Texas sues Pfizer for fraud and censorship

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Pfizer for "misrepresenting the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine and attempting to censor public discussion of the product," according to an available press release. The release points out that "Pfizer engaged in false, deceptive and misleading acts and practices, making unsubstantiated claims about the company's Covid-19 vaccine, and thus violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act." The claim that his vaccine was 95% effective against the infection was highly misleading, as the press release also states, as it was based on a statistic called "relative risk reduction" for vaccinated individuals. In the petition submitted to the District Court of Lubbock County, the Texas Attorney General states that "at the end of 2020, the defendant Pfizer conveyed to the world that its Covid-19 vaccine was 95% effective," and "based on this and other statements made by Pfizer touting the efficacy of its new vaccine, Americans were given the impression that the Pfizer vaccine would end the coronavirus pandemic and lift the pervasive veil of fear and uncertainty from a restless public". The document points out that trust in Pfizer led hundreds of millions of Americans to line up to receive the vaccine, but then "the pandemic did not end, it got worse." "More Americans died in 2021, with the Pfizer vaccine available, than in 2020, the first year of the pandemic," the petition signed by Attorney General Ken Paxton also points out, which proves that the Pfizer vaccine was not 95% effective. How was the widespread adoption of the vaccine possible under these conditions? "In short, Pfizer misled the public," the document from the Texas attorney general states, and then emphasizes that "Pfizer's claim that its vaccine was 95% effective against the infection was grossly misleading yet from day one," because "the value refers to the relative risk reduction for a person vaccinated in the Pfizer clinical trial, which was not yet completed." The algorithm for calculating the effectiveness of the anti-Covid vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech was also presented in an article from BURSA, "Has the effectiveness of anti-Covid vaccines become negative in Great Britain?" , dated October 28, 2021. Pfizer officials' public claims about the vaccine's effectiveness are also contradicted in the purchase contracts, which many governments still keep under lock and key, defying minimum transparency standards with impunity while offering speeches about "liberal democracy." "The buyer also acknowledges that the long-term effects and effectiveness of the vaccine are not currently known and there may be adverse effects of the vaccine that are not currently known," reads the purchase agreement between Pfizer and the South African government. which was made public recently, following a legal action (see the article "Studies: The vaccine from Pfizer was never safe and effective", BURSA, September 25, 2023). The petition submitted to the Lubbock County District Court also cites publications from the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), the institution responsible for protecting public health in the United States by ensuring the safety, efficacy and security of human and veterinary drugs and biological products, according to which "relative risk reduction" is a misleading statistic that "unduly influences" consumer choice. "When information is presented in a relative risk format, risk reduction appears much greater and treatments are viewed more favorably than when the same information is presented using a more precise measurement system," a paper from FDA taken up in the petition. Here it is also pointed out that when Pfizer started making claims about the effectiveness of the anti-Covid vaccine, the company only had, on average, the data related to two months of clinical studies on which to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Given that 17,000 participants were injected with a placebo and only 162 were infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the press release shows that "the risk of contracting Covid-19 was so low in the first instance, in this short period, that the Pfizer vaccine only fractionally improved a person's risk of infection". The "absolute risk reduction" statistic, the FDA's preferred measure of effectiveness, shows that the vaccine was only 0.85% effective.

Also, the company was warned during the tests that "the protection offered by the vaccine cannot be accurately predicted beyond two months".

The warning meant nothing to Pfizer, which "promoted the misleading impression of long-lasting protection from the vaccine and withheld from the public information that undermined claims about the duration of protection."

Moreover, "Pfizer engaged in a public intimidation campaign in which the vaccine was presented as a necessary measure to protect loved ones."

When the number of Covid-19 cases increased after the widespread administration of the vaccine, "Pfizer moved to silence those who tell the truth," according to the Texas Attorney General's press release.

"We seek justice for the people of Texas, many of whom were forced by tyrannical vaccination mandates to receive a defective product that was falsely sold," Attorney General Paxton said.

"The facts are clear and show that Pfizer did not tell the truth about their Covid-19 vaccines. As the Biden administration has used the pandemic as a weapon to force illegal public health decrees on the public and enrich pharmaceutical companies, I will use every tool at my disposal I have them at my disposal to protect our citizens who have been misled and harmed by Pfizer's actions", reads the end of the press release.

The Texas lawsuit against Pfizer comes about eight months after Attorney General Paxton announced an investigation into Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson to determine the extent to which they misrepresented the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine and manipulated clinical trial data. .