This week, CDC director Rochelle Walensky provided witness testimony to the House Committee on Appropriations responsible for overseeing the funding of various federal programs related to labour, health, education, and other related agencies.
But serious questions have been raised about the veracity of Walensky’s testimony.
Congressman Andrew Clyde (R-Ga) asked Walensky if her March 2021 public statement on MSNBC, in which she unequivocally said that “vaccinated people do not carry the virus, they do not get sick” was accurate.
“At the time it was [accurate]” Walensky replied confidently.
She then proceeded to explain, “We’ve had an evolution of the science and an evolution of the virus” and that “all the data at the time suggested that vaccinated people, even if they got sick, could not transmit the virus.”
However, there was no such evidence at the time and it prompted criticism from scientists who said there weren’t enough data to claim that vaccinated people were completely protected or that they could not transmit the virus to others.
One of those critics was Jay Bhattacharya, professor of health policy at Stanford University School of Medicine.
“Back then, Walensky didn’t know if it was true. It was just an irresponsible use of a bully pulpit as a CDC director to say something that she did not know for certain to be true at the time,” said Bhattacharya.
“Unfortunately, people used that information to discriminate against unvaccinated individuals and would certainly have been used as fuel for very destructive policies like vaccine mandates,” he added.
Notably, only days after Walensky made that statement to MSNBC, a spokesperson from her own agency had to walk back the comments saying, “Dr Walensky spoke broadly in this interview” adding that it was possible for fully vaccinated people to get COVID-19.
Walensky missed the memo
Walensky should have known that when mRNA vaccines were first authorised in 2020, the FDA listed critical ‘gaps’ in the knowledge base. One of them was the vaccine’s unknown effectiveness against viral transmission.
Also, in Pfizer’s and Moderna’s original pivotal trials, there were 8 and 11 people respectively, who developed symptomatic COVID-19 in the vaccine group, proving the vaccines never had absolute effectiveness, like Walensky had claimed.
Several months later, the FDA’s evaluation stayed the same. In a clinical review, the FDA wrote, “remaining uncertainties regarding the clinical benefits of BNT162b2 in individuals 16 years and older, include its level of protection against asymptomatic infection and transmission of SARS-CoV-2, including for the delta variant.”
Even today, the FDA remains clear that efficacy against transmission is unproven. The FDA’s website states, “While it is hoped this will be the case, the scientific community does not yet know if Comirnaty will reduce such transmission.”
Walensky says Cochrane summary ‘retracted’
Another astonishing falsehood made by Walensky was her response to Congressman Clyde’s question about the Cochrane review which found that wearing face masks in the community “probably makes little to no difference” in preventing viral transmission.
Walensky enthusiastically stated, “I think its notable, that the Editor-in-Chief of Cochrane, actually said that the summary of that review was…[stumble]..she retracted the summary of that review and said that it was inaccurate.”
However, the summary of the review was not retracted, nor have the authors of the review changed the language in the summary.
Misleading statements by New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci has likely led to this falsehood being repeated (which I cover in a previous article).
In response to Walensky’s comments, Tom Jefferson, lead author of the Cochrane study said, “Walensky is plain wrong. There has been no retraction of anything.”
“It’s worth reiterating that we are the copyright holders of the review, so we decide what goes in or out of the review and we will not change our review on the basis of what the media wants or what Walensky says,” remarked Jefferson.
Bhattacharya was also stunned by Walensky’s comments. “It’s irresponsible for her to claim that the Cochrane review [summary] was retracted when it was not. It damages her credibility and harms the scientific process, which requires public officials to be honest about scientific results,” he said.
Did Walensky lie to Congress or is she poorly informed?
Witnesses at these hearings are expected to provide truthful and accurate information to the committee and may be subject to legal penalties if they provide false information or knowingly make false statements.
But will Walensky be held accountable for misleading Congress? Unlikely.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hired a marketing firm to write what looked like news articles but were actually ad placements created to persuade parents of young children and elderly people to get flu shots, according to documents obtained by Children’s Health Defense (CHD).
The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show the CDC in September 2020 hired Weber Shandwick, a marketing firm, to create and place unattributed articles on news sites.
The campaign was part of a multi-year, $32 million dollar contract between Weber Shandwick and the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) to promote influenza vaccination and strengthen NCIRD’s immunization program.
The FOIA-requested contract specifies the ad agency will develop a wide variety of media strategies to deliver the CDC/NCIRD’s message on flu vaccines — but not always in its name — including writing unbranded articles for media distribution, spokesperson training, celebrity outreach, social media blitzes, social listening and monitoring, podcasting and more.
The contract could be renewed for a total award of $55.2 million, according to USAspending.gov, a federal grants database.
The broader campaign, described in the documents obtained by CHD, is dedicated to implementing “strategic health communication to provide a full range of communication support to change attitudes and behaviors to prevent diseases of interest to NCIRD.”
Every year the CDC launches a flu vaccination campaign — seeking to vaccinate every person in the U.S. ages 6 months and older.
Past campaign strategies have been largely fear-based, with the CDC’s in-house marketing team explicitly encouraging television personalities and public health experts and others to “state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes)” for flu season and to represent each flu season in ways that will “motivate behavior (e.g., as ‘very severe,’ ‘more severe than last or in past years,’ ‘deadly’).”
The CDC recently incorporated another strategy that researchers call “native advertising,” which involves training and/or paying trusted, non-governmental actors to promote vetted ideas in conversation, community spaces and social media in ways that don’t appear to the targeted individual to be linked to official government campaigns.
Starting in 2021, the CDC spent hundreds of millions of dollars using these same advertising strategies to push the COVID-19 vaccines among communities of color.
‘Leveraging content with third-party credibility’
The FOIA documents — which only partially fulfilled CHD’s request and came heavily redacted — show Weber Shandwick subcontracted with Brandpoint, another public relations firm with expertise in “MAT release,” to create the articles related to flu shots.
MAT release means developing “branded, consumer-facing” articles that look like news articles, but are actually ads. Brandpoint specializes in making such ads and distributing them to a wide network of print and online publishers.
According to Brandpoint’s website, “These articles allow brands to leverage their own content and the credibility of third-party media companies while reaching consumers on the local news and media sites they frequent daily.”
In other words, the articles and announcements encouraging flu vaccination appear to be news, posted in English and Spanish on websites and radio stations that people know and trust, such as the San Antonio Express-News, the Houston Chronicle, WJCL in Savannah, Georgia, and KSBW in Salinas, California, according to the documents.
For example, Brandpoint has a Los Angeles Timescontent page that links to several of its articles. The print ads sometimes, but not always, carry a small label that marks them as a “paid post” but does not indicate who paid for them.
Some of the stories outlined CDC recommendations, but they don’t appear to be written by the CDC. Instead, the listed author is Brandpoint — often written as “(BPT)” — and the articles follow journalistic style conventions, so there is no way for the reader to know the CDC bankrolled the information.
Brandpoint committed to running ad articles on at least 800 online locations, flooding people’s media landscape with CDC-sponsored content. Many of Brandpoint’s story links from this campaign no longer work.
CHD is working to obtain records not yet provided by the CDC related to the agency’s contract with Weber Shandwick.
CDC supported ‘intentionally unbranded’ messaging to avoid appearance of ‘top-down’ advice
Since 2021, the CDC has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to create “culturally tailored” pro-vaccine materials and train “influential messengers” to promote COVID-19 and flu vaccines in communities of color in every state across the country.
The CDC’s strategy included training clergy members, teachers, neighborhood businesses, community organizations and others to promote its COVID-19 and flu vaccine messaging so it would appear those messages came from within people’s existing communities, rather than from the federal government.
FOIA documents show this “native marketing” strategy began at least as early as 2020. In this case, the strategy focused on placing “organic” messages in third-party and social media — places the marketing agencies identified would be most likely to influence the target audiences.
Peer-reviewed research published in Plos One in 2020 found that messaging on social media that was unbranded — not visibly associated with the CDC or other government agencies — was more likely than a “top-down” approach to yield “positive attitudes toward the flu vaccine,” particularly among African American and Latino people.
The research, funded by healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente, paid micro-influencers to select vetted messages and use them to create their own original content promoting flu vaccination on their social media pages.
Payment, which varied according to each influencer’s reach and influence, ranged from $84 to $360 per influencer.
Content was “intentionally unbranded to ensure that it aligned with the look and feel of their [influencer’s] pages.”
The “native advertising” strategy is used commonly in advertising, but prior to this study, it was untested in public health. It’s based on research demonstrating people are more likely to engage with — and change their behavior based on — content they don’t think is tied to a campaign or to advertising.
When people in the study’s target region, particularly among “at-risk groups,” were exposed to messaging from people with whom they “had trusting relationships,” they were in fact more likely to change their attitudes and behaviors regarding the flu vaccine than when the message came from the “top-down.”
But unbeknownst to them, the messages were created by researchers to include “pre-selected” and “vetted facts,” including messages like “everyone needs a flu shot,” side effects are minimal, the flu vaccine is “safe and effective,” etc.
Influencers also were instructed not to use the word “vaccine” but rather “shot” because of negative associations with the word vaccine.
A $10 billion market by 2030
The flu vaccine market is booming, according to market analysts who estimate the global flu vaccine market will grow to $10 billion by 2030, up from $5 billion in 2020.
Allied Market Research makes this projection based on the fact that “Healthcare organizations all over the world like Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have suggested vaccines” for the treatment of influenza.
Several major pharmaceutical companies produce flu vaccines available in the U.S., including AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Mylan, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, Sanofi Pasteur and Seqiris.
The CDC says private vaccine producers projected they will produce 173.5 million to 183.5 million doses of quadrivalent influenza vaccines for the 2022-2023 season in the U.S.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDC has advocated that people get the flu and COVID-19 vaccines and CDC vaccine promotion funding targeted the two vaccines together.
When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine advisory committee met in January, representatives from the CDC and FDA reported they thought instances of stroke following receipt of Pfizer’s new booster in the elderly may be connected to the flu vaccine and said they would conduct research to determine if this was the case.
When asked by a committee member if it would be prudent to separate the flu and COVID-19 vaccines for elderly people, the CDC’s Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, responded:
“I think talking about spacing the vaccine is premature and I’ll just reinforce that the CDC’s recommendation for COVID vaccination and for flu vaccination have not changed.”
The Allied Market Research report confirms that pairing the two vaccines is good for the flu vaccine markets.
It states, “The COVID-19 outbreak is anticipated to have a positive impact on growth of the global influenza vaccine market. As the number of the population affected with COVID-19 virus increases, the demand for influenza vaccine surges.”
Government efforts — which by the CDC have amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars for flu and COVID-19 — help Big Pharma’s profits soar.
“Increase in government support and surveillance regarding vaccination against influenza on the national and global levels to monitor the supply, distribution, and administration of flu vaccines is one of the crucial factors driving the market growth,” the report states.
Flu vaccine comes with risks, no evidence it’s effective
Although the CDC reports 36,000 to 80,000 deaths per year from flu, data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — available on the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) website — show that CDC’s annual estimates are off by orders of magnitude, according to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., CHD chairman on leave, who outlined the existing scientific data on flu in a May 2020 letter to Sanjay Gupta.
NCHS data report the average number of mortalities attributable to influenza on death certificates is little more than 1,000, but the CDC is able to inflate the data by conflating flu and pneumonia deaths, BMJ Senior Editor Peter Doshi reported.
Doshi charged the CDC with deliberately lying about annual flu deaths to “[work] in manufacturers’ interest by conducting campaigns to increase flu vaccination.” He warned that “by arbitrarily linking flu with pneumonia, current data are statistically biased.”
Even its promoters concede the flu vaccine has low efficacy. The Mayo Clinic reports the flu vaccine is, at best, 50% effective for reducing the risk of illness among healthy adults ages 18 to 64 (a group with already low flu risk) and the CDC reports it is 40-60% effective at reducing risk.
TwoCochrane reviews found the scientific data provides “no evidence for the utilization of vaccination against influenza in healthy adults as a routine public health measure” and no evidence that the vaccine reduces transmission.
The Cochrane researchers accused the CDC of deliberately misrepresenting the science in order to support their universal influenza vaccination recommendation.
Evidence shows the vaccine carries serious risks. Roughly two-thirds of the claims compensated in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (5,297 claims) have been for influenza vaccine injuries. In 2021, the total compensation to date — paid by U.S. taxpayers — was almost $4.5 billion, CHD reported.
And there is a lack of safety studies for two of the most targeted demographics for the flu shot — children and pregnant women, Kennedy wrote. In fact, studies have linked flu vaccination to miscarriages and birth defects.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
A recent publication by the world-renowned scientific group, The Cochrane Collaboration, has shown that masks did little to nothing positive during the pandemic response. Following the release of this study, New York Times opinion writer, Zeynep Tufekci, along with the editor-in-chief of the Cochrane Collaboration, Karla Soares-Weiser, threw the authors of the mask study under the bus. Jefferey Jaxen does a deep dive to uncover the important details of this story.
Despite the CDC preparing for the COVID shot rollout in 2020, newly released internal documents reveal that VAERS, the system for tracking vaccine adverse events, was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of submissions despite expecting record reports. Even after planning for a ‘worse case scenario’ of 1,000 reports per day, an untenable deluge swamped the system and its contractors in just 6 days after going live. But it didn’t stop there. Jeffery Jaxen reports.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Children’s Health Defense (CHD) on Friday filed a class action lawsuit against President Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top administration officials and federal agencies, alleging they “waged a systematic, concerted campaign” to compel the nation’s three largest social media companies to censor constitutionally protected speech.
Kennedy, CHD and Connie Sampognaro filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Monroe Division, on behalf of all the more than 80% of Americans who access news from online news aggregators and social media companies, principally Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
The plaintiffs allege top-ranking government officials, along with an “ever-growing army of federal officers, at every level of the government” from the White House to the FBI, the CIA and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to lesser-well-known federal agencies of inducing those companies:
“to stifle viewpoints that the government disfavors, to suppress facts that the government does not want the public to hear, and to silence specific speakers — in every case critics of federal policy — whom the government has targeted by name.”
Kennedy, chairman and chief litigation counsel of CHD, said American Democracy itself is at stake in this case:
“U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, ‘Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.’ It also violates the Constitution.
“The collaboration between the White House and health and intelligence agency bureaucrats to silence criticism of presidential policies is an assault on the most fundamental foundation stone of American Democracy.”
The lawsuit’s argument rests on the Norwood Principle, an “axiomatic,” or self-evident, principle of constitutional law that says the government “may not induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”
According to the plaintiffs, the U.S. government used the social media companies as a proxy to illegally censor free speech.
The complaint cites the now-weekly, ongoing disclosures of secret communications between social media companies and federal officials — in the “Twitter files,” other lawsuits and news reports — which revealed threats by Biden and other top officials against social media companies if they failed to aggressively censor.
The suit points to examples where the censorship campaign allegedly trampled First Amendment freedoms, such as the Hunter Biden laptop story, the COVID-19 Wuhan lab-leak theory and the suppression of facts and opinions about the COVID-19 vaccines.
The plaintiffs do not seek financial damages. Instead, they seek a declaration that these practices by federal agents violate the First Amendment and a nationwide injunction against the federal government’s effort to censor constitutionally protected online speech.
The complaint points to a Supreme Court decision that said social media platforms are “the modern public square” and argues that all Americans who access news online have a First Amendment right against censorship of protected speech in that public square.
Jed Rubenfeld, one of the attorneys arguing the case filed Friday, explained why the lawsuit was filed as a class action:
“Social media platforms are the modern public square. For years, the government has been pressuring, promoting, and inducing the companies that control that square to impose the same kind of censorship that the First Amendment prohibits.
“This lawsuit challenges that censorship campaign, and we hope to bring it to an end. The real victim is the public, which is why we’ve brought this suit as a class action on behalf of everyone who accesses news from social media.”
According to the complaint, when the administration violates the First Amendment of an entire class of people, the judiciary must step in to protect American’s constitutional rights:
“Apart from the Judiciary, no branch of our Government, and no other institution, can stop the current Administration’s systematic efforts to suppress speech through the conduit of social-media companies.
“Congress can’t, the Executive won’t, and States lack the power to do so. The fate of American free speech, as it has so often before, lies once again in the hands of the courts.”
The lawsuit also names Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of Commerce, DHS, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and other individuals and agencies — 106 defendants in total.
‘The largest federally sanctioned censorship operation’ ever seen
According to the lawsuit, efforts by federal officials to induce social media platforms to censor speech began in 2020 with the suppression of the COVID-19 lab leak theory and reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Once President Biden took office in January 2021, senior White House officials reported the Biden team began “direct engagement” with social media companies to “clamp down” on speech the White House disfavored, which officials called “misinformation.”
Revelations would later prove the administration was asking social media companies to suppress not only putatively false speech but also speech it knew to be “wholly accurate” along with expressions of opinion.
This practice, it alleges, spread from the administration and through the entire government, becoming “a government-wide campaign to achieve through the intermediation of social media companies exactly the kind of content-based and viewpoint-based censorship of dissident political speech that the First Amendment prohibits.”
Similar allegations about this massive federal censorship campaign also so were alleged by the plaintiffs in the Missouri. v. Biden case, but this case introduces many new allegations.
Some, but not all, examples of government-coordinated suppression of free speech on social media cited in the complaint include the following:
Substantial evidence of coordinated efforts by Fauci and others to suppress the lab-leak theory, which remains plausible and supported by evidence.
Extensive email communication between Fauci and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, demonstrating Facebook and other social media companies adopted policies that identified any claims about the lab-leak hypothesis to be “false” and “debunked.”
Facebook’s admission that its censorship of COVID-19-related speech, on supposed grounds of falsity, is based on what “public health experts have advised us.”
Public statements by Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan’s podcast that Facebook suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story as a result of communications from the FBI.
“Twitter files” documents demonstrating weekly meetings between agents from the FBI’s 80-agent social media task force and Twitter to discuss content suppression along with direct payments from the FBI to Twitter for compliance with requests.
CISA’s work with the Center for Internet Security, a third-party group, to flag content, including particular individuals, for censorship on social media.
“Twitter files” evidence about the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a vast network of high-level interactions with the federal government and social media platforms — which included proposals, ultimately adopted, for the U.S. government to establish its own “disinformation” board. One free-speech advocate described the EIP as “the largest federally-sanctioned censorship operation” he had ever seen.
Documents demonstrating after the election, the EIP was transformed into the “Virality Project,” which was dedicated to “take action even against ‘stories of true vaccine side effects’ and ‘true posts which could fuel hesitancy.’”
Census Bureau documents describing work by its “Trust & Safety” team with social media platforms to “counter false information.”
“Twitter files” documents, news reports, and documents received through Freedom of Information Act requests that demonstrated myriad, consistent communications with Facebook, Twitter and Google (YouTube) and numerous Biden administration officials named as defendants in the lawsuit including Murthy, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, officials from the CDC, DHS, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, CISA, the U.S. State Department, the White House — including White House Counsel — and other agencies about how to take action against “misinformation” related to COVID-19.
This last set of communications included action against the so-called “Disinformation Dozen,” which includes Kennedy. According to the complaint, “Facebook itself has stated that the infamous ‘disinformation dozen’ claim has no factual support.”
The complaint alleges that the collusion between the administration, federal agencies and social media companies to suppress constitutionally protected free speech now also extends beyond the election and COVID-19-related commentary to include suppression of speech on topics such as climate change, “clean energy,” “gendered disinformation,” pro-life pregnancy resource centers and other topics.
It also alleges, based on research from the Media Research Center that identified hundreds of instances of censored critiques of Biden, that social media companies “have achieved astonishing success in muzzling public criticism of Joe Biden.”
It argues that the defendants’ power over social media gives them a “historically unprecedented power over public discourse in America — a power to control what hundreds of millions of people in this county can say, see, and hear.”
CHD President Mary Holland, who also serves as CHD general counsel, told The Defender :
“If Government can censor its critics, there is no atrocity it cannot commit. The public has been deprived of truthful, life-and-death information over the last three years. This lawsuit aims to have government censorship end, as it must, because it is unlawful under our constitution.”
The lawsuit asks the court to permanently enjoin them from, “taking any steps to demand, urge, pressure, or otherwise induce any social-media platform to censor, suppress, de-platform, suspend, shadow-ban, de-boost, restrict access to constitutionally protected speech, or take any other adverse action against any speaker, protected content or viewpoint expressed on social media.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published inaccurate data about the COVID-19 pandemic and made incorrect claims that exaggerated the threat on at least 20 occasions since January 2021, a new paper has found.
The pre-print (not yet peer-reviwed) by Vinay Prasad, Tracy Beth Hoeg, Kelley Krohnert and Alyson Haslam documents 25 instances when the CDC reported statistical or numerical errors. Twenty (80%) of these instances exaggerated the severity of the COVID-19 situation, three instances (12%) simultaneously exaggerated and downplayed the severity of the situation and one error was neutral. One error exaggerated COVID-19 vaccine risks. The CDC was notified about the errors in 16 instances (64%), and later corrected the errors, at least partially, in 13 instances (52%).
The authors searched for the errors by reviewing CDC publications, press releases, interviews, meetings and Twitter accounts. They also catalogued mortality data from both the National Center for Health Statistics and the CDC Covid Data Tracker and compared reported results.
They concluded that “a basic prerequisite for making informed policy decisions is accurate and reliable statistics, even during times of uncertainty”. They note a need for greater diligence in data collection and reporting. They also recommend that the federal entity responsible for reporting health statistics “should be firewalled from the entity setting policy due to concerns of real or perceived systematic bias in errors” – in this instance, towards exaggerating risk.
Here are the 25 errors they found:
February 26th 2021:
MMWR stated that during the study period, the seven-day moving average of cases identified by PCR or antigen testing ranged from 152 to 577 cases.
Multiple errors. Reported case rates during the study period were described as a seven-day moving average of cases per 100,000 persons including PCR and antigen cases, but the paper actually reported the raw seven day moving average (without adjusting for population) and for PCR only (not including antigen tests).
From: MMWR
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
July 26th 2021:
Delta Variant is as contagious as chicken pox.
Delta is not as contagious as varicella. The CDC overstated Delta R0 and understated chicken pox R0 (Delta estimate was overlaid directly on a New York Times graphic).
From: CDC slide deck
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: All
July 27th 2021:
4% of COVID-19 deaths are in children 0-17.
Actual number was 0.04% based on original CDC estimated data. When the estimated data were updated later, the percentages were not updated. The actual percentage based on the updated data was 0.07%.
From: COVID-19 website
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
October 15th 2021:
“COVID-NET data for the week ending Sept. 25th show that rates of COVID-19-associated hospitalisations in children ages 5-11 years are the highest they’ve been.”
COVID-NET hospitalisations were already falling from Sept peak. Rate was 1.1 in week ending Sept. 11th and Sept. 25th. (Now week of Sept. 11th shows 1.2),
From: Twitter @CDCgov
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
October 27th 2021:
“CDC Director Walensky said “there have been 745 deaths in children less than 18.”
As of 27/10/21, NCHS data showed 558 deaths with COVID-19. Final NCHS data shows 679 pediatric deaths with COVID-19 through Oct. 30th, 2021
From: White House Press Briefing
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
November 8th 2021:
Among ages 0-17, CDC’s reported rate of symptomatic illness was [more] than the total infection rate (asymptomatic + symptomatic –
an impossible claim), and this error occurred among children (infection rate also fell only for children from May 21st to Sept 21st estimates).
Estimated infection rate was 35,490 per 100K, not 29,885 per 100K (symptomatic illness remained at 30,253 per 100K).
From: COVID-19 website
Risk: Neutral
Concerns: All
December 20th 2021:
Omicron makes up 73% of new infections in the U.S.
Error with Nowcast estimate, a week later they revised to 23% (outside the previous 95% CI).
From: Data Tracker
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: All
February 24th 2022:
COVID-19 hospitalisations had a sudden over-1.6-fold increase in Georgia per HHS/CDC data.
Very likely a dramatic multi-week increase was due to imputation error on behalf of the reporting state or municipality, yet this was not audited or detected.
From: Data Tracker
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: All
March 15th:
Paediatric deaths on the Data Tracker demographics page were overstated while adult deaths were understated.
On 15/3/22, CDC removed 416 paediatric deaths from Data Tracker from 1,755 to 1,339 (still overstated) and almost 72,000 adult deaths, blaming an algorithm for classifying deaths as COVID-19 related.
From: Data Tracker
Risk: Mixed
Concerns: Both
June 17th 2022:
COVID-19 is a top five cause of death in children of all age groups.
Pre-print had inaccurate data, and CDC chose the most extreme version of the flawed data. Specifically, for COVID-19 it used cumulative counts (which spanned more than two years), and death was attributed if it was one of any multiple cause of death, whereas for other causes of death, they used only a single year, and attributed it only if it was the single underlying cause of death).
From: ACIP Meeting
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
June 23rd 2022:
At a White House COVID-19 briefing, CDC Director Walensky cited the claim that COVID-19 is a “top five cause of death” in children
Flawed pre-print, authors already acknowledged that fact, and COVID-19 was not a top five cause of death.
From: White House Press Briefing
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
June 27th 2022:
ACIP website includes the “top five cause of death” claim
Flawed pre-print, authors already acknowledged that fact, and COVID-19 was not a top five cause of death.
From: ACIP website
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
August 9th 2022:
COVID-19 has killed 1,500 children ages 17 and younger.
As of 10/8/22, NCHS data showed 1,201 deaths with COVID-19. As of 5/2/23, NCHS data shows 1,323 paediatric deaths with COVID-19 through August 6th 2022.
From: Twitter @CDCgov
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
August 12th 2022:
“COVID-19 hospitalisations for children and teens are increasing again in the U.S.”
CDC hospitalisation data showed hospitalisations had peaked two weeks prior, on 29/7/22.
From: Twitter @CDCgov
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
August 20th 2022:
CDC Excess Mortality Dashboard overstated recent deaths in North Carolina and Connecticut.
Model for weighting due to death reporting lag was poorly adjusted.
From: CDC Excess Mortality Dashboard
Risk: Exaggerated risk of all-cause mortality
Concerns: All
August 22nd 2022:
Alabama paediatric hospitalisations had a dramatic single week increase from under 10 per day to over 50 per day.
Very likely a dramatic single week increase was due to imputation error on behalf of the reporting state or municipality, yet this was not audited or detected.
From: Data Tracker
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
August 26th 2022:
CDC Data Tracker made a single week jump of 186 paediatric deaths and 1,679 adult deaths, which is unusually high for children and unusually low for adults.
Incorrect death data. CDC corrected this days later, removing 173 paediatric deaths and adding 2,484 adult deaths
From: Data Tracker
Risk: Mixed
Concerns: All
September 1st 2022:
ACIP Chair Grace Lee repeated the “top five cause of death” claim in ACIP meeting to approve bivalent booster.
Flawed pre-print was corrected two months prior. Unknown if ACIP committee informed.
From: ACIP meeting
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
November 9th 2022:
Florida paediatric hospitalisations had a dramatic single week increase from seven to 112 (seven-day new admissions).
Very likely a dramatic single week increase was due to imputation error on behalf of the reporting state or municipality, yet this was not audited or detected.
From: Data Tracker
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
December 30th 2022:
XBB.1.5 variant reported at 41% of new infections in the US.
A week later they revised to 18% (outside the original 95% CI).
From: COVID-19 website
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: All
December 31st 2022:
North Carolina paediatric hospitalisations had a dramatic single week increase from two to 19 (seven-day new admissions).
Very likely a dramatic single week increase was due to imputation error on behalf of the reporting state or municipality, yet this was not audited or detected
From: Data Tracker
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
January 13th 2023:
Table 2 listed 62 events for children needing medical care as 13.9%.
It should be 1.9%. It is correct in the text, but not the table.
From: MMWR
Risk: Exaggerated risk of vaccine
Concerns: Children
February 9th 2023:
Dr. Walensky testified before Congress that there had been “2,000 paediatric deaths from COVID-19”.
This number comes from the flawed Data Tracker. Actual number is 1,400-1,500
From: Data Tracker/ testimony
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
February 23rd 2023:
ACIP slide claimed 1,489 paediatric deaths in ages six months-17 years.
They did not remove 305 deaths in infants under-six months. Actual number should have been 1,184 using the NCHS data source cited on the slide
From: ACIP meeting
Risk: Exaggerated
Concerns: Children
Through March 3rd 2023:
Data Tracker continues to report too many paediatric deaths and too few adult deaths.
Inaccurate mortality data by age group are updated weekly on the CDC Data Tracker Demographics page.
In a previous article, we described the concept of survivor bias in studies that claimed better outcomes for covid vaccinated women in pregnancy: since the greatest risk to babies occur early in pregnancy, the babies of women who are vaccinated during pregnancy must already have survived the riskiest period.
In fact, a similar survivor bias more generally affects mortality rates for the vaccinated. If you see a study claiming much higher mortality rates of the ‘never vaccinated’ versus the ‘ever vaccinated’ you need to be sure it’s not just a statistical illusion due to survivor bias. This (7 minute) video provides an animated explanation:
The video shows this particular bias is avoided by using ‘person years in each vaccination category’ rather than people in each category. So a person who first gets vaccinated 6 months into a one year study and lives until the end of the year will be counted as 6 months never vaccinated and 6 months ever vaccinated.
The example is, of course, extremely simplified. Ideally, to calculate the correct number of person years in each category we need to know, for each person in the study, the exact date of each vaccination. And we also need to take account of the varying infection rate at different time intervals. That’s because the survivor bias is further exaggerated if (as was the case in most Western nations for the covid vaccines) the initial vaccine roll-out happened during the winter – meaning that fatality rates would inevitably fall anyway as more people were vaccinated. So, irrespective of the vaccine, more deaths were occuring at a time when more people were unvaccinated. Most of those classified as vaccinated would therefore already have survived the initial death peak when first vaccinated.
The ONS attempt to avoid survivor bias, but most reporting organisations and published studies do not
The ONS data on deaths by covid vaccine status uses person years to avoid this kind of survivor bias (although there are other biases not avoided in the ONS data as explained here). However, most studies and reports comparing mortality rates of vaccinated and unvaccinated (whether it is for covid deaths or all-cause deaths) fail to make the adjustment and are therefore overestimating the mortality rate of the unvaccinated while underestimating the mortality rate of the vaccinated.
Death rates are calculated as the number of deaths in each group, divided by the total number of people in this group. This is given per 100,000 people.
So, all of the graphs shown there, such as this one for the USA, are subject to survival bias (one of the tell-tale signs of survivor bias is that the overestimation of the unvaccinated mortality rate will be highest during the time when large numbers of people are still being vaccinated and lowest during periods when there are few new vaccinations):
The regular CDC reports such as this most recent one not only fail to adjust for survivor bias but fail to mention this among the many listed limitations of their analysis. Since, as our simple video example shows, survivor bias makes it inevitable that a placebo vaccine can be shown to reduce mortality and will do so the more jabs you have. Therefore, it is unsurprising that these reports all have to assert the following to keep up the illusion:
All persons should stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccination
Survival bias is just one of the many biases and flaws that have led to massively exaggerated claims of vaccine efficacy and safety
As we have explained several times before there are many biases and flaws in the way covid data is collected and analysed which (curiously) all favour exaggerated claims of vaccine efficacy and safety:
The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) civil rights group has announced that a federal judge has rejected a motion to dismiss a First Amendment lawsuit, Missouri v. Biden, where the government is accused of involvement in censorship.
“The Court finds that the complaint alleges significant encouragement and coercion that converts the otherwise private conduct of censorship on social media platforms into state action, and is unpersuaded by defendants’ arguments to the contrary,” the decision reads.
The Biden White House thus failed to stop the legal challenge which alleges collusion between the government and Big Tech to suppress information they disapproved of concerning the pandemic and US elections.
The decision not to accept the motion was made in the US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana by Judge Terry A. Doughty, a statement from the non-profit said.
The NCLA explained that it represented doctors Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, Aaron Kheriaty, as well as Jill Hines, and that the suit lifted the lid on the censorship regime that the organization says a number of federal agencies had put in place.
The number in question is “at least” 11 agencies and sub-agencies (including the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security, DHS), the NCLA said, and backed this claim up by information that came out during the discovery process.
Government officials are accused of participating in a lawless censorship campaign that used a wide variety of tools to get social media companies to toe the line, from collusion and coordination, to coercion.
These serious claims laid out in the lawsuit, which Judge Doughty just allowed to proceed, further allege that the result was the censoring, blacklisting and shadow-banning of the clients represented by the NCLA, as well as other methods of silencing them, such as deliberately downranking their content, throttling, etc.
Explaining the decision to deny the motion to dismiss, the judge said that, based on past censorship, the threat of future censorship is “substantial” – rather than being “illusory or merely speculative.”
The NCLA welcomed the ruling, describing it as an important victory in the battle for free speech in the US, and lauded the district court for recognizing the scale and damage of government-orchestrated censorship.
“The Court has seen through the government’s unrelenting efforts to deny responsibility for using its vast power to silence thousands upon thousands of Americans online, often removing factually true information the government did not like,” commented NCLA’s senior litigation counsel, John J. Vecchione.
The case is now headed to a preliminary injunction hearing set for May 12.
The National Toxicology Program (NTP) on Wednesday released a draft report linking prenatal and childhood fluoride exposure to reduced IQ in children, after public health officials tried for almost a year to block its publication.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially blocked the NTP from releasing the report, according to emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
But a court order stemming from a lawsuit filed by Food and Water Watch against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forced the report’s release this week.
The NTP, an interagency program run by HHS that researches and reports on environmental toxins, conducted a six-year systematic review to assess scientific studies on fluoride exposure and potential neurodevelopmental and cognitive health effects in humans.
The report, containing a monograph and a meta-analysis, went through two rounds of peer review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Comments from reviewers and HHS and NTP’s responses also were included in the report released Wednesday.
According to its website, the NTP “removed the hazardous classification of fluoride” in response to comments in the peer-review process. Yet, the report states:
“Our meta-analysis confirms results of previous meta-analyses and extends them by including newer, more precise studies with individual-level exposure measures.
“The data support a consistent inverse association between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ …
“The results were robust to stratifications by risk of bias, gender, age group, outcome assessment, study location, exposure timing, and exposure type (including both drinking water and urinary fluoride).”
“These findings fly in the face of the empty, unscientific claims U.S. health officials have propagated for years, namely that water fluoridation is safe and beneficial,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Children’s Health Defense chairman and chief litigation counsel. “It’s past time to eliminate this neurotoxin from our water supply.”
The controversial report will play a key role in determining the outcome of a lawsuit brought in 2017 by several nonprofits against the EPA to end fluoridation of drinking water, plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Connett told The Defender.
“We had to fight hard to have this report even made public,” Connett said. “They [CDC and HHS] buried this. If they had gotten their way, this report would have never even seen the light of day,” Connett said.
Since the trial began in 2020, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen has been waiting for the NTP to complete a systematic review of fluoride’s neurotoxicity before ruling on the case.
Groups like the American Dental Association publicly pressured the NTP to “exclude any neurotoxin claims” from the reports.
Connett said during the trial, the EPA repeatedly claimed that the plaintiffs’ allegations about toxicity could not be verified because there was no “systematic review.”
The documents released Wednesday fill that gap.
Connett said:
“So now what do we have? We have a systematic review by one of the pioneering, leading, most authoritative research groups on toxicology in the world.
“They just completed a systematic review that took them six years to complete, so if that’s not enough to demonstrate a hazard under the toxic substances control act, then how would any citizen group ever be able to meet the standard?”
The findings: fluoride and lowered IQ in children
According to the NTP report:
“The current bodies of experimental animal studies and human mechanistic evidence do not provide clarity on the association between fluoride exposure and cognitive or neurodevelopmental human health effects.”
Yet, the report’s summary contradicts this statement by summarizing the evidence informing this conclusion, stating that nearly all studies examined for this literature review found evidence of cognitive or developmental issues associated with fluoride.
According to the report, 8 of the 9 “high-quality studies examining cognitive or neurodevelopmental outcomes reported associations with fluoride exposure.”
Of the 19 high-quality studies assessing the association between fluoride and IQ in children, 18 reported an association between higher fluoride exposure and lower IQ in children. Forty-six of the 53 low-quality studies also found evidence of that association.
The meta-analysis also states:
“The body of evidence from studies on adults is also limited and provides low confidence that fluoride exposure is associated with adverse effects on adult cognition. There is, however, a large body of evidence on IQ effects in children.”
The monograph and meta-analysis found that fluoride exposure at levels equivalent to 1.5 mg/L is associated with lower IQ in children. The abstract concludes:
“This review finds, with moderate confidence, that higher fluoride exposure (e.g., represented by populations whose total fluoride exposure approximates or exceeds the World Health Organization Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality of 1.5 mg/L of fluoride) is consistently associated with lower IQ in children.”
Levels of fluoride found in drinking water in the U.S. are typically 0.7 mg/L, which is lower than the 1.5 mg/L levels found to be neurotoxic by the reports.
On that basis, HHS’ review of the reports recommended the NTP revise its assessment such that, “all conclusory statements in this document should be explicit that any findings from the included studies only apply to water fluoride concentrations above 1.5 mg/L.”
The NTP responded:
“We do not agree with this comment. Our assessment considers fluoride exposures from all sources, not just water.
As discussed in the pre-publication 2022 NTP Monograph, because fluoride is also found in certain foods, dental products, some pharmaceuticals, and other sources, individual behaviors are likely an important determinant of actual exposures.”
Rick North, former CEO of the American Cancer Society’s Oregon division and Fluoride Action Network board member told The Defender that “people consume large amounts of fluoride through tea and other drinks and processed foods made with fluoridated water, not to mention pesticide ingestion and fluoride from air pollution.”
He also said that people’s fluoride exposure can depend on how much water they drink.
“Think about it,” North said. “Your level of risk depends upon, incredibly, how thirsty you are. That’s how absurd the entire premise of water fluoridation is,” he said.
The NTP confirmed that people exposed to levels of fluoride lower than 1.5 mg/L in the water system could have high levels of fluoride in their systems. It stated:
“Even in the optimally fluoridated cities [fluoridated at 0.7 mg/L] in Canada studied by Green et al. (2019), individual exposure levels, as documented by repeated urinary measurements, suggest widely varying total exposures from water combined with fluoride from other sources.”
It added, “our moderate confidence conclusion is primarily based on studies with total fluoride exposure that approximates or exceeds what is generally associated with consumption of optimally fluoridated water [0.7 mg/L] in the United States.”
“We have stressed in our monograph that our conclusions apply to total fluoride exposures rather than to exposures exclusively through drinking water.”
“What the NTP is pointing to here is that in some communities, where the dose of fluoride in the water is 0.7 mg/L, the NTP has found levels of fluoride found to be associated with lower IQ,” Connett told The Defender.
Also, different people have different risk levels, he said. Pregnant women and bottle-fed babies, for example, are some of the populations at highest risk.
On this point, the NTP responded to a different HHS critique, writing, “We have no basis on which to state that our findings are not relevant to some children or pregnant people in the United States.”
“The margin of safety here just doesn’t exist — it is precariously small,” Connett said. He added that the lawsuit is “basically a risk assessment of fluoride.”
To do a risk assessment, the EPA first identifies a hazard and determines at what dose — what level of human exposure — that hazard harms human health.
Then the agency determines in a given case whether the margin between the existing hazard levels and the human exposure levels is unacceptably close, which would make a toxin pose a risk to human health.
Connett said that in EPA’s previous risk assessments for other chemicals, such as methylene chloride or bromopropane, evaluated according to the 2020 risk evaluation method that guides this case, the agency found the hazard level exceeds the human exposure level by much higher margins — “usually in a range of ten to 20 times higher,” yet it has deemed those chemicals to present an unreasonable risk to human health.
In other words, the substances were found to be toxic to humans at levels significantly higher than what people may be exposed to in regular use, yet the EPA determined them to be risks.
When it makes that determination, the EPA must then take steps to mitigate the risk.
That can also be the finding in this case. According to a pre-trial document, both sides in the case agreed to the “undisputed fact” that the “EPA does not require that human exposure levels exceed a known adverse effect level to make an unreasonable risk determination under TSCA.”
The NTP documents also raised flags about the implications of seemingly small neurotoxic effects:
“Research on other neurotoxicants has shown that subtle shifts in IQ at the population level can have a profound impact on the number of people who fall within the high and low ranges of the population’s IQ distribution.
“For example, a 5-point decrease in a population’s IQ would nearly double the number of people classified as intellectually disabled.”
Top HHS and CDC officials tried to ‘water down’ and block the report
In 2016, a group of six nonprofit organizations and several individuals petitioned the EPA to end fluoridation of drinking water in the U.S. based on evidence of health risks associated with fluoride, namely neurotoxicity.
The EPA rejected the petition.
In response, Food and Water Watch, Fluoride Action Network and others sued the EPA in 2017, seeking an end to water fluoridation.
They based their initial claims on dozens of studies and reviews demonstrating fluoride’s neurotoxicity. Studies have also linked fluoride to a variety of other health risks in both children and adults, and evidence shows it to be an endocrine disruptor.
The EPA denied water fluoridation causes harm.
A seven-day trial took place in federal court in San Francisco in June 2020, but Judge Chen put the proceedings on hold pending the release of NTP’s systematic review of research available on the neurotoxic effects of fluoride.
The report, slated for release in May 2022, was delayed several times and sent for several rounds of peer review.
“The people on the [NTP] committee were experts in their fields who put years into this study, going back and forth with one external review after another,” North said. “You couldn’t ask for more peer review than what it already had. There were constant attempts to delay it, to water it down.”
In late October 2022, Judge Chen ended the stay on the NTP review, ruling that the parties involved could view the NTP review in its unpublished form to better inform his final decision.
However, due to concerns from the EPA, he also ruled the report could not be made public unless the NTP released it.
In December 2022, the plaintiffs filed several exhibits with Judge Chen, including a redacted version of the NTP’s assessment of fluoride’s neurotoxicity and internal emails between the CDC and the NTP obtained through FOIA demonstrating that HHS blocked the release of the long-delayed review, the plaintiffs argued.
The documents showed that on May 11, NTP notified the agencies that it was going to release the report on May 18, but the CDC opposed the release.
Emails also indicated that HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine was going to “get involved,” and, “the May 18 release date for [the monograph] is almost certainly not going to happen,” the Defender reported.
Connett said:
“It was only because we were tipped off by someone with knowledge on the inside that something was amiss that we went and did extensive FOIA requests and we were able to get documents showing that the NTP scientists considered this report to be complete and ready for publication last May, May of 2022.”
North said it was clear the agencies were blocking the release of the report, which was ready for publication.
“This was a clear case of stonewalling,” North said. “The National Toxicology Program, after over six years of research and numerous outside peer reviews, had completed its state-of-the-science report.”
Connett added:
“We have emails showing that Levine is the one who put it on hold. Rachel Levine said not to publish this report at this time. Then we got the FOIA emails showing that and NTP said they may not publish this [the report] at all. They may not publish it in final form but we did get them to agree to at least post a draft report. They will consider it a draft report.”
On January 20, Judge Chen denied the EPA’s request to add another six-month period to the stay he lifted in his October ruling.
The monograph and meta-analysis released yesterday on the NTP’s website are both labeled “draft.”
“Unfortunately, fluoridation promoters and high-level government officials have continued to label it a draft,” North said. “It wasn’t.”
Experts associated with the lawsuit against the EPA will now analyze and interpret the report in future hearings and then Judge Chen will rule.
The next hearing date is scheduled for April 11, 2023. At that time, the judge will set a date for the next phase of the trial.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
The Medicare data proves that the flu vaccine is too unsafe to use because it kills more than 1 person per million vaccinated, which is the safety threshold noted by vaccine expert Paul Offit.
The evidence has been in plain sight but nobody seems to care.
Introduction
I find it really annoying that our government is hiding the safety data on vaccines. How does hiding the data protect the public from harm?
Of course, I’m not a doctor and doctors don’t have any problem at all with their government hiding safety data. Have you ever seen any of them complain about the lack of transparency? Of course not! None of them want their licenses revoked or their grants canceled.
However, since I’m not a doctor, I’m not encumbered.
So I wanted to let you in on a little secret: the government hides the data from us because the vaccines they’ve been promoting are unsafe.
Let’s take the flu vaccine for example.
Have you noticed that the government NEVER shows you the data from Medicare, VSD, BEST, or any other database?
The reason is simple: the shots are deadly and should be pulled. If they released the data, everyone would know this. So they keep the data hidden from public view.
Thanks to an anonymous HHS employee, I’ve been provided with the “days after death” for the flu vaccine.
I’ve already published the flu charts twice before (here and here) and nobody noticed, even though I pointed it out in my Feb 25 Game Over article, so I’m going to point it out once again now.
Figure 1. Number of deaths per day after taking the flu shot. See the spike on Day 0? It’s easy to miss if you aren’t looking. That’s a problem. That could only be caused by the vaccine itself. There is no other way to explain this “coincidence.”
See the spike on Day 0?
At least 375 “excess deaths” on Day 0!
Last I checked, there is no need to vaccinate people for the flu right before they die because the vaccine takes time to have an effect. That’s why there is normally a reduced number of deaths on Day 0 vs. baseline: if you are about to die, they aren’t going to waste time vaccinating you.
But you can see there are 375 excess deaths on Day 0.
Now consider that this is a subset of all the people who get the flu vaccine in 2021:
It’s only people in Medicare
It’s only people who got the flu shot in Q1 of 2021
It’s only people < 80
375 excess deaths times 1M is more than the population of the US.
So over 1 person per million died.
Summary
The flu vaccine kills > 1 person per million vaccinated.
This means the flu vaccine should be pulled from the market.
I don’t know how I can make it any clearer than that.
And the COVID vaccine? Well, it’s killing people at a 1,000X greater rate than the flu shot. It should have been pulled long ago. Check out this analysis by Denis Rancourt that, after accumulating 100K views, was pulled from ResearchGate. It’s a quality analysis. For example, one of my colleagues who NEVER texts me on ANY papers, texted me to look at this one: “Just published. This data is really stunning.”
But the health authorities are looking the other way and the doctors just blindly do whatever the CDC says, no matter how many people are killed.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy people’s data from third party companies – SafeGraph and Cuebiq – who are in the business of tracking physical locations.
The CDC did this in a bid to check how citizens were complying with lockdown and other Covid restrictions, reports The Epoch Times, which has had access to the contracts between the parties.
One of these companies received $420,000, while the other deal was worth $208,000. The CDC was allowed to buy this data thanks to emergency rules enacted because of the pandemic.
They were designed to give the government organization the data it deemed necessary in order to properly react.
This included tracking people for the sake of “evaluating the impact of visits to key points of interest, stay at home orders, closures, re-openings and other public health communications related to mask mandate, and other emerging research areas on community transmission of SARS-CoV-2.”
The data SafeGraph and Cuebiq are able to get hold of and sell on comes from apps installed on phones. In SafeGraph’s case, this information covered points like neighborhood patterns – revealing the frequency at which somebody visited a place “of interest,” as well as where they came to that place from, and where they went from there.
Cuebiq, meanwhile, sold its shelter-in-place index dataset, and that reveals for how long a phone is inside a house, expressed in percentages, as well as the time people would spend in another state. The goal was to assess who was “sheltering in place” as the authorities had mandated.
The contracts were signed only in 2021 but the CDC at first, early into the pandemic, got a taste of the two companies’ location data offer for free.
The organization was not shy about it at the time, either, and in 2020, used the data to produce two studies, covering metropolitan areas in the US. The subject was how often the people tracked were moving around if distancing restrictions were in place – the result was, less often.
The same is true of movement during radical lockdown measures, and US taxpayers also footed the bill that allowed the CDC to come up with this “revolutionary” result: once states started lifting these measures, people started to move around more frequently.
I am frequently asked: why are the government agencies still pushing COVID-19 vaccination after there have been calls in the US Senate and all around the world to pull them off the market for lack of safety and efficacy?
In a March 10, 2023 letter from FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, MD, and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, to Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD, the agencies give their rationale. While Walensky does not have a compelling academic track record, her FDA counterpart Califf has been considered a staunch advocate of randomized trials and a hawk on safety of cardiovascular drugs over his career which was notable for building the Duke Clinical Research Institute, one of the most impressive academic research organizations in the world.
Here are 10 assertions that Califf and Walensky make to Ladapo and Americans on why the COVID-19 vaccines should be “pushed.”
“The claim that the increase of VAERS reports of life-threatening conditions reported from Florida and elsewhere represents an increase of risk caused by the COVID-19 vaccines is incorrect, misleading and could be harmful to the American public.” They are assuming unproven benefit at the start. The Bradford Hill criteria have been applied to VAERS and causality has been met. Autopsy studies have conclusively demonstrated causality for fatal syndromes. Doctors use the VAERS system when they believe COVID-19 vaccines caused the death, NOT when the death is unrelated to the vaccine in practice.
“The FDA-approved and FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccines have met FDA’s rigorous scientific and regulatory standards for safety and effectiveness and these vaccines continue to be recommended for use by CDC for all people six months of age and older.” The FDA has relied on the false surrogate of antibody elevations after injection eight times. This is neither rigorous nor valid. Large randomized, double blind placebo controlled trials with hospitalization/death as the primary endpoint are required to prove efficacy in all age groups.
“Despite increased reports of these events, when the concern was examined in detail by cardiovascular experts, the risk of stroke and heart attack was actually lower in people who had been vaccinated, not higher.” They cite a nonrandomized study with inadequate control for the known determinants of cardiovascular disease. Both selection bias and confounding eliminate any valid claims of benefit. There is no mechanism by which COVID-19 vaccination would reduce cardiovascular events. There are >200 published manuscripts on COVID-19 vaccines mechanistically causing cardiovascular events including myocarditis, accelerated atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, aortic dissection, hypertensive crisis, etc.
“FDA and CDC physicians continuously screen and analyze VAERS data for possible safety concerns related to the COVID-19 vaccines. For signals identified in VAERS, physicians from FDA and CDC screen individual reports, inclusive of comprehensive medical record review. Most reports do not represent adverse events caused by the vaccine and instead represent a pre-existing condition that preceded vaccination or an underlying medical condition that precipitated the event.” The agencies have not produced a report giving their analysis of what caused death after vaccination. Since many deaths occur on the day of the shot or in the next few days that follow, the public deserves to see regulatory evidence for cause of death.
“In addition to VAERS, FDA and CDC utilize complementary active surveillance systems to monitor the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.” CDC V-safe is one of the active systems mentioned. The CDC refused to release to the public until ordered by the courts, demonstrated an unacceptable 7-8% rate of hospitalization, emergency care, or urgent office visit caused by vaccine side effects. So agency use of systems demonstrate lack of safety and are not reassuring to the public.
“Based on available information for the COVID-19 vaccines that are authorized or approved in the United States, the known and potential benefits of these vaccines clearly outweigh their known and potential risks. Additionally, not only is there no evidence of increased risk of death following mRNA vaccines, but available data have shown quite the opposite: that being up to date on vaccinations saves lives compared to individuals who did not get vaccinated.” There are no randomized placebo controlled trials demonstrating hospitalization/death are reduced as primary endpoints. Thus the agencies cannot make an efficacy claim from a regulatory perspective. Nonrandomized studies have the following threats to validity: 1) selection bias—healthier more health conscious people take vaccines, 2) vaccinated are more likely to seek early treatment which reduces hospitalization/death, 3) no control over prior COVID-19 infection which greatly influences risk of hospitalization/death, 4) no adjudication of COVID-19 endpoints.
“Another study using mathematical modeling estimated that the vaccines saved an estimated 14 million lives from COVID-19 in 185 countries and territories between December 8, 2020, and December 8, 2021.” Modeling studies start with the unproven assertion that vaccination reduces death which has not been demonstrated in proper randomized trials, hence extrapolations to large populations are invalid.
“The most recent estimate is that those who are up to date on their vaccination status have a 9.8 fold lower risk of dying from COVID-19 than those who are unvaccinated and 2.4 fold lower risk of dying from Covid-19 than those who were vaccinated but had not received the updated, bivalent vaccine. Roughly 90% of deaths from COVID-19, as carefully classified by the CDC, in recent months have occurred among those who were not up to date on their vaccines.” This estimate did not account for the two known determinants of COVID-19 mortality: early treatment and natural immunity.
“Over the course of the pandemic, FDA and CDC have held numerous public meetings to discuss the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines where detailed safety data are shared with outside experts and public comment is encouraged. Further, FDA publishes the full regulatory action package containing hundreds of pages summarizing clinical studies and review for each COVID-19 approval on FDA’s website (see “COVID-19 Vaccines Authorized for Emergency Use or FDA Approved”) and CDC publishes an extensive amount of information on their clinical use in Interim Clinical Considerations. Complete information about both benefits and risks helps health care providers better care for their patients.” The FDA/CDC have never reviewed or commented on the Pfizer 90-day post-marketing data which reported 1223 deaths shortly after the shot. The FDA attempted to block these data to the public for 55 years. The agencies have never conducted a symposium to review the >1000 peer-reviewed published papers on serious adverse events and death after COVID-19 vaccination.
“Unfortunately, the misinformation about COVID-19 vaccine safety has caused some Americans to avoid getting the vaccines they need to be up to date.” The Rasmussen Report indicates 28% of Americans know someone who has died after the vaccine. Nothing in that report suggested “misinformation” was leading to hesitancy, moreover it was word of mouth on the horrifying outcomes Americans are witnessing among their family and friends that is leading to refusal rates of boosters.
There are easily another ten invalid assertions made by the agency that could be handled by experienced clinical investigators. Take a look at the letter yourself. Keep in mind the FDA/CDC deceived America by asserting that SARS-CoV-2 did not come out of the Wuhan Laboratory and just a few days ago the US House of Representatives voted to declassify our documents from the laboratory after multiple agencies and witnesses capitulated on the lab origin. This casts doubts on truthfulness of any agency public health assertions during the crisis.
The important message to Americans is that our agencies have no intention of carefully considering vaccine safety or changing course on their relentless pursuit of frequent, mass, indiscriminate COVID-19 vaccination down to 6-month old babies. It will be up to you to protect yourself and your family.
After ICAN obtained the v-safe data and published to the world that 7.7% of v-safe users sought medical care (and that the CDC hid this number from the public for two years), Reuters reached out to my firm stating it had received comment from the CDC regarding this figure.
Incredibly, CDC told Reuters that the 7.7% figure was grossly inflated because it claimed there were 10 million records in v-safe, not 10 million users. Here is the exact email I received from Reuters:
“CDC says v-safe has 10 million records, not 10 million users, and that one person could submit multiple records of seeking medical care for the same adverse event. Which makes the 7.7% statistic problematic… Is that something ICAN was aware of or able to adjust for?”
Based on the CDC’s claim, the major news outlet asked if ICAN would be modifying its claim of 7.7%. But it was the CDC’s claim that was categorically false!
ICAN was correct: there were 10 million v-safe users, not 10 million records; and the 7.7% also did not double-count because it was the number of unique v-users who submitted one or more reports of seeking medical care.
The CDC was plainly pushing the major news to declare ICAN’s claim false and, hence, characterize it as misinformation.
Had Reuters just accepted the CDC’s claim, as typically occurs, it likely would have published a story declaring ICAN’s 7.7% figure to be false information.
Luckily, to its credit and because one of its reporters proceeded objectively and with integrity, this news outlet did not just take the CDC’s word for its claim. It actually gave us an opportunity to respond to this claim. (Albeit not by asking if ICAN believed it was wrong but by asking if it would adjust the figure it published.)
CDC Proven Wrong
Showing that the CDC was wrong was simple. All we had to do was use the CDC’s own data it provided to ICAN!
The data the CDC provided to ICAN clearly and without any doubt showed that ICAN was using the precise and correct number of v-safe users and the number of unique v-safe users who reported needing medical care. Meaning, the 7.7% was absolutely accurate – without any doubt.
We sent this proof and asked Reuters to please ask that CDC substantiate with actual proof, not just conclusory assertions, how ICAN was supposedly wrong and spreading misinformation. And again, to Reuter’s credit, because it demanded proof from the CDC, the CDC eventually relented!
The CDC finally conceded that v-safe did in fact have approximately 10 million users and, hence, the 7.7% figure of those who reported seeking medical care was accurate.
With that, I expected that interaction would be one heck of a story in and of itself! I foresaw a Reuters story that disclosed this CDC behavior – here was the CDC trying to get a major news outlet to publish false information! It was trying to get it to write that the 7.7% figure was incorrect.
That should have been its own major story. And although Reuters did publish a story about v-safe, thus far, these behind-the-scenes communications have not been published. I expect they never will, other than in this article.
CDC Asks Reuters to Ask ICAN for a Copy of CDC’s V-Safe Data
It gets even worse. Making plain that the CDC officials communicating with Reuters were not concerned about the facts, and instead were focused solely on pushing their “safe and effective” mantra which is typically not questioned, they further revealed the agency’s disfunction: the CDC officials asked Reuters if it could get a copy of the v-safe data from ICAN and send it back to the CDC representatives Reuters were dealing with so they can review that data. If that sounds nutty, it is because it is.
Just so you don’t think you misread the foregoing, let me repeat: CDC asked Reuters to get the v-safe data that CDC had given to ICAN days before, and then send that data back to the CDC to review.
You can’t make this stuff up. Mind you, the data had already all been made public on ICAN’s website.
What this shows is that these CDC officials were driving forward to push a major news outlet to claim to the world that ICAN’s claim of 7.7% was false without actually looking at the data to assure their claim was accurate. It also shows an incredible level of disfunction at the CDC; instead of getting the data internally, they had to ask a news outlet to get its own data produced to ICAN to then send it back to CDC.
And these are the folk that have effectively dictated what level of civil and individual rights most Americans would have over the last three years!
CDC Seeks to Deceive Again
When the foregoing gambit by the CDC did not work, it had a new gambit. It tried to get Reuters to publish that the 7.7% figure was misleading by claiming to Reuters that “[i]n the first week after vaccination, reports of seeking any medical care … range from 1-3% (depending on vaccine, age group and dose).”
But as we explained to Reuters, even this is not true. For example, 3.36% of those younger than 3 years old reported receiving medical care within one week of receiving the Moderna vaccine.
Even if all combinations of vaccine, age group, and dose resulted in between 1% to 3% of infants, children, or adults seeking medical care within one week, that is not necessarily an insignificant figure! Why is this somehow comforting? Especially in the context of vaccinating the entire country.
And why should the reports of medical care on days 14 or 21 or 28 be ignored? Is it because the CDC thought it was not relevant information? And, if so, why in the world ask v-safe users to submit this information on these days? Or is it because the CDC did not like what the numbers showed? I will let you be the judge.
As noted above, and a sad irony, when medical care is sought during the first seven days, the CDC presumably attributes that to expected reactogenicity and tells the public to not be concerned. And if it occurs beyond seven days, it pretends as if that data does not exist – even though harms from COVID-19 vaccines, as the CDC well knows, can occur well after the first seven days, as discussed in depth in part 7 of this v-safe substack series.
Also, here, we are talking about a novel medical product, hence heightening the need for assessing its long-term safety – certainly beyond 7 days post-vaccination.
This shows how the sausage is made in mainstream media. But for the actual tenacity – I would even say courageous – pushback from a Reuters reporter, the story around ICAN’s v-safe claims could have ended very differently.
The real story I can only imagine this reporter would have liked to publish, the one I told above, however, would no doubt be a step too far for Reuters as an organization – at least for now, until brave journalists become the typical journalist.
“You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.”
Leviticus, Chapter 26, verses 7-9
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations… then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.”
Deuteronomy 7:1-2,
“…do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them… as the Lord your God has commanded you…”
Deuteronomy 20:16
Gilad Atzmon | January 8, 2009
There is not much doubt amongst Biblical scholars that the Hebrew Bible contains some highly charged non-ethical suggestions, some of which are no less than a call for a genocide. Biblical scholar Raymund Schwager has found in the Old Testament 600 passages of explicit violence, 1000 descriptive verses of God’s own violent actions of punishment, 100 passages where God expressly commands others to kill people. Apparently, violence is the most often mentioned activity in the Hebrew Bible.
As devastating as it may be, the Hebrew Bible saturation with violence and extermination of others may throw some light over the horrifying genocide conducted momentarily in Gaza by the Jewish state. … continue
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