of the US population, a maximum of only 6 out of 25 (24%) of the members of the Biden Cabinet are Protestants i.e. they are 48.9%/24% = 2.0-fold under-represented in the Biden Cabinet.
(j). Republicans, Pentecostal Christians (Evangelical Christians), and Racist Religious Right Republicans (R4s) are totally absent from the Biden Cabinet. Not surprisingly there are no Republicans in the Biden Cabinet, and despite its representational inequities, the Biden Cabinet is blessed by the absence of Biblical literalist and genocidally pro-Zionist Pentecostal Christians (Evangelical Christians), and of Racist Religious Right Republicans (R4s) in general. Biblical literalists are simply nuts.
(k). All of the members of the Biden Cabinet are fervently theist, nationalist, neoliberal, pro-market, pro-One Percenter, anti-socialist, pro-nuclear terrorism, pro-US hegemony, pro-militarism, pro-US interventionism, pro-Apartheid Israel (and hence pro-Apartheid) and pro-Zionist. To state the obvious, American politicians have to observe the sine qua non pillars of US politics of theism, capitalism, nationalism and support for Apartheid Israel (and hence for Apartheid).
America portrays itself as a “democracy” but this assertion is highly flawed because of differential representation and influence as illustrated here, neoliberal One Percenter domination, and entrenched lying by commission and omission by mass media journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes. A Zionist-subverted and obscenely neoliberal US has transmuted from a one-person-one-vote democracy to a kleptocracy, plutocracy, Murdochracy, lobbyocracy, corporatocracy, and dollarocracy in which Big Money purchases people, politicians, parties, policies, votes and hence more political power and more private profit. The support for Apartheid Israel and hence for Apartheid by the non-European members of the Biden Cabinet is particularly disgusting.
This Zionist perversion and subversion of America is deadly serious because 1.7 million Americans die preventably each year from “life-style choice” and “political choice” reasons, and since 9/11 about 33 million Americans have died thus in this ongoing American Holocaust. The long-term accrual cost of the War on Terror has been about $6 trillion. About 32 million Muslims have died from violence, 5 million, or from imposed deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9/11 false flag atrocity. Thus Zionist-subverted America has committed $6 trillion to killing over 30 million Muslims abroad instead of trying to save over 30 million American lives at home. For a very detailed and documented analysis see Gideon Polya, “Zionist-subverted America: Jewish Zionists Are One Third Of The Biden Cabinet,” Countercurrents, 27 January 2022. Wake up America!
Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades.
Nurse Nicole Sirotek testified before the House regarding the way the medical establishment is mistreating COVID patients, who aren’t dying from COVID but, instead, die from medical malpractice, including the insistence on vaccines and Remdesivir and the refusal to provide safe, affordable therapeutics.
At this current crazy moment, most of the “Western” world (Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia) is hell bent on achieving a “net zero” energy system. As I understand this concept, it means that, within two or three decades, all electricity production will be converted from the current mostly-fossil-fuel generation mix to almost entirely wind, solar and storage. On top of that, all or nearly all energy consumption that is not currently electricity (e.g., transportation, industry, heat, agriculture) must be converted to electricity, so that the energy for these things can also be supplied solely by the wind, sun, and batteries. Since electricity is currently only about a quarter of final energy consumption, that means that we are soon to have an all-electric energy generation and consumption system producing around four times the output of our current electricity system, all from wind and solar, backed up as necessary only by batteries or other storage.
A reasonable question is, has anybody thought to construct a small-to-moderate scale pilot project to demonstrate that this is feasible? Before embarking on “net zero” for a billion people, how about trying it out in a place with, say, 10,000, or 50,000, or 100,000 people. See if it can actually work, and how much it will cost. Then, if it works at reasonable cost, start expanding it.
As far as I can determine, that has never been done anywhere. However, there is something somewhat close. An island called El Hierro, which is one of the Canary Islands and is part of Spain, embarked more than a decade ago on constructing an electricity system consisting only of wind turbines and a pumped-storage water reservoir. El Hierro has a population of about 11,000. It is a very mountainous volcanic island, so it provided a fortuitous location for construction of a large pumped-storage hydro project, with an upper reservoir in an old volcanic crater right up a near-cliff from a lower reservoir just above sea level. The difference in elevation of the two reservoirs is about 660 meters, or more than 2000 feet. Here is a picture of the upper reservoir, looking down to the ocean, to give you an idea of just how favorable a location for pumped-storage hydro this is:
The El Hierro wind/storage system began operations in 2015. How has it done? I would say that it is at best a huge disappointment, really bordering on disaster. It has never come close to realizing the dream of 100% wind/storage electricity for El Hierro, instead averaging 50% or less when averaged over a full year (although it has had some substantial periods over 50%). Moreover, since only about one-quarter of El HIerro’s final energy consumption is electricity, the project has replaced barely 10% of El Hierro’s fossil fuel consumption.
Here is the website of the company that runs the wind/hydro system, Gorona del Viento. Get ready for some excited happy talk:
A wind farm produces energy which is directed into the Island’s electricity grid to satisfy the population’s demand for electricity. The surplus energy that is not consumed directly by the Island’s inhabitants is used to pump water between two reservoirs set at different altitudes. During times of wind shortage, the water stored in the Upper Reservoir is discharged into the Lower Reservoir, where the Wind-Pumped Hydro Power Station is, to generate electricity from its turbines. . . . The diesel-engine-powered Power Station only comes into operation in exceptional circumstances when there is neither sufficient wind or water to produce the energy to meet demand.
Over at the page for production statistics, it’s still more excitement about tons of carbon emissions avoided (15,484 in 2020!) and hours of 100% renewable generation (1293 in 2020!). I think that they’re hoping you don’t know that there are 8784 hours in a 366 day year like 2020.
But how about some real information on how much of the island’s electricity, and of its final energy consumption, this system is able to generate? Follow links on that page for production statistics, and you will find that the system produced some 56% of the electricity for El Hierro in 2018, 54% in 2019, and 42% for 2020. No figures are yet provided for 2021. At least for the last three years of reported data, things seem to be going quite rapidly in the wrong direction. I suspect that that’s not what you had in mind when you read that the diesel generators only come into operation in “exceptional circumstances” when wind generation is low. And with electricity constituting only about 25% of El Hierro’s final energy consumption, the reported generation statistics would mean that the percent of final energy consumption from the wind/storage facility ran about 14% in 2018, 13.5% in 2019, and barely 10% in 2020.
So why don’t they just build the system a little bigger? After all, if this system can provide around 50% +/- of El Hierro’s electricity, can’t you just double it in size to get to 100%? The answer is, absolutely not. The 50% can be achieved only with those diesel generators always present to provide full backup when needed. Without that, you need massively more storage to get you through what could be weeks of wind drought, let alone through wind seasonality that means that you likely need 30 days’ or more full storage. Get out your spreadsheet to figure out how much.
Roger Andrews did the calculation for El Hierro in a January 2018 post on the Energy Matters website. His conclusion: El Hierro would need a pumped-storage reservoir some 40 times the size of the one it had built in order to get rid of the diesel backup. Andrews provides plenty of information as to the basis of his calculations and his assumptions, so feel free to take another crack at his calculations with better assumptions. But unfortunately, his main assumption is that the pattern of wind intermittency for any given year will be just as sporadic as it was for 2017.
Then take a look at the picture and see if you can figure out where or how El Hierro is going to build that 40 times bigger reservoir. Time to look into a few billions of dollars worth of lithium ion batteries — for 11,000 people.
And of course, for those of us here in the rest of the world, we don’t have massive volcanic craters sitting 2000 feet right up a cliff from the sea. For us, it’s batteries or nothing. Or maybe just stick with the fossil fuels for now.
So the closest thing we have to a “demonstration project” of the fully wind/storage electricity has come up woefully short, and really has only proved that the whole concept will necessarily fail on the necessity of far more storage than is remotely practical or affordable. The idea that our political betters plow forward toward “net zero” without any demonstration of feasibility I find completely incomprehensible.
As explained in priorposts, in a lawsuit seeking all of the documents the FDA relied upon to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, a federal judge shot down the FDA’s requested rate of 500 pages per month and instead ordered the FDA to produce at the rate of 55,000 pages per month starting on March 1.
Since the government has trillions of dollars of our money, it is putting it to good use by fighting to assure that the public has the least amount of transparency possible. To that end, it has now asked the Court to make the public wait until May for it to start producing 55,000 pages per month and, even then, claims it may not be able to meet this rate.
The FDA’s excuse? As explained in the brief opposing the FDA’s request, the FDA’s defense effectively amounts to claiming that the 11 document reviewers it has already assigned and the 17 additional reviewers being onboarded are only capable of reading at the speed of preschoolers.
Meanwhile…
As the FDA tries to obtain months of delay, guess who just showed up in the lawsuit? Yep, Pfizer. And it is represented by a global chair and team from a law firm with thousands of lawyers. Pfizer’s legal bill will likely be multiple times what it would cost the FDA to simply hire a private document review company to review, redact, and produce the documents at issue. Within weeks, if not days.
Pfizer is coming in as a third party. But Pfizer assures the Court it is here to help expedite production of the documents. Sure it is! Where was Pfizer before the Court ordered the 55,000 pages per month? Right, doing what it normally does: letting the government work on its behalf – like the way the government mandates, promotes, and defends Pfizer’s product.
But the government did not please Pfizer this time and so here it comes, likely looking for a second bite at the apple. Of course the FDA consented to Pfizer appearing. You can read the response my firm filed to Pfizer’s motion , as well as all of the other relevant recent filings in the link provided below.
Let me end by noting that all of this insanity is simply in response to an attempt to obtain some basic transparency. This should again bring into sharp focus why the government should never coerce or mandate anyone to get an unwanted medical product or procedure. Just look at this circus – the government mandates Pfizer’s product, gives it immunity for any safety or efficacy issues, promotes its product using taxpayer money, gives Pfizer over $17 billion and then uses taxpayers’ money to fight to avoid providing even the most basic level of transparency to the public.
The introduction from the brief opposing the FDA’s request is below and you can find copies of all the relevant court filings (FDA Motion to Modify Scheduling Order, January 18, 2022 / Plaintiff Opposition to Motion to Modify, January 24, 2022 / Pfizer Motion to Intervene, January 21, 2022 / FDA Response to Pfizer Motion, January 25, 2022 / Plaintiff Response to Pfizer Motion, January 25, 2022) here:
It is understandable that the FDA does not want independent scientists to review the documents it relied upon to license Pfizer’s vaccine given that it is not as effective as the FDA originally claimed, does not prevent transmission, does not prevent against certain emerging variants, can cause serious heart inflammation in younger individuals, and has numerous other undisputed safety issues.[1] However, the FDA’s potential embarrassment over its decision to license this product must take a back seat to the transparency demanded by FOIA and the urgent need and interests of the American people to review that licensure data. The Court already recognized this unprecedented urgent need in its January 6th order directing the FDA to produce 55,000 pages per month.
The FDA now insists it must delay its first 55,000-page production until May 1, 2022 – four months after the Court entered its order. However, the FDA’s own papers seeking this delay make plain it can produce at a rate of 55,000 pages per month in February and March. The FDA affirms it has already “allocated the equivalent of nearly 11 full-time staff to this project” and that “a review speed of 50 documents per hour was within the normal range for document review in a complex matter” in private practice; and here the 50 document per hour rate would be faster since there is only a need to review for personally identifying information (“PII”) for most pages. Hence, if the FDA’s 11 full-time reviewers work only 7.5 hours per day and review 50 pages (not documents) per hour, the FDA could review over 88,000 pages per month in February and March. That is more than sufficient to produce the 55,000 pages per month currently ordered for these two months.
Instead of complying with this Court’s reasoned order, the FDA claims these 11 reviewers can only review a total of 10,000 pages per month. What the FDA does not say, and what basic math shows, is that a rate of 10,000 pages a month for 11 full-time reviewers amounts to only 5 pages per hour! This rate is made even more absurd because most of the pages the FDA will be reviewing during this period are repetitive data files that only require second level review to redact minimal amounts of PII that Pfizer may have left in the documents. FDA’s reality defying claim and contemptuous approach to its production obligations should not be countenanced. (Infra § I.)
It is also apparent that the instant demand is just the start of a campaign to delay the production ordered by the Court. In this first salvo, the FDA is not really asking the Court. It is instead expressly telling the Court it does not intend to produce more than 10,000 pages per month for February and March, and despite claiming it is making “unprecedented” efforts, the FDA repeatedly tells the Court: “It is not possible to guarantee that FDA will be able to fully comply” with the 55,000-page production rate thereafter. (Dkt. No. 38 at APPX004, APPX008.) Americans must follow the law and the FDA, a multi-billion-dollar agency, should similarly be given no safe harbor from complying with the orders of this Court. (Infra § II.)
The FDA should also be held to what it attests. The FDA, with over 18,000 employees and an over $3 billion discretionary budget, repeatedly assures the Court that it is taking steps to “marshal every possible resource available to it,” “acting with maximal urgency to assemble every possible resource available to it” and “putting every available resource at its disposal into its efforts to achieve compliance.” (Dkt. No. 37 at 10, 3, 10.) The FDA also attests that over the coming weeks, it will have 28.5 full-time people reviewing the documents. Working 7.5 hours per day for 20 business days per month, 28.5 people reviewing 50 pages per hour can review a total of approximately 213,750 pages per month. Putting aside that most of this production can be reviewed far faster than the rate of 50 pages per hour, Plaintiff asks that the FDA be held to its representations and be directed to produce at the rate of 180,000 pages per month starting in April. (Infra § III.)
The Court is, other than Congress, the only check on the FDA. In a free country, transparency is paramount, and the FDA has chosen to thwart transparency and the requirements of FOIA by anemically understaffing the office it maintains to respond to FOIA requests. It is akin to the boy that kills his parents and asks for sympathy for being an orphan. Decrying that this Court is now making it comply with the law – by actually producing documents in a timely manner – is ridiculous. It is also incredible for the FDA to claim that compliance here would harm its health policy objectives. Even if the FDA really does need to spend $4 to $5 million which, as shown below, is an absurd overestimate, that is an inconsequential amount of its overall $3.41 billion discretionary budget. Moreover, the issues with the Pfizer vaccine – including waning immunity, variants evading immunity, the failure to prevent transmission, myocarditis, and pericarditis – show that the FDA’s priority should be to address this product before rushing off to engage in other activities. (Infra § IV.)
For these reasons, as explained below, the Court should refuse to reduce the rate of production in February and March and should increase the rate of production for April and thereafter to 180,000 pages per month consistent with the FDA employing 28.5 full-time reviewers in the coming weeks to conduct the review and the fact that most of the pages need only be reviewed for PII.
[1] Reflecting the issues with this product, the FDA failed to send a representative to a federal court hearing in this matter on December 14th because of the “FDA’s protocols” regarding COVID-19. Meaning, despite the FDA’s claim the vaccine is “effective,” the FDA is apparently still scared to send a representative to the hearing. Its actions speak volumes and cast serious doubt on its words.
ALLEGED evidence of negligence in handling the Covid vaccination rollout by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) submitted to the Metropolitan Police has been dismissed by the BBC as a ‘conspiracy-laden criminal complaint’.
The BBC further claim that the four-hour oral testimony given to officers at Hammersmith and Fulham Police Station by three legal and one medical professional alleged ‘genocide’ and ‘depopulation’.
‘This is not true,’ said Philip Hyland, the lawyer whose testimony police heard. ‘I was quite careful not to say genocide and depopulation. I said negligence, misfeasance, corporate manslaughter and misconduct in a public office, but not genocide or depopulation.’
On January 7, the BBC published an article headlined ‘Anti-vax protests: “Sovereign citizens” fight UK Covid vaccine rollout’. It said: ‘Conspiracy-laden criminal complaints have recently been filed with the police in the UK and also the International Criminal Court, alleging ‘genocide’ and ‘depopulation’ via vaccinations.’
On January 18, Mr Hyland wrote to Alistair Coleman, one of two journalists – Shayan Sardarizadeh was the second – who co-authored the piece, complaining that they had failed to check details of the complaint with the Met Police or with him. ‘This breaches standard journalistic practice,’ he said via email. The BBC’s own editorial guidelines are clear that he should have been given his ‘right to reply’.
The complaint to the ICC was nothing to do with Mr Hyland and was submitted by Hannah Rose Law. It does mention genocide and depopulation, but Mr Hyland’s concern is with the MHRA. He said: ‘They have failed to follow up vaccine concerns. They have also failed to withdraw bad batches [known in the trade as “hot lots”] of vaccines when there are known issues with several. But I did not accuse them of murder, conspiracy to murder, genocide, gross negligence manslaughter, or crimes against humanity as stated in a ‘Public Announcement’ shared on social media on January 7.’
It was December 20, 2021, when he presented his evidence, with solicitor Lois Bayliss, of Broad Yorkshire Law, Dr Sam White, a former partner from a Hampshire GPs’ practice, and former police officer Mark Sexton. They were given a crime number by the Met, 6029679/21, to show that the police are taking it seriously and intend to investigate.
Despite this, Reuters fact checkers say the Met have not opened a criminal investigation. They give the impression that the police are not looking at evidence, which is misleading. The police are reviewing all testimonies and documents and will assess the strength of evidence for any potential case. It is then up to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to decide whether that evidence is strong enough to make arrests and take the case to trial.
Mr Hyland said that his oral evidence was received by ‘a young, intelligent officer, PC Irvine. I gave a four-hour oral statement. PC Irvine asked intelligent questions and he was already aware of much that we were talking about. None of it was a surprise; none of it was new. He wasn’t shocked.
‘He was young, bright and a good listener. He grasped what we told him. I couldn’t fault him.’
He then provided a secure portal for the team to upload evidence, and case developments are being overseen by Detective Sergeant Mallett.
Ms Bayliss has been gathering witness statements from those who allege they are vaccine-injured, and from potential expert witnesses in the US and the UK. She said: ‘We have subsequently uploaded 103 statements regarding vaccine associated deaths and injury, and 13 from identifiable whistleblowers, medical experts and scientists.’
To build his case, Mr Hyland investigated our medicines regulatory authority, specifically the alleged negligence of June Raine, chief executive of the MHRA. He said: ‘The charge against the MHRA is that they negligently conducted themselves and have caused British citizens real harm and suffering.
‘They have failed to act on any of the Yellow Card reports they have received. There are currently 2,000 deaths reported and 500,000 adverse events. They should have stopped the programme before the deaths reached 100 and launched a thorough investigation.’
The Yellow Card data show that 1 in 120 people have reported an event they considered serious enough to spend 40 minutes filling out a Yellow Card form. ‘This may be just the tip of the iceberg,’ said Ms Bayliss, ‘as the MHRA admit they receive information from around 10 per cent of those damaged.’
The figure is low because some doctors find they cannot access the Yellow Card scheme from their hospital computers, while others do not know about it. Members of the public are generally not informed about Yellow Card and most who complain to their GP that they think they have suffered a serious adverse event are told that the vaccine is an unlikely cause and their symptoms are put down to ‘coincidence’, as the Royal College of General Practitioners has not issued them with any advice.
If the coincidence theory held water, you would expect an even spread of reports across the three vaccinations used in Britain. We have Pfizer-BioNTech’s experimental mRNA jab introduced in December 2020, and Oxford/AstraZeneca’s more traditional one which has been available since January 2021. Plus the new kid on the block, Moderna’s mRNA jab introduced in April 2021.
Although we began using it four months after Pfizer and three months after AstraZeneca, Moderna is clocking up 50 per cent more Yellow Cards than AZ, who have 60 per cent more reported injuries than Pfizer.
Oxford/AstraZeneca has been received by 24.9million people and the Yellow Card scheme shows that 1 in 103 have been impacted, while Pfizer-BioNTech’s has been received by 25.3million people and Yellow Card shows that 1 in 162 people have been impacted.
Moderna has been given to 1.6million people and its Yellow Card reporting rate shows that 1 in 50 people have been impacted. On average, 1 in 120 people have suffered an adverse reaction.
‘In our view, we have enough evidence to show gross negligence,’ said Mr Hyland. ‘It is clear that the MHRA have failed to follow up concerns about vaccine injury and they failed to withdraw harmful batches when they knew about the issues.
‘They also exaggerated the risk of Covid by failing to distinguish the difference between dying with Covid, which is when someone has other illnesses, or of Covid, which is when the patient has no other illnesses.’
Covid-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has a low fatality rate: less than one per cent of those who contract it. The Office of National Statistics has revealed under a Freedom of Information request that only 13,597 deaths in England and Wales out of 140,000 attributed to Covid were caused by Covid alone. The bulk of deaths were of people with comorbidities.
‘New evidence is coming in all the time,’ said Mr Hyland, ‘including from those who have suffered psychological harm caused by the mandates.
‘The alleged criminality that appears to have gone on is like nothing we have ever seen before and has resulted in people being injured, some permanently, and dying. There were safe treatments which were ignored by the MHRA but there must have been heavy political pressure to authorise the vaccine as the Prime Minister had pre-ordered millions of doses.
‘History will show this to be one of the world’s biggest-ever scandals.’
We contacted the two BBC journalists for comment but they did not respond.
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The New York Times assigned four of their top national political reporters to write a long story about Biden’s First Pandemic Year. The article is an unwitting case study in everything that is wrong with the Biden administration, the public health establishment, and the corporate media.
“Highly respected infectious disease expert(TM)” Rochelle Walensky knows almost nothing about viruses nor infectious disease
From the article:
Dr. Rochelle Walensky was stunned. Working from her home outside Boston on a Friday night in late July, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had just learned from members of her staff that vaccinated Americans were spreading the coronavirus.
Vaccines had been the core of President Biden’s pandemic strategy from the moment he took office. But as Dr. Walensky was briefed about a cluster of breakthrough cases in Provincetown, Mass., the reality sank in. The Delta variant, which had ravaged other parts of the world, was taking hold in the United States. And being vaccinated would not, it turned out, prevent people from becoming infected with the variant or transmitting it.
It was a “heart sink” moment, Dr. Walensky recalled in a recent interview.
I am not a medical doctor nor scientist. But I’ve been warning since April 2020 that SARS-CoV-2 was not a good candidate for a vaccine because it mutates too fast. This was known to everyone who paid even minimal attention to the data. There has never been a successful vaccine for the common cold nor HIV — and SARS-CoV-2 was engineered to have pieces of both of those viruses. And the flu vaccine, depending on the year, is often less than 50% effective (some years the effectiveness drops into the teens or even single digits). All of these vaccines fail for the same reason that coronavirus vaccines are failing — the virus mutates too fast.
Did Rochelle Walensky honestly not know the rate at which this virus was mutating?
It sounds like they never contemplated the possibility that the vaccines might fail.
That also likely means that Walensky has no idea what antibody dependent enhancement is, why it’s a problem, nor does she know how to spot antibody dependent enhancement if it’s happening in the population.
Bougiecrats just execute the plan. They do not think. They just tick boxes. That is not what the U.S. needs in the midst of this crisis.
Fauci is a malevolent force inside the government and he is wrong about everything
We already knew this but the article drives it home:
Fauci pushed for a national vaccine passport system.
Fauci pushed for vaccine mandates for domestic air travel.
Fauci pushed for the vaccine mandates that eventually became the OSHA, CMS, and federal worker vaccine requirements. Thankfully the OSHA vaccine mandate was recently struck down by the Supreme Court and the federal worker mandate was stayed last Friday by a federal judge in Texas.
One reason that the Biden administration was not prepared for the Delta and Omicron variants was because Fauci assured them that “the vaccine push would be able to, for the most part, nullify a Delta surge.”
Fauci is literally the Pandemic’s Wrongest Man Elf.
Six people dictate coronavirus policy for 330,000,000 Americans. Five of the six are completely rotten
Biden’s Pandemic team consists of six people:
Jeff Zients, an economist and former management consultant with no scientific nor medical background;
Xavier Becerra, a lawyer with no scientific nor medical background;
Janet Woodcock, the woman who gave us the opioid epidemic that kills more Americans every year than the Vietnam War;
David Kessler, who is a decent guy (not sure how they let him on the team);
Tony Fauci, who funded the creation of the virus that killed more Americans than all foreign wars combined; and
Rochelle Walenksy, who looks like she’s always on the verge of a nervous breakdown and is clearly unfit for purpose.
This is the point that I keep coming back to again and again:
Would you rather have six captured bureaucrats imposing their diktats on 330,000,000 people? Or would you rather have the one-million professionally-active doctors and 210,000,000 adults in this country using logic and reason to solve this problem using their best judgement?
It is profoundly unAmerican to give six corrupt unelected bureaucrats this much power. And it is absolutely the wrong way to make scientific decisions. No wonder the Biden administration gets everything wrong when it comes to coronavirus.
Ron DeSantis lives rent free inside Biden’s head and he is the reason we do not have a national vaccine passport system
The article states that the Biden administration, in March of 2021, began planning for a national vaccine passport system. We all saw the trial balloons that they floated in the press. But then they scuttled the plan when they saw that Governor DeSantis opposed it and was using it to build opposition to the administration. The Biden administration fears losing to DeSantis in the 2024 election and so they have scaled back their totalitarianism somewhat in hopes of not giving him more ammunition.
The reporters at the NY Times are dumb fascist clowns that have their thumb on the scale for Pharma
The NY Times is one of the best jobs in journalism. And the four senior reporters assigned to this article exemplify the total intellectual and moral collapse of the bourgeoisie.
The first five paragraphs of the article are all about how the vaccine does not stop the Omicron variant. The very next sentence reads,
Mr. Biden and his team have gotten much right, including getting at least one dose of a vaccine into nearly 85 percent of Americans 12 and older…
Did they not read the five paragraphs before about how the vaccine does not work? How is an 85% vaccination rate a success when the vaccine does not actually stop the virus? In fact, the best evidence shows that these vaccines have negative efficacy, something that these crack “reporters” do not seem to realize.
Throughout the article, the reporters chide Biden for not pushing harder for vaccine and mask mandates and more testing. They claim “a chorus of voices inside and outside the government” pushing for such measures — but strangely they never cite any sources by name who are part of this “chorus”. Apparently that’s the script and they are sticking to it regardless of whether they have to manufacture such claims.
Furthermore these stenographers for the cartel never once ask about vaccine effectiveness/risks, the fact that most masks make no difference, and the 90% false-positive rate from tests that their own newspaper reported on in August 2020. I guess they don’t trust the NY Times either.
They are also addicted to the “overwhelmed hospitals” narrative — they just sprinkle it in for a dash of flavor whenever their rhetoric starts to sag. They never question the firing of doctors and nurses with natural immunity and critical thinking skills. Nor do they examine the possibility that vaccine failure and vaccine injury might contribute to whatever patient surges might exist.
They live inside the Pharma-directed metaverse and they have no plans to ever leave or question any of its assumptions.
Conclusion
The reason why RFK Jr., Del Bigtree, Alex Berenson, and Joe Rogan have bigger audiences than the NY Times is because they tell the truth.
The reason why the Biden administration is a complete and total failure is because it is filled with bougiecrats who do not think, they just execute the plan and wait around for their participation trophy.
None of the bourgeois institutions that caused this problem (from the corporate media to the government to the public health establishment) are capable of correcting course based on new data. They are guided by ideology, not facts. The only solution is revolution. Let’s make it happen.
A study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has found that the risk of myocarditis (heart inflammation) after receiving an mRNA Covid vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna) was dramatically increased across many age groups and was highest after the second vaccination dose in young men.
The study found myocarditis reports were highest after the second vaccination dose in males aged 12 to 15 years at 70.7 per million Pfizer doses, compared to an expected rate of 0.53 per million, amounting to a 133-fold increase; in males aged 16 to 17 years at 105.9 per million Pfizer doses, compared to an expected rate of 1.34 per million, amounting to a 79-fold increase; and in young men aged 18 to 24 years at 52.4 per million Pfizer doses and 56.3 per million Moderna doses, compared to an expected rate of 1.76 per million, amounting to a 30-fold and 32-fold increase respectively. The full results are shown in the table below and a selection are depicted in the chart above.
The study comprised a review of reports of myocarditis to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) that occurred after mRNA Covid vaccination between December 2020 and August 2021 in people over 12 years old. The researchers adjudicated and summarised the reports and compared the rates to expected rates of myocarditis using 2017-2019 data. For those under 30 they conducted medical record reviews and clinician interviews to investigate clinical presentation, test results, treatment, and early outcomes.
They found that out of 192,405,448 individuals receiving a total of 354,100,845 mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine doses during the study period, there were 1,991 reports of myocarditis to VAERS, of which 1,626 met their case definition of myocarditis. Among the 1,626 cases, the median age was 21 years and the median time to symptom onset was two days. Males comprised 82% of the myocarditis cases for whom sex was reported, and where timing was reported, 82% occurred after the second vaccination dose.
The charts showing myocarditis cases by age and symptom onset are shown below.
Among persons younger than 30 years of age, there were no confirmed cases of myocarditis in those who died after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination without another identifiable cause and there was one probable case of myocarditis [in those who died] but there was insufficient information available for a thorough investigation. At the time of data review, there were two reports of death in persons younger than 30 years of age with potential myocarditis that remain under investigation and are not included in the case counts.
The authors note that a difference between vaccine-related myocarditis and virus-related myocarditis was that the former comes on more quickly; they also note that it appears to be milder:
The onset of myocarditis symptoms after exposure to a potential immunological trigger was shorter for COVID-19 vaccine-associated cases of myocarditis than is typical for myocarditis cases diagnosed after a viral illness. Cases of myocarditis reported after COVID-19 vaccination were typically diagnosed within days of vaccination, whereas cases of typical viral myocarditis can often have indolent courses with symptoms sometimes present for weeks to months after a trigger if the cause is ever identified.
The major presenting symptoms appeared to resolve faster in cases of myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination than in typical viral cases of myocarditis. Even though almost all individuals with cases of myocarditis were hospitalised and clinically monitored, they typically experienced symptomatic recovery after receiving only pain management. In contrast, typical viral cases of myocarditis can have a more variable clinical course. For example, up to 6% of typical viral myocarditis cases in adolescents require a heart transplant or result in mortality.
To what extent are these differences a reporting artefact, where adverse event reports are only made when a reaction occurs within days of a vaccination, but otherwise the link is unnoticed or dismissed?
The authors note that underreporting is likely, “given the high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination”, and therefore “the actual rates of myocarditis per million doses of vaccine are likely higher than estimated”.
Another recent study found post-vaccination myocarditis adverse events were underestimated by the VAERS definition.
A third recent study, from Oxford University, found that myocarditis risk following Covid vaccination was up to 14 times higher than that following COVID-19 infection. It has been suggested that that study underestimated the risk following vaccination. It should also be noted that since vaccination provides little protection against infection the idea that the risk following vaccination is instead of and not as well as the risk following infection is not sound.
Myocarditis is not the only serious side-effect of these vaccines, and the vaccines do not protect well against infection or transmission. This means it is increasingly clear that the current Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines do not have the efficacy and safety profile that would make giving them to children and young people worthwhile or ethical.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier this month recommended women who are pregnant, recently pregnant, who are trying to become pregnant now or who might become pregnant in the future get the COVID-19 vaccine.
The CDC made the recommendation after concluding, in a Jan. 7 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, that data support the safety of COVID vaccination during pregnancy.
By comparing COVID vaccination during pregnancy to those unvaccinated during pregnancy, the agency determined COVID vaccines were not associated with preterm birth or with delivering a child who was born smaller or less developed than expected, also known as small-for-gestational-age (SGA).
In this article, we examine flaws in the CDC study that led to the agency’s wrongful conclusion regarding COVID vaccines for pregnant women.
First, some background.
Including pregnant women in clinical trials
Pregnancy is a precarious time not just for the expectant mother but most importantly the developing fetus. Expectant mothers are advised not to drink alcohol or caffeinated beverages and not to eat raw foods such as sushi and deli meats.
A lot of medications are contraindicated during pregnancy including simple pain meds like non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (Ibuprofen), antidiarrheals, decongestants, antihistamines, nasal sprays and expectorants.
Women are advised not to take these medications during pregnancy because they pose potential risks to the developing fetus.
For decades, expectant mothers have been considered a vulnerable group to be shielded from potential harms of research for the sake of their fetuses’ health.
In 1977, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued guidelines excluding pregnant women and women “with childbearing potential” from phase I and phase II clinical trials, where new drugs are tested for safety and efficacy.
This view stemmed, in part, from tragedies caused by two now-infamous drugs that were widely prescribed to pregnant women in the mid-20th century: thalidomide, which caused thousands of children around the world to be born with flipper-like limbs and other birth defects, and diethylstilbestrol, which was linked to higher rates of cancer in both mothers and the daughters born to them.
Federal regulations currently require any study involving pregnant women to meet 10 criteria, including that, “where scientifically appropriate,” data first be collected on pregnant animals and non-pregnant human subjects to assess risk, and that any risk to mother or fetus be “the least possible for achieving the objectives of the research.”
Reproduction toxicity studies in animal models hinted at dangers early on
While the companies developing the COVID-19 vaccines have done preliminary studies in animals, their studies were limited to rodents. The vaccine makers did not conduct studies on non-human primates, recognized as the closest animal models to humans regarding genetics, physiology and behavior.
Nevertheless, Moderna’s own Assessment Report to the European Medicines Agency Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use on March 11, 2021, included a study for reproductive and developmental toxicology on female rats during gestation.
The report noted (page 50: Reproduction Toxicity) an increase in the number of fetuses with common skeletal variations of one or more rib nodules and one or more wavy ribs. Additionally, the number of pups born to vaccinated rats was lower than the number in the unvaccinated rats.
Most importantly, the authors explicitly stated, “In this study, no vaccine dose was administered during the early organogenesis [the period during embryonic development of an animal when the main body organs are formed], to address the direct embryotoxic effect of the components of the vaccine formulation.”
One month earlier, Pfizer reported in its Feb. 19, 2021, Assessment Report to the same committee that pregnant rats demonstrated a greater-than-2x increase in pre-implantation loss in exposed animals compared to controls.
The authors of the Pfizer report further stated (Page 50: Reproduction Toxicity) that “a very low incidence of gastroschisis, mouth/jaw malformations, right-sided aortic arch, and cervical vertebrae abnormalities” occurred in litters of exposed rats, and that these findings were within historical control data.
This finding brings up an important question: Why compare the incidence of these major congenital abnormalities with “historical” controls and not with the controls themselves?
As late as April 2021, the CDC still maintained there was limited data surrounding the safety of COVID vaccines for women who were pregnant or breastfeeding. The agency advised women who were pregnant or breastfeeding to consult with their physician before getting vaccinated.
But were obstetricians made aware of the potential safety signals appearing in animal models?
And how were physicians able to decide whether or not a COVID vaccine was appropriate for their pregnant patients if the CDC wasn’t offering any guidance at that time?
CDC’s latest study: a closer look at the details
Using data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink — a CDC vaccine safety monitoring system the public cannot access — the CDC study identified 46,079 pregnant women with live births and gestational age.
Of those, 10,064 (21.8%) received ≥1 COVID vaccine doses during pregnancy from Dec. 15, 2020, to July 22, 2021.
Nearly all (9,892, or 98.3%) of the pregnant women included in the study were vaccinated during the second or third trimester.
The authors found that among unvaccinated women, the rate of premature births was 7% compared to 4.9% in those who had received either one or both vaccine doses.
The rate of small-for-gestational-age in both vaccinated and unvaccinated mothers was equal (8.2%).
The authors thus conclude that “… receipt of COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy was not associated with increased risk for preterm birth or SGA at birth.”
5 flaws in the CDC analysis
On closer examination, we identified the following five deficits in the CDC study:
Cohorts were not well matched. There were greater than three times more African American women in the unvaccinated group than in the vaccinated group. The CDC acknowledges the African American race is a risk factor for preterm birth and may be as high as 50% greater than in white women.
There were also greater than 50% more mothers in the unvaccinated group classified as having inadequate prenatal care. Obesity, also a risk for preterm birth, was also overrepresented in the unvaccinated group (29% vs 23.9%) compared to the vaccinated.
No adjustment for mothers with a history of preterm birth of SGA. The authors did not address this potential confounder.
COVID infection, another potentially important confounder, was present in the unvaccinated group at a 25% greater incidence than in the vaccinated cohort (3.5% vs 2.8%). There was no mention of when in the pregnancy the infection was detected. Viral infections early in pregnancy are particularly deleterious to the developing fetus. This should have been an important risk factor to quantify independently, especially when establishing a risk-versus-benefit ratio of vaccination.
The CDC data indicate a 7.7% risk of preterm birth in mothers having received one of two vaccines. This represents a 10% greater risk than in unvaccinated pregnancies. This increased risk is not mentioned in the discussion. Moreover, the adjusted Hazard Ratio (aHR) in this population is given as 0.78, indicating a 22% risk reduction in preterm birth in vaccinated mothers, seemingly conflicting with the raw data. (A request for clarification from the corresponding author was not answered).
The most glaring deficit in the CDC analysis is the scarcity of vaccinated mothers who received a vaccine in the first trimester in this study. The risk of untoward outcomes (birth defects, miscarriages) in pregnancy is greatest during the first third of pregnancy, a time when crucial embryonic structures are developing. This is the period of time where maternal health is particularly important, and exposure to toxins, infections and certain medicines must be minimized or eliminated entirely if possible.
Only 172 of more than 10,000 (1.7%) vaccinated mothers in the study received a vaccine in the first trimester. The incidence of preterm birth and SGA were not mentioned in this small cohort because of limited numbers.
Nonetheless, the authors arrive at the stunning conclusion: “CDC recommends COVID-19 vaccination for women who are pregnant, recently pregnant (including those who are lactating), who are trying to become pregnant now, or who might become pregnant in the future (4) to reduce the risk for severe COVID-19–associated outcomes.”
CDC not required to provide access to its data or subject its analysis to peer review
The Vaccine Safety Datalink uses data reported from nine large healthcare organizations, serving only 3% of the U.S. population. The system collects electronic health data from each participating site.
This database is accessible only to researchers outside the CDC and only by request. Requests may be accommodated after a research proposal is submitted and approved by the Research Data Center of the National Center for Health Statistics.
CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports can, as in the case of the agency’s analysis of COVID vaccine safety in pregnant women, be based on data that is not necessarily publicly available.
The agency’s analyses are not subject to peer review. Nevertheless, the reports are often widely cited as the official scientific position.
Conclusions
The CDC’s determination that COVID vaccination is safe in pregnant women is unfounded.
Cohorts were poorly matched. There was an inexcusably low representation of women who were vaccinated early in their pregnancy in their analysis. This is a period where any exposure to medical interventions will have a greater potential for risk to the fetus.
Broadly recommending vaccination for all pregnant women including those who are trying to become pregnant is particularly unwarranted.
This report places the CDC’s purported commitment to its mission of disease control and prevention on full display. The agency’s conclusions arrive more than a full year after the CDC authorized COVID vaccinations and are based on retrospective data alone.
In other words, the CDC is willing (and apparently allowed) to make safety determinations only after the experimental vaccines have been widely and indiscriminately deployed.
This is a shocking departure from the higher standards of prudence that are demanded during pregnancy, a time where two lives are potentially at risk and poor outcomes can lead to a lifetime of potential consequences.
It should be noted that several of the authors of this study reported potential conflicts of interest.
One author reported institutional research funding from Pfizer, and another from Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. A third author has a career grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Madhava Setty, M.D. is senior science editor for The Defender.
Jennifer Smith, Ph.D. holds a doctoral degree in mIcrobiology and molecular cell sciences.
On February 13, 1960, France carried out its first nuclear test in Algeria’s southern Reggane region. According to official statistics, 17 nuclear tests were carried out in total over the next 6 years. The area remains affected, and local scientists say that radioactive contamination has caused genetic mutations and irreversibly changed the region.
There are no official statistics on the number of victims. The only figures can be found in the records kept by the French representative of the local church, which lists 42,000 victims of nuclear tests. Three years ago, the French Ministry of Defense issued a statement, putting the number at 27,000 people. The victims include French soldiers as well as local Algerians who lived in the surrounding areas. … continue
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