By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Browstone Institute | November 18, 2022
A series of revealing texts and tweets by Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced CEO of FTX, the once high-flying but now belly-up crypto exchange, had the following to say about his image as a do-gooder: it is a “dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”
Very interesting. He had the whole game going: a vegan worried about climate change, supports every manner of justice (racial, social, environmental) except that which is coming for him, and shells out millions to worthy charities associated with the left. He also bought plenty of access and protection in D.C., enough to make his shady company the toast of the town.
As part of the mix, there is this thing called pandemic planning. We should know what that is by now: it means you can’t be in charge of your life because there are bad viruses out there. As bizarre as it seems, and for reasons that are still not entirely clear, favoring lockdowns, masks, and vaccine passports became part of the woke ideological stew.
This is particularly strange because covid restrictions have been proven, over and over, to harm all the groups about whom woke ideology claims to care so deeply. That includes even animal rights: who can forget the Danish mink slaughter of 2020?
Regardless, it’s just true. Masking became a symbol of being a good person, same as vaccinating, veganism, and flying into fits at the drop of a hat over climate change. None of this has much if anything to do with science or reality. It’s all tribal symbolism in the name of group political solidarity. And FTX was pretty good at it, throwing around hundreds of millions to prove the company’s loyalty to all the right causes.
Among them included the pandemic-planning racket. That’s right: there were deep connections between FTX and Covid that have been cultivated for two years. Let’s have a look.
Earlier this year, the New York Times trumpeted a study that showed no benefit at all to the use of Ivermectin. It was supposed to be definitive. The study was funded by FTX. Why? Why was a crypto exchange so interested in the debunking of repurposed drugs in order to drive governments and people into the use of patented pharmaceuticals, even those like Ramdesivir that didn’t actually work? Inquiring minds would like to know.
Regardless, the study and especially the conclusions turned out to be bogus. David Henderson and Charles Hooper further point out an interesting fact: “Some of the researchers involved in the TOGETHER trial had performed paid services for Pfizer, Merck, Regeneron, and AstraZeneca, all companies involved in developing COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines that nominally compete with ivermectin.”
For some reason, SBF just knew that he was supposed to oppose repurposed drugs, though he knew nothing about the subject at all. He was glad to fund a poor study to make it true and the New York Times played its assigned role in the whole performance.
It was just the start. A soft-peddling Washington Post investigation found that Sam and his brother Gabe, who ran a hastily founded Covid nonprofit, “have spent at least $70 million since October 2021 on research projects, campaign donations and other initiatives intended to improve biosecurity and prevent the next pandemic.”
I can do no better than to quote the Washington Post:
The shock waves from FTX’s free fall have rippled across the public health world, where numerous leaders in pandemic-preparedness had received funds from FTX funders or were seeking donations.
In other words, the “public health world” wanted more chances to say: “Give me money so I can keep advocating to lock more people down!” Alas, the collapse of the exchange, which reportedly holds a mere 0.001% of the assets it once claimed to have, makes that impossible.
Among the organizations most affected is Guarding Against Pandemics, the advocacy group headed by Gabe that took out millions in ads to back the Biden administration’s push for $30 billion in funding. As Influence Watch notes: “Guarding Against Pandemics is a left-leaning advocacy group created in 2020 to support legislation that increases government investment in pandemic prevention plans.”
Truly it gets worse:
FTX-backed projects ranged from $12 million to champion a California ballot initiative to strengthen public health programs and detect emerging virus threats (amid lackluster support, the measure was punted to 2024), to investing more than $11 million on the unsuccessful congressional primary campaign of an Oregon biosecurity expert, and even a $150,000 grant to help Moncef Slaoui, scientific adviser for the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine accelerator, write his memoir.
Leaders of the FTX Future Fund, a spinoff foundation that committed more than $25 million to preventing bio-risks, resigned in an open letter last Thursday, acknowledging that some donations from the organization are on hold.
And worse:
The FTX Future Fund’s commitments included $10 million to HelixNano, a biotech start-up seeking to develop a next-generation coronavirus vaccine; $250,000 to a University of Ottawa scientist researching how to eradicate viruses from plastic surfaces; and $175,000 to support a recent law school graduate’s job at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Overall, the Future Fund was a force for good,” said Tom Inglesby, who leads the Johns Hopkins center, lamenting the fund’s collapse. “The work they were doing was really trying to get people to think long-term … to build pandemic preparedness, to diminish the risks of biological threats.”
More:
Guarding Against Pandemics spent more than $1 million on lobbying Capitol Hill and the White House over the past year, hired at least 26 lobbyists to advocate for a still-pending bipartisan pandemic plan in Congress and other issues, and ran advertisements backing legislation that included pandemic-preparedness funding. Protect Our Future, a political action committee backed by the Bankman-Fried brothers, spent about $28 million this congressional cycle on Democratic candidates “who will be champions for pandemic prevention,” according to the group’s webpage.
I think you get the idea. This is all a racket. FTX, founded in 2019 following Biden’s announcement of his bid for the presidency, by the son of the co-founder of a major Democrat Party political action committee called Mind the Gap, was nothing but a magic-bean Ponzi scheme. It seized on the lockdowns for political, media, and academic cover. Its economic rationale was as nonexistent as its books. The first auditor to have a look has written:
“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.”
It was the worst example of a phony perpetual-motion machine: a token to back a company that itself was backed by the token, which in turn was backed by nothing but political fashion and woke ideology that roped in Larry David, Tom Brady, Katy Perry, Tony Blair, and Bill Clinton to provide a cloak of legitimacy.
And you can’t make this stuff up anymore: FTX had a close relationship with the World Economic Forum and was the favored crypto exchange of the Ukrainian government. It looks for all the world like the money-laundering operation of the Democratic National Committee and the entire lockdown lobby.
I will tell you what infuriates me about these billions in fake money and deep corruptions of politics and science. For years now, my anti-lockdown friends have been hounded for being funded by supposed dark money that simply doesn’t exist. Many brave scientists, journalists, attorneys, and others gave up great careers to stand for principle, exposing the damage caused by the lockdowns, and this is how they have been treated: smeared and displaced.
Brownstone has adopted as many in this diaspora as possible for fellowships as far as the resources (real ones, contributed by caring individuals) can go. But we cannot come anywhere near what is necessary for justice, much less compete with the 8-digit funding regime of the other side.
The Great Barrington Declaration was signed at the offices of the American Institute for Economic Research, which, apparently, six years prior had received a long-spent $60,000 grant from the Koch Foundation, and thus became a “Koch-funded libertarian think tank” which supposedly discredited the GBD, even though none of the authors received a dime.
This gibberish and slander has gone on for years – at the urging of government officials! – and Brownstone itself faces much of the same nonsense, with every manner of fantasy about our supposed power, money, and influence swarming the darker realms of the social-media dudgeons. In fact, the actual Koch Foundation (probably unbeknownst to its founder) was funding the pro-lockdown work of Neil Ferguson, whose ridiculous modeling terrified the world into denying human rights to billions of people the world over.
All this time – while every type of vicious propaganda was unleashed on the world – the pro-lockdown and pro-mandate lobby, including fake scientists and fake studies, were benefiting from millions and billions thrown around by operators of a Ponzi scheme based on cheating, fraud, and $15 billion in leveraged funds that didn’t exist while its principle actors were languishing in a drug-infested $40 million villa in the Bahamas even as they preened about the virtues of “effective altruism” and their pandemic-planning machinery that has now fallen apart.
Then the New York Times, instead of decrying this criminal conspiracy for what it is, writes puff pieces on the founder and how he let his quick-growing company grow too far, too fast, and now needs mainly rest, bless his heart.
The rest of us are left with the bill for this obvious scam that implausibly links crypto and Covid. But just as the money was based on nothing but puffed air, the damage they have wrought on the world is all too real: a lost generation of kids, declined lifespans, millions missing from the workforce, a calamitous fall in public health, millions of kids in poverty due to supply-chain breakages, 19 straight months of falling real incomes, historically high increases in debt, and a dramatic fall in human morale the world over.
So yes, we should all be furious and demand full accountability at the very least. Whatever the final truth, it is likely to be far worse than even the egregious facts listed above. It’s bad enough that lockdowns wrecked life and liberty. To discover that vast support for them was funded by fraud and fakery is a deeper level of corruption that not even the most cynical among us could have imagined.
Jeffrey A. Tucker, Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, is an economist and author. He has written 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press.
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 16, 2022
Could employees injured by a COVID-19 vaccine that was mandated by their employer get relief under the U.S. workers’ compensation program?
Some lawyers think so — including three who spoke with The Defender about specific workers’ compensation strategies that may help private-sector employees who sustained COVID-19 vaccine injuries obtain financial relief.
The attorneys also suggested that the more people file claims for their COVID-19 vaccine injuries, the more employers — and their insurers — may feel pressure to reconsider employer-mandated vaccines in the future.
Noting that the number of workplace disability claims in the U.S. increased in early 2021 — the same time COVID-19 vaccines were rolling out — lawyers interviewed for this story detailed the steps involved, the benefits that may be available and the potential hurdles claimants may face, and how to overcome the challenges of locating a suitable attorney and doctor to assist with the claims.
In the U.S., the workers’ compensation program — available in all 50 states — provides an option for employees of companies and businesses that mandated COVID-19 vaccination.
Filing a workers’ compensation claim doesn’t preclude an employee from filing claims via other legal channels. But it does provide the potential to receive immediate financial relief and medical treatment and also, possibly, long-term support.
Workers’ compensation provides possible recourse for vaccine-injured workers
The three attorneys — Ben Carlisle, Ray L. Flores II and Patrick R. Hollingsworth — are experienced in legal areas of relevance to those injured by the COVID-19 vaccines. Carlisle and Hollingsworth’s firms specialize in workers’ compensation claims, while Flores is experienced in issues of health freedom rights.
Flores told The Defender that workers’ compensation is “a much easier system to navigate” than the PREP Act (Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act) of 2005 or the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which are the traditional avenues to submit claims related to vaccine injuries.
Flores said the PREP system is “impossible to get through,” which has led to a situation where “everybody thinks there’s nothing that can be done.” However, he said, “I’ve cited in several places [that] PREP does not preclude workers’ compensation.”
In an Aug. 24 interview with CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD,” Hollingsworth said this means that “if you were mandated to take the COVID vaccine as a condition of employment and you were injured, you are entitled to file a workers’ compensation claim.”
Carlisle noted that the two legal avenues are “not mutually exclusive, it’s not one or the other,” but that workers’ compensation claims are “an avenue that’s a lot easier right now.”
Carlisle also pointed out that workers’ compensation “is a no-fault system” in states like New York, where he is licensed, “so there are a lot fewer hurdles you have to jump through.”
Carlisle said “no-fault” means that employers can’t hide behind claims that the government compelled them to issue a mandate:
“That’s not a defense … It’s no-fault. I don’t have to prove it’s anyone’s fault. I don’t have to prove Pfizer was negligent. I don’t have to prove the employer was negligent.
“All I have to do [is] to prove that they were within the course and scope of their employment and they got injured and that their vaccination relates to that injury. That’s it.”
Hollingsworth, in a May 23 presentation, explained that employees also can file workers’ compensation claims in situations where, even without an explicit mandate, an employee faced “coercion, exclusion, discrimination,” where they were “ostracized by their co-workers or it was strongly suggested that they get the vaccine.”
“I believe you would be able to show … causation there, whether your employer requested you to have it, mandated or not,” Hollingsworth said.
Many different types of injuries can be considered work-related, as long as “employment is the main factor that exposes him or her to the situation that caused the injury,” Hollingsworth said, adding that some states, such as California, often liberally construe facts in favor of the injured worker.
Hollingsworth also said case law has often recognized compensation for aggravation of “pre-existing non-industrial issues related to … vaccination,” such as if the vaccine “aggravated a pre-existing autoimmune disorder or pre-existing heart condition.”
Employees also sometimes can make claims of psychological and emotional distress.
“You’re allowed treatment and in other cases, additional compensation for any psychological damage as a result of said injuries,” Hollingsworth said. “If you’re having any kind of physical reaction to a vaccination, like an anaphylactic shock or any other kind of subsequent injury, we could even go as far as to allege emotional distress.”
He added:
“Many [claimants] didn’t want to get the vaccination and were told they were going to be terminated. It caused severe emotional distress for them to have to choose between injecting themselves or not wanting to take the shot.”
Cumulative adverse health effects, such as “a large buildup of toxicity,” resulting from multiple vaccinations and boosters also could form the basis for a claim, said Hollingsworth in the May presentation, as could secondary injuries, such as falling and getting injured after fainting, if the vaccination caused the initial fainting.
Carlisle told The Defender, “This is a workers’ compensation claim … it’s not a lawsuit. It’s a claim for benefits that you’re entitled to. That’s why you don’t have to prove negligence. You don’t have to prove fault. Anything you do in workers’ compensation will not exclude you from pursuing other avenues of justice.”
Hollingsworth said such claims are “just starting to roll in” as “people are becoming aware of their rights under workers’ compensation.”
Carlisle, who filed two such cases, said soon after mandates were implemented, he had tweeted a warning to employers that they might be liable for workers’ compensation claims in the future. “At the time, I think 10 people saw [that tweet],” he said.
However, “a million people have viewed” his Nov. 4 tweet about his first workers’ compensation hearing against an employer-mandated vaccine: “The judge found sufficient evidence to proceed. Trial set for January.”
Conversely, navigating other avenues of justice has proven challenging for the overwhelming majority of claimants.
Describing it as “a dead end,” Flores told The Defender there have been only six claims approved for payment under the CICP, or Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program. All of them were for vaccine injuries, and payment in all cases is pending a review of eligible expenses.
Appearing on CHD.TV in August, Flores said, “Workers’ compensation is considered your primary avenue at the beginning of a work-related vaccine injury … the PREP Act is considered a last resort.”
The standard of evidence is much higher in PREP Act cases as compared to workers’ compensation cases, Flores said.
“PREP cases can only be filed in Washington, D.C., District Court in the event of serious injury or death and when willful misconduct can be alleged,” Flores said.
However, before you can file a lawsuit in district court, you have to first file a claim with the CICP, then wait 240 days. If you reject the CICP offer, or don’t hear back, then you can file in D.C. District court — but only if there is serious bodily injury or death and you can prove willful misconduct.
Flores said the PREP Act covers COVID-19 vaccine injury claims, as this act “is only for emergency medical countermeasures.” He added, “so everything falls under the PREP Act if there’s any injury.”
This makes a workers’ compensation claim more attractive for most vaccine injury victims, Flores said. “If you file a workers’ compensation claim, not only does the claim get started, there are initial payments that start being made right out of the gate.”
Hollingsworth said he and other workers’ compensation attorneys “work on contingency, so it doesn’t cost anything to file.” He told CHD.TV viewers in August that it’s a “no-lose situation” for applicants.
“The attorneys taking the case, at least here in California, charge anywhere between 15-18%, sometimes up to 20% at some firms if it’s a very complex case that drags on, but usually it’s 15%,” Hollingsworth said. “There’s no upfront fee, there’s no filing fee, there’s no cost deducted from your recovery. It’s all paid for by the insurance carrier. So there’s really no reason not to file [a claim] if you’re injured.”
File workers’ compensation claims as quickly as possible, attorneys say
Hollingsworth told The Defender that, in many states, such as California, potential applicants have one year from the date of knowledge of their injury to file a claim with their employer. In New York, however, the statute of limitations is two years, Carlisle said.
In his May presentation, Hollingsworth explained the importance of filing workers’ compensation claims early. “You want to file a claim immediately. Oftentimes, many issues come up as to communicating your injury to your supervisor or as a liability issue. If you don’t communicate the injury right away … it could be a basis for denial.”
This is applicable even in cases where the adverse effects following vaccination are minor, as this may still help a future claim.
“Most people suffer just soreness in the arm or swelling or redness,” Hollingsworth said. “If you’re having any of those, I would probably advise filing something just to get it acknowledged immediately that there was an issue, so that if there is a more significant injury further down the road, at least acknowledge that you had a reaction at the outset of any kind.”
According to Carlisle, this is because most states specify a shorter period of time to report injuries to an employer:
“In New York and … probably a lot of states, you’ve got 30 days to provide notice of the injury. That doesn’t mean you’re bringing a claim. It just means you’ve got to tell your employer, ‘I took this shot, you made me take it, and now I’m missing time from work.’ That satisfies your notice requirement.”
Carlisle said it’s best to provide notice in writing, and there are other advantages to promptly reporting an injury to employers.
“If the employer pays what we call an advance payment of compensation, if they pay for your lost time or they pay for your medical, then that tolls the statute,” meaning that the statute of limitations is frozen, Carlisle said.
According to Hollingsworth, employers are required to disclose information about workers’ compensation to employees when an injury is reported:
“If you bring it up to your employer … and the employer tells you to pound sand and they don’t provide you the requisite claim form that they’re required to under the law, that tolls the statute of limitations.
“It’s usually very easy to overcome the statute of limitations in workers’ compensation. That doesn’t mean you should sit on your rights forever. But it shouldn’t be a deterrent from at least attempting to bring a claim.”
Workers’ compensation cases move faster than civil litigation
Speaking to CHD.TV in August, Hollingsworth said the average workers’ compensation case lasts between one-and-a-half and two-and-a-half years. Cases sometimes run longer though, “especially if there’s a lengthy course of medical history.”
Cases can sometimes be processed quickly, however. Carlisle said his first COVID-19 vaccine injury client came to him in September, and the first hearing in that case was held a month later.
He described the typical process:
“If it’s controverted, you’re going to be in front of a judge within about a month. If you don’t show medical, the board’s not going to schedule a hearing until you have a medical report that says ‘this individual was injured and I think it’s related to X.’ It’s a pretty low standard. The standard is sufficient medical to proceed.
“If you have sufficient medical to proceed, you’re going to get in front of a judge. The judge will then direct the insurance carrier to get their own opinion [within 30-45 days]. If their doctor says that it’s related, then we’re done … But if their doctor says it’s not related, then we depose the doctors. That takes another couple of months. Then we get a decision from a judge.”
After this, said Carlisle, an appeals process may follow.
“If either side wants to appeal, you could be waiting up to a year for the board panel to give you a decision. And if either party wants to appeal that to a full board panel, you’re looking at another six months to get that second decision.”
Further appeals could add six months to a year.
“I’d say at the far end, you’re looking at about 18 months before you’re going to get a final decision from the full board. But oftentimes people stop even just at that, the regular board panel level.”
During this process, claimants are entitled to benefits, Hollingsworth told CHD.TV:
“Workers’ compensation is administrative law, so there’s no jury trial, it’s all bench trials. You litigate in front of an administrative law judge. You’re entitled to certain benefits, and they’re pretty much the same in every state: you can receive medical treatment to cure or relieve the illness or injury that you have.
“Once your claim is accepted, that’s paid for by the workers’ compensation insurance, you’re entitled to two years of temporary disability in California [but] that may vary by state.”
In his May presentation, Hollingsworth outlined the early stages of the legal process:
“[There’s a] claim form that gives employers legal notice that you are filing a work injury claim, which starts tolling some of the time limits for investigation, denial, delay … In California, we have a 90-day period to investigate the claim.
“Once the form is received, employers and insurance must provide initial treatment of up to $10,000 while the investigation takes place and/or until the claim is denied or delayed. Oftentimes, there’s an employer-level investigation … If their claim is denied or delayed, we have what’s called the agreed medical evaluation.”
Hollingsworth also described the medical process:
“There’s a medical-legal process whereby a doctor determines causation. If your case is denied, you can pick any treating physician you want to evaluate you and give a medical opinion as to whether the vaccination caused your injury or not.
“Then there’s … a qualifying medical evaluator process … where the parties select a state-appointed doctor in a particular specialty — we’re trying to use allergy medicine doctors here, internal medicine doctors — and they write a medical-legal report to establish what caused the injury, the nature of the injury.”
According to Carlisle, the compensation received during this period would cover any medical expenses related to the injury:
“Anything that’s a consequence of the initial injury would be covered medically. So those are the benefits that you receive in [workers’ compensation cases] … Any kind of treatment that’s related to your claim, the insurance carrier pays 100%. There’s no out-of-pocket expenses for the claimant.
“And if something develops down the road that’s a consequence of the original injury, like say you were on your way to a medical appointment and you got in a car accident, they consider that a consequential injury. Then anything that happened in that car accident is a consequence.”
Lost time from work is also covered during this period, said Carlisle.
“Any time you have to lose time from work because of your injury, you’re entitled to lost time,” he said. “There’s a formula to figure out how much you get paid, but it’s all based on what you were getting paid when you were working.”
Hollingsworth told The Defender that temporary disability payments are also made during this period:
“Most states have a temporary disability program for up to 104 weeks. So you get two years of temporary disability. So if you can’t work or if you had to retire or you’re so sick that you can’t work, you’re entitled to two years of temporary disability, which [in California] is two-thirds of your wages to a maximum of $1,500 a week … tax-free for up to two years while you’re dealing with your injury or until a doctor declares that you’ve reached your maximum medical improvement.”
In his May presentation, Hollingsworth said this period could be extended:
“You can’t get it longer than 104 weeks [unless] you have … a severe condition … we have passed exceptions for amputations, chronic or severe conditions, hepatitis B and C — which has been shown to possibly be caused by vaccination — severe burns, HIV, eye injuries, chemical burns and pulmonary fibrosis.”
Also, depending on the circumstances, temporary disability can ultimately lead to the issuance of a permanent disability benefit.
“Permanent disability is a percent of your whole-person impairment,” Hollingworth said. “If you have 70% permanent disability and above, this would possibly qualify you for a life pension. When you get a final report from all the doctors, you’re going to get a permanent disability rating for your injuries.”
These permanent disability benefits may cover new health issues that arise in the future. “If you need medication for your heart to continue working or you need a heart transplant down the road or something, this is something that they’re going to be on the hook for,” Hollingsworth said.
Carlisle noted that, in New York at least, there also is the possibility to settle the case, where both parties would then “look at the lifetime value of the claim” and then “either close out the indemnity, or just the medical or just the indemnity or both, and in that case, claimants would be looking at a lump sum recovery … by virtue of a settlement.”
Families who lost a loved one because of vaccine injury, where the vaccine was mandated by the employer, may apply for workers’ compensation death benefits, Hollingsworth said.
In California, the death benefit is $320,000 for an individual with two dependents, and $250,000 for an unmarried person with no dependents.
In his May presentation, Hollingsworth said that in California, this benefit is paid out as “two-thirds of your average weekly wage” but “oftentimes people want to settle for a lump sum, depending on the nature of the case, which is often discounted at present value.” He added that families would be “entitled to funeral and burial expenses.”
According to Hollingsworth, “Every state has workers’ compensation laws and employers are required by law in most states to have workers’ compensation insurance” and “it is illegal for employers to discriminate based on work injury.”
Claimants concerned that their employer will retaliate if they file a claim have protected status under the law, Hollingsworth told CHD.TV in August:
“Retaliation is oftentimes something we see that people are hesitant to file their workers’ compensation claims because they are afraid their employer is going to then terminate them. If they do that based on your workers’ compensation filing status as an injured worker, they would be subject to a wrongful termination lawsuit, a discrimination lawsuit as well on top of that, whereby you can get reinstated to your job if you get terminated.”
For federal employees, there is a separate federal worker’s compensation system. “The federal government is a little bit more difficult to navigate and less likely to be successful [because] they’re the ones mandating it all,” Hollingsworth said, “and finding an attorney for that unfortunately is going to be difficult.”
For state and local government employees, some localities may be self-insured and handle their own claims, in which case “they’re entitled to the same benefits you would get if you worked for a private entity,” he said.
How do you find a suitable attorney for your workers’ compensation claim?
Hollingsworth, speaking to CHD.TV in August 2022, emphasized the importance of hiring an attorney who specializes in workers’ compensation law, stating “You want to really make sure that they only specialize in workers’ compensation, as other attorneys aren’t really familiar with how workers’ compensation works.”
During the same broadcast, Flores said that such firms typically accept most cases. “One of the good things about finding a firm is that workers’ compensation — as opposed to other types of law — chances are the firm is going to take your case,” he said, “although with the vaccine injury, there may be a bit of a hurdle to jump over.”
In the same broadcast, Hollingsworth also advised the public to ensure that, during any workers’ compensation hearings, “an attorney is handling your case and not a hearing representative,” noting that vaccine-related cases are “contentious” and require “someone that knows the law, that’s experienced.”
Flores referred to legal resources compiled by Children’s Health Defense, including locating attorneys in their state who handle workers’ compensation cases (see attorney search engine, find legal help and find a lawyer by practice area and state), and also emphasized the importance of educating lawyers on such issues, telling The Defender :
“The more information that we have available to the injured party or to the attorneys, then that will reverberate so that they’re not going to turn away the business. That’s another benefit of what we’re trying to do, to educate the lawyers as well.”
What about finding a doctor to back up your claim?
A significant obstacle often reported by vaccine injury victims — including some interviewed by The Defender — is locating a doctor willing to draw a connection between their symptoms and their vaccination in their diagnosis.
Carlisle told The Defender, “That’s going to be the biggest hurdle, just finding those doctors.” The second “tricky part,” he said, is that “they have to be licensed by the Workers’ Compensation Board in order to get reimbursement from the insurance carrier.”
Hollingsworth also recognized this obstacle but said he believes the tide is changing. He told CHD.TV in August:
“In terms of workers’ compensation … there are a lot of doctors who are afraid to come forward who do believe in what we’re doing, but that’s changing. Even doctors that are skeptical, who were on the other side, are seeing such an influx of young injured people coming to their practices, especially the internal medicine doctors, the heart doctors … we’re seeing a changing of the tide.”
Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis support Hollingsworth’s assertion that there is a growing number of vaccine injury victims. The data indicate a significant increase in disability claims in 2021 and 2022.
The number of disabled individuals in the U.S. hovered between 29.974 million in April 2016 and 30.612 million in April 2017, while the number of disabled persons in the workforce ranged between 5.811 million in October 2015 and 6.335 million in June 2017.
By October 2021, these figures increased to 31.195 million and 6.987 million, respectively. And by October 2022, the figures were 32.819 million and 7.797 million.
According to American Progress, quoting BLS data, the number of non-disabled people in the civilian population and in the workforce decreased in 2021.
American Progress and other media blamed the increase in disabled workers on “long COVID,” but previous analysis featured by The Defender demonstrated that disability claims in 2021 and 2022 corresponded with vaccination peaks one to two months prior.
Educating doctors about vaccine injuries is key, Hollingsworth said:
“We have to help educate them to the risks associated with the vaccines, and I think that is going to take a little time and could be a difficult hurdle to overcome … Physicians do not want to admit that’s a potential possibility, although I am starting to get more people telling me that they are starting to acknowledge it.”
Hollingsworth highlighted state medical boards as an obstacle for doctors who recognize that some of their patients are vaccine-injured:
“Part of the reason why [doctors are] having a hard time is because of the medical boards that have been coming down against doctors speaking out about the COVID vaccines.
“We have in California here a law that passed saying that doctors can be disciplined for ‘COVID misinformation,’ whatever that means. Doctors are worried that they’re going to lose their license or have some kind of disciplinary action taken if they say that the vaccine caused an injury.”
However, Hollingsworth said he believes there are doctors who would be cooperative with patients who seek to file workers’ compensation claims.
“I think that as things move forward, there are more and more doctors that have no choice but to acknowledge what’s happening and will be advocates,” he said.
During his May presentation, Hollingsworth also advised those seeking to file a claim to visit an independent doctor instead of working with a doctor in major medical systems, such as California’s Kaiser Permanente, who “more likely than not is going to look for a way not to find [a claim] work-related for whatever internal political reasons.”
Hollingsworth also advised claimants to pay particular attention to their medical records, because “medical reporting is something that is so poorly done and can often be fatal to your case because of such negligence,” adding that once a mistake enters one’s records, “it’s hard to get it changed.”
Carlisle is compiling a list of cooperative doctors and invites others to join. “Doctors, if you’re willing to give an honest causal relationship opinion, please let me know. I’ll add you to the list of doctors people can find.”
Pressuring employers and insurers to discourage future mandates
For Hollingsworth, workers’ compensation claims serve a dual purpose: not only do they represent an effort to get a degree of compensation and justice for those who were injured by mandated vaccines, but they also are intended to pressure employers and insurers.
He said:
“Through some strategy of a mass filing of injury claims for workers’ compensation, hopefully it will get the attention of insurance companies and therefore employers.
“Large employers specifically will take notice if people start filing these claims and then hopefully maybe rethink some of the mandatory vaccination policies they may have if it hits them in the pocketbook.”
He added his hope that this pressure would lead them to reconsider future mandates.
Carlisle told The Defender :
“I’d like to show people that there are consequences for fascism. The merger of state and corporate power is something we should all be very concerned about. If you just go along with what the state tells you to do and then all of a sudden you’re the one holding the bag for the liability, I sincerely hope it’s a wake-up call.
“That’s absolutely the strategy here, to get people to stand up and assert their rights and to get employers to realize, ‘if I go along with this, if I don’t stand up to the government, if I impose these mandates myself, I’m opening up myself to liability that the government’s not going to indemnify me for, and certainly not Pfizer and certainly not Moderna.’”
According to Flores, the added benefit, regardless of the outcome, is that the employer’s workers’ compensation premiums are going to go up,” likely compelling employers to reconsider mandatory vaccination in the future.
Remarking on the possibility that employers, once hit with workers’ compensation claims and higher insurance premiums, will then turn around and sue the government or the vaccine manufacturers, Carlisle said this might be a possibility, in addition to lobbying efforts to develop a compensation fund.
Carlisle told The Defender :
“I’m going to think that they’ll absolutely try … I would say their chances of success against Pfizer and Moderna are probably not so great, but against the government, I think if there are enough people … that say, ‘hey, you guys did this to us, you put us in this position, you’re going to have to set up some kind of fund’.
“I anticipate, honestly, that lobbyists are going to go to [the state] and they’re going to [lobby for] some kind of vaccine injury fund to compensate all these people that were required to take the jab by virtue of governmental mandates.”
Ultimately, we are in “uncharted waters” according to Hollingsworth, who said the workers’ compensation system has never been tested on a “vaccination that’s being forced en masse upon employees.”
He told CHD.TV that, as a result, “Especially at the outset, these are going to be hard-fought cases because the ramifications of a mass filing of workers’ compensation claims with severe injury is going to be devastating to these employers and insurers.”
Hollingsworth told The Defender that this process “is going to take time” but as “more people are communicating . . . , the more people start to suffer from injury, over time I think you’re going to see an increase in people filing.”
However, one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome, he said, is “human cognitive dissonance,” as “we have an idea of what vaccinations are … and that they’re safe and effective. The rhetoric has been pounded into people’s heads for so long where you’re having to overcome their own individual cognitive dissonance.”
He added:
“A lot of people aren’t sure if they were injured or not. They don’t know what’s causing it. The doctor gaslights them and tells them ‘it was something else’ … Don’t be afraid to second-guess the doctors or the information. Just keep reaching out until you find someone that knows what they’re talking about.”
The information provided does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. All information, content and materials are for general informational purposes only. This may not constitute the most up-to-date legal information. Please contact a qualified workers’ compensation attorney in your state to obtain advice with respect to any work-related legal matter without delay.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Do not underestimate the Swiss diligence
By Andreas Oehler | Live To Fight Another Day | November 14, 2022
The detail-oriented Swiss are taking their medical establishment to task in a big way for authorizing and administering the Covid-19 mRNA jabs, in a formal criminal complaint.
“That is what the criminal complaint against Swissmedic is about” (SRF, 2022.11.14):
That’s what it’s all about: On July 14, 2022, a lawyer submitted a 300-page criminal complaint to the responsible cantonal public prosecutor’s office on behalf of six people allegedly injured by mRNA vaccinations. It is directed against three representatives of the Swiss licensing and supervisory authority for medicinal products and medical devices (Swissmedic) and five vaccinating doctors from the Inselspital in Bern. A criminal investigation is to be opened against them. The lawyer has now gone public with a media conference.
These are the plaintiffs: The lawyer for those affected, Philipp Kruse, is a declared opponent of vaccination and Covid measures. He represented people who refused to wear masks or parents who didn’t want their children to take part in pool tests. Doctors who were noticed as corona skeptics also appeared at the media conference.
This is what the indictment says: The defendants are accused of violating basic drug law due diligence by allowing and administering the Covid 19 vaccination. There are a number of other charges listed, including intentional or possibly negligent bodily harm, endangering life, killing and abortion.
These are the alleged damages: According to lawyer Kruse, the damages range from circular hair loss, derailment of the menstrual cycle to polyarthritis, muscle weakness and chronic exhaustion to the death of a 20-year-old person. Some of the six victims listed are still unable to work. The connection to the Covid 19 vaccination was confirmed by experts in five cases. In the case of the deceased, the causal connection must be proven on the basis of pathological examinations. However, these investigations are not yet complete.
What Swissmedic says: Nothing. Swissmedic does not want to comment on the ongoing court proceedings. The Federal Office of Public Health and the Federal Vaccination Commission also do not want to comment.
What may fly under the radar in other countries, in terms of the lack of accountability and responsibility for Covid-19 jabbing injuries, is unlikely to pass muster in Switzerland. The Swiss pride themselves on being OBJECTIVE, diligent, thorough and just. Because of these very high public expectations, it is impossible to sweep under the carpet, gaslight, or outright ignore the laws on the books over there, let’s hope:
It is about these articles of the Medicines Act
Art. 3 Duty of care 1 Anyone who handles medicinal products must take all the necessary measures based on the current state of science and technology to ensure that the health of humans and animals is not endangered.
Chapter 8: Penal Provisions Art. 86233 Crimes and misdemeanors 1 Anyone who willfully: a. manufactures, places on the market, uses, prescribes medicinal products without the necessary authorization or authorization, contrary to the terms and conditions associated with an authorization or authorization or contrary to the due diligence obligations stipulated in Articles 3, 7, 21, 22, 26, 29 and 42, imports, exports or trades abroad; (…).
Link to the Medicines Act .
Also of note here is that Swissmedic is the key conduit of the global vaccination programmes in partnership with Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation and WHO, and also FDA.
Good luck in court!
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | November 10, 2022
The conversation is exploding across Europe as politicians and media raise the alarm about record excess mortality rates in 2022. Why are so many non-Covid related deaths happening now?
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | November 10, 2022
Obstetrician, Dr. James Thorp, and Postpartum Nurse, Michelle Gershman, speak out about unprecedented elevation of reproductive and pregnancy complications that have been reported that directly coincide with the Covid-19 vaccine rollout.
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | November 15, 2022
Anyone following the news cycle since the Covid “vaccines” rolled out has seen a simply remarkable uptick in the number of things that can reportedly cause sudden strokes or heart attacks.
Cold weather, hot weather, depression, various food, long covid AND short covid, new magical chemicals just found in the atmosphere, “post-pandemic stress disorder”, undiagnosed aortic stenosis and expensive electricity.
That’s not even an exhaustive list, it just goes on and on and on.
… and now we can add pollution to the rogues gallery, according to this piece from Science Alert, which headlines:
Tiny Particles in The Air May Trigger Sudden Heart Attacks, Study Suggests
On a similar theme, the Daily Mail headlined yesterday:
America’s growing wildfire crisis could lead to a wave of heart attacks, lung disease and cancer diagnoses years down the line, scientists warn
Now, we don’t need to break down these articles piece by piece, it’s perfectly apparent what’s happening here.
The Covid vaccines are either causing more heart attacks, or the people in charge are aware they might, and are prepping fall-back stories accordingly.
We predicted that would be an ongoing story this year back in January, and they haven’t disappointed.
The new wrinkle here is working pollution and wildfires into the narrative, and associating heart attack risk with environmentalism and climate change.
This provides fuel for the metamorphosis of “climate change” from an environmental issue into a public health issue, allowing them to talk about it the same way they talk about “Covid”, and perhaps treat it the same way too (climate lockdowns etc.)
This is classic narrative braiding, the practice of intertwining two separate propaganda narratives together so they reinforce each other.
I coined the term, just this moment, but it’s the perfect metaphor.
It’s beautifully efficient, really. The vaccine-associated heart attacks provide evidence that “climate change” is a public health problem, while “climate change” can be used to conceal the vaccine-associated heart attacks.
Covering up something they caused with something they invented, and propping up something they invented with something they caused.
Clever in theory, but rather transparent in practice.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky Tweeting Counterfactuals with Intent
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | November 10, 2022
CDC Director, Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, for the record, continues to make false claims about the COVID-19 vaccine boosters with the apparent motivation of getting more Americans “fully vaccinated.” This is in the backdrop of an 8.4% rate of Americans over age 5 taking one of them.[i]
No matter how hard the internal pressure is at the CDC to get a “needle in every arm,” what would be such a strong motivation for Walensky to blatantly deceive Americans with such obvious counterfactual information?
She states “COVID-19 vaccines may not prevent every infection (as apparent in her personal case), but they do provide us important protection against severe illness, hospitalization, and death…”
In order for that claim to be valid by US regulations, a COVID-19 vaccine would need to reduce the risk of adjudicated COVID-19 hospitalization and death as a primary endpoint in a prospective, double blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial. The benefit would need to be meaningful, e.g., ~20% relative risk reduction, and statistically significant, e.g., p<0.05. The conclusive study should have no significant threats to validity such as loss to follow-up. There has been no pivotal randomized trial, and no one can claim COVID-19 vaccines reduce hospitalization and death. The shortest section on the FDA Pfizer Fact Sheet is the “Benefits” section! This is given with the consent form and makes no claims about severity, hospitalization, and death.[ii]
She goes on to promote a two-month period between the last injection (presumably legacy mRNA) and the new bivalent vaccine. This schedule has never been tested and demonstrated to be safe in human beings. Even more shocking, the bivalent boosters which failed in animal studies to stop Omicron, have never been tested for safety or efficacy in human RCTs with clinical outcomes. In academic medicine and the pharmaceutical regulatory community, the question is WHY does Walensky cross the line into making false claims, an illegal act for fully FDA approved and marketed drugs/vaccines? Only senate or congressional hearings with direct questions will get the truth out of her.
Here are some possibilities: 1) she is following orders from higher governmental authorities, 2) she knows the claims are false but truly believes the only way for vaccination to work is to keep everyone vaccinated on a continuous basis no matter what the costs, 3) she is in a form of a trance or psychological state driven by fear in herself and for humanity where COVID-19 vaccination has become like a talisman with special powers and cannot be challenged. Indeed, Walensky has never comprehensively discussed safety of COVID-19 vaccination, and she has not disclosed who should NOT take a COVID-19 vaccine. So, the next time someone in your circles claims you or your loved one should take a COVID-19 vaccine to be “safe” or “protected” from serious outcomes, ask them to take a look at the consent fact sheet and read the tiny benefit section.
[i] CDC COVID Tracker, Accessed November 9, 2022
[ii] VACCINE INFORMATION FACT SHEET FOR RECIPIENTS AND CAREGIVERS ABOUT COMIRNATY (COVID-19 VACCINE, mRNA), THE PFIZER-BIONTECH COVID-19 VACCINE, AND THE PFIZER-BIONTECH COVID-19 VACCINE, BIVALENT (ORIGINAL AND OMICRON BA.4/BA.5) TO PREVENT CORONAVIRUS DISEASE 2019 (COVID-19) FOR USE IN INDIVIDUALS 12 YEARS OF AGE AND OLDER, August 22, 2022
Dr Mike Yeadon – Let’s not put a Gloss on It. The COVID death shots Is Medical Murder
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 8, 2022
Southern California’s Orange County Health Department this month declared a local health emergency over concerns around the rising number of pediatric cases of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).
County officials also declared a Proclamation of Local Emergency, allowing them to access state and federal resources in response to the spread of RSV.
The news came amid media warnings of a looming “tripledemic” of RSV, influenza and COVID-19 and news that Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) are close to securing regulatory approval for their RSV vaccine candidates — including Pfizer’s RSV vaccine for pregnant women.
RSV was first identified in 1956, and frequently affects children, with a majority of childhood cases occurring before age 2. For most children, symptoms are similar to those of the common cold, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
It can, however, cause serious symptoms in the very young and the elderly, although childhood deaths are infrequent, according to CDC data.
According to California attorney Rita Barnett-Rose, there’s no evidence to support claims that Orange County hospitals are overextended, or to justify a state of emergency.
In an interview with The Defender, Barnett-Rose drew parallels between Orange County’s emergency declaration for RSV and other state, local and federal emergency declarations for COVID-19:
“One of the other alarming things that happened with COVID is when [Gov. Gavin] Newsom declared the state of emergency in COVID. He also waived the 30 and 60-day review periods for all local governing boards.
“So, yeah, so that’s what everyone is concerned about, this perpetual state of emergency.
“And the other thing that it triggers is it asks, once they declare a state of emergency, aside from getting the funding, it also triggers a request to Governor Newsom to declare a statewide state of emergency and then also to have Newsom ask President Biden to declare a national state of emergency.”
That could lead to Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of RSV vaccines, according to Barnett-Rose, who told The Defender there may be an avenue to challenge the legality of the latest Orange County emergency declaration.
Is pharma using the COVID playbook to push RSV vaccines?
Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, Orange County’s health officer, said in a press release county officials issued the declaration due to “rapidly spreading virus infections causing record numbers of pediatric hospitalizations and daily emergency room visits.”
The declaration will allow the county to access state and federal resources and to allow non-pediatric hospitals to offer beds to sick children, Chinsio-Kwong said.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) California Chapter notes that this declaration was unanimously ratified “over the objections by members of the public who showed up to speak against the declarations.”
Dr. Melaine Patterson, chief nursing officer for Children’s Health Orange County, said area hospitals are seeing an “unprecedented” volume of children visiting their emergency rooms — approximately 400 per day, with wait times of “four to 12 hours.”
She also said that, as of Nov. 1, there were 285 patients in her hospital, compared to 188 on that date last year, adding that 11 of those current patients were placed in ICU as a result of RSV infections. RSV cases also are on the rise nationally.
Chinsio-Kwong advised the public to remain “up to date with other vaccinations such as flu and COVID-19” to “reduce the burden on hospitals this fall and winter.”
“Our best shot at protecting ourselves and our children from respiratory illnesses continues to be the same things we practiced throughout the pandemic including the use of masks when indoors around others and staying home when you are sick,” Chinsio-Kwong said.
However, Barnett-Rose said hospitals in Orange County may be overextended not due to an unusually high number of admissions, but due to unvaccinated staff having been let go.
She told The Defender :
“I do think that has a big role in it, and a lot of people pointed that out during the hearings and public comments were made about that.
“They were trying to claim … there were not enough pediatric experts or pediatric-trained doctors and medical professionals, so they needed to go outside of the county. And I do think a big part of that is that they did let go of many pediatric nurses and pediatric physicians that refused to take the vaccines. So I do think that this is a crisis of their own making … if there is even a crisis.”
San Diego County also issued a warning to its residents Nov. 4 over rising RSV cases but stopped short of declaring an emergency.
CHD California questioned why Orange County would declare a “Local Health Emergency” now — even though local COVID-19 states of emergency haven’t been lifted.
Despite claims that the purpose of these new declarations is exclusively meant to help county hospitals, CHD California said, “the language of the emergency Resolutions says something else entirely”:
“Both the Resolution to ratify the Local Health Emergency under Health & Safety Code section 101080 and the Proclamation of a Local Emergency under Government Code section 8630 declare the need for these local emergencies not only based on the asserted need to handle allegedly rising cases of RSV — but also because of other unnamed ‘other respiratory illnesses’ that were not discussed during the special meeting or otherwise disclosed to the public.”
Barnett-Rose provided insights into the legal meaning underlying these declarations. She told The Defender :
“There’s a local health emergency, which is declared by the public health officer as opposed to the [county] board … and that is when the health officer says … ‘I’ve been talking to the hospitals and we’ve done some assessments and there’s an increasing rate of respiratory illnesses and the children’s hospitals, and so, because of this, I am asking to declare a local health emergency.’ …
“But her authority to declare a local health emergency only lasts for seven days unless it’s ratified by our board of supervisors. And so, on Nov. 2, our board ratified that, which means now it’s in place and it needs to be renewed or looked at every 30 days, unless Governor Newsom waives that condition.”
CHD California argued that the “overly broad language used in these emergency declarations should be deeply concerning to anyone wary of a repeat of the “public health” measures ordered under COVID-19,” noting that adding the vague statement referring to “other respiratory viruses” creates “plenty of room for further abuse.”
Barnett-Rose told The Defender that, during the Nov. 2 meeting, Chinsio-Kwong said, “No restrictions are currently [emphasis added] in place,” a statement that “caused … a little bit of an uproar during the hearing because of her wording, which suggests that indeed they may end up rolling out mask mandates or some other mandates.”
Under this type of “slippery language,” argued CHD California, even the common cold could be used to issue an emergency declaration.
Barnett-Rose agreed:
“How do you measure that? How do you dispute it? How do you examine it? How do you end it?
“If you’re going by one infectious disease, at least you can try to find some data on hospitalizations or cases or deaths or ICU beds. But when it’s everything, it can still include COVID, flu, cold, COPD, a whole bunch of things that would qualify as respiratory illnesses.”
Barnett-Rose said that attempts will be made to legally challenge these declarations as “overbroad,” noting, however, that while case law precedent exists to challenge overbroad legislation, there is no such precedent in place for states of emergency.
Barnett-Rose she’s looking into whether there’s some way to litigate against these broad states of emergency.
When statutes are overbroad, she said, sometimes you can challenge them for being overley broad or too vague, but she’s not sure if there’s a similar precedent for challenging an overly broad state of emergency.
Declaring a local state of emergency at the county level could trigger a chain of events leading all the way to a national declaration of emergency, according to CHD California:
“By ratifying and/or declaring these local emergencies, the Board has now triggered an official request to Governor Newsom that he also declare a state-wide state of emergency on the same overly broad basis — and to ask the President of the United States to declare a national state of emergency.”
“A nationally declared state of emergency may trigger all of the same measures that have already deeply divided our country: masks on airplanes, business and school closures, and coercive school and employee mandates for experimental ‘vaccines’ offered as the ‘only solution’ back to Freedom,” CHD California argued.
Barnett-Rose said the emergency declaration in Orange County may be tied to the fact that there are multiple RSV vaccines already in the pipeline:
“The reason this is becoming really huge news is because this is what happened with the COVID state of emergency, too, it kind of went like that in dominoes.
“Once Biden declares a national state of emergency, then that triggers all of the emergency use authorizations that allowed the so-called vaccines for COVID. And I’m sure you already know that there’s vaccines in the works now for RSV that they’re floating out there in the news as well.”
Recounting events that occurred in relation to COVID-19, Barnett-Rose told The Defender that Orange County and some other counties in California declared a state of emergency, “then it went to the state, then it went national, and then, of course, once there’s a national emergency, you can go into Iowa.”
“So I do think that this is very suspicious timing, the articles that we are seeing in the news about being close to this RSV vaccine,” Barnett-Rose said. “And so, I do think that they’re trying to repeat the same playbook.”
Up to 30 RSV vaccine candidates already in pipeline
Pharmaceutical industry publication FiercePharma reported that Pfizer and GSK “moved closer to regulatory approvals” in the past week, and “could each see the first-ever approvals for an RSV vaccine in 2023.”
GSK’s candidate will be reviewed May 3, 2023, while Pfizer is “eyeing an approval filing by year-end.”
In all, up to 30 RSV candidate vaccines have been identified by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
GSK has secured priority review status for its RSV vaccine following the submission of data from its AReSVi-006 phase 3 trial. The candidate vaccine exclusively targets adults 60 and older, and the data reportedly “showed high overall vaccine efficacy against RSV lower respiratory disease” at a rate of 82.6%, Fierce Biotech reported.
GSK initially intended to develop an RSV vaccine for older adults and for infants, but plans for the latter were shelved due to a “safety concern.” Nevertheless, GSK CEO Emma Walmsley in a call last week with investors described GSK’s new vaccine as “a very significant scientific achievement.”
Previous efforts to develop an RSV vaccine have failed because they “had a persistent tendency to cause worse disease,” due to “a phenomenon known as antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE).”
Dr. Ruth Karron, a pediatrician and professor of international health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, “The difference this year is the general public for the first time is probably eagerly awaiting an RSV vaccine, because they’re seeing firsthand just how much of a problem RSV can be,” in a statement drawing a clear connection with the reported increase in RSV cases this year.
Pfizer announced Nov. 1 that its own candidate RSV vaccine wrapped up its phase 3 trial for efficacy early. Unlike GSK’s candidate vaccine, Pfizer’s vaccine targets pregnant women. The vaccine is designed to be administered early in the third trimester with the intent that the vaccine-induced antibodies be passed from the mother to her newborn.
Pfizer, in its Nov. 1 announcement, claimed that its bivalent RSV prefusion vaccine candidate RSVpreF, also known as PF-06928316, delivered “broadly positive” results — namely, a significant reduction in the rate of respiratory illness in newborns and their mothers.
Pfizer claimed 81.8% efficacy against severe cases of RSV for babies up to three months, and 69.4% efficacy after six months.
Pfizer’s MATISSE (MATernal Immunization Study for Safety and Efficacy) trial involved 7,400 pregnant women and their newborns, tracking the infants for one year following birth, and some for two years. It was conducted in 18 countries beginning in June 2020.
Pfizer’s vaccine trial did not deliver statistically significant results regarding the prevention of infant medical visits caused by RSV, including for non-severe cases.
Nevertheless, Pfizer said there are “no major safety concerns” with its product, adding:
“At the recommendation of the DMC [Data Monitoring Committee], and in consultation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Pfizer has stopped enrollment in the study.
“Based on these positive results Pfizer plans to submit a Biologics License Application (BLA) to the FDA by the end of 2022 for the vaccine candidate followed by other regulatory authorities in the coming months.”
Pfizer’s phase 3 trial data has not yet been vetted by independent experts, and has not been peer-reviewed or published.
On March 2, 2022, Pfizer’s candidate vaccine received a Breakthrough Therapy Designation from the FDA, while previously, in November 2018, the FDA granted it Fast-Track status, according to the Pfizer release.
“Pfizer’s investigational RSV vaccine candidate builds on foundational basic science discoveries including those made at the National Institutes of Health (NIH),” the vaccine maker said in its press release.
The NIH research in question also was “key to the hugely successful COVID-19 vaccines,” according to ABC 7 Los Angeles.
Others looking to develop an RSV vaccine include Moderna and AstraZeneca and Sanofi, in a joint initiative. Moderna received fast-track designation from the FDA on Aug. 3, 2021, for its mRNA-1345 RSV vaccine for older adults, while AstraZeneca and Sanofi are developing a viral vector RSV vaccine by the name of “nirsevimab.”
An August 2021 article in The Defender predicted that RSV would represent the “new frontier for vaccine development,” as pharmaceutical companies would be “lured by the prospect of a large untapped global RSV vaccine market,” leading to a vaccine development “gold rush.”
Media tout benefits, ignore safety concerns
Online news portal Vox described the development of new RSV vaccines as “very, very good news” in a recent article.
Coupled with media coverage about “rising” RSV cases nationwide, it appears the stage is being set to create an emergency in the public consciousness, which could lead to EUAs being granted to the new vaccines and a rush to get the public vaccinated.
Blogger James Roguski, however, called into question the results of the Pfizer phase 3 trial, raising many safety concerns that are indicated in the company’s own data but were downplayed by Pfizer in its public proclamations. In a recent post, he wrote:
“In the Phase II study, researchers found that women who received RSVpreF vaccine containing aluminum hydroxide had a higher incidence of local reactions than those who received RSVpreF vaccine without aluminum hydroxide.
“It seems like 1 of the 117 infants in the placebo group suffered fetal death and 6 infants in the ‘vaccinated’ group are unaccounted for.”
Roguski also highlighted the many adverse events that were recorded for both infants and pregnant mothers who participated in the study, none of which were recorded for the placebo group.
For infants, some of these adverse events included acute respiratory failure, bronchiolitis, cardiac murmur, chordee (bent penis), conjunctival hemorrhage, hypoglycemia, jaundice, low birth weight, neonatal hypoxia, neonatal respiratory failure, seizure, sepsis, upper respiratory tract infection and vascular malformation.
Pregnant women, in turn, experienced adverse events including fetal growth restriction, fetal tachycardia, gestational diabetes, nonreassuring fetal heart rate pattern, premature labor, premature separation of placenta, vaginal hemorrhage and thrombocytopenia.
For some, these safety concerns are conjuring up memories of previously failed attempts to develop an RSV vaccine.
A vaccine tested in 1966 led to the deaths of two toddlers as a result of “enhanced disease symptoms,” while many infants “suffered worse symptoms than usual, and needed to be hospitalized.”
As previously reported by The Defender, RSV itself originated in monkeys housed in a Maryland facility where they were used to conduct polio vaccine research. Remarking on this and the connection to RSV vaccine development today, Brian Hooker, CHD’s chief scientific officer, told The Defender, “It is incredible that the vaccine industry can create a disease — RSV from the polio vaccine — and then create another vaccine to ‘prevent’ that disease. Talk about a business proposition!”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
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BBC – Compiled in 2003
Internment of civilian nationals belonging to opposing sides was carried out in varying degrees by all belligerent powers in World War Two. It was also the fate of those servicemen who found themselves in a neutral country.
At the outbreak of war there were around 80,000 potential enemy aliens in Britain who, it was feared, could be spies, or willing to assist Britain’s enemies in the event of an invasion. All Germans and Austrians over the age of 16 were called before special tribunals and were divided into one of three groups… continue
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