The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today granted full approval to the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID vaccine for people 16 years and older — without allowing public discussion or holding a formal advisory committee meeting to discuss data.

This is the first COVID vaccine approved by the FDA, and is expected to open the door to more vaccine mandates by employers and universities.

According to The Washington Post, Pfizer’s vaccine approval was the fastest in the agency’s history, coming less than four months after Pfizer/BioNTech filed for licensing on May 7.

According to an article published Aug. 20 in the BMJ, transparency advocates have criticized the FDA decision not to hold a formal advisory committee meeting to discuss Pfizer’s application for full approval — an important mechanism used to scrutinize data.

“They know they can’t win this argument on the science and that’s why they had to abolish the public process and independent oversight,” said Children’s Health Defense Chairman Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “They believe themselves so powerful now that they are stripping off all pretenses that this is about public health, and are baldly revealing the corruption.”

Kennedy told The Defender:

“This is a sinister scheme for mandating a badly flawed vaccine that has already made history with record deaths and injuries, that neither prevents disease nor transmission, and does not improve mortality. Pfizer’s most recent six-month data show that while the jab prevents some COVID deaths, it causes more heart attacks yielding a net loss of life.”

Buried in the fine print of Monday’s approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of the Pfizer Comirnaty COVID vaccine are two critical facts that affect whether the vaccine can be mandated, and whether Pfizer can be held liable for injuries.

First, the FDA acknowledges that while Pfizer has “insufficient stocks” of the newly licensed Comirnaty vaccine available, there is “a significant amount” of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine — produced under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) — still available for use.

The FDA decrees that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine under the EUA should remain unlicensed but can be used “interchangeably” (page 2, footnote 8) with the newly licensed Comirnaty product.

Second, the FDA pointed out that the licensed Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine and the existing, EUA Pfizer vaccine are “legally distinct,” but proclaims that their differences do not “impact safety or effectiveness.”

There is a huge real-world difference between products approved under EUA compared with those the FDA has fully licensed.

EUA products are experimental under U.S. law. Both the Nuremberg Code and federal regulations provide that no one can force a human being to participate in this experiment. Under 21 U.S. Code Sec.360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III), “authorization for medical products for use in emergencies,” it is unlawful to deny someone a job or an education because they refuse to be an experimental subject. Instead, potential recipients have an absolute right to refuse EUA vaccines.

U.S. laws, however, permit employers and schools to require students and workers to take licensed vaccines.

Americans, told that the Pfizer COVID vaccine is now licensed, will understandably assume COVID vaccine mandates are lawful. But only EUA-authorized vaccines, for which no one has any real liability, will be available during the next few weeks when many school mandate deadlines occur.

The FDA appears to be purposefully tricking American citizens into giving up their right to refuse an experimental product.

While the media has trumpeted that the FDA has approved COVID vaccines, the FDA has not approved the Pfizer BioNTech vaccines, nor any COVID vaccines for the 12- to 15-year age group, nor any booster doses for anyone.

And the FDA has not licensed any Moderna vaccine, nor any vaccine from Johnson & Johnson — so the vast majority, if not all, of vaccines available in the U.S. remain unlicensed EUA products.

Here’s what you need to know when somebody orders you to get the vaccine: Ask to see the vial. If it says “Comirnaty,” it’s a licensed product.

If it says “Pfizer-BioNTech,” it’s an experimental product, and under 21 U.S. Code 360bbb, you have the right to refuse.

If it comes from Moderna or Johnson & Johnson (marketed as Janssen), you have the right to refuse.

The FDA is playing bait and switch with the American public — but we don’t have to play along. If it doesn’t say Comirnaty, you have not been offered an approved vaccine.

The Unjustified, Dishonest & Dangerous FDA Approval Of Pfizer’s Injection – Clearing Up Confusion

VIDEO: Please watch-turn off your TV and take some time-after the emotional clip at the start from a first responder in Hawaii who is under threat of termination for non compliance-listen to Ryan Cristian the Last American Vagabond dig into all of the sourced material to see through the fog.

Covid-19: FDA set to grant full approval to Pfizer vaccine without public discussion of data

…..The vaccine has already been rolled out to millions of Americans through an emergency use authorisation. Companies typically apply for full approval after a longer period has elapsed so that more data are available for review.

But with the US government indicating this week that it plans to start making booster shots widely available next month, experts said the decision not to meet to discuss the data was politically driven.

Data scrutiny

Public discussion

Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, who has also spoken at recent VRBPAC meetings, told The BMJ, “It’s obvious that the FDA has no intention of hearing anyone else’s opinion…..

Does the FDA think these data justify the first full approval of a covid-19 vaccine?

On 28 July 2021, Pfizer and BioNTech posted updated results for their ongoing phase 3 covid-19 vaccine trial. The preprint came almost a year to the day after the historical trial commenced, and nearly four months since the companies announced vaccine efficacy estimates “up to six months.”

But you won’t find 10 month follow-up data here. While the preprint is new, the results it contains aren’t particularly up to date. In fact, the paper is based on the same data cut-off date (13 March 2021) as the 1 April press release, and its topline efficacy result is identical: 91.3% (95% CI 89.0 to 93.2) vaccine efficacy against symptomatic covid-19 through “up to six months of follow-up.”

The elephant named “waning immunity”

…Now Israel, which almost exclusively used Pfizer vaccine, has begun administering a third “booster” dose to all adults over 40. And starting 20 September 2021, the US plans to follow suit for all “fully vaccinated” adults eight months past their second dose.

Delta may not be responsible

Enter Pfizer’s preprint. As an RCT reporting “up to six months of follow-up,” it is notable that evidence of waning immunity was already visible in the data by the 13 March 2021 data cut-off.  ….

But although this additional information was available to Pfizer in April, it was not published until the end of July.

And it’s hard to imagine how the Delta variant could play a real role here, for 77% of trial participants were from the United States, where Delta was not established until months after data cut-off.

Waning efficacy has the potential to be far more than a minor inconvenience; it can dramatically change the risk-benefit calculus. And whatever its cause—intrinsic properties of the vaccine, the circulation of new variants, some combination of the two, or something else—the bottom line is that vaccines need to be effective.

Until new clinical trials demonstrate that boosters increase efficacy above 50%, without increasing serious adverse events, it is unclear whether the 2-dose series would even meet the FDA’s approval standard at six or nine months.

Severe disease

With the US awash in news about rising cases of the Delta variant, including among the “fully vaccinated,” the vaccine’s efficacy profile is in question. But some medical commentators are delivering an upbeat message. Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who is on Pfizer’s board, said: “Remember, the original premise behind these vaccines were [sic] that they would substantially reduce the risk of death and severe disease and hospitalization. And that was the data that came out of the initial clinical trials.”

Yet, the trials were not designed to study severe disease. In the data that supported Pfizer’s EUA, the company itself characterized the “severe covid-19” endpoint results as “preliminary evidence.” Hospital admission numbers were not reported, and zero covid-19 deaths occurred.

In the preprint, high efficacy against “severe covid-19” is reported based on all follow-up time (one event in the vaccinated group vs 30 in placebo), but the number of hospital admissions is not reported so we don’t know which, if any, of these patients were ill enough to require hospital treatment. (In Moderna’s trial, data last year showed that 21 of 30 “severe covid-19” cases were not admitted to hospital; Table S14).

And on preventing death from covid-19, there are too few data to draw conclusions—a total of three covid-19 related deaths (one on vaccine, two on placebo). There were 29 total deaths during blinded follow-up (15 in the vaccine arm; 14 in placebo).

The crucial question, however, is whether the waning efficacy seen in the primary endpoint data also applies to the vaccine’s efficacy against severe disease. Unfortunately, Pfizer’s new preprint does not report the results in a way that allows for evaluating this question.

Approval imminent without data transparency, or even an advisory committee meeting?

Last December, with limited data, the FDA granted Pfizer’s vaccine an EUA, enabling access to all Americans who wanted one. It sent a clear message that the FDA could both address the enormous demand for vaccines without compromising on the science. A “full approval” could remain a high bar.

But here we are, with FDA reportedly on the verge of granting a marketing license 13 months into the still ongoing, two year pivotal trial, with no reported data past 13 March 2021, unclear efficacy after six months due to unblinding, evidence of waning protection irrespective of the Delta variant, and limited reporting of safety data. (The preprint reports “decreased appetite, lethargy, asthenia, malaise, night sweats, and hyperhidrosis were new adverse events attributable to BNT162b2 not previously identified in earlier reports,” but provides no data tables showing the frequency of these, or other, adverse events.)

It’s not helping matters that FDA now says it won’t convene its advisory committee to discuss the data ahead of approving Pfizer’s vaccine. (Last August, to address vaccine hesitancy, the agency had “committed to use an advisory committee composed of independent experts to ensure deliberations about authorization or licensure are transparent for the public.”)

Prior to the preprint, my view, along with a group of around 30 clinicians, scientists, and patient advocates, was that there were simply too many open questions about all covid-19 vaccines to support approving any this year. The preprint has, unfortunately, addressed very few of those open questions, and has raised some new ones.

I reiterate our call: “slow down and get the science right—there is no legitimate reason to hurry to grant a license to a coronavirus vaccine.”

FDA should be demanding that the companies complete the two year follow-up, as originally planned (even without a placebo group, much can still be learned about safety). They should demand adequate, controlled studies using patient outcomes in the now substantial population of people who have recovered from covid. And regulators should bolster public trust by helping ensure that everyone can access the underlying data.

Peter Doshi, senior editor, The BMJ.