Frontline Health Workers: From Heroes to Vaccine Hesitant Public Health Threats

Updated

By Jefferey Jaxen

UPDATE (12/1): The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has voted 13 to 1 in an emergency meeting to make the recommendation that residents and employees of nursing homes health care workers be the first to receive coronavirus vaccines.

It’s the final countdown!  Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine candidates are on their way to emergency use authorization (EUA) consideration. Experimental messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine technology, rushed through trials, with public-facing scientific transparency and disclosures coming via public relations press releases. What’s to fear? 

Officials are now targeting the world’s frontline health workers as their ‘post-marketing data’ cohort – the unofficial 4th phase of Covid vaccines trials. But the frontline health workers…they’re not so sure

During his Thanksgiving video teleconference, Donald Trump said Covid-19 vaccines would be sent “on the next week or week after” to “frontline workers and seniors.” Similar plans have been announced from Texas to California, from Scotland to UK and from Canada to India

But the news is now noting how frontline health workers have suddenly become ‘vaccine hesitant.’ Early in the coronavirus response, the media held up frontline health workers as heroes who could do no wrong. That all changed in July 2020 during the America’s Frontline Doctor’s Summit when those same heroes began going off-script, speaking of the beneficial effects of early therapeutics like Hydroxychloroquine. 

The media-Big Tech hammer and sickle operation immediately went to work. It censored these now-former medical heroes and their message. There would be no opposition to the official Covid narrative – whether the dissent was backed by scientific data or not. 

Media has since shifted its optics from praising frontline health workers to signaling that healthcare workers may not cooperate with the coming Covid vaccine push for which they are the initial, primary targets. 

There were early warning signs, even before the coronavirus response, that healthcare workers weren’t taking well the aggressive vaccine push backed by limited safety science. In December 2019, the World Health Organization’s Global Vaccine Safety Summit featured, among other speakers, Heidi Larson. Larson announced her findings while studying vaccine hesitancy, which looked at nearly 300,000 people around the world: ”[Vaccine] safety was the biggest issue.” 

Then she dropped the bombshell. 

“The other thing that’s a trend, and an issue, is not just confidence in providers, but confidence of healthcare providers. We have a very wobbly health professional frontline that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. That’s a huge problem.”

Larson continued stating that the frontline workers “don’t have enough confidence about the safety to stand up to the person asking them the questions.”

Fast-forward to the present moment. Call it karma. Or a revelation whose time has come. Will, in Larson’s words, a “very wobbly health professional frontline” take a new and untested vaccine when they previously didn’t have the confidence in previous vaccines (safety) when challenged by patients?

Look at the information health professionals and the general public are given. Primary endpoint goals for early vaccine trials are mild symptoms and a positive PCR test. That’s it. 

Tal Zaks, chief medical officer at Moderna, told The BMJ that the company’s trial lacks adequate statistical power to assess more severe endpoints. Zaks said Moderna’s trial wouldn’t demonstrate prevention of transmission, judge hospital admissions or even know if it prevents mortality.

The most up-to-date data by Pfizer and Modern’s Covid vaccine candidates has been from their press releases. Make of that what you will. The available safety data is limited (at best!) with no longterm info. Full disclosure concerning several key aspects, from raw trial data to vaccine formulation composition, is not known

AstraZeneca is currently experiencing a media black-eye for making public claims that raised red flags about their coming shot, based on “very shaky science.” A more careful analysis of their claims might suggest words like manipulation and lies.   

Public information justifying the potential EUA’s of the the coming shots make it simply impossible to give properly informed consent at this point. 

In a BMJ letter to the editor, Allan S. Cunningham writes the following after crunching the numbers in the press release data for Pfizer’s coming shot: 

“…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……We’ve already heard that an early effect of the vaccine is “like a hangover or the flu.” Will vaccinees who are later exposed to coronaviruses have more severe illness as a result of antibody-dependent enhancement of infection (ADEI), a known hazard of coronavirus vaccines? Is there squalene in the Pfizer vaccine? If so, will vaccinees be subject to autoimmune diseases, like Gulf War Syndrome and narcolepsy that have been associated with the adjuvant?”

Despite what the media has previous told its audience, vaccines can and do cause injuries. What if a frontline healthcare worker is injured or dies from the experimental shot? What do they do? Where do they or their family go for legal recourse? 

Short answer, x3: We don’t know. The world’s foremost expert on vaccine court and legal compensation for vaccine injuries and deaths, author Wayne Rohde, believes it will be in what’s called the CounterMeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). The CICP is a “very problematic” program created by Congress in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. “The CICP is considered the black hole. And for good reason” writes Rhode in a recent analysis

One thing is certain: The media is currently prepping the public consciousness for a coming wave of vaccine reactions and harms. Their once impenetrable narrative clung to a network lockstep of ‘safe and effective’ vaccines, but it has now swung around to headlines reading like the following:

Coronavirus Vaccine Side Effects Won’t ‘Feel Wonderful’, May Require Taking Day Off COVID-19 vaccine trial participants report aches, fevers and chills

Doctors say CDC should warn people that side effects from COVID-19 vaccines won’t be ‘a walk in the park’

Coronavirus vaccine trial participants report day-long exhaustion, fever and headaches — but say it’s worth it

Then there’s the finance piece. Media optics be damned as vaccine-maker CEO’s have unloaded stock to make fortunes leaving the public confidence shaken.  

Moderna’s Stephane Bancel sold his company’s shares to a cool $62,046,363 profit over the last 6 months making him a billionaire in the process.  

Pfizer’s Albert Bourla snagged $5,557,390 in a one-time dump coinciding with the day his company lauded their vaccine’s 90% efficacy in a press release. 

A notable mention goes to Moderna’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Tal Zaks, currently possessing no shares of his company, having sold $47,938,130 worth of shares over the last 6 months. 

Like Pfizer’s Bourla, Zaks’ sales also happened on key dates. On the day his company’s press release announced its Covid vaccine candidate met its primary phase 3 endpoint and the company would be submitting for EUA with the FDA, Zaks dumped $1,454,830 worth of shares. 

Previous share dumps from the CMO coincided with positive Moderna vaccine-related press releases on October 26 [sold $1,050,004 worth of shares,] August 24 [sold $1,624,671 worth of shares sold,] July 27 [sold $1,574,524 worth of shares].

Speaking to NPR, Daniel Taylor, an expert in insider trading and an associate professor of accounting at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said that the close timing between the adoption of Bourla’s stock plan and the Pfizer press release looked “very suspicious.”

Addressing the questionable trading actions of both Pfizer and Moderna’s execs, Taylor told NPR, ”It’s troubling to me that the general counsel or the internal controls of these companies would consider it legitimate to adopt a 10b5-1 plan one day before a major vaccine announcement,” said Taylor. “If this isn’t a wake-up call for the SEC and a wake-up call that we need to reform these 10b5-1 plans, I don’t know what it is.”

Frontline healthcare workers have what looks like mere weeks to make their individual decisions on whether or not to consent to a Covid shot. Will they be allowed to choose? Will they be coerced with their employment hanging in the balance? Or will their shots be mandatory? With this large of a rollout, and so many questions left unanswered about safety, what happens if even 1% of the vaccines go wrong?

Jefferey Jaxen

Jefferey Jaxen is a health journalist and featured in his weekly segment, ’The Jaxen Report’, on The HighWire. As an investigative journalist, researcher, and compelling writer, Jefferey serves as Lead editor of The HighWire News and Opinion Team.