COVID-19
‘We need to ask these questions’: Experts accuse government, Pharma of covering up vaccine risks

From LifeSiteNews
By Michael Nevradakis Ph. D., The Defender
Medical experts, political figures, journalists and whistleblowers today accused public health agencies and the mainstream media of censoring and covering up information relating to COVID-19 vaccine injuries and adverse events during a U.S. Senate roundtable discussion.
Sen. Ron Johnson hosted the discussion – “Federal Health Agencies and the COVID Cartel: What Are They Hiding?” – which his office said was intended to “expose the truth about how the COVID cartel – federal health agencies, Big Pharma, legacy media, and Big Tech – engaged in censorship and coverups.”
“It was heartening to hear these courageous experts willing to risk careers and reputations in order to tell the truth despite tremendous pressure to look the other way,” said Laura Bono, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) vice president.
Bono, who attended the roundtable, added:
We can’t ensure that the global devastation caused by the COVID crisis will never occur again unless we are able to analyze what happened and speak about it freely. We are immensely grateful to Senator Johnson for presenting this crucial discussion to the American public.
The discussion focused on six topics: COVID-19 vaccine issues, the history of vaccine injury cover-ups, the corruption of medical research and federal public health agencies, media censorship and propaganda, the COVID-19 response in other countries and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) proposed “pandemic agreement.”
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD chief scientific officer, told The Defender he was “riveted listening to the panelists during the entire four-hour session.”
“Being here among these heroes was such an encouragement,” he said. “Sen. Johnson was an extremely gracious host and a true hero himself.”
Hooker, co-author with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak, participated in the roundtable, highlighting the health risks posed by vaccines and the lack of adequate testing by federal health agencies.
2.26.2024 Washington, D.C. US Senator Ron Johnson calls a hearing on Covid 19 and who controls the Covid Cartels today in the USA. All speakers here warn you do not take the vaccine ever as young people are dying from it every day. @RonJohnsonWI pic.twitter.com/QDjnkXivI3
— Corinne Cliford 🇺🇸 (@corinnecliford) February 26, 2024
HHS never submitted required vaccine safety report to Congress
In his testimony, Hooker said, “The CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] has never tested the cumulative effect of the vaccine schedule on childhood health outcomes.”
He referenced several scientific studies to support his testimony.
“Vaccinated children were at least twice as likely to be diagnosed with developmental delays, ear infections and gastrointestinal disorders. The likelihood of an asthma diagnosis among the vaccinated group was four-and-a-half times higher than the unvaccinated group,” he said.
Hooker said unvaccinated children have shown “incidence rates between 4-20 times lower” than vaccinated children for autoimmune, neurodevelopmental and other disorders.
He also referred to the sharp rise in myocarditis diagnoses following COVID-19 vaccination.
“Myocarditis is a serious disorder and 76% of all cases following COVID-19 vaccination, as reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System [VAERS], required emergency care and/or hospitalization,” he said. Yet, the “CDC significantly downplays myocarditis as a side effect of the vaccine.”
Further highlighting government inaction in studying and responding to vaccine injuries, Hooker said:
The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act requires that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report to Congress on the state of vaccine safety in the U.S. every two years.
Yet HHS has “never submitted a vaccine safety report to Congress,” he said.
Big Pharma ‘controls the levers of power,’ suppresses unprofitable treatments
Edward Dowd, a former BlackRock executive who has extensively studied the increase in excess deaths during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, also participated in the roundtable.
Dowd, author of ‘Cause Unknown’: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022, said that government and WHO statements claiming the COVID-19 vaccines were “safe and effective” have “been proven false.”
“It has become clear that the U.S. government, along with the health regulators, do not desire an honest accounting of … policies that were imposed mostly under federal mandates,” he said, noting that this has resulted in high human costs.
Dowd told the panel:
The total excess deaths since the rollout of the vaccine in the U.S. is approximately 1.1 million for 2021, 2022 and 2023. We estimate the economic cost of productive working age people dying at $15.6 billion [and] estimate 28.4 million individuals are chronically absent, resulting in an estimated economic cost of $135 billion since 2021.
Jessica Rose, Ph.D., an immunologist and biochemist, told The Defender in advance that her testimony would focus on an “Analysis of the VAERS pharmacovigilance database in the context of the COVID-19 injectable products,” which “has revealed strong emergent safety signals – from myocarditis to death – that are not being acknowledged by the owners of the data.”
Dr. Jessica Rose Speaks for the Vaccine-Injured Through VAERS Data
"In 2021 … a 1417% INCREASE in [vaccine adverse event] reporting occurred, whereby 93% of these reports were in the context of the Covid-19 products."@JesslovesMJK
This clip is from Ron Johnson's roundtable… pic.twitter.com/E8zcIPLPnR
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) February 26, 2024
“This goes against standard operating procedures and begs the question: Why?” she said.
Rose also referred to recent revelations, later confirmed by Canadian public health authorities, about the contamination of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
“Is there a risk associated with DNA insertion in the context of the modified mRNA shots? Yes,” she said.
Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, discussed the suppression of potentially effective treatments by public health agencies.
“We are only now beginning to understand that many long-established drugs may have other uses that we don’t even know about, effectively treating diseases we never imagined using them against,” he said. “So why on earth aren’t we systematically testing them for potential new uses?”
Kory told the panel:
The ugly truth is it’s not profitable. Big Pharma makes money on complicated new drugs, and it controls the levers of power. Nearly half of FDA’s [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] budget is bankrolled by the drug industry, and its tentacles are deep in academia, medicine and other regulatory agencies like the NIH [National Institutes of Health].
He cited ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as examples of treatments that were suppressed during the pandemic despite evidence they were effective.
Watch Lara Logan's segment just this morning in Washington, D.C., at Senator Ron Johnson's roundtable discussion 'Federal Health Agencies and the COVID Cartel: What Are They Hiding? pic.twitter.com/v4kzoiG4QP
— Lara Logan (@laralogan) February 26, 2024
Johnson: Those who ask questions ‘vilified,’ ‘ridiculed’
In an interview with The Gateway Pundit Sunday, Johnson discussed adverse events related to the COVID-19 vaccines, the discovery by embalmers of “strange white fibrous clots” in bodies of the deceased since the vaccine rollout began in late 2020 and efforts to suppress ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as COVID-19 treatments.
Referring to the clotting phenomenon, Johnson said, “What’s unfortunate is the medical establishment in general, and certainly, our federal health agencies, are discouraging autopsies. So, the only evidence we’re getting of this is from embalmers that are having a difficult time getting embalming fluid into [the] cadavers.”
Johnson suggested that Big Pharma and government health agencies promoted mRNA vaccines because of a profit motive.
He said:
They’ve had this mRNA platform. It never succeeded in animals, but they knew how profitable a platform it could be. They’ve already found out how profitable vaccines are because there’s no worry of liability. You just get those things on the childhood vaccine schedule, and you just start printing money.
Nobody can question the efficacy. Nobody can question the safety of them. So, vaccines are highly profitable for pharmaceutical companies, so they’re going to push them. And of course, they’ve got their individuals in government that push them right along with them.
Again, our health agencies have been completely captured by Big Pharma.
Johnson also questioned the addition of an increasing number of vaccines to the childhood vaccination schedule in the U.S.
“With the number [of vaccines] we administer to children now, gee, what could go wrong?” he said. “Every time you inject a child with a vaccine, you’re messing with their immune system. Is that why autoimmune diseases are up?”
“We need to ask these questions,” Johnson said. “My problem is we’re just not even able to ask questions, and those who ask questions, those who put forward evidence are immediately ostracized, criticized, vilified, ridiculed – and that’s not science.”
Johnson also implied that some of his congressional colleagues have sustained injuries related to the COVID-19 vaccines but are not speaking out.
“My guess is they understand how people that do question this stuff are ridiculed and vilified. And they just don’t want to put up with the hassle,” he said.
Johnson also spoke out against pharmaceutical company advertising, suggesting it should be subject to a government ban.
“Pass a law,” he said. “We are one of the very few countries that allow that.”
Johnson said that while he is “a free-market guy” who usually “would not be on the side of imposing that kind of government restriction on business,” he said that having seen how Big Pharma “spends the billions and how they use that to capture the narrative and destroy anybody who questions the narrative,” he believes “that’s got to stop.”
Participants at the roundtable included:
- Vaccinated children (R-Ga.).
- Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD senior director of science and research.
- Del Bigtree, CEO of the Informed Consent Action Network.
- Psychologist and author Mattias Desmet, Ph.D.
- Edward Dowd, author of “‘Cause Unknown’: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022.”
- Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center and co-author of the 1985 book “DPT: A Shot in the Dark.
- Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance.
- Journalist Lara Logan, formerly of CBS News.
- Dr. Robert Malone, pioneer and expert in mRNA and DNA vaccines and therapies.
- Kevin McKernan, chief scientific officer and founder of Medicinal Genomics.
- Journalist Rodney Palmer, formerly of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
- Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D., professor emeritus and senior research scientist in epidemiology (chronic diseases) at the Yale School of Public Health.
- International elected officials, including Rob Roos, a member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands.
- Immunologist and biochemist Jessica Rose, Ph.D.
- Biologist and podcaster Bret Weinstein, Ph.D.
Several of the participants – and Sen. Johnson – previously spoke at this past weekend’s International Crisis Summit in Washington, D.C., which Malone organized. Rep. Greene recently spoke in support of vaccine injury victims at a U.S. House of Representatives vaccine safety hearing.
Watch Sen. Johnson’s roundtable discussion here:
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.
2025 Federal Election
Conservatives promise to ban firing of Canadian federal workers based on COVID jab status

From LifeSiteNews
The Conservative platform also vows that the party will oppose mandatory digital ID systems and a central bank digital currency if elected.
Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party’s 2025 election platform includes a promise to “ban” the firing of any federal worker based “solely” on whether or not they chose to get the COVID shots.
On page 23 of the “Canada First – For A Change” plan, which was released on Tuesday, the promise to protect un-jabbed federal workers is mentioned under “Protect Personal Autonomy, Privacy, and Data Security.”
It promises that a Conservative government will “Ban the dismissal of federal workers based solely on COVID vaccine status.”
The Conservative Party also promises to “Oppose any move toward mandatory digital ID systems” as well as “Prohibit the Bank of Canada from developing or implementing a central bank digital currency.”
In October 2021, the Liberal government of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced unprecedented COVID-19 jab mandates for all federal workers and those in the transportation sector. The government also announced that the unjabbed would no longer be able to travel by air, boat, or train, both domestically and internationally.
This policy resulted in thousands losing their jobs or being placed on leave for non-compliance. It also trapped “unvaccinated” Canadians in the country.
COVID jab mandates, which also came from provincial governments with the support of the federal government, split Canadian society. The shots have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects, such as death, including in children.
Many recent rulings have gone in favor of those who chose not to get the shots and were fired as a result, such as an arbitrator ruling that one of the nation’s leading hospitals in Ontario must compensate 82 healthcare workers terminated after refusing to get the jabs.
Beyond health concerns, many Canadians, especially Catholics, opposed the injections on moral grounds because of their link to fetal cell lines derived from the tissue of aborted babies.
COVID-19
RFK Jr. Launches Long-Awaited Offensive Against COVID-19 mRNA Shots

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH
As millions of Americans anxiously await action from the new HHS leadership against the COVID-19 mRNA injections—injected into over 9 million children this year—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has finally gone publicly on the offensive:
Let’s go over each key point made by RFK Jr.:
The recommendation for children was always dubious. It was dubious because kids had almost no risk for COVID-19. Certain kids that had very profound morbidities may have a slight risk. Most kids don’t.
In the largest review to date on myocarditis following SARS-CoV-2 infection vs. COVID-19 vaccination, Mead et al found that vaccine-induced myocarditis is not only significantly more common but also more severe—particularly in children and young males. Our findings make clear that the risks of the shots overwhelmingly outweigh any theoretical benefit:
The OpenSAFELY study included more than 1 million adolescents and children and found that myocarditis was documented ONLY in COVID-19 vaccinated groups and NOT after COVID-19 infection. There were NO COVID-19-related deaths in any group. A&E attendance and unplanned hospitalization were higher after first vaccination compared to unvaccinated groups:
So why are we giving this to tens of millions of kids when the vaccine itself does have profound risk? We’ve seen huge associations of myocarditis and pericarditis with strokes, with other injuries, with neurological injuries.
The two largest COVID-19 vaccine safety studies ever conducted, involving 99 million (Faksova et al) and 85 million people (Raheleh et al), confirm RFK Jr.’s concerns, documenting significantly increased risks of serious adverse events following vaccination, including:
- Myocarditis (+510% after second dose)
- Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (+278% after first dose)
- Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis (+223% after first dose)
- Guillain-Barré Syndrome (+149% after first dose)
- Heart Attack (+286% after second dose)
- Stroke (+240% after first dose)
- Coronary Artery Disease (+244% after second dose)
- Cardiac Arrhythmia (+199% after first dose)
And this was clear even in the clinical data that came out of Pfizer. There were actually more deaths. There were about 23% more deaths in the vaccine group than the placebo group. We need to ask questions and we need to consult with parents.
Actually, according to the Pfizer’s clinical trial data, there were 43% more deaths in the vaccine group compared to the placebo group when post-unblinding deaths are included:
We need to give people informed consent, and we shouldn’t be making recommendations that are not good for the population.
Public acknowledgment of the grave harms of COVID-19 vaccines signals that real action is right around the corner. However, we must hope that action is taken for ALL age groups, as no one is spared from their life-reducing effects:
Alessandria et al (n=290,727, age > 10 years): People vaccinated with 2 doses lost 37% of life expectancy compared to the unvaccinated population during follow-up.
Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation
Please consider following both the McCullough Foundation and my personal account on X (formerly Twitter) for further content.
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