’.

I’m hiding in Honduras I’m a desperate man,
Send lawyers, guns, and money. The shit has hit the fan – Lawyers, Guns and Money Warren Zevon.

A warning sign from the world’s most vaccinated country 10 May 2021, Washinton Post Notes “The Seychelles situation is being watched all over the world. ‘It is providing a critical case to consider the effectiveness of some vaccines and what range we have to reach to meet herd immunity,’ said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations… Roughly 60 percent of the doses administered in Seychelles are vaccines made by the Chinese company Sinopharm that were donated to the Seychelles by the United Arab Emirates. The remaining doses are of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and produced by the Serum Institute of India. The UAE has asked some who received the Sinopharm vaccine to return for third doses, citing low immune responses”.

Here is the bit that got my attention “That rise in cases arrived after something else: the return of tourists to the Seychelles. But so far, the evidence linking the two is unclear. While the number of new daily coronavirus cases has more than doubled since tourism restrictions were removed, only 10 percent of positive cases are among visitors to the island”.

The rest of the article declares this all points to the need for more vaccinations, mask and quarantine.

Bloomberg then picks up the story at the end of May (21) 2021 “What’s happening in Seychelles is very different from the experience of Israel, the second-most vaccinated nation, where Covid-19 infections have plummeted”. The contrast could yield crucial insights into the efficacy of the different types of immunizations. In Israel the dominant vaccine was the messenger ribonucleic acid shot made by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE. The pandemic has seen mRNA vaccines— Moderna Inc. makes another—being used in scale for the first time. Data from clinical trials so far suggest they are better at stopping Covid, tackling variants, and preventing the virus from spreading in the community. Sinopharm’s and AstraZeneca’s vaccines rely on more traditional methods, and their shots have been shown to have lower efficacy in studies”

That was in May and assumptions have being utterly crushed as what is now emerging as Israel rate of infection in those with two or three jabs replicated what we seeing in the UK. Namely the more booster jabs you receive the higher the risk of side affects. And again this is not about being anti vax its about questioning the way we went about making the vaccine or addressing the complicated issue which go with mass vaccination, where the complication climb exponentially the greater the scale of mass vaccination required. And it about the wisdom of granting pharmaceutical manufactures indemnity when their has ever never being a single study published to ascertain can this be done safety or whether it can actually make the situation worse. “To date, no controlled trials and very few observational studies have determined the impact of vaccination schedules on overall health. The balance of the risks and benefits from mass vaccination therefore remains uncertain”*1.

Source: Multiple Vaccinations and the Enigma of Vaccine Injury Anthony R Mawson ¹, National Library of Medicine.

To highlight the back to front-ness of this approach Bloomberg story (May 13), “Jude Gedeon, the country’s public-health commissioner, said samples were to be sent to the Kenya Medical Research Institute for testing. The World Health Organization is also taking action. ‘We are very concerned, and we are sending a multidisciplinary team there to help the Seychelles government address the situation’” says Richard Mihigo, program area manager for immunization and vaccine development at the WHO’s regional office for Africa in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo. ‘We are also in discussion with the government to conduct a vaccine effectiveness study’.

COVAX To The Rescue….Or Not As The Case Maybe

The story then drops suddenly out of the headline until four days ago where it was announced by USAID Pfizer partner in COVAX drug takeover.

“The new consignment of a little over 31,000 vaccine doses is expected to arrive in the country around September 5. The authorities are predicting it will take between five to six weeks to cover this population group. After this, other groups of priority will be identified to administer the remainder of the vaccine stock, which has a lifespan of five months. The Ministry of Health in close collaboration with the Ministry of Education will administer the Pfizer vaccines at secondary and post-secondary schools. The relevant authorities are doing the necessary to include adolescents who are outside these institutions in the programme. With no mention of pas problem the new narrative intones There are an estimated 7,000 people in the country aged between 12 and 17 who will be eligible to receive the vaccine. Pugazendhi noted that so far, Seychelles has vaccinated a little over 70,000 people with both doses of a vaccine, “which means that we have gone over and above the target that we had set for vaccination of adults.” At the moment Seychelles, an archipelago in the western Indian Ocean, is using Covishield, Sinopharm and Sputnik in its vaccination programme. Pfizer will be the FORTH vaccine made available in the country and the only approved COVID-19 vaccine for the 12 to 17 age group. Seychelles will receive the Pfizer vaccine through a donation from the United States under the COVAX programme. COVAX is one of three pillars of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator launched in April by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the European Commission and France in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In June USAID announced The United States International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) in collaboration with the World Bank Group, Germany, and France, announced a joint investment to boost vaccine manufacturing capacity in Africa. As Vice Chair of DFC’s Board of Directors, I was proud to vote yes on this deal. This financing will enable a South African business to ramp up manufacturing capacity and produce more than 500 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by the end of 2022. This deal builds on President Biden’s recent announcements that the U.S. would donate 80 million vaccines to share with the world and that we will purchase and provide an additional 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to COVAX, the global vaccine initiative, to support 92 low- and middle-income countries and the African Union. 

GET OUT OF JAIL FREE CARD

This brings us back full circle to the wisdom of indemnity which more importantly in Pfezier case goes beyond what has already being hammered out under COVAX.

The NY Time ‘Where a Vast Global Vaccination Program Went Wrong’ notes Pfizer had sought liability protections “beyond Covax’s model indemnification agreement”.

Pfeizer it emerges has asking aid recipient recipient countries to sign additional legal letter and the refusal by nations, like South Africa, has added to COVAX promise of safety and quickly vaccinating poorer nations as was the original point of COVAX and is how the Biden administration USAID and the drug companies (which appear in reality to be dominated by Pfizer) sold it. Meanwhile in Latin America the additional clauses have included demands for bank reserve and even “military bases” to be put up upfront as collateral.

Developed nations have as a generalisation waved of the World Health Organisation indemnity offer. However WHO COVAX, which serves to get vaccines into poorer nations, seeks to take on indemnity via a model where the USA offer to guarantee to offer general indemnity known as COVAX Indemnity as the developed nation then must work out with the vaccine provider any additional terms of indemnity.

The WHO Briefing note on the COVAX indemnity clause to it clients are by and large pretty fair and build pn the lessons learned by H1N! bid flu outbreak.

They state “Following accelerated development, the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines at virtually the same time in hundreds of countries and territories will be the fastest and the largest deployment of a novel vaccine in history (it not). All vaccines made available or procured through the COVAX Facility will have received regulatory approval or an emergency use authorization, allowing their general availability (the “Vaccines”). However, even under normal circumstances, vaccines that are approved for general use may nevertheless, in rare cases, cause unexpected serious adverse events (SAEs). Those involved in their manufacture, distribution and administration can normally get insurance to cover this risk”.

It goes on (and on and on) but ends “economies will not be required to provide indemnification for losses that result from e.g. the wilful misconduct, or gross negligence of the Indemnified Entities or for losses that result from a defect in the Vaccine which occurred because of the manufacturer’s failure to comply with the terms of the marketing authorization or emergency use authorization, as applicable, and/or cGMP requirements, and/or failure of the manufacturers to properly store, handle and/or transport the Vaccines”.

The additional Pfizer indemnity letters however go way beyond that and ask for upfront payment and full get out of jail clauses not just for cases involving manufacture slips up. A copy of the additional Pfizer Indemnity clause (full pdf with English translation can be accessed here) show it even covers where Corporate policy, intended or other wise, is later found to be based on acts of “negligence, fraud, or malice“.

Appendix A of the binding term sheet between Pfizer/BioNTech and the Dominican Republic includes provisions relating to the liability and indemnity, which the parties agreed to include in the definite agreement. The appendix states that the Dominican government will “indemnify, defend, and hold harmless” Pfizer, BioNTech, and their affiliates, “from and against any and all suits, claims, actions, demands, losses, damages, liabilities, settlements, penalties, fines, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees and other expenses of an investigation or litigation), whether sounding in contract, tort, intellectual property, or any other theory, and whether legal, statutory, equitable or otherwise (collectively, “Losses”) arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the Vaccine, including but not limited to any stage of design, development, investigation, formulation, testing, clinical testing, manufacture, labelling, packaging, transport, storage, distribution, marketing, promotion, sale, purchase, licensing, donation, dispensing, prescribing, administration, provision, or use of the vaccine.”

The provision is yet another example of how Pfizer is using national governments and legal black mail to de-risk the commercialization of their vaccine. The contract, contains a confidentiality clause, shows the Dominican Republic paid $96m for 8m doses, $24 for each two-dose vaccine, consistent with the price paid by other countries in the region. However the government cannot cancel orders even if Pfizer misses its delivery schedule, and the contract in the event of a legal dispute will be governed by US laws and decided over in a New York State Court where Pfizer has their corporate headquarters. Insuring the entire scheme is covered by the best justice money can buy.