Tag: pandemic

How Much Did the US Government Pressure Twitter to Ban Alex Berenson?

Nearly a year ago, former New York Times Journalist Alex Berenson was permanently banned from Twitter for writing the following lines about the Covid shot: “It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it—at best—as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity.”

From the beginning of the Covid hysteria, we followed and cited Berenson many times on the Ron Paul Liberty Report. Berenson took government and mainstream media rhetoric about the pandemic the way journalists used to take it: with a heavy dose of skepticism. And not long after he was banned for saying so, even the CDC Director admitted what he wrote is true.

But at the time, he was a danger to the government narrative on Covid, and the “private” social media company Twitter silenced him. They did not only silence one reporter who was a thorn in their side, however. They preemptively silenced anyone else who might might question the narrative. The message was clear to all the would-be Alex Berensons out there: do you want to follow him to the digital gulag?

So not only was Berenson’s free speech under attack—free speech itself was under attack.

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FDA will not require clinical trial data to authorize redesigned COVID boosters -official

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will not require companies to submit clinical trial data on COVID-19 vaccines modified to protect against the BA.4 and BA.5 versions of Omicron in order to authorize those shots, a top FDA official said on Thursday.

Dr. Peter Marks, head of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told Reuters the agency will rely on data from clinical trials vaccine makers have run on shots designed to combat the BA.1 lineage, as well as manufacturing data, for emergency use authorization submissions before the fall.

Preclinical data from animal studies and safety data could also be available, he said.

The FDA on Thursday recommended COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers change the design of their booster shots beginning this fall to include components tailored to combat the currently dominant Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 sublineages.

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New Jersey Bill Would Require College Students to Receive Coronavirus Vaccine

A proposed bill in New Jersey would require college students and staff at higher education institutions to receive the coronavirus vaccine.

Proposed by Democratic Assemblyman Herb Conaway Jr. and co-sponsored by Democratic Assemblyman Ralph Caputo, Bill A4334 would essentially require that all in-person students and staff be fully vaccinated while exempting only those who would work virtually.

“If the bill becomes law, it would go into effect in the 2022-2023 school year,” noted News12.

The bill will now be reviewed by the Assembly Health Committee and will have to pass the state Senate before it becomes law. A similar bill in the New Jersey Senate has not yet received a vote.

Colleges and universities have adopted their own vaccination policies without government mandates up until now. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, no other state in the union has required coronavirus vaccinations for students in higher education.

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Fed report finds 75% of $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program didn’t reach employees

Taxpayers paid $4 for every $1 in wages and benefits received by workers in jobs saved by the federal government’s pandemic Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), according to a new study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

The Fed study also found PPP didn’t support jobs at risk of disappearing, and money flowed disproportionately to wealthier households.

“The PPP was a very large and very timely fiscal-policy intervention, saving about 3 million jobs at its peak in the second quarter of 2020 and distributing $800 billion well within two years of the onset of the COVID-19 crisis,” authors William Emmons and Drew Dahl concluded in their study, “Was the Paycheck Protection Program Effective?”

“But it was poorly targeted, as almost three-quarters of its benefits went to unintended recipients, including business owners, creditors and suppliers, rather than to workers. Due to differences in the typical incomes of those varied constituencies, it also ended up being quite regressive compared with other major COVID-19 relief programs, as it benefited high-income households much more.”

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This State Lost HALF Its Pandemic “Stimulus” Benefits to Fraud and Scammers

The federal government’s multi-trillion-dollar “stimulus” efforts during the pandemic may go down as the biggest legislative failure in modern American history. Congress spent an astounding $42,000 per federal taxpayer (do you know anyone who received anywhere near that much in benefits?) and only successfully “stimulated” inflation. What’s more, evidence continues to mount that the biggest beneficiaries of this binge were criminals and fraudsters.

A new analysis from the American Enterprise Institute’s Matt Weingarten reports that the state of Illinois lost half of the money it sent out in expanded pandemic unemployment benefits to scammers.

Illinois’s inspector general reports that the level of fraud it experienced was “unprecedented” and amounted to more than $1.8 billion lost.

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Pfizer Trial Found Vaxxed Toddlers ‘Were More Likely to Get Severely Ill With Covid’

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that toddlers vaccinated during Pfizer’s trial were “more likely to get severely ill with Covid than those who received a placebo” and “most kids who developed multiple infections during the trial were vaccinated.”

From WSJ, “Why the Rush for Toddler Vaccines?”:

“This is a very historic milestone, a monumental step forward,” President Biden declared last week after the Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for toddlers. “The United States is now the first country in the world to offer safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months old.”

In fact, we don’t know if the vaccines are safe and effective. The rushed FDA action was based on extremely weak evidence. […]

More troubling, vaccinated toddlers in Pfizer’s trial were more likely to get severely ill with Covid than those who received a placebo. Pfizer claimed most severe cases weren’t “clinically significant,” whatever that means, but this was all the more reason that the FDA should have required a longer follow-up before authorizing the vaccine.

Also worrisome: Most kids who developed multiple infections during the trial were vaccinated. This warranted more investigation, since experimental vaccines for other diseases sometimes increase susceptibility to infection.

Scientists are also discovering that triple-vaccinated adults who were previously infected with the Wuhan variant have a weaker immune response to Omicron, leaving them more susceptible to reinfection. This phenomenon, called “immunological imprinting,” could explain why children who received three Pfizer shots were more likely to get reinfected.

The FDA brushed aside the risk that inoculating infants against a variant no longer circulating could blunt their immune responses to Omicron and its offshoots. There’s a reason vaccine trials usually take a decade. Some steps can be accelerated, but an extended follow-up is often necessary to ensure potential side effects aren’t overlooked.

The FDA standard for approving vaccines in otherwise healthy people, especially children, is supposed to be higher than for drugs that treat the sick. But the FDA conspicuously lowered its standards to approve Covid vaccines for toddlers. Why?

An NIH study of adults who took part in Moderna’s trial (which ran through March 2021) found those with shots had fewer N antibodies after COVID infection when compared with the unvaccinated, suggesting they’re more likely to get reinfected with the virus.

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Woke National Teachers Union Agenda Includes Mandatory Masks, Vaccines and Banning the Words Mother and Father

The National Education Association’s (NEA) annual conference is underway in Chicago, and the group is calling for a national policy of mandatory masking, mandatory vaccinations, and rejecting the words “mother” and “father.”

The NEA is the largest labor group in the U.S., with more than three million members, including Jill Biden. Its president is Becky Pringle.

The Chicago conference is chock-full of woke agenda items called New Business Initiatives (NBI). They include progressive language involving issues that seem to have little to do with proper education. NBIs are proposals that delegates must vote on in order to pass. 

Terry Stoops, a conservative education expert in North Carolina, exposed this year’s NBIs in a lengthy post on Twitter.

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Pfizer Asks Court to Dismiss Whistleblower Lawsuit Because Government Was Aware of Fraud

A lawsuit filed by whistleblower Brook Jackson alleging Pfizer and two of its contractors manipulated data and committed other acts of fraud during Pfizer’s COVID-19 clinical trials is paused following a motion by the defendants to dismiss the case.

In an interview with The Defender, Jackson’s lawyer said Pfizer argued the lawsuit, which was filed under the False Claims Act, should be dismissed because the U.S. government knew of the wrongdoings in the clinical trials but continued to do business with the vaccine maker.

Under the False Claims Act, whistleblowers can be rewarded for confidentially disclosing fraud that results in a financial loss to the federal government.

However, a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision that expanded the scope of a legal principle known as “materiality” resulted in a series of federal court decisions in which fraud cases brought under the False Claims Act were dismissed.

As interpreted by the Supreme Court, if the government continued paying a contractor despite the contractor’s fraudulent activity, the fraud was not considered “material” to the contract.

Pfizer is a federal contractor because it signed multiple contracts with the U.S. government to provide COVID-19 vaccines and Paxlovid, a pill used to treat the virus.

“Pfizer claims they can get away with fraud as long as the government would write them a check despite knowing about the fraud,” attorney Robert Barnes said.

The other two defendants in the case are Ventavia Research Group, which conducted vaccine trials on behalf of Pfizer, and ICON PLC, also a Pfizer contractor.

In an attempt to strengthen the False Claims Act’s anti-retaliation provisions and install new safeguards against industry-level blacklisting of whistleblowers seeking employment, Congress in July 2021 introduced the False Claims Amendments Act of 2021.

In December 2021, Pfizer hired a well-connected lobbyist, Hazen Marshall, and the law firm Williams & Jensen to lobby against the bill.

Pfizer previously was heavily fined in connection with the False Claims Act. As part of a 2009 settlement, the company paid $2.3 billion in fines — the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice — stemming from allegations of illegal marketing of off-label products not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“Pfizer, one of the most criminally fined drug companies in the world, wants to weaken the laws that hold them accountable,” Barnes told The Defender.

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Twitter censors story of British mother who died after reaction to Covid vaccine

Three children in the UK were left without a mother after she died from a massive stroke determined to be caused by blood clots that formed after she received the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, but Twitter is labeling conversations about this information taking place on the platform as “misinformation.”

Previously healthy Lucy Taberer, whose youngest is a five-year-old boy, succumbed to the consequences of the Covid shot 22 days after she was vaccinated. At first, the 47-year-old experienced mild side-effects, described in reports as common, to then develop a bruise, skin rash, and pain that the doctors at first dismissed as being caused by kidney stones.

In the end, it turned out that the victim’s reaction to the vaccine had been to develop blood clots that proved to be fatal.

Her death certificate reads that Taberer died of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and vaccine-associated thrombosis with thrombocytopenia.

Local media, including Leicester Mercury, reported about it, and Taberer’s step daughter tweeted a link to the story, but was quickly shut down by Twitter, which labeled the post as “misleading.”

To add insult to injury, she was advised to click another link, provided by Twitter’s “fact-checkers,” that would “explain” why health officials think Covid vaccines are safe “for most people.”

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