COVAX through the Looking Glass part 2
And the ones that mother gives you, don't do anything at all
As outlined in part 1, the blue pill narrative of fear and pandemic conformity has inexorably lead to the fictional necessity for the masses to allow themselves, even beg, to be injected with an untested biological intervention masquerading as a vaccine that has never before been foisted upon the world.
We shall take a look at the potential consequences of such folly in due course, but first let us make a media-free evaluation as to what the pharma majors, such as Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca, are really claiming about their dubious products.
In the UK, as in the US and other western countries, “unapproved” drugs are allowed in emergency situations. The government has purchased 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, 17 million doses of the Moderna vaccine and 100 million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
These doses are part of Britain’s portfolio of 355 million shots from seven different vaccine developers.
Thus far, 2.4 million people have had the Pfizer vaccine, the first to be approved in the UK (on Dec 2nd ) and the world. The NHS is committed to vaccinating everyone in the top four priority groups by February 15th, leaving 12.5 million to be vaccinated within the next five weeks.
Pfizer claimed an effectiveness of over 90%. However, this claim is misleading.
First of all, the actual claim is that it is effective only in minimally preventing moderate symptoms, such as coughs and headaches, not infection.
Secondly, the “effectiveness” is based on comparing the vaccine group’s chance of “cases” – about 0.04% with that of the control group – about 0.43%.
This gives a relative risk reduction of 100(1 – (0.04/0.43) = 90.7%
The absolute risk reduction (true effectiveness) of the vaccine is (0.43-0.04) = 0.39%.
This is far less impressive than Pfizer’s figure which basically amounts to a deceitful marketing strategy.
Thirdly, what the vaccine makers deem a “case” is one positive PCR test and one or two mild symptoms. Of the 20,000 or so control subjects, 86 became PCR positive and exhibited mild symptoms while of the 20,000 or so who received the vaccine, 8 became PCR positive and exhibited mild symptoms.
The number of subjects tested as PCR positive but with no symptoms, the so-called “asymptomatic carriers”, has not been disclosed. This would be important information, as it would indicate whether PCR positivity has any diagnostic value at all.
As we know, the PCR test picks up fragments of RNA that may or may not resemble that of Sars-Cov-2 and may be merely a remnant of an infection that was seen off weeks or months previously. It can be, has been and is being tweaked for hypersensitivity by increasing the cycle-threshold well above 30, rendering the diagnosis meaningless.
The notoriety of the inaccurate PCR test aside, the risks of even these dubious “cases” occurring are so low as to render such “efficacy” meaningless.
Dr. Allan Cunningham, a retired paediatrician in New York, pointed out in the BMJ that:
“The Number Needed To Vaccinate (NNTV) = 256 (1/0.0039), which means that to prevent just 1 Covid-19 case 256 individuals must get the vaccine; the other 255 individuals derive no benefit, but are subject to vaccine adverse effects, whatever they may be and whenever we learn about them……”
Finally, all the participants selected were healthy with no immunodeficiency issues.
All the manufacturers have pulled the same trick.
Moderna claimed that its vaccine, designed in two days, tested in under a year, and approved in the UK following a review by the MHRA on Jan 8, was about 95% effective in preventing Covid-19 in clinical trials.
Of the 15,000 control subjects, 0.6% became PCR positive and of the 15,000 vaccine subjects, about 0.03% became PCR positive. Again, such measures of “efficacy” are meaningless where the risks of an event are so small.
Yet we have relative risk reduction of 100(1 – 0.03/0.6) = 95%
The absolute effectiveness of the vaccine is (0.6-0.03) = 0.57%.
The Number Needed To Vaccinate (NNTV) = 175(1/0.0057), which means that to prevent just 1 Covid-19 case with symptoms, 175 individuals must get the vaccine; the other 174 individuals derive no benefit.
None of these revealed how many cycles were used for the PCR tests used to measure Covid-19 “cases”. Neither was it reported whether the “cases” had symptoms or not, nor was there indication of any hospitalizations or deaths.
Again, the vaccine is not designed to prevent infection. To be deemed “successful,” the vaccine merely needs to reduce the severity of the symptoms, not reduce infection, hospitalization or death rates.
Now we come to the UK government and AstraZeneca’s flagship Oxford vaccine. Approved on Dec 30th , followed by emergency authorization by India, and commencing roll out from Jan 4th.
The reported results from the trials of this vaccine were particularly curious.
Of 11,500 volunteers from the UK and Brazil, the vaccine was purported to be 70.4% “effective” on average.
When administered in two full doses it was just over 60% “effective”.
Of the 4455 control subjects, 71 developed “cases” and of the 4440 vaccine subjects, 27
This gives a relative risk reduction of 100(1 – 0.61/1.59) = 62%
The absolute effectiveness is (1.59-0.62) = 0.97%.
The Number Needed To Vaccinate (NNTV) = 103 (1/0.0097), which means that to prevent just 1 Covid-19 case with symptoms, 103 individuals must get the vaccine; the other 102 individuals derive no benefit.
However, when administered at a half-dose and then a full dose it was found to be just over 90% “effective”.
30 out of 1374 in the control group came down with coronavirus, compared to 3 out of 1367 patients in the vaccine group.
This gives a relative risk reduction of 100(1 – 0.15/2.18) = 93%
The absolute effectiveness is (2.18-0.15) = 2.03%.
The Number Needed To Vaccinate (NNTV) = 49 (1/0.0203), which means that to prevent just 1 Covid-19 case with symptoms, 49 individuals must get the vaccine; the other 48 individuals derive no benefit.
It is important to note that this half-dose group included no patients older than 55. These patients were a subset of the UK trials. The UK participants did not receive saline injections as controls but rather an approved meningitis vaccine. This would go some way to explaining the high absolute effectiveness of this vaccine. The meningitis vaccine may have reduced the T-cell response of the control participants to Sars-Cov-2 or other coronaviruses, making them more likely to test positive and exhibit symptoms. This would mean that the initial half-dose treatment group was evaluated on the basis of receiving the Oxford vaccine and not receiving a meningitis vaccine!
This initial half-dose group trial was presented by AstraZeneca as a fortunate mistake. They claimed an error in dosage was made by a contractor, and once discovered, the initial half-dose followed a month later by a full dose group and a two full-dose group was set up and the trials continued in this fashion. AstraZeneca and Oxford researchers said they did not know why the smaller dose appeared to produce better results. I suggest, however, that these already rigged trials were rigged again to give them an advantage over the trials, rigged to a lesser degree, carried out by AstraZeneca’s rivals.
AstraZeneca had previously come under disrepute for not promptly disclosing to the public that a participant had fallen ill during their clinical trials in September of 2020. They did, however, provide immediate details of the nature of the illness in a private conference call with investors hosted by the investment bank JP Morgan.
All this ire did not prevent Boris Johnson from proclaiming that the vaccine “has the makings of a wonderful British scientific achievement.”
Curious that on the very day the Oxford vaccine was approved - December 30th, the four UK chief medical officers announced that the second doses of all the Covid vaccines purchased ( Pfizer’s, Moderna’s and AstraZeneca’s) would be given towards the end of 12 weeks rather than in the previously recommended 3-4 weeks.
The reasons given were the vaccine shortages and the need to maximise the number of people receiving a vaccine.
Recall that the UK purchased 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, 17 million doses of the Moderna vaccine and 100 million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
The population of the UK is 66.65 million. Double that is 133.5 million.
However, it is known that the trials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine included different spacing between doses, finding that the longer gap of two to three months led to a greater immune response, despite the overall participant numbers being small.
While this may be the case for the Oxford vaccine, the trials for the Pfizer vaccine did not compare different dosing schedules.
In a joint statement Pfizer and BioNTech said, “The safety and efficacy of the vaccine has not been evaluated on different dosing schedules as the majority of trial participants received the second dose within the window specified in the study design . . . There is no data to demonstrate that protection after the first dose is sustained after 21 days.”
The European Medicines Agency has said that the gap between the first and second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine should not exceed 42 days. “Any change to this would require a variation to the marketing authorisation as well as more clinical data to support such a change, otherwise it would be considered as ‘off-label use,’” the agency said
Again, I suggest that the UK government’s flagship Oxford recombinant viral-vector vaccine ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, developed by AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish pharmaceutical company based in Cambridge, has been surreptitiously maneuvered to the forefront of the vaccine rollout in the UK.
Indeed, the Oxford-AstraZeneca team were leaders in the race to develop a vaccine last spring. The UK government pre-ordered 100 million doses. This should not be surprising to anyone familiar with the central role of the UK, through the governmental Department for International Development (DFID), in establishing the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), created in the year 2000.
GAVI is funded and partnered by the Gates foundation, other private philanthrocapitalists, the Vaccine industry, the WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank and 194 member states, of which the British government, as its top sponsor, has been the most instrumental.
In 2017, the campaign was stepped up a notch as Gates collaborated with the governments of Norway, India, Japan, and Germany along with the Wellcome Trust – a British research charity, in launching the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). This alliance was to invest in the accelerated development of vaccines. They made it clear that they would support whatever it took to find a vaccine for COVID-19. This included compressing the development timeline and financing numerous facilities to manufacture a wide range of potential vaccines simultaneously. The UK Government invested £50 million in CEPI to support the rapid vaccine and immunoprophylactic development against “unknown pathogens” (also referred to as Disease X).
The UK government’s favourite for this project is the British-Swedish pharma major – AstraZeneca, in partnership with the Jenner Institute at Oxford University. “ChAdOx1 nCoV-19” is a recombinant viral vector vaccine. This is a method of immunisation that uses live replicating viruses that have been engineered to carry extra genes derived from a pathogen that produce the proteins against which the body generates immunity.
Remarkably, the leader of the study, Professor Sarah Gilbert explained how this vaccine was rushed through due to “ongoing research into Disease X – an as yet unknown infectious agent earmarked as a potential pandemic in the making – which allowed them to pivot so quickly to Covid-19.”
How can one research into an infectious agent when no one knows what it will be?
How can plans be put in place in anticipation of such a world changing event without knowing it’s cause?
They can’t of course.
Regardless, it seems the US is not happy at the moment with AstraZeneca’s shenanigans and it remains to be seen whether the FDA will grant emergency authorisation for the 300 million doses it had ordered.
But the AstraZeneca vaccine has the winning card. It’s cheaper and easier to handle and store and more amenable to mass production than Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines. Developing countries such as India, Brazil and South Africa have bet all their chips on this shot.
Whether the developing and developed worlds need this vaccine at all will be the focus of parts 3 and 4.