Top pathologist Dr. Roger Hodkinson told government officials in Alberta during a zoom conference call that the current coronavirus crisis is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.”
Hodkinson’s comments were made during a discussion involving the Community and Public Services Committee and the clip was subsequently uploaded to YouTube.
Noting that he was also an expert in virology, Hodkinson pointed out that his role as CEO of a biotech company that manufactures COVID tests means, “I might know a little bit about all this.”
“There is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians, it’s outrageous, this is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public,” said Hodkinson.
The doctor said that nothing could be done to stop the spread of the virus besides protecting older more vulnerable people and that the whole situation represented “politics playing medicine, and that’s a very dangerous game.”
Hodkinson remarked that “social distancing is useless because COVID is spread by aerosols which travel 30 meters or so before landing,” as he called for society to be re-opened immediately to prevent the debilitating damage being caused by lockdowns.
Hodkinson also slammed mandatory mask mandates as completely pointless.
“Masks are utterly useless. There is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever,” he said.
“Paper masks and fabric masks are simply virtue signalling. They’re not even worn effectively most of the time. It’s utterly ridiculous. Seeing these unfortunate, uneducated people – I’m not saying that in a pejorative sense – seeing these people walking around like lemmings obeying without any knowledge base to put the mask on their face.”
The doctor also slammed the unreliability of PCR tests, noting that “positive test results do not, underlined in neon, mean a clinical infection,” and that all testing should stop because the false numbers are “driving public hysteria.”
Hodkinson said that the risk of death in the province of Alberta for people under the age of 65 was “one in three hundred thousand,” and that it was simply “outrageous” to shut down society for what the doctor said “was just another bad flu.”
“I’m absolutely outraged that this has reached this level, it should all stop tomorrow,” concluded Dr. Hodkinson.
Hodkinson’s credentials are beyond question, with the MedMalDoctors website affirming his credibility.
“He received his general medical degrees from Cambridge University in the UK (M.A., M.B., B. Chir.) where he was a scholar at Corpus Christi College. Following a residency at the University of British Columbia he became a Royal College certified general pathologist (FRCPC) and also a Fellow of the College of American Pathologists (FCAP).”
“He is in good Standing with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, and has been recognized by the Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta as an expert in pathology.”
In case the above video gets deleted by YouTube, a backup via Bitchute is available here.
So many people sent me versions of this story it would be impossible to thank each individually, but the numbers of people who did so clearly indicate that our “Gizars” are still on top of their game. Indeed, I am blogging about this story because it has my suspicion meter in the red zone. Here’s a version shared by M.G.:
What’s the story? Basically the NASDAQ stock exchange is considering pulling up stakes, and leaving its New Jersey/New York home, and heading for Texas, Dallas to be specific. And NASDAQ isn’t the only exchange considering such a move. There are rumors that the NYSE itself might consider a move to Texas.
From the article:
Officials from Nasdaq and other major stock exchanges will meet with Gov. Greg Abbott on Nov. 20 in Austin to discuss a possible move from New Jersey to Texas, nbcdfw.com and the Dallas Morning News reported.
The meeting comes on the heels of the exchanges threatening to move their trading platforms out of New Jersey, the report said.
Abbott and other Texas officials plan to boast the state’s business-friendly environment during the meeting.
“Texas continues to be the premier economic destination in the country, attracting more leading businesses than any other state,” spokeswoman Renae Eze said in a statement to The Dallas Morning News. “The governor looks forward to meeting with Nasdaq and showcasing Texas’ business-friendly environment, skilled workforce, robust infrastructure, and low taxes, all of which foster greater economic growth in the Lone Star State.”
According to The Dallas Morning News, Abbott’s office has been talking with Nasdaq and other exchanges about moving their data centers to Dallas because of a potential tax on financial transactions in New Jersey. (Emphases added)
Now this article, one might have noted, is a bit peculiar in several respects. For one thing, it mentions – twice – “NASDAQ and other exchanges,” the clear implication being the NYSE itself. But that’s only one of what might be “other exchanges.” We’ll get back to that in a moment. Then there is a second peculiarity in that the article specially mentions that what is being moved are the “trading platforms” and “data centers”. I strongly suspect that the language here is meant to be reassuring to the low information news consumer, because the language implies that the actual exchange floors themselves – you know, that image we have in our minds of people on the floors of those exchanges shouting bids at each other and waving papers around. They’re just moving the data centers and not the actual exchanges themselves.
Except in the modern world of dark pools and algorithmic trading, to move the data center so far away from the actual trading floor is a big clue, because in the dark pool world of quants and algorithmic trading, moving the data center is moving the trading floor, at least, the virtual one. And whatever may be left of real humans on the real trading floor shouting buy and sell orders at each other won’t be far behind. THe reason? Because in the world of algorithmic trading, trading/data centers need to be as close to “the action” as possible, because trades are executed in nanoseconds. The farther the distance – even at the speed of light – the greater the risk that certain trades won’t go through in time.
Which brings me back to “the other exchanges.” The article, I suspect, has already given us the “public spin version” of the reasons for the move: higher taxes. But I suspect the deeper reason is the insanity of the political culture in the “blue states”, and their increasing fiscal unsoundness and lack of stability. It’s difficult – even in a dark pool – for traders manning the phone banks and computers to execute trades by following arrows on the floor, wearing masks, and “social distancing” (which Abbot will have to explain too). One needs sane environments in which to conduct market activities. So one wonders if “other exchanges” means that commodities exchanges – like in Chicago, another “blue” city with a mayor competing with DiBlasio for the nuttiest mayor of the year award – might be looking at Texas as well.
Which brings me to my high octane speculation of the day, for I do not for a moment think that this is just happenstance. All the mentioned “reasons” in the article seem to be to be a bit contrived. After all, New York and New Jersey have had high taxes for years if not decades. So what has changed? For one thing, the political and cultural climate. For another, the financial one. Texas is a producing state. It produces things: crops, cattle, horses, technologies, rockets, airplanes, cement… New York produces, hmmm… well, crops, horses, some technology, and things like that. But it’s biggest product is “financial paper”, or what I call “crapitalism.” And it’s produced a lot of that. And it also produces lots of taxes. So if one is entertaining the idea of a financial reset, or even a “coming split” in the country, one wants to be “where the action is,” and that’s not New York or California, it’s Texas.
And while we’re talking about splits and financial resets, Texas has something else New York doesn’t, and that thing makes me wonder if we’re looking at the public face of plans – detailed plans – that were set in motion some time ago…:
Texas has a state bullion depository. And isn’t it funny how they’re all of a sudden talking about crypto-“currencies” “backed” by gold…
All New York has is the Federal Reserve… which tends to lose massive amounts of gold on occasion. Just ask Hjalmar Schacht…
It’s much easier to re-hypothecate and otherwise lose gold if one is dealing in currencies that aren’t really currencies…
Oct 14, 2020 • Last Updated 22 days ago • 4 minute read
A screenshot of a letter from the Nova Scotia government which was sent out to residents to warn about a pack of wolves on the loose in the province. The letter was actually a forgery by Canadian military personnel as part of a propaganda training mission.
Article content
A letter from the Nova Scotia government sent out to residents to warn about a pack of wolves on the loose in the province was forged by Canadian military personnel as part of a propaganda training mission that went off the rails.
The letter told residents to be wary of wolves that had been reintroduced into the area by the provincial and federal governments and warned the animals were now roaming the Annapolis Valley. The letter, which later became public, sparked concern and questions among residents but was later branded as “fake” by the Nova Scotia government which didn’t know the military was behind the deception.
The training also involved using a loudspeaker to generate wolf sounds, the Canadian Forces confirmed to this newspaper.
The fake letter was part of new skills being tested by the military as it hones its expertise for launching propaganda missions at home and abroad. The letter was developed by information warfare specialists with the Halifax Rifles, a reserve unit.
They not only forged the logo of the Wildlife Division of Nova Scotia’s Department of Lands and Forestry but they also attributed the letter to a real Nova Scotia government employee, even though they didn’t have permission to do so. A phone number on the letter, which residents were to call if they had concerns about the wolves, was traced by this newspaper to the work number of an Environment Canada employee, who also appears to be a Canadian Forces reservist.
The Canadian Forces revealed its role behind the fake letter last week to the Nova Scotia government and then on the weekend to local news media. Media outlets reported military staff had written the letter but didn’t know why.
Emma Briant, a professor at Bard College in the U.S. who specializes in researching military propaganda, said what the Canadian Forces did was a major violation of ethics. “This is way over the top,” Briant said. “It’s a very dangerous path when you start targeting your own public with false information and trying to manipulate them.”
Briant said the deception has nothing to do with wolves; it was likely an exercise in the testing the military’s skills in trying to manipulate the population with false information. “You start a rumour about wolves on the loose and then you see how the public reacts,” she added.
Similar deception operations were tried by contractors of SCL, a propaganda company which had worked for the U.S. and British militaries in Afghanistan and other locations in Asia. In those cases, false information was transmitted to villagers to convince them not to send their children to religious schools where they might be radicalized. But instead of being truthful, the contractors concocted an information campaign claiming pedophiles were operating in religious schools and parents shouldn’t send them there because their children would be in danger of being molested.
Department of National Defence spokesman Dan Le Bouthillier said the fake letter wasn’t meant to be released to the public and an investigation is underway to determine how that happened. The letter was an aid for the propaganda training. Le Bouthillier said he didn’t know why the loudspeaker was set up to transmit wolf sounds and that will be investigated as well.
The training initiative did not follow the established approval process and was not okayed by senior leaders, he added.
The Nova Scotia propaganda training comes as the Canadian Forces spools up its capabilities to conduct information warfare, influence operations and other deception missions aimed at populations overseas and, if necessary, the Canadian public.
Briant revealed on Monday the Canadian Forces spent more than $1 million in training its public affairs officers in skills to influence targeted populations.
In July, this newspaper reported a team assigned to a Canadian military intelligence unit monitored and collected information from people’s social media accounts in Ontario, claiming such data-mining was needed to help troops working in long-term care homes during the coronavirus pandemic. The collection involved comments made by the public about the provincial government’s failure in taking care of the elderly in the province. That data was turned over to the Ontario government, with a warning from the team it represented a “negative” reaction from the public.
This newspaper reported at the same time that the Canadian Forces planned a propaganda campaign aimed at heading off civil disobedience by Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic. The plan used similar propaganda tactics to those employed against the Afghan population during the war in Afghanistan, including loudspeaker trucks to transmit government messages. The propaganda operation was never put into action.
In addition, some Canadian military officers have suggested creating fake Facebook and other social media accounts for carrying out deception operations as well as harnessing social media accounts of Canadian Forces members, military-friendly academics and retired senior military staff to challenge opposition politicians and journalists who raise controversial issues regarding the Canadian Forces.
The Canadian Forces stresses that it follows ethical guidelines in its propaganda operations.
But others inside the military say that isn’t the case, pointing to the Nova Scotia operation as a prime example as it violated Canadian privacy law and the Criminal Code when soldiers forged documents.
The fake wolf letter was dated Sept. 19, two days after Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance met with senior military leaders to explain “the value of ethical decision making and the importance of maintaining the credibility of the CAF by being honest and transparent in everything we do.”
“I had grasped the significance of the silence of the dog, for one true inference invariably suggests others…. Obviously the midnight visitor was someone whom the dog knew well.”
~ Sherlock Holmes – The Adventures of Silver Blaze
Is it possible to make sense out of nonsense?
So much these days is an incoherent mess. It’s complete nonsense.
Page 1 excitedly beams about a glorious rebound in GDP. Yay economic growth!
Page 2 worryingly notes the near complete failure of Siberian arctic ice to reform during October and that hurricane Zeta (so many storms this year we’re now into the Greek alphabet!) has made punishing landfall.
Each is a narrative. Each has its own inner logic.
But they simply do not have any external coherence to each other. It’s nonsensical to be excited about rising economic growth while also concerned that each new unit of growth takes the planet further past a critical red line.
These narratives are incompatible. So which one should we pick?
Well, in the end, reality always has the final say. As Guy McPherson states: Nature bats last.
So better we choose to follow the narrative that hews closest to what reality actually is, vs what we desperately want it to be.
‘They’ Don’t Care About Us
While issues like climate change and economic growth may be difficult to fully grasp and unravel, direct threats to our lives &/or livelihoods are much more concrete and something we can react to and resist.
Such immediate and direct threats are now fully in play and, once again, they’re accompanied by narratives that are completely at odds with each other. I’m speaking of Covid and the ways in which our national and global managers are choosing to respond (or not).
It’s a truly incoherent mess about which both social media and the increasingly irrelevant media are working quite hard to misinform us.
The mainstream narrative about Covid-19, in the West, is this:
It’s a quite deadly and novel disease
There are no effective treatments
Sadly, no double-blind placebo controlled trials exist to support some of the wild claims out there about various off-patent, cheap and widely available supplements and drugs
Health authorities care about saving lives
They care so much, in fact, that along with politicians they’ve decided to entirely shut down economies
There’s a huge second wave rampaging across the US and Europe and there’s nothing we can do to limit it except shut down businesses and people’s ability to travel and gather
You need to fear this virus and its associated disease
All we can do is wait for a vaccine
The alternative narrative, one that I’ve uncovered after 9 months of almost daily research and reporting, is this:
It’s not an especially dangerous disease and it’s certainly not novel
There is a huge assortment of very effective, cheap and widely-available preventatives and treatments including (but not limited to)
Vitamin D
Ivermectin
Hydroxychloroquine
Zinc
Selenium
Famotidine (Pepcid)
Melatonin
Use of a combination of these mostly OTC supplements could reasonably be expected to drop the severity of illness and the already low mortality rate by 90% or (probably) more
Western health authorities have shown either zero interest in the results of studies mainly conducted in poorer nations on these combination therapies or…
They have actively run studies designed to fail so that these cheap, effective therapies could be dismissed or…
Set up proper studies but which started late, have immensely long study periods and most likely won’t be done before a vaccine is hastily rushed through development.
By the way – every single one of my assertions and claims is backed by links and supporting documentation from scientific and clinical trials and studies. I am not conjecturing here; I am recounting the summary of ten months’ worth of inquiry.
The conclusion I draw from my narrative (vs. theirs) is that we can no longer assume that the public health or saving lives has anything to do with explaining or understanding the actions of these health “managers” (I cannot bring myself to use the word authorities).
After we eliminate the impossible – which is that somehow these massive, well-funded bodies have missed month after month of accumulating evidence in support of ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamin D, NAC, zinc, selenium and doxycycline/azithromycin – what remains must be the truth.
As improbable as it seems, the only conclusion we’re left with is that the machinery of politics, money and corporate psychopathy is suppressing life saving treatments because these managers have other priorities besides public health and saving lives.
This is a terribly difficult conclusion, because it means suspending so much that we hold dear. Things like the notion that people are basically good. The idea that the government generally means well. The thought that somehow when the chips are down and a crisis is afoot, good will emerge and triumph over evil.
I’m sorry to say, the exact opposite of all of that has emerged as true.
Medical doctors in the UK NHS system purposely used toxic doses of hydroxychloroquine far too late in the disease cycle to be of any help simply to ‘make a point’ about hydroxychloroquine. They rather desperately wanted that drug to fail, so they made it fail.
After deliberately setting their trial up for failure, they concluded: “Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t help, and it even makes things worse.”
Note that in order to be able to make this claim, they had to be willing to cause harm — even to let people die. What kind of health official does that?
Not one who actually has compassion, a heart, or functioning level of sympathy. It’s an awful conclusion but it’s what remains after we eliminate the impossible.
Getting Past The Emotional Toll
Science has proven that cheap, safe and significantly protective compounds exist to limit both Covid-related death and disease severity.
Yet all of the main so-called health authorities in the major western countries are nearly completely ignoring, if not outright banning, these safe, cheap and effective compounds.
This is crazy-making for independent observers like me (and you) because the data is so clear. It’s irrefutable at this point. These medicines and treatments not only work, but work really, really well.
However most people will be unable to absorb the data, let alone move beyond it to wrestle with the implications. Why? Because such data is belief-shattering. Absorbing this information is not an intellectual process; it’s an emotional one.
I don’t know why human nature decided to invest so much in developing a tight wall around the belief systems that control our actions and thoughts. But it has.
I’m sure there was some powerful evolutionary advantage. One that’s now being hijacked daily by social media AI programs to nudge us in desired directions. One that’s being leveraged by shabby politicians, hucksters, fake gurus, and con men to steer advantage away from the populace and towards themselves.
The neural wiring of beliefs is what it is. We have to recognize that and move on.
Some people will be much faster in their adjustment process than others. (Notably, the Peak Prosperity tribe is populated with many fast-adjusters, which is unsurprising given the topics we cover…tough topics tend to attract fast adjusters and repel the rest)
To move past the deeply troubling information laid out before us requires us to be willing to endure a bit of turbulence. It’s the only way.
For you to navigate these troubling times safely and successfully, you’ll need to see as clearly as possible the true nature of the game actually being played. To see what the rules really are – not what you’ve been told they are, or what you wish or hope they are.
The Manipulation Underway
The data above strongly supports the conclusion that our national health managers don’t actually care about public health generally or your health specifically.
If indeed true, then the beliefs preventing most people from accepting this likely include:
Wanting to believe that people are good (a biggie for most people)
Trust and faith in the medical system (really big)
Faith in authority (ginormous)
There are many other operative belief systems I could also list. But this is sufficient to get the ball rolling.
Picking just one, how hard would it be for someone to let go of, say, trust in the medical system?
That would be pretty hard in most cases.
First not trusting the medical system might mean having to wonder if a loved one might have died unnecessarily while being treated. Or realizing that you’re now going to have to research the living daylights out of every medical decision before agreeing to it. Or worrying that your medications might be more harmful to you over the long haul than helpful (which is true in many more cases than most appreciate). It might mean having your personal heroes dinged by suspicion — perhaps even your father or mother who worked in the medical profession. It would definitely require a complete reorientation away from being able to trust anything you read in a newspaper, or see on TV, about new pharmaceutical “breakthroughs”.
Trust, which is safe and warm and comforting, then turns into skepticism; which is lonelier and insists upon active mental involvement.
But, as always, hard work comes with benefits — with a healthy level of skepticism and involvement, the families of those recruited into the deadly UK RECOVERY trial could have looked at the proposed doses of HCQ (2,400 mg on day one! Toxic!) and said, “Not now, not ever!” and maybe have saved the life of their loved one.
Look at that tangled mess of undesirables that comes with unpacking that one belief: regret, uncertainty, shame, doubt, fallen idols, and vastly more additional effort. Are all up for grabs when we decide to look carefully at the actions of our national health managers during Covid.
Which is why most people simply choose not to look. It’s too hard.
I get it. I have a lot of compassion for why people choose not to go down that path. It can get unpleasant in a hurry.
But, just like choosing to ignore a nagging chest pain, turning away in denial has its own consequences.
The Coming ‘Great Reset’
My coverage of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) and Covid-19 (the associated disease) has led me to uncover some things that have made me deeply uncomfortable about our global and national ‘managers’. Shameful things, really. Scary things in their implications for what we might reasonably expect (or not expect, more accurately) from the future.
Once we get past the shock of seeing just how patently corrupt they’ve been, we have to ask both What’s next? and What should I do?
After all, you live in a system whose managers either are too dumb to understand the Vitamin D data (very unlikely) or have decided that they’d rather not promote it to the general populace for some reason. It’s a ridiculously safe vitamin with almost zero downside and virtually unlimited upside.
Either they’re colossally dumb, or this is a calculated decision. They’re not dumb. So we have to ask: What’s the calculation being performed here? It’s not public safety. It’s not your personal health. So… What is it?
This is our line of questioning and observation. It’s like the short story by Arthur Conan Doyle in Silver Blaze that many of us informally know as “the case of the dog that didn’t bark”. As the story goes, because of a missing clue – a dog who remained silent as a murder was committed – this conclusion could be drawn: the dog was already familiar with the killer!
The silence around Vitamin D alone is extremely telling. It is the pharmacological dog that did not bark.
One true inference suggests others. Here, too, we can deduce from the near total silence around Vitamin D that the health managers would prefer not to talk about it. They don’t want people to know. That much is painfully clear.
Such lack of promotion (let alone appropriate study) of safe, effective treatments is a thread that, if tugged, can unravel the whole rug. The silence tells us everything we need to know.
Do they want people to suffer and die? I don’t know. My belief systems certainly hope not. Perhaps the death and suffering are merely collateral damage as they pursue a different goal — money, power, politics? Simply the depressing result of a contentious election year? More than that?
We’ve now reached the jumping off point where we may well find out just how far down the rabbit hole goes.
A massive grab for tighter control over the global populace is now being fast-tracked at the highest levels. Have you heard of the Great Reset yet?
If not, you soon will.
In Part 2: The Coming ‘Great Reset’ we lay out everything we know so far about the multinational proposal to transform nearly every aspect of global industry, commerce, trade, and social structure.
If you read on, be ready and willing to let go of cherished beliefs and to suspend what you know to be true. Because none of us has that in hand. It’s going to be a wild ride from here.
Something very big is afoot and I suspect that Covid-19 is merely an excuse providing cover for a much bigger power grab over the world’s wealth and peoples.
It is time now to focus on peace and compassion as we move into this election week.
The power of many people intending that these days are full if light and love will overcome all the expectations of doom and violence that the media are propagating.
We are powerful in our desire for justice and a moment’s thought every day for righteousness and justice and peace for humanity can bring about the most benevolent outcome.
Take a thought every day, give a focus on goodness and joy that peace prevail.
Americans have been following COVID-19 vaccine trial developments for weeks, watching companies jockey for frontrunner status like contestants in a reality TV show. And though participants in some of the studies (by Moderna, Oxford, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer) have surfaced with reactions serious enough to pause several of the trials, market analysts remain “bullish” about the near-term prospects for approval of these liability-free products by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
On Oct. 16, Pfizer’s CEO indicated the company would likely file for FDA Emergency Use Authorization for its experimental BNT162b2 vaccine in late November. That statement came three days after Pfizer announced that it had received FDA permission to administer the unproven vaccine to children as young as 12, becoming the first company in the U.S. to include young participants in Phase 3 trials. In the UK, Oxford and AstraZeneca gained approval to test their vaccine in children aged 5-12 back in May, a couple of months before two of their adult clinical trial participants developed transverse myelitis.
To date, Pfizer has administered two doses of vaccine to almost 35,000 adult participants in five countries. Unworried by the dramatic side effects reported by some of these adults — including high fever, pounding headaches, body aches, exhaustion and shivering intense enough to crack teeth — more than 90 parents have already expressed interest in volunteering their teenagers.
Are these parents (perhaps left unemployed by coronavirus restrictions) tempted by the financial incentives offered to clinical trial participants, reportedly anywhere from $1200 to $2000? Otherwise, their motivation for wanting to throw their children into the experimental fray is unclear; as the director of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital stated, “most of the time, what a coronavirus causes is a cold” that does not even make children “sick enough to where a parent says they need to go to a doctor.”
The Cincinnati physician has, nonetheless, just started giving Pfizer’s shot to 16- and 17-year-olds (and soon to 12-15-year-olds). To entice additional young participants, he tells parents that the COVID-19 death rate in children is “not zero” — but declines to spell out that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the survival rate in those age 19 and under is 99.997%. Using similarly vague language, a Memorial Sloan-Kettering health policy expert said that a COVID-19 vaccine’s benefits for the young would likely be “secondary’ in nature” but characterized the gesture as “an act of service to help protect others.”
However, reports in Pediatrics and other journals assert that children are not a source of infection and are far more likely to acquire COVID-19 from adults “rather than transmitting it to them.” In other words, policymakers expect children to accept a risk-benefit equation heavily tilted toward risk.
Corporate bad guy
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer — the second-largest drug and biotech company in the world and the fourth-highest earner of vaccine revenues — has seen a 7% increase in its share value this year. However, though Pfizer claims to be a standard-bearer for “quality, safety and value,” it has a corporate rap sheet a mile long. Pfizer is routinely mired in controversies involving alleged price-fixing, bribery, kickbacks, tax avoidance, regulatory misdirection and other unsavory practices and has also repeatedly paid fines for environmental violations at its research and manufacturing plants.
Critics point to decades of aggressive and questionable marketing. In 2009, this behavior earned Pfizer the dubious distinction of paying the largest-ever criminal fine at the time — $2.3 billion — for fraudulent and illegal promotion of four drugs, including a painkiller marketed at “dangerously high” doses. In 2016, a British regulator levied a $106 million fine against Pfizer for a 2600% increase in the price of a widely prescribed anti-epilepsy drug that increased the National Health Services’ expenditures from one year to the next — for a single drug—from $2.5 million to $63 million.
Perhaps to compensate for its unpleasant track record, Pfizer is the top drug company spender in state elections, even outspending the industry’s own lobbying group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRM). As a just-published analysis of drug company political spending by STAT and the National Institute on Money and Politics shows, Pfizer’s “prolific” state-level spending ($778,000 since January 2019) “mirrors its behavior at the federal level, where its [political action committee] was also the top political spender among drug companies” — roughly $1 million over the same time period. The report pointedly notes that while the amounts paid out to legislators represent a “pittance” for a company earning tens of billions a year, “those small chunks of corporate change can have a significant impact.”
Pfizer’s vaccines
Pfizer is responsible for two vaccines on the U.S. childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule: the pneumococcal vaccine Prevnar-13 (given to children under 5 and also to older adults) and the meningococcal vaccine Trumenba (approved for 10 – 25-year-olds). Package inserts link the two vaccines to a large number of serious adverse events, including anaphylaxis and other allergic reactions, severe headaches and chronic muscle and joint pain. Among the roughly 40 harms listed in the Prevnar-13 insert are sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and half a dozen other fatal outcomes.
Pfizer developed its COVID-19 vaccine — which uses experimental messenger RNA (mRNA) technology — in partnership with the German biopharma company BioNTech. Although mRNA vaccines must be stored in special ultra-low-temperature freezers that pose certain logistic obstacles, Pfizer is gung-ho on the never-before-approved approach because it bypasses the more costly and difficult methods used in traditional vaccine production. It does this by essentially turning recipients into “vaccine factories” — with long-term risks that are unknown.
Pfizer and BioNTech brought their COVID-19 vaccine candidates “from concept into clinical development” in under three months, perhaps helped along by the current Pfizer CEO’s efforts to restructure Pfizer into a more “nimble” company. At the same time, observers who now place Pfizer at the head of the pack for COVID-19 vaccines credit the company’s “well-oiled system,” remarking that “Pfizer’s incredibly organized and is always … a couple steps ahead, planning where they want to go.”
Conflicts of interest and revolving doors
In the summer of 2019, after having served as the Trump administration’s FDA commissioner for two years, Scott Gottlieb passed through the revolving door to join Pfizer’s board of directors as well as becoming a regular contributor on CNBC. For the past four decades, stepping onto pharmaceutical boards has been par for the course for departing FDA commissioners, though Gottlieb may have upped the ante by also joining the boards of the AI- and big-data-reliant genetic testing start-up, Tempus, and the biotech company Illumina.
While at the FDA, Gottlieb presided over a record number of drug approvals. According to one commentator, this “trail-blazing” FDA stint and Gottlieb’s focus on “hustling up the [drug approval] process … helped endear him to the industry, making him one of the most popular commissioners in FDA history.” As the director of a consumer watchdog group put it, “He’s basically been a shill for pharmaceutical corporations for much of his career.” Two months before stepping down from the agency, Gottlieb attracted notice when he strongly denied any link between vaccines and autism while publicly threatening that the federal government might be “forced” to intervene in states with vaccine exemptions to make vaccines mandatory across the board.
Gottlieb’s affiliation with CNBC may explain why he has been a frequent public face during the coronavirus pandemic, promoting the U.S. as a world leader in the vaccine race but also vocally endorsing measures like universal masking, universal testing and restaurant and school shutdowns. On October 19, Gottlieb dourly told Americans that the U.S. is “entering a pretty difficult period” and that “the hardest part is probably [still] ahead.” Ironically, around the same time that Gottlieb was using positive test results to hype ongoing restrictive measures, a former Pfizer vice-president and chief science officer in the UK characterized mass testing as “inappropriate,” asserting that “it is impossible for the positives to be much other than false.” Discussing the harsh policies that have been particularly disastrous for children, the former Pfizer executive agreed that they have essentially been based on “completely fake data.”
Kids at risk
Reporter Whitney Webb recently outlined how Operation Warp Speed is awarding contracts to vaccine companies through a nongovernmental defense contractor intermediary, a tactic that shields the contracts from oversight and federal regulation. Meanwhile, Moncef Slaoui — who heads up the Operation Warp Speed initiative — stated that after a round of testing in adolescents, he expects the leading coronavirus vaccines to also be tested in toddlers and babies. Parents would do well to keep their children on the sidelines of these experiments. If vaccine clinical trials, including Pfizer’s, are already generating concerning results in adults capable of describing their symptoms, what will happen when preverbal babies experience similar adverse outcomes?
