A businessman is offering $1 million to anyone who can prove the mRNA COVID-19 inoculations did not kill more people than they saved.
Entrepreneur, vaccine critic, and alternative therapy advocate Steven Kirsch, the inventor of the optical mouse and founder of Infoseek, Frame Technology Corp, Abaca, and OneID, issued the challenge during the COVID-19 crisis. Four years later, Kirsch has a taker.
The platform Rootclaim is administering the debate, and the taker is Rootclaim founder Saar Wilf, an Israeli entrepreneur, businessman, and angel investor. The event is now underway.
Final Answer?
Phil Kerpen, president of American Commitment and a free-market policy analyst and political organizer, says he doubts the debate will change people’s opinions.
“The structure and the wager are unlikely to make either side’s arguments more compelling to opponents who have already formed their own strong views,” said Kerpen. “So, this exercise is unlikely to resolve anything, unfortunately.”
John Dunn, M.D, J.D., a physician, attorney, and policy advisor to The Heartland Institute, which co-publishes Health Care News, says a debate at this stage could be futile.
“The data on deaths and complications of COVID-19 and the shot are so corrupted there is no way to get credible evidence that is competent and probative,” said Dunn. “All those legal terms describe the nature of admissible evidence. The issue is so corrupted by politics that nothing will come of the challenge.”
Variable Overload
Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, says the debate requires the pro-vaccine side to prove that more lives were saved than were lost to side effects.
“In a sense, to ask the question is to answer it,” said Orient. “One must acknowledge that people were killed by the vaccine. If so, it becomes a quantitative argument. How many more? You have people who took the vaccine and died, but how do you prove it was the vaccine? You have people who took the vaccine and didn’t die, but why? Maybe they wouldn’t have gotten COVID-19, or would have gotten a less virulent strain, or would have fought it off successfully. And people who didn’t take the vaccine and either died or didn’t.
“As stated, it is impossible to prove,” said Orient. “There are just too many variables, and too much speculation is required, even if you could get honest data—and you can’t.”
Officials’ Claims
The debate is predicated on claims the efficacy of the mRNA vaccines has been vastly lower than the manufacturers and health officials originally claimed and dangerous side-effects have been greatly underreported.
Public health officials promoting the vaccines during the pandemic claimed taking the vaccine meant you would neither be able to catch the virus nor transmit it. In fact, evidence shows neither claim was true.
According to the Vaccine Adverse Effect Reporting Service (VAERS), severe adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines between 2020 and 2022 totaled 68,519. The widely used seasonal flu vaccines over a three-year period from 2019 to 2022 registered just 709 reports.
A study published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found adverse effects from the COVID-19 mRNA shots included “serious clinical manifestations such as acute myocardial infarction, Bell’s palsy, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, Guillain–Barré syndrome, myocarditis/pericarditis (mostly in younger ages), pulmonary embolism, stroke, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, lymphadenopathy, appendicitis, herpes zoster reactivation, neurological complications, and autoimmunity (e.g., autoimmune hepatitis and autoimmune peripheral neuropathies).”
Government Benefits
The broad indemnity granted to the vaccine manufacturers in the emergency use authorization (EUA) is frequently cited as a reason the debate over the COVID-19 shots will ultimately be resolved. The government agencies that pushed the EUA benefited from drug royalties, as did the drug makers.
For example, Moderna paid the NIH $400 million for using a molecular stabilizing technique borrowed from government and academic researchers in its mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, according to the drug maker’s 2022 earnings report. The agreement also grants the NIH “low single-digit royalties on future COVID-19 vaccine sales,’ to nearly $5 billion in 2023.
Potential Liability
The royalties the drug makers paid to the federal agencies appear to be the tip of the iceberg and are driving some of the interest in whether the COVID-19 shots killed more people than saved.
The debate could open a floodgate of information that could call into question the Emergency Use Authority (EUA) indemnity by officials with apparent conflicts of interest, says Dunn.
“The word ‘vitiate’ is key,” said Dunn. “It means that certain types of misconduct would extinguish the immunity conferred on manufacturers and distributors under the Emergency Authorization. Specifically, the courts can authorize and enable lawsuits if they rule that reckless or intentional tortious conduct occurred.”
Censorship Factor
There is another big problem with the EUA, Dunn says.
“In order for the Emergency Authorization to be conferred, the situation had to be that there was no currently available effective treatment,” said Dunn. “That was why it was so important to the malefactors to discredit any claims that hydroxychloroquine and/or ivermectin worked. [White House coronavirus response leaders Anthony] Fauci and [Deborah] Birx worked hard on that one and recruited research to condemn HCQ and ivermectin after some initial studies claimed benefit.”
Censorship of other opinions cleared the way for the EUA, says Dunn.
“How fortunate for the shot makers,” said Dunn. “Recall that not only was it not tested by the normal protocols, it wasn’t a vaccine. It was a new technology different from vaccines, a twofold adventure that benefited the shot makers for sure, with billions in revenue.”
Kevin Stone ([email protected]) writes from Arlington, Texas
