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Is the Real Covid Pharmaceutical Bonanza Just Getting Started?

BY NICHOLAS WILLIAMS | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which is not a manufacturer of a Covid vaccine and thus did not benefit from Covid vaccine sales, recently announced second quarter 2022 results that surpassed expectations. This has enabled an upward adjustment in the profit forecast for the full year 2022. The Telegraph reported that GSK shares are up 44% from last spring.

Sales of GSK’s shingles vaccine, Shingrix, was the main driver of growth. Shingrix sales more than doubled in the second quarter, being April to June 2022, pushing up total GSK sales by 13%.

Shingrix is a relatively new shingles vaccine that my doctor tells me is considered an improvement on Zostervax, the traditional shingles vaccine. However, Shingrix is not cheap. A two dose course in Hong Kong costs £600, in the U.K. £440 and in the U.S. around $300. Allowing for distributor and retail margins, I estimate that GSK’s income would be about one third of the retail price. Let’s assume therefore that GSK earns £150 per two dose course on a worldwide average basis.

According to GSK, sales of Shingrix doubled to £731M, an increase of £366M in one fiscal quarter. At £150 per course, this equates to an unexpected increase in sales and thus vaccine recipients in one fiscal quarter of 2.4 million from the expected quarterly run rate.

When asked the reason for this surprising jump in Shingrix sales, GSK’s CEO stated: “It comes after countries started to shift their focus away from Covid towards other jab campaigns.”

Nobody seems to have questioned this statement. In the period in question, April to June 2022, Covid vaccine programmes were still highly active and indeed many programmes across the world were on to their third or fourth booster.

Though extremely painful, shingles is not life threatening and generally affects people over 50. It affects persons who have previously had chickenpox, often in their childhood, and is triggered mainly by overwork, lack of sleep or similar stress-related reasons. Shingles attacks the nervous system, especially nerve endings, and hence is often intensely painful.

Vaccination against shingles is not routinely given to all over-50s in most countries. Despite this, according to GSK, in the middle of a continuing Covid campaign, countries opted to shift their focus to vaccinating against shingles?

Is this likely? If indeed there was a shift to more usual vaccination programmes, would vaccination against shingles have been prioritised? Additionally, given the cost of this vaccine, and weighing up the public benefit, would most countries or patients really switch to Shingrix from the much cheaper Zostervax?

All of this seems unlikely. So what has driven a 50% increase in sales of a very expensive vaccine not part of the usual standard vaccination programme?

Further, taking the USA as an example, the ratio of Shingrix to Zostervax sales is 50-50.  In most other countries, Shingrix has less than 50% of the market. If 2.4 million people in one quarter had the Shingrix vaccine, how many more had Zostervax? It is not inconceivable that some 5 million more people than usual were vaccinated against shingles in one quarter.

Can this really be explained by countries restarting their normal vaccination programmes, and for no particular reason adding a shingles vaccines into the standard mix?

I may have the answer. In my 50s I twice had shingles. I can vouch for how painful it is. Since then I have had the traditional shingles vaccine jab every few years and had been shingles free for 15 years. I have also consciously improved how I manage my business travel and lifestyle to reduce travel stress and tiredness, which had been the previous drivers in my case.

In March and April 2021 I had my first and second Pfizer Covid jabs. On the day following the second jab I developed a chickenpox like rash and started to experience nerve pain. As I am something of a shingles veteran, I immediately thought “I am getting shingles!” And this is, indeed, what developed quite badly over the next few days.

I rang my doctor who said, “It can’t be shingles, you are vaccinated.” However, after examining me the next day he agreed I was right. I asked what had brought this on? Could it be the Covid jabs? He replied: “I cannot explain why, but it is not likely to be connected to the Covid jab.  Just unfortunate timing.”

My doctor then prescribed the usual medication for shingles and it cleared up in a week or so (for some it can take many weeks). My doctor then suggested I spend £600 having the new and better Shingrix vaccine, “as obviously your body is now immune to the traditional vaccine”. In his defence, this was very early days for assessing vaccine side-effects.

I decided I would not spend £600. Instead, I set about researching on the internet.

Since then it has transpired that shingles is a recognised reaction to the Pfizer vaccine in older people. Shingles is an inflammation of the nerves and nerve endings. The mRNA vaccines are now known to affect the nervous system in a number of different ways. It appears that triggering shingles is one of them (or else it is a result of a temporary depression of the immune system, as some have suggested).

Significantly, my doctor has confirmed he has now had other patients who contracted shingles after Covid vaccination. Most took up his £600 offer of Shingrix. It does not take much to imagine what a multiplier effect such advice and take-up across the world would have on the sales of Shingrix and the profits of GSK.

Something must be happening across the world for sales of an existing single product to double in a quarter by 2.4 million. In the absence of any other new factors, one can conclude that the drive in sales must have been due to one side-effect of the Covid vaccines. Equally one can imagine the booster effect for the makers of Zostervax too.

Whilst not all pharmaceutical companies have produced enormously profitable Covid vaccines, the emerging medical toll, side-effects and general aftermath of these vaccines and lockdowns is only just emerging. I suspect all pharmaceutical companies will now share in a second Covid profits bonanza driven by medications prescribed to deal with the collective aftermath of Covid. GSK has lit the way.

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

Vaccines and National Security

By Ulson Gunnar – New Eastern Outlook – 04.05.2015

One can easily see in the emerging information and cyber war that a nation having its own IT infrastructure, its own hardware, and its own versions of social media platforms is quickly becoming a matter of national security. Without control over these assets, a nation must depend on foreign suppliers for their computers, peripheries and software. Already, this dependence has opened nations up to now evident threats including malware embedded into hardware and software that is otherwise impossible to detect until the damage is already done.

Likewise, a nation’s food supply can and has throughout history, been a source of vulnerability in times of conflict. The inability to grow one’s own food invites blockades and their modern equivalent, sanctions, undermining a nation’s strength and stability and eventually setting the stage for its ultimate demise. Iraq is an example of this.

In the long-term, a nation’s food supply controlled by foreign corporations, particularly in the realm of genetically engineered organisms, can have disastrous effects.  As a nation’s wealth is slowly drained from their shores and into the coffers of corporations like Bayer, Monsanto and Syngenta, inferior, expensive and environmentally devastating crops wreak havoc on the very socioeconomic fabric of a nation. India is increasingly becoming an example of this.

And what of healthcare? Surely the same applies. But even as nations and communities are just now understanding the importance of protecting their food supplies from predatory multinational corporations and the hegemonic ambitions they represent, there seems to be some latency in understanding this likewise in regards to healthcare and in particular pharmaceuticals and vaccines.

The Danger of Big-Pharma’s Vaccines 

Imagine a gang member knocking at your door with a syringe in one hand, demanding you roll up your sleeve and allow him to inject its contents into your bloodstream. Likely there would be no hesitation to call the police and barricade the door until they arrived. Allowing a criminal to inject a substance known or unknown into your body would be an unimaginable risk no sane person would accept.

Now imagine that gang member is wearing a suit, has a multi-million dollar marketing budget, doctors and researchers working for him (paid via an expansive bribery network) and instead of knocking at your door, he invited you to one of his doctors’ offices to receive the injection. What we’ve just done here is describe big-pharma.

Immense pharmaceutical corporations like GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) have been caught numerous times engaged in immense criminality.

In 2012, the London Guardian would report in its article GlaxoSmithKline fined $3bn after bribing doctors to increase drugs sales that:

The pharmaceutical group GlaxoSmithKline has been fined $3bn (£1.9bn) after admitting bribing doctors and encouraging the prescription of unsuitable antidepressants to children. Glaxo is also expected to admit failing to report safety problems with the diabetes drug Avandia in a district court in Boston on Thursday.

The company encouraged sales reps in the US to mis-sell three drugs to doctors and lavished hospitality and kickbacks on those who agreed to write extra prescriptions, including trips to resorts in Bermuda, Jamaica and California.

In early 2014, the London Telegraph would report in its article GlaxoSmithKline ‘bribed’ doctors to promote drugs in Europe, former worker claims that:

GlaxoSmithKline, Britain’s largest drug company, has been accused of bribing doctors to prescribe their medicines in Europe.

Doctors in Poland were allegedly paid to promote its asthma drug, Seretide, under the guise of funding for education programme, a former sales rep has claimed.

Medics were also said to have been paid for lectures in the country which did not take place.

Then in late 2014, the BBC would report in its article GlaxoSmithKline fined $490m by China for bribery that:

China has fined UK pharmaceuticals firm GlaxoSmithKline $490m (£297m) after a court found it guilty of bribery.

The record penalty follows allegations the drug giant paid out bribes to doctors and hospitals in order to have their products promoted.

The court gave GSK’s former head of Chinese operations, Mark Reilly, a suspended three-year prison sentence and he is set to be deported.

These three news stories establish without doubt that an immense pharmaceutical giant, still allowed to conduct business to this very day, has been engaged in systematic, global criminality. The first story regarding its criminal conduct in the United States should be of particular concern, where the pharmaceutical giant encouraged doctors to peddle harmful substances to children. How exactly is that any different than your local pusher?

And it should be alarming to know that GSK is one of several pharmaceutical giants promoting the use of vaccines. Who would trust vaccines produced and peddled by the same corporation convicted multiple times of immense fraud, corruption and the endangerment of children?

But corrupt corporations peddling poison for profits still isn’t the greatest danger. State sanctioned bioweapons masquerading as vaccines is.

South Africa’s Vaccines Against “Being Black” 

3423222The apartheid regime in South Africa infamously waged war on its black population. So intent was the regime on subduing and/or exterminating black communities, its biological warfare program began developing a bioweapon that would infect only blacks, and planned to administer it covertly under the cover of a vaccine program.

The United Nations in a report titled Project Coast: Apartheid’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme would admit:

One example of this interaction involved anti-fertility work. According to documents from RRL [Roodeplaat Research Laboratories], the facility had a number of registered projects aimed at developing an anti-fertility vaccine. This was a personal project of the first managing director of RRL, Dr Daniel Goosen. Goosen, who had done research into embryo transplants, told the TRC that he and Basson had discussed the possibility of developing an anti-fertility vaccine which could be selectively administered—without the knowledge of the recipient. The intention, he said, was to administer it to black South African women without their knowledge.

Unscrupulous corporations with global reach, married to unscrupulous ideologies seeking to covertly kill off entire segments of their population constitutes nightmare scenarios generally confined to the realm of science fiction. However, here are the ingredients, right before our very eyes.

Vaccines and National Security 

It is very clear then, why communities and nations must take control of their healthcare systems entirely. Not a single aspect of it can depend on foreign suppliers any more than national IT infrastructure, the food supply, power production, or military hardware can.

No nation would “outsource” the protection of its head of state to foreigners. Why would they outsource the protection of their people’s health? Dependence on big-pharma has already put countless lives in danger with untold disease, disabilities and death following in the wake of their unhinged global criminality. It should be noted, that despite their rampant criminality, they are all still very much in business, a testament to the unwarranted power and influence their immense profits and the lobbying efforts they purchase has afforded them.

If vaccines are determined to be beneficial to a nation’s population, they should be developed by that nation and administered only by that nation. There should be no multinational pharmaceutical corporations, because no nation should leave their population’s health to the whims of foreign entities who have already demonstrated the well-being of their customers is the least of their concerns.

And while nations taking up this responsibility and pushing out foreign pharmaceutical corporations is a good start, one must still consider the case of South Africa, where a government sought to destroy entire communities within their borders under the guise of vaccination programs. Individual communities and individuals themselves would be wise to think twice before allowing anyone to inject something into their body.

If vaccinations are so important, then the information required to make them should be made open source and all invited to examine how and why they are made and how to make them in community laboratories located at local universities and hospitals. If that can’t be done, then they probably aren’t that important to begin with nor any more legitimate or necessary than the dangerous antidepressants GSK peddled to little children in America, and surely something society could do well without.

August 2, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 1 Comment