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COVID-19

Florida COVID grand jury finds ‘profound and serious issues’ in vaccine regulation, oversight

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The grand jury commissioned by Gov. DeSantis has released its long-awaited final report on the manufacture and rollout of the COVID shots, finding no actionable crimes under current law but still identifying ‘profound and serious issues involving the process of vaccine development and safety surveillance in the United States.’

A Florida grand jury has released its final report on the manufacture and rollout of the COVID-19 shots, finding no actionable crimes under current law but still identifying “profound and serious issues involving the process of vaccine development and safety surveillance in the United States” for policymakers to resolve.

In December 2022, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to approve a grand jury to determine whether pharmaceutical companies and other medical organizations “engaged in criminal activity or wrongdoing” pertaining to the controversial and harmful shots.

In February 2024, it released its first interim report, which decided that before assessing the shots it first had to understand the risk posed by COVID itself, and so concluded that the 2020 lockdowns did more harm than good, masks were ineffective at stopping the virus, COVID was “statistically almost harmless” to children and most adults, and it was “highly likely” that COVID hospitalization numbers were inflated.

On Tuesday, the grand jury released its final 144-page report. It opens with the somewhat surprising declaration that two conflicting statements – “COVID-19 vaccines were a triumph of science, technology and public health that saved countless lives”; and “COVID-19 vaccines were heedlessly licensed, excessively recommended, and even mandated to broad swathes of people that did not need them, placing their health-and sometimes their lives-at unnecessary risk” – are “both true.”

READ: Peer-reviewed study finds over 1,000% rise in cardiac deaths after COVID-19 shots

The grand jury maintains that the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative “produced an effective vaccine in early 2021 that dramatically reduced many of the risks associated with SARS-CoV-2,” but “all the goodwill generated by that amazing achievement was squandered in the following years, as sponsors and federal regulators collaborated to push out booster after booster based on shallow, inaccurate safety and efficacy data, sidelining their own ombudsmen to get doses of these vaccines into the arms of every American, regardless of their underlying risk from the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”

“Our investigative efforts in both of those categories were directed in large part towards Pfizer and Modema, whose rnRNA-based vaccines were the primary focus of our investigation,” the report adds. “Suffice it to say that while we are certain we have not seen everything these companies created with respect to these products (Pfizer essentially admitted this fact), we did receive a lot of relevant information from them, more than we could ever hope to meaningfully review in our limited term. Many of our conclusions are informed by documents we received or on testimony given by their representatives.”

The report condemns Big Pharma’s reluctance to shed light on the full extent of the problem, and the lack of recourse when the worst does happen.

“It is frustrating to this Grand Jury, as it should be frustrating to everyone who reads this report, to know that these sponsors have taken in billions of taxpayer dollars for creating and selling their vaccines; they cannot be sued if something goes wrong with them; they have access to critical information about deaths related to a side effect of their products; and the public does not have access to that information,” it says. “Instead, we are left to speculate, and the research community is left to draw inferences as one-off or two-off histopathological reports detailing the events of this death or that death that trickle into scientific journals slowly, year after year. Somehow, withholding this valuable safety information is not a crime. It certainly should be.”

While its conclusions will be thoroughly dissected by many experts and activists in the days to come, the report’s most immediate takeaway is that current law is inadequate to cure the problems investigators uncovered.

“While we did not find criminal activity, we did find a pattern of deceptive and obfuscatory behavior on the part of sponsors and regulators that often straddled the line between ethical and unethical conduct,” the report says. “More importantly, however, not finding any indictable criminal activity does not mean we did not find any problems. On the contrary, there are profound and serious issues involving the process of vaccine development and safety surveillance in the United States. Some of those are acute, COVID-19-era problems that are unlikely to occur outside the context of another once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic. Others, however, are systemic; they will occur over and over until someone fixes them.”

The report says “it was genuinely striking to us just how many of the problems we found occurred at either the direction or acquiescence of the FDA [U.S. Food & Drug Administration], CDC [Centers for Disease Control & Prevention] and other federal regulators. Nearly every time we found an issue with MRNA-1273 [the Moderna shot] or BNT162b2 [the Pfizer shot], the fingerprints of these agencies were all over the scene, advising that the flagship and surrogate clinical trials be performed in specific ways, authorizing dose after dose and formulation after formulation based on out-of-date immunogenicity comparisons and observational results, and even running interference for sponsors by misleading the American public about validated safety signals.”

To the federal government, the grand jury recommends new clinical trials of both mRNA-based COVID shots, reinstatement of the FDA’s old ban on direct-to-consumer advertising of therapeutics, new controls on the hiring of medical industry insiders and lobbyists for health regulatory positions, restructuring the Vaccines & Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) for greater accountability, mandatory disclosure of anonymized individual patient data as a condition of FDA licensure, and making safety data transparency a condition of liability protection. To the state of Florida, it recommends a series of changes to strengthen grand juries’ ability to obtain the information they seek, as well as more widespread monitoring of wastewater for pathogens.

DeSantis said Tuesday that while his office was still reviewing the report’s details, it was clear that “Big Pharma brought in billions of dollars in profit, and the federal government amplified bogus ‘studies,’ all while suppressing any opposition that went against their preferred narrative. Instead of federal agencies acting as a backstop to bad incentives, they worked closely with Big Pharma as they cut corners, even becoming unpaid advertisers on their behalf.”

“The Grand Jury has made a number of recommendations that should be followed,” the governor declared. “The status quo cannot continue. The American people deserve transparency on how Big Pharma is using their federal tax dollars, and they deserve regulating entities that operate as watchdogs, not cheerleaders.”

 

The report follows a large body of evidence that identifies significant risks to the COVID shots, which were developed and reviewed in a fraction of the time vaccines usually take under the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative.

The federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 38,190 deaths, 219,170 hospitalizations, 22,082 heart attacks, and 28,769 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of November 29, among other ailments. CDC researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.

An analysis of 99 million people across eight countries published February in the journal Vaccine “observed significantly higher risks of myocarditis following the first, second and third doses” of mRNA-based COVID injections, as well as signs of increased risk of “pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis,” and other “potential safety signals that require further investigation.” In April, the CDC was forced to release by court order 780,000 previously undisclosed reports of serious adverse reactions, and a study out of Japan found “statistically significant increases” in cancer deaths after third doses of mRNA-based COVID-19 shots and offered several theories for a causal link.

All eyes are currently on returning President Donald Trump and his health team, which will be helmed by prominent vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his nominee for Secretary of Health & Human Services. Trump has given mixed signals as to the prospects of reconsidering the shots for which he has long taken credit and has nominated both critics and defenders of establishment COVID measures for a number of administration roles.

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COVID-19

Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Lich to face sentencing July 23

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Lich is slated to be sentenced on July 23.

In a recent update by The Democracy Fund, the group noted that “Sentencing for Ms. Lich is scheduled for July 23rd and 24th before Justice Perkins-McVey in Ottawa.”

In April of this year, Lich and Chris Barber were found guilty of mischief for their roles as leaders of the 2022 protest and as social media influencers. The conviction came despite the non-violent nature of the popular movement.

TDF also noted that the full 108 page judgment of Justice Perkins-McVey’s ruling is now available online.

According to TDF, the “Court determined that both Ms. Lich and Mr. Barber were leaders of the Freedom Convoy 2022 movement and were involved in organizing and leading trucks and other vehicles from western Canada.”

“While there was no evidence that Ms. Lich owned a vehicle emitting fumes or honking, or that she blocked access to buildings, the Court noted her creation of the Freedom Convoy 2022 Facebook page, which gained a large following, and her involvement in setting up the GoFundMe and later GiveSendGo fundraising pages,” noted TDF.

As for Barber, his sentencing has been further delayed. The delay in his case follows an update he gave earlier this month in which he announced that the Crown wants to jail him for two years in addition to seizing the truck he used in the protest. As such, his legal team has asked for a stay of proceedings for the time being.

The Lich and Barber trial concluded in September of 2024, more than a year after it began. It was only originally scheduled to last 16 days.

Lich and Barber were initially arrested on February 17, 2022, meaning their legal battle has lasted longer than three years.

The actions taken by the Trudeau government were publicly supported by Mark Carney at the time, who won re-election on April 28 and is slated to form a minority government.

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COVID-19

Vaccines: Assessing Canada’s COVID Response

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The Audit David Clinton's avatar David Clinton

I planned to be “first in line” for the shots as soon as my age cohort became eligible. By early March however, COVID itself dropped by the house, leading to the most uncomfortable (although non life-threatening) week of my life.

It’s been five years since COVID hit and one part of me wants to stuff it all in a closet somewhere and forget about it. But perhaps certain events – and especially government errors and overreach – should be documented. So this post will identify actions at all levels of government from those early days that, given our understanding of the threat available through the benefit hindsight, were both misguided and damaging.

I haven’t completely forgotten the mood through the early months in 2020. Politicians faced near-unanimous public demand for an aggressive response. Much of that sentiment was the result of messaging coming from foreign governments (mostly in the U.S.). But the local sentiment was definitely there.

To be fair, Governments got some things right and, taking into account the chaos and uncertainty of those early months, even some of their mistakes were understandable. But it’s the job of government to lead. And to avoid making choices – even popular choices – that will lead to predictable harms.

Vaccine mandates starting in 2021 were a case in point. Federal authority largely stemmed from the 2005 Quarantine Act and the Contraventions Act that allowed officials to issue tickets for non-compliance with the Quarantine Act. Provincial mandates were based on laws like Ontario’s Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act. The question isn’t whether the mandates and their enforcement were legal, but whether they caused more harm than good.

As the first vaccines started arriving in Canada around February 2021, I planned to be “first in line” for the shots as soon as my age cohort became eligible. By early March however, COVID itself dropped by the house, leading to the most uncomfortable (although non life-threatening) week of my life.

After recovering, my family doctor advised me to wait three months before getting the shots so my body could get back to normal. During those months, I got access to preprint results from the Israeli study into natural immunity which showed that:

Natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity

Those results were later confirmed by CDC and NEJM studies, among others.

Given that context, I didn’t see any justification for exposing myself to even minimal health risks associated with vaccines. Which meant that, despite demonstrably posing no threat to public health, I would (at various times) be unable to:

  • Board domestic commercial flights, VIA Rail, Rocky Mountaineer trains, and cruise ships within Canada
  • Board international flights or trains departing Canada
  • Freely return to Canada through an overland point of entry
  • Upon return to Canada, bypass the 14 day quarantine under the Quarantine Act
  • Upon return to Canada via air, bypass the three day quarantine in (expensive) government-approved hotels
  • Engage in ‘non-essential” activities like restaurants, gyms, events (details varied from province to province)
  • Enter Parliament
  • Seek employment in federally regulated air, rail, and marine sectors

What should Canadian governments have done? Remove restrictions on individuals with natural immunity, obviously. Which, by the way, would have come with the valuable bonus of entirely avoiding the truckers protest and consequent confrontations.

If authorities were reluctant to take us at our word on immunity, they could have followed the European Union’s lead by emulating their Digital COVID Certificate for proof of recovery. Were they worried about people without immunity creating fake certificates? Hard to take that one seriously. There were more fake vaccine passports littering the streets of Ontario than abandoned Toronto Maple Leafs car window flags in a normal early May.

In the end, my own suffering was negligible. I didn’t really want to visit family in the U.S. all that much anyway. But for millions of other Canadians, the real-world stakes were far higher. And all that’s besides the billions of dollars wasted during those years’ government policies.

To be sure, resisting unscientific street-level calls for vaccine mandates would have required courage. But shouldn’t acts of courage be a source of pride for public officials?

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