Brownstone Institute
Had You Known, Would You Have Taken the Jab?
From the Brownstone Institute
” the company skewed the public debate in order to induce Americans to take its shots. The efforts stripped us of the right to informed consent, deceiving us on purported benefits while hiding established risks “
Would 92% of American adults have gotten a Covid shot had they known the “vaccines” only offered a 0.85% reduction in risk? Would young men have taken the jab if they had known it did not prevent transmission?
Americans came to understand that the media campaigns supporting the shots were fraudulent. The touted benefits – preventing infection and transmission – were lies. In response, fewer than one in five Americans elected to receive “boosters” despite multi-billion dollar propaganda campaigns.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has now brought a suit to bring accountability for the fraud that resulted in record profits for the pharmaceutical industry. Paxton filed a complaint alleging that Pfizer misrepresented Covid vaccine efficacy and “conspired to censor public discourse” in violation of Texas’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA).
While Big Pharma enjoys immense government-provided insulation from legal liability for vaccine injuries, it cannot lie to promote those products.
Paxton alleges that the $75 billion Pfizer has raked in through sales of Covid vaccines were the “direct and proximate result” of the company’s deceit.
The DTPA requires Paxton prove two questions to succeed in his case. First, he must establish that the company lied or failed to disclose known information concerning its Covid vaccine. Second, he must prove that the company’s fraud was designed to promote sales of the shots.
Brownstone previously analyzed the applicability of the DTPA against Moderna. Now, Paxton’s lawsuit threatens Pfizer with fines of $10 million as well as awards of “restitution, damages, or civil penalties.”
Paxton’s case argues that Pfizer deceived the public on three issues: (1) the efficacy of the vaccine; (2) whether the shots reduced the risk of transmission; and (3) the company’s efforts to “censor[] persons who threatened to disseminate the truth.”
In each instance, the company skewed the public debate in order to induce Americans to take its shots. The efforts stripped us of the right to informed consent, deceiving us on purported benefits while hiding established risks.
Efficacy
First, Paxton targets the now-familiar falsehoods that the company, led by CEO Albert Bourla, touted, including that the shots had “95% efficacy” and worked against mutations of the virus.
Paxton’s critiques do not require the benefit of hindsight. Pfizer’s own data showed that the vaccine was merely 0.85% effective in reducing the likelihood that an individual would contract Covid (known as absolute risk reduction). Put differently, Pfizer’s clinical data showed that “preventing one COVID-19 case required vaccinating 119.”
Despite this unconvincing data, Bourla claimed there was “initial evidence of our vaccine’s ability to prevent Covid-19.” Bourla later said that the shots had “100%” efficacy rates against mutations of the virus, including the Delta variant. Not only was this a lie, Pfizer never tested the shots against the variants. Still, in May 2021 he baselessly claimed that “no variant identified so far…escapes the protection of our vaccine.”
Three months later, the company issued a press release saying that boosters would “preserve and even exceed the high levels of protection against…relevant variants.” Shortly thereafter, the United States exercised its option to purchase 500 million more doses of Pfizer’s Covid vaccines.
These lies clearly and directly induced Americans to take products with illusory benefits. The claims were fabricated, and they led to billions of dollars in windfalls for Bourla and Pfizer.
Transmission
Pfizer’s marketing relied on convincing healthy young adults and teenagers to get shots despite the negligible risk that Covid posed to them. Bourla used transmission to launch a moral blackmail campaign. He told teenagers that they should get the shots to “protect…their loved ones.” He later tweeted, “widespread vaccination is a critical tool to help stop transmission.”
Under oath, company officials later admitted that they had never tested whether the vaccines reduced transmission.
In October 2022, Pfizer spokeswoman Janine Small appeared at a European Parliament hearing. “Was the Pfizer Covid vaccine tested on stopping transmission of the virus before it entered the market?” asked Dutch MEP Rob Roos. “No!” Small responded emphatically. “We had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market; and from that point of view, we had to do everything at risk.”
Under the DTPA, Paxton must prove that the company misrepresented information regarding the vaccine in an effort to promote sales of its products. With the vast majority of Americans under 70 facing zero substantial risk from Covid infection, the lies regarding transmission were critical to expand the customer base.
This deception underpinned the mandates in 2021 as government and corporate officials insisted that vaccination was necessary to keep healthy adults’ coworkers and neighbors safe. By December 2021, Pfizer’s stock price had doubled from the onset of the pandemic in February 2020.
Censorship
As Pfizer committed to deceiving the public, it had to ensure that journalists would not uncover its corporate misdeeds. Paxton’s suit outlines how the company “sought to intimidate and silence…journalist Alex Berenson.”
As Berenson reported on the efficacy, or lack thereof, of mRNA “vaccines,” Pfizer Board Member Dr. Scott Gottlieb colluded with Twitter to silence his reporting. In August 2021, Berenson tweeted that Pfizer’s vaccine “doesn’t stop infection…[o]r transmission,” and had a“limited window of efficacy.” Despite the veracity of these statements, Gottlieb wrote to Twitter officials encouraging them to ban Berenson’s heresy.
Hours later, Berenson received a permanent ban (he was later reinstated following a lawsuit). Now, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla is a defendant in Berenson’s case against the Biden Administration, which accuses White House officials of colluding with private actors in Big Tech and Big Pharma to usurp Berenson’s First Amendment rights.
Paxton’s case also outlines how Pfizer worked to silence scientists who discussed the benefits of natural immunity, calling the rhetoric “corrosive” to the public’s confidence in their products. The aim was simple: shield Americans from the truth so that they would continue to get the product.
A Rare Opportunity to Strike Back
To this point, “victories” against the hegemon that emerged in 2020 have been defensive in nature. Groups have fended off vaccine mandates, states have resisted calls for renewed lockdowns, and journalists have begun to expose the corruption that shattered Western civilization.
These efforts, though important, have failed to bring accountability against those who usurped our civil liberties and pillaged the national treasury. Paxton’s suit strikes at the heart of the corruption behind the Covid regime: how their success required mass deception and their profits depended on lies.
Though $10 million in fines is little compared to the $75 billion in revenue that Pfizer raked in from vaccines alone, the suit signifies that the resistance is at last on the offensive.
Big Pharma sees this is a grave threat, and its lobbying forces led a failed impeachment effort against Paxton this fall. They threw him out of his office, and disabled his ability to do his job that the voters sent him to do. Turning up nothing, the legislature rejected the entire drama. Now he is back and working and this is the result: accountability at last.
The steep drop in demand for Covid shots reveals how Pfizer depended upon fraud to promote their most lucrative product. Once Americans knew the truth, demand dropped by over 75%.
Now, Paxton’s suit brings that fraud to trial.
Author
From the Brownstone Institute
You might think these are quite rare but not a bit of it; 13,200 of these were recorded in the last 12 months, and that’s around 36 a day, and they go on your record and sometimes mean you end up with no job. They also have new laws planned to control misinformation and disinformation, something not just confined to the UK. Similar laws are planned for Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the EU.
I’m envious. The US has something the UK doesn’t have, namely a First Amendment. Yes I know there are those who wish the US didn’t have it either, including, I understand, John Kerry and that woman who still thinks she beat Trump the first time around. Kerry kind of wishes that the First Amendment wasn’t quite so obstructive to his plans. But from where I stand, you should be thankful for it.
Not only does the UK not have a First Amendment, it doesn’t have a constitution either, and that makes for worrying times right now. Free speech has little currency with Gen Z and the way it looks, even less with the new UK Labour government. Even Elon Musk, who takes a surprising interest in our little country, has recently declared the UK a police state.
It’s not surprising. Take for instance the case of Alison Pearson, who had the police knocking on her door this Remembrance Sunday. They had come to warn her they were investigating a tweet she had posted a whole year ago which someone had complained about. They were investigating whether it constituted a Non-Crime Hate Incident or NCHI. Yes, you heard me right, a ‘non-crime’ hate incident and no, this is not something out of Orwell, it’s straight out of the College of Policing’s playbook.
If you haven’t heard of them, you can thank your First Amendment. In the UK you can get a police record for something you posted on X that someone else didn’t like and you haven’t even committed a crime. NCHIs are a way they have of getting around the law in the same way John Kerry would like to get around the First Amendment, except it’s real where I live.
Alison Pearson is a reporter for the Daily Telegraph, but that doesn’t mean she can write what she likes. When she asked the police what the tweet was which was objected to, she was told they couldn’t tell her that. When she asked who the complainant was, they said they couldn’t tell her that either. They added, that she shouldn’t call them a complainant, they were officially the victim. That’s what due process is like when you don’t have a First Amendment or a constitution. Victims of NCHI in the UK are decided without a trial or a defense. They asked, very politely, if Pearson would like to come voluntarily to the police station for a friendly interview. If she didn’t want to come voluntarily, they would put her on a wanted list and she would eventually be arrested. Nice choice.
It’s true that there has been a public ruckus over this particular case, but the police are unapologetic and have doubled down. Stung into action by unwanted publicity, they are now saying they have raised the matter from an NCHI to an actual crime investigation. Which means they think she can be arrested and put in prison for expressing her opinion on X. And of course they are right. In the UK that’s where we are right now. Pearson tried to point out the irony of two police officers turning up on her door to complain about her free speech on Remembrance Day of all days, when we recall the thousands who died to keep this a free country, but irony is lost on those who have no memory of what totalitarianism means.
The way things are looking I would say things can only get worse. The new Labour government has made it clear that it wants to beef up the reporting of NCHIs and make them an effective tool for clamping down on hurtful speech. You might think these are quite rare but not a bit of it; 13,200 of these were recorded in the last 12 months, and that’s around 36 a day, and they go on your record and sometimes mean you end up with no job. They also have new laws planned to control misinformation and disinformation, something not just confined to the UK. Similar laws are planned for Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the EU. Germany in particular is keen to remove all misinformation from the internet, I understand.
Whenever I see the word ‘misinformation’ these days I automatically translate it in my head to what it really means, which is ‘dissent.’ Western countries, former champions of free speech, the bedrock of liberty and individual choice, en masse it seems, now want to outlaw dissent. What is coordinating this attack on free expression, I don’t know, but it’s real and it’s upon us. We are slowly being intellectually suffocated into not expressing any opinion that others might find objectionable or that might contradict what the government said. If you had told me that would happen in my lifetime, I would have called you a liar.
I live in the UK, the home of the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta, and the mother of parliamentary democracy. I was proud that we produced men like John Milton, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Paine, that we understood the importance of the Areopagitica, the Rights of Man, and incorporated On Liberty into our social thinking. But those days seem long gone when police knock on your door to arrest you for an X post.
So I’m glad someone somewhere has a First Amendment even if we don’t. It may be your last defense in that republic of yours, if you can keep it.
Author
From the Brownstone Institute
The House report on HHS Covid propaganda is devastating. The Biden administration spent almost $1 billion to push falsehoods about Covid vaccines, boosters, and masks on the American people. If a pharma company had run the campaign, it would have been fined out of existence.
HHS engaged a PR firm, the Fors Marsh Group (FMG), for the propaganda campaign. The main goal was to increase Covid vax uptake. The strategy: 1. Exaggerate Covid mortality risk 2. Downplay the fact that there was no good evidence that the Covid vax stops transmission.
The propaganda campaign extended beyond vax uptake and included exaggerating mask efficacy and pushing for social distancing and school closures.
Ultimately, since the messaging did not match reality, the campaign collapsed public trust in public health.
The PR firm (FMG) drew most of its faulty science from the CDC’s “guidance,” which ignored the FDA’s findings on the vaccine’s limitations, as well as scientific findings from other countries that contradicted CDC groupthink.
The report details the CDC’s mask flip-flopping through the years. It’s especially infuriating to recall the CDC’s weird, anti-scientific, anti-human focus on masking toddlers with cloth masks into 2022.
President Biden’s Covid advisor Ashish K. Jha waited until Dec. 2022 (right after leaving government service) to tell the country that “[t]here is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.” What took him so long?
In 2021, former CDC director, Rochelle Walensky rewrote CDC guidance on social distancing at the behest of the national teachers’ union, guaranteeing that schools would remain closed to in-person learning for many months.
During this period, the PR firm FMG put out ads telling parents that schools would close unless kids masked up, stayed away from friends, and got Covid-vaccinated.
In March 2021, even as the CDC told the American people that the vaxxed did not need to mask, the PR firm ran ads saying that masks were still needed, even for the vaxxed. “It’s not time to ease up” we were told, in the absence of evidence any of that did any good.
In 2021, to support the Biden/Harris administration’s push for vax mandates, the PR firm pushed the false idea that the vax stopped Covid transmission. When people started getting “breakthrough” infections, public trust in public health collapsed.
Later, when the FDA approved the vax for 12 to 15-year-old kids, the PR firm told parents that schools could open in fall 2021 only if they got their kids vaccinated. These ads never mentioned side effects like myocarditis due to the vax.
HHS has scrubbed the propaganda ads from this era from its web pages. It’s easy to see why. They are embarrassing. They tell kids, in effect, that they should treat other kids like biohazards unless they are vaccinated.
When the Delta variant arrived, the PR firm doubled down on fear-mongering, masking, and social distancing.
In September 2021, CDC director Walensky overruled the agency’s external experts to recommend the booster to all adults rather than just the elderly. The director’s action was “highly unusual” and went beyond the FDA’s approval of the booster for only the elderly.
The PR campaign and the CDC persistently overestimated the mortality risk of Covid infection in kids to scare parents into vaccinating their children with the Covid vax.
In Aug. 2021, the military imposed its Covid vax mandate, leading to 8,300 servicemen being discharged. Since 2023, the DOD has been trying to get the discharged servicemen to reenlist. What harm has been done to American national security by the vax mandate?
The Biden/Harris administration imposed the OSHA, CMS, and military vax mandates, even though the CDC knew that the Delta variant evaded vaccine immunity. The PR campaign studiously avoided informing Americans about waning vaccine efficacy in the face of variants.
The propaganda campaign hired celebrities and influencers to “persuade” children to get the Covid vax.
I think if a celebrity is paid to advertise a faulty product, that celebrity should be partially liable if the product harms some people.
In the absence of evidence, the propaganda campaign ran ads telling parents that the vaccine would prevent their kids from getting Long Covid.
With the collapse in public trust in the CDC, parents have begun to question all CDC advice. Predictably, the HHS propaganda campaign has led to a decline in the uptake of routine childhood vaccines.
The report makes several recommendations, including formally defining the CDC’s core mission to focus on disease prevention, forcing HHS propaganda to abide by the FDA’s product labeling rules, and revamping the process of evaluating vaccine safety.
Probably the most important recommendation: HHS should never again adopt a policy of silencing dissenting scientists in an attempt to create an illusion of consensus in favor of CDC groupthink.
You can find a copy of the full House report here. The HHS must take its findings seriously if there is any hope for public health to regain public.
Author
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