Porky Pies Vaccine Fiasco Flash Backs

Make your own mind up! Who can we believe?

From Fact checkers https://apnews.com/article/fact-check...

CLAIM: Pfizer admitted to the European Parliament that it had not tested the ability of its COVID-19 vaccine to prevent transmission of the virus before it entered the market, proving the company lied about this earlier in the pandemic.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. Janine Small, president of international markets at Pfizer, told the European Parliament on Monday that Pfizer did not know whether its COVID-19 vaccine prevented transmission of the virus before it entered the market in December 2020. But Pfizer never claimed to have studied the issue before the vaccine’s market release.

THE FACTS: After Small testified before the European Parliament’s Special Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic, misleading claims about whether Pfizer knew the impact of its COVID-19 vaccine on preventing transmission spread widely on social media.

Rob Roos, a Dutch European Parliament member who asked Small a question about transmission at the hearing, tweeted: “BREAKING: In COVID hearing, #Pfizer director admits: #vaccine was never tested on preventing transmission. ‘Get vaccinated for others’ was always a lie. The only purpose of the #COVID passport: forcing people to get vaccinated. The world needs to know. Share this video!”

The tweet, which included a video showing the exchange between Roos and Small, had received more than 232,000 likes and more than 166,000 shares by Thursday.

Other social media posts about the hearing used the hashtag #PfizerLiedPeopleDied.

At the hearing, Roos asked Small whether Pfizer had tested its COVID-19 vaccine for its ability to prevent transmission of the virus prior to its market release. Small answered: “No. We had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market.” She went on to explain why Pfizer moved quickly to develop a COVID-19 vaccine as the virus spread worldwide.

While Roos and many others framed this as a new revelation, Pfizer never claimed that its clinical trial, upon which the vaccine was authorized for use, evaluated the shot’s effect on transmission. In fact, shortly before the vaccine’s release, the company’s CEO emphasized that this was still being evaluated.

A study funded by Pfizer and German vaccine maker BioNTech published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Dec. 10, 2020, a day before the Food and Drug Administration gave Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine emergency use authorization, did not include data about the vaccine’s effectiveness at reducing transmission of the virus.

Instead, it reported that two doses of the vaccine provided 95% protection against contracting symptomatic COVID-19 in people 16 and older. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla also said in a December 2020 interview with NBC News that it was still unclear whether vaccinated individuals could carry the virus and transmit it to others.

“I think this is something that needs to be examined,” he told the network. “We are not certain about that right now.”

The FDA stated in a Dec. 11, 2020, press release announcing the authorization of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine that “at this time, data are not available to make a determination about how long the vaccine will provide protection, nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person.”

A Pfizer spokesperson told The Associated Press that its clinical trial was designed to evaluate the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine in preventing disease caused by the COVID-19 virus, including severe illness.

“Stopping transmission was not a study endpoint,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.

Asked for comment, Roos told the AP that he was not making a point about Pfizer, but about government mandates for the COVID-19 vaccines.

“I take fundamental rights seriously,” Roos wrote in an email. “For governments to infringe on them, they need a massive amount of evidence to prove the necessity. In this case, it was not even a part of the Pfizer trials.” He said that such mandates were based on “no evidence.”

But experts and research say that the COVID-19 vaccines have provided benefits in terms of limiting infections and transmission, at least with earlier variants of the virus and for a period of time after being vaccinated.