Government marketing campaign for COVID-19 vaccines: “dispelling fears” by avoiding the facts

18 January 2021

Within weeks, the Australian Federal government will be spending A$24 million of our nation’s money on an advertising campaign to promote uptake of so-called COVID-19 vaccines.

(Important note: It is technically incorrect to label these products “COVID-19 vaccines”, on two counts:

1) Vaccines are developed to induce immunity against an infectious agent [bacterium or virus – in this case, SARS-CoV-2] not against an illness [in this case, COVID-19]; and

2) According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, the definition of a vaccine is “a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease”.
Neither the Pfizer, Moderna nor Oxford-AstraZeneca products meet this definition, since they instead use techniques [messenger RNA or viral vectors] to cause our own cells to produce fragments of viral proteins, in order to induce an immune response to these proteins. It is more accurate to describe these novel products as gene therapy, and in fact viral vectors are used in gene therapy to deliver genes into cells.)

N.B. After publication of this article, Merriam-Webster updated its definition of a vaccine. See screenshots from 18 January 2021:

and from 26 January 2021:

This $24 million is on top of the $363 million the government has already contributed to support research and development of “COVID-19 vaccines” and over $3.3 billion committed in 5 agreements with vaccine manufacturers,

According to a report published in the Sydney Morning Herald, young women, indigenous and migrant communities are going to be targeted with specifically tailored messages.

Women aged 30-39 were identified in research commissioned by the federal Department of Health, and conducted by Quantum Market Research in late 2020, as the demographic group with the highest level of concern about the safety of “COVID-19 vaccines”. 42% of women in their 30s expressed safety concerns compared to 27% of the total sample of 1000 Australians.

The Quantum report concluded that these safety concerns indicate “a need to dispel some specific fears held by certain cohorts of the community in relation to potential adverse side effects.”

My response to that statement is that the appropriate response to such fears is to gather and present accurate information on the risks and benefits of “COVID-19 vaccines”, rather than attempt to snow people with a government marketing campaign.

Let’s consider whether concerns about “COVID-19 vaccines” may be warranted.

Firstly, none of the products that are under contract by the Australian government, pending authorisation by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), have completed clinical trials to establish their safety and efficacy.

Any claim that these products have already been proved “safe and effective” (such as this one in The Guardian – which perhaps not coincidentally has received at least US$12 779 391 in grant funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has invested heavily in “COVID-19 vaccines”) is an outright lie.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca “COVID-19 vaccine”

The Oxford-AstraZeneca “COVID-19 vaccine” is the product that most Australians are expected to receive.

The Russian arm of the Phase 3 clinical trial of this product has been suspended due to a suspected unexpected serious adverse reaction (SUSAR), defined as “an untoward and unintended response to a study drug, which is not listed in the applicable product information, and meets one of the following serious criteria: results in death, is life-threatening, requires hospitalisation or prolongation of an existing hospitalisation, results in persistent or significant disability or incapacity, or is a congenital anomaly or birth defect.”

The US arm of the Phase 3 clinical trial is not due to be completed until February 21, 2023, as its Clinical Trials entry shows:

March 23, 2021 is listed as the “final data collection date for primary outcome measure” – in other words, the date by which AstraZeneca intends to wrap up data collection (note that publication of these data, and analysis by regulatory agencies such as the TGA and by the peer review process required for publication in medical journals would – or at least, should – take at minimum several weeks and ideally several months) for the primary outcome measures, which are as follows:

• Occurrence of any symptoms currently ascribed to COVID-19 (which could be as minor as a mild fever, headache or nausea), occurring along with a positive RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2, at least 15 days after receiving the second dose of the “vaccine”;
• Incidence of adverse events, including serious adverse events; note that data-gathering on adverse events is intended to continue for 730 days (2 years) after receipt of the second dose of the vaccine, yet the trial was only commenced on August 28, 2020).

In other words, Australians are expected to roll up their sleeves and take an experimental vaccine, doses of which are currently being manufactured under licence in Melbourne, that is nowhere near completing basic safety and efficacy testing, before it has even reached the milestone of reporting primary outcome data.

And to add insult to injury, as former professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health Dr William Haseltine has pointed out, the standard set for vaccine efficacy in these primary outcome measures is appallingly low:

Only after analysis of full trial data, which are projected to be available in March 2023, will it be known whether the Oxford-AstraZeneca “COVID-19 vaccine” achieves any or all of the secondary outcome measures, which include prevention of severe or critical COVID-19 cases, prevention of COVID-19-related emergency room visits, and production of neutralising antibodies (which prevent both infection with SARS-CoV-2, and transmission of the virus to other people).

In plain English, we will not know until at least April 2023 (allowing time for analysis of the data) whether the Oxford-AstraZeneca “vaccine” prevents any outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection that are of genuine concern, including whether it prevents contagion (transmission of the virus by an infected person to other people).

It is noteworthy that the World Health Organization’s Chief Scientist, Dr Soumya Swaminathan, has stated that

“At the moment, I don’t believe we have the evidence on any of the vaccines to be confident that it’s going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on.”

Dr Soumya Swaminathan

In addition, people with “confirmed or suspected immunosuppressive or immunodeficient state” and/or “significant disease, disorder, or finding” were excluded from participation in the clinical trial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca “COVID-19 vaccine”.

Yet people living in aged care, people with disabilities, and others deemed “more likely to get severe infections” – which by definition includes people who are immunosuppressed, immunodeficient, and/or suffering from significant diseases or disorders – are going to be targeted for receipt of the first available doses of any “COVID-19 vaccine” attained by the Australian government.

In other words, the most vulnerable Australians are going to be used as guinea pigs to test out products that have not yet completed fundamental safety and efficacy assessments.

The Pfizer-BioNTech “COVID-19 vaccine”

The Pfizer-BioNTech product is expected to be approved by the TGA by the end of January 2021, with rollout of the “vaccine” commencing in mid to late February.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has stated that the “goal was to have four million people vaccinated by the end of March”. Presumably, most of these people will receive the Pfizer-BioNTech product, of which 10 million doses have been secured by the Australian government.

According to the Clinical Trials register entry for the US arm of the trial for this product, the Phase 3 trial (assessing safety and efficacy) will not be finalised until January 27, 2023, with final data collection for primary outcome measures estimated to be complete by July 30, 2021.

Once again, the primary outcome measures for the Pfizer-BioNTech “COVID-19 vaccine” do not include prevention of severe or critical cases of COVID-19, nor transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

The much-hyped 95% efficacy of this product was for prevention of any symptoms of COVID-19 (including common cold-type symptoms such as headache and mild fever) in conjunction with a positive RT-PCR test. The World Health Organization has admitted that the RT-PCR is generating false positives – that is, people who do not actually have a SARS-CoV-2 infection are being told that they do, on the basis of this test.

(See my article COVID-19: To test or not to test, and watch The PCR Deception, for a detailed discussion of the serious limitations of the RT-PCR test as a diagnostic assay for SARS-CoV-2 infection.)

Note that people with any of the following conditions or circumstances were excluded from participation in the clinical trial of this product:

• History of severe adverse reaction to any previous vaccine, and/or severe allergic reaction to any component of the Pfizer-BioNTech “vaccine”;
• Immunocompromise and known or suspected immunodeficiency;
• Pregnant or breastfeeding women;
• Current treatment with immunosuppressive therapy, including cytotoxic agents or systemic corticosteroids; and
• “Other medical or psychiatric condition including recent (within the past year) or active suicidal ideation/behavior or laboratory abnormality that may increase the risk of study participation or, in the investigator’s judgment, make the participant inappropriate for the study.”

In other words, the trial enrolled ‘perfect patients’: people who were in good health and not suffering from any of the conditions likely to be experienced by the nursing home residents, people with disabilities and others deemed “more likely to get severe infections”, who will be targeted for the first stage of the rollout of “COVID-19 vaccines” in Australia.

Returning to the safety concerns expressed by women in their 30s – the demographic group most likely to bear children in Australia- it cannot be emphasised enough that there are no efficacy or safety data for the Pfizer-BioNTech product in pregnant or breastfeeding women.

Furthermore, females of reproductive age were required to undertake a pregnancy test before receiving each dose of the “vaccine” and if they tested positive, they were immediately withdrawn from the study:

All male participants, and female participants with childbearing potential, and their sexual partner/s, were also required to use effective contraception for the duration of the study:

Male participants were required to either abstain from intercourse, or use a condom, for 28 days after they received the final dose of the “vaccine”:

Female participants of childbearing potential were required to continue to use effective contraception for 28 days after receiving the final dose:

The possibility has been raised that “COVID-19 vaccines” that induce antibody formation against spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 could induce antibodies against a structurally similar protein, syncytin-1, which is crucial to formation of a placenta and hence to maintaining pregnancy.

Since pregnant women were excluded from the Pfizer-BioNTech trial, women of childbearing potential were instructed to use contraception throughout and after the treatment period, and no studies investigating reproductive toxicity in animals have been published, it is simply unknown at this point whether these products may cause miscarriage, or render women temporarily or even permanently infertile:

It is hard to understand how the government could possibly be “developing information and communication to meet the needs of the community, including pregnant women and young families,” as Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has stated, when there are currently no data on safety or efficacy in women who are, or intend to become, pregnant, or are currently breastfeeding; nor on children aged under 12 in the case of the Pfizer-BioNTech “vaccine”, or under 18 in the case of the Oxford-AstraZeneca “vaccine”; nor on frail elderly, immunocompromised or seriously ill people, since individuals with any of these characteristics were excluded from the trials.

Indigenous Australians, also targeted for special attention by the government “COVID-19 vaccine” marketing campaign, have higher rates of chronic diseases that may increase the risk of adverse reactions to these novel pharmaceutical products.

Furthermore, no clinical trials for any COVID-19 vaccine candidates currently slated for rollout to the Australian population have been conducted within Australia, which almost certainly means that no Indigenous Australians have been enrolled in such trials.

It is unknown whether Indigenous Australians may have genetic or other biologically-based differences that alter their response to, or risk of adverse outcomes from, these products.

Targeting them for the first round of the rollout is therefore, at best, ethically questionable.

Prime Minister Morrison has warned that the government intends to make uptake of “COVID-19 vaccines” “as mandatory as you can possibly make it”.

Unlike medications, vaccines are administered to people who are not yet ill from infection with the pathogen the vaccine is intended to protect against. Every single person who receives a vaccine is at risk of adverse effects of the vaccine, whereas few people in Australia are currently at risk of developing COVID-19 .

In a country with no widespread community transmission of SARS-CoV-2, and in which, therefore, each individual is at a vanishingly low risk of contracting the virus, it is utterly unconscionable to deploy novel products that have not even completed Phase 3 trials, on a population-wide basis.

Initial reports on adverse reactions to “COVID-19 vaccines” that have been administered under emergency use authorisations in multiple countries including the UK, US, Israel and Portugal, are highly concerning, with many cases of severe allergic reactions, Bell’s palsy, encephalomyelitis, multi-system inflammatory syndrome, and several deaths – especially in elderly people – occurring within minutes to days of vaccine administration.

In the first five days of “COVID-19 vaccination” in the US, out of 215 362 “vaccine” recipients registered with the v-safe smartphone app, 5052 self-reported serious “health impact events” following their first dose of “vaccine” — events requiring care from a fellow health professional and rendering the person unable to work or perform normal daily activities. This equates to a one-in-43 injury rate (2.3%) for the v-safe group.

Australia has no vaccine injury compensation scheme. The Morrison government has granted legal indemnity to manufacturers of “COVID-19 vaccines”, meaning they cannot be sued for any adverse events caused by their products, and has also declined to set up a no-fault vaccine injury compensation scheme. Hence, anyone injured by these novel products will “face a tough battle to seek compensation”, according to Australian Medical Association president, Omar Khorshid.

I for one would prefer that my taxpayer’s dollars were spent on thorough investigation of the safety and efficacy of “COVID-19 vaccines” before a single Australian receives these novel products, rather than on a marketing campaign which does not – and cannot, given the absence of data on safety and efficacy of any current “vaccine” candidate – provide any useful information to address the valid concerns of members of the Australian public.

Even better, I would like to see my taxpayer’s dollars directed toward campaigns aimed at reducing known risk factor for severe outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection, such as obesity and cardiometabolic disease.

Thorough and unbiased investigation of the prophylaxis and early treatment protocols currently being deployed, with apparent success, in India, would also be a valuable use of the portion of my – and your – hard-earned money that is taken by the government, supposedly in service of the citizens of this country.

Contact your Federal MP and Senator here if you wish to protest the inappropriate use of taxpayers’ dollars to promote uptake of pharmaceutical products that have not yet completed clinical trials to establish their safety and efficacy, especially in groups that were specifically excluded from participating in those clinical trials.

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