In December, Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal — who is not a doctor, nor a scientist and holds only a bachelor’s degree in history — proposed a massively controversial bill that would mandate the COVID-19 vaccination for New Yorkers. Naturally, this was met with massive resistance from those who advocate for informed consent.

As TFTP has reported, the COVID-19 vaccine itself is controversial given its rush to market. Never before in history has a vaccine been developed and approved in under 9 months. By the very definition, this vaccine’s long term results are entirely unknown making it experimental.

Since the FDA has fast tracked these vaccines, those who don’t blindly trust in them are being labelled as kooks and anti-vaxxers. However, the reality is that these vaccine manufacturers and their government enablers have given us every reason in the world not to trust them.

The resistance to the vaccine is also growing by the day, up to and including health care workers. Are these trained doctors and nurses working the front lines of the pandemic, “science deniers”? We think not.

Nevertheless, the push to silence those who advocate for vaccine safety continues.

As TFTP has reported, Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, who has sponsored a slew of mandatory vaccine laws throughout his career came out in 2019 to threaten the speech of those who question forced vaccination.

In a letter to the Attorney General of the United States, Pan wrote that the “deliberate spread of vaccine information discouraging vaccination” requires the surgeon general to “stop this attack on our nation’s health by addressing the spread of vaccine misinformation.”

He literally advocated for people to be jailed for questioning vaccines — and now he’s gone even further. In an oped for the Washington Post, this totalitarian likened “antivaxxers” to terrorists.

“This campaign to deny potentially life-saving vaccines to those seeking them, and to poison public opinion against vaccinations, could result in countless American deaths. That is akin to domestic terrorism,” Pan wrote.

 

Pan has also criticized Facebook and other social media groups for allowing vaccine skeptics to post their views.

 

“This movement not only puts out mis- or disinformation about vaccines or lies about vaccines, which in itself can be harmful, but they are also aggressively bullying, threatening and intimidating people who are trying to share accurate information about vaccines,” Pan told the New York Times.

Given the recent paranoia by the federal government following the Trump supporters marching on the Capitol, throwing around the term domestic terrorist is as dangerous as it is tyrannical. Whether or not you agree with “antivaxxers” or pro-vaccine safety groups, it is their right to say whatever they want, up to and including holding protests. It’s called freedom of speech and it shall not be infringed.

Whether or not you agree with a parent’s decision to vaccinate their child or themselves is irrelevant. While there will likely be many folks cheering on the state in these situations of forced medication and the silencing of critics, how you feel personally about vaccines should never lead to a loss of freedom — for anyone. No person should be forced by government regulation or societal pressure to receive any medication or treatment, including vaccines, against his or her will.

As long as we focus on forcing people to vaccinate, instead of on the reasons people are scared of vaccines, nothing will ever change.

In 1988, largely due to vaccine makers lobbying the government to alleviate their responsibility and liability for damages caused by their vaccines, The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) was established. It has cost the U.S. taxpayers over four billion since its inception.

Now, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s gotten even more corrupt.

As CNBC reported, in February of 2020, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar invoked the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP). The 2005 law empowers the HHS secretary to provide legal protection to companies making or distributing critical medical supplies, such as vaccines and treatments, unless there’s “willful misconduct” by the company. The protection lasts until 2024.

“When the government said, ‘We want you to develop this four or five times faster than you normally do,’ most likely the manufacturers said to the government, ‘We want you, the government, to protect us from multimillion-dollar lawsuits,’” said Rogge Dunn, a Dallas labor and employment attorney.

And that’s exactly what the government did. So, in instances of harm from the COVID-19 vaccine, no one is held liable because it’s the FDA who approved the vaccine and you can’t sue them.

“You can’t sue the FDA for approving or disapproving a drug,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law. “That’s part of its sovereign immunity.”

There are limited exceptions, but Dunn said he doesn’t think they provide a viable legal path to hold the federal government responsible for a Covid vaccine injury.

Those limited exceptions are for people who experience extreme adverse reactions.

Within the PREP Act, government established the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), which provides benefits to eligible individuals who suffer serious injury from the uncovered vaccines. However, the coverages are weak. If you are injured so badly from the vaccine that you can’t even leave your home, the maximum amount of money you will get it $50,000 per year as long as you are injured.

Even if you literally drop dead after getting the shot, the program’s death payout is capped at $370,376.

“This government compensation program is very hard to use,” said Reiss. “The bar for compensation is very high.”

As the push continues to silence and criminalize those who advocate for vaccine safety, the outlook is bleak. We are moving toward a situation in which we can watch Big Pharma injure people and not only be granted immunity for it, but those who speak out about it could face legal persecution. A scary situation indeed.