Warped logic to booster drive
The government’s art of strategic communication paints a sketchy picture.
Pfizer’s COVID-19 bivalent booster will be available to everyone aged 30 plus from April 1.
The New Zealand government’s booster campaign comes at a time when there are calls, in international science circles, for investigation into links between adverse events and COVID injections, especially the boosters.
While 1.7 million doses of the new bivalent booster are ordered for New Zealand, the long-term implications for emerging problems, such as pericarditis, arthritis, thyroid disruption, menstrual irregularities and damage to the nervous system remain unknown.
But, announcing the booster rollout, NZ Health Minister Ayesha Verrall said, “This is a really important thing for making sure our health system functions over winter. It will protect you, and your whanau.”
She described the government’s approach as ‘safe and smart’: “We relied on advice of the technical advisory group and they recently recommended the bivalent vaccine would be useful.”
The Technical Advisory Group is part of the Ministry’s response to COVID-19.
Minister Verrall told the nation:“Billions of doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been given around the world and we are very confident of its safety.”
What the Minister didn’t mention is that several studies now show that vaccine rollout – particularly of the booster doses – is associated with rising excess deaths. Examples where this pattern has been observed include Israel, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Authors of the German study found two important aspects.
“First, the findings show that COVID-vaccinations can cause deaths as a side effect. Second, the findings show that deadly side effects of COVID-vaccinations are not extreme exceptional cases.”
The authors concluded that it seemed surprising that a respective safety signal was not detected by the institute responsible for the safety monitoring of drugs in Germany.
The bivalent mRNA boosters — authorised with no human clinical trials — contain components of the original COVID-19 ancestral strain plus the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants.
There is no good data that bivalent boosters lower hospitalisation or death or even make a small dent in transmission, according to Vinay Prasad, Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at University of California.
But the New Zealand Ministry of Health tells us that the new COVID-19 bivalent vaccine is considered “likely” to be more effective against Omicron subvariants.
University of Waikato economist John Gibson sees the rollout of booster doses as controversial and costly.
“The ratio of vaccine risk to benefits likely has swung more towards risk than during the original randomised trials, due to dose-dependent adverse events and to fixation of immune responses on a variant no longer circulating, yet the evidence underpinning mass use of boosters is weaker than was the evidence for the original vaccine rollout.”
His 2022 study found there were 16 excess deaths per 100,000 booster doses in the country, amounting to more than 400 excess deaths: “The value of statistical life of these excess deaths is over $1.6 billion.”
NZDSOS, a group of health professionals, fears we are not getting a good deal: “Kiwis understand that if you need five or more doses of something and even then it doesn’t stop you getting infected, hospitalised or transmitting an infection and it increases your mortality, you are being sold a lemon. In our opinion this is a huge waste of taxpayers money and very sadly the jab experiment has cost the lives of some New Zealanders.”
Minister Verrall may not have read these reports:
Overseas COVID lawsuits are expected to be ‘bigger than asbestos and big tobacco’, according to organisers of The Covid Litigation Conference to be held in Atlanta, USA, this month.
The conference focuses on employer and education mandates, medical licence, fraud, civil rights, censorship, vaccine injury and hospital negligence.
Closer to home, statistician Guy Hatchard has written an open letter to Prime Minister Chris Hipkins about the booster campaign.
He says there is no credible legal defence that the government can advance to cover its failure to openly inform individuals and the public of the inherent health risks of Covid vaccines.
Hatchard calls for further investigation into the causes of current high rates of hospital admissions and deaths, with reference to vaccination status.
“We need to be more alert as a nation to our own sovereign and economic interests especially when we consider health and the legal protections that have been afforded to multinational interests like Pfizer and others”, Hatchard writes.
Much of the government’s decision making during the pandemic has been based on guidance from the World Health Organisation, which is presently seeking to expand its powers through amendments to international health regulations and an international treaty, or accord.
New Zealand is playing a lead role:
Andrew Forsyth - the NZ Ministry of Health’s manager of Public Health Strategy - is a member of the WHO’s International Health Regulations Review Committee.
Sir Ashley Bloomfield, the country's Director-General of Health during the COVID pandemic, co-chairs the working group for these amendments. The working group is tasked with proposing a package of targeted amendments for adoption by the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the WHO. (Bloomfield is remembered by many for cruelly denying vaccination exemptions to many people who were at known risk from the COVID vaccination.)
The WHO admits it engages in “strategic communication and community engagement approaches and interventions”, a practice clearly adopted by New Zealand health authorities that have shut down and ignored any attempt to debate their policies.
We now need some straight answers from Chris Hipkins.
Does NZ intend to sign up to this treaty/accord?
Will you gauge public opinion on this move?
Under the proposed regulations, will doctors be told what they are allowed to give a patient and what they will be prohibited from giving a patient when the WHO declares a public health emergency?
Under your leadership, will you ever reintroduce vaccine mandates?
Will the treaty/accord provisions interfere with our national sovereignty in the case of declaring and managing a health emergency?
Note: Medsafe hosts a Medicines Adverse Reactions Committee meeting to be held on Thursday 9 March 2023. At this stage COVID vaccines and boosters are missing from its published agenda.
Reminder: A petition requesting that the House of Representatives call for a Royal Commission of Inquiry in the safety and efficacy of Covid-19 vaccine use in New Zealand closes at the end of March. Petition
“A cartel of very powerful scientific bureaucrats took over the whole apparatus of science and we had a catastrophe” - Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Standford University.
“Stop the immunisation and start the scientific discussion. And we need to examine the long-term effects of the mRNA vaccines. The Government should not hide and manipulate the data.” - Masanori Fukushima, Professor Emeritus at Kyoto University
Sources
https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/waieconwp/22_2f11.htm
Vinay Prasad on risk-benefit slide
Peter Marks of FDA admits he did not demand appropriate efficacy data for bivalent booster
https://drtrozzi.org/it/2023/02/26/rodey-palmer-exposes-historical-anti-canadian-propaganda/
Ashley Bloomfield chairs working group
Letter-to-prime-minister-chris-hipkins/
Should Every American Older than 18 Get a Booster?
Peter Marks of FDA admits he did not demand appropriate efficacy data for bivalent booster