Wisconsin national embarrassment Sen. Ron Johnson continues to push more irresponsible anti-vax propaganda with the help of Fox "news." This isn't the first time RoJo has made an appearance on Fox and misused the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) to try to scare people out of getting vaccinated.
As we've discussed here, and as FactCheck.org has reported, the system's data is often abused to make false claims about COVID, but "government database is not designed to determine if vaccines cause health problems." It's raw data that can be entered by anyone, including foreign entities, and until there's some follow up on the validity of the claims, it's meaningless and is just a tool for the CDC to make sure they don't miss something that's actually worth investigating.
RoJo and his host Maria Bartiromo seem to want more people to die of Covid so Trump's numbers won't be so bad in the pages of history. Mutherbear on Twitter posits that opinion and it makes a lot of sense:
Here he is basically admitting that the data is unverified, but using it to fearmonger over vaccinations anyway, lying about the efficacy of the COVID vaccines, lying about whether vaccine mandates are working, and with pushing Ivermectin, which the FDA says should never be used to treat or prevent COVID:
Now that we know that fully vaccinated individuals are getting infected, they can transmit the disease, unfortunately they're getting hospitalized, they're getting seriously ill, they're dying.
There's no point to the mandate whatsoever. The fact that this administration wouldn't recognize natural immunity with these mandates, and of course they're completely ignoring the vaccine injuries, and Maria, people need to really understand this, because it's not being reported. It's being suppressed.
But, for over 25 years the flu vaccine, there were about little less than 1700 deaths reported on the vaccine adverse event reporting system, that's CDC's early surveillance system—less than 1700 over 25 years. With the COVID vaccine we've had 16,766 deaths in 10 months, administering this vaccine.
Now, I realize that VAERS does not prove causation but when you have over 5400 of those deaths occurring in days zero, one or two, it certainly would cause me some serious concern. And the other stat is, we now have 798,000 adverse events reported in just 10 months. 798,000 thousand.
And the other criticism of VAERS is that it dramatically under reports the vaccine injuries. So it's not an irrational decision for people to say I don't want to take this experimental vaccine.
Johnson then proceeded to lie about the FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine, saying what was approved is a different version than what's being used in the United States, even though the press release from the FDA says they're the same thing:
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine has been known as the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, and will now be marketed as Comirnaty (koe-mir’-na-tee), for the prevention of COVID-19 disease in individuals 16 years of age and older. The vaccine also continues to be available under emergency use authorization (EUA), including for individuals 12 through 15 years of age and for the administration of a third dose in certain immunocompromised individuals.
“The FDA’s approval of this vaccine is a milestone as we continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. While this and other vaccines have met the FDA’s rigorous, scientific standards for emergency use authorization, as the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine, the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product,” said Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, M.D. “While millions of people have already safely received COVID-19 vaccines, we recognize that for some, the FDA approval of a vaccine may now instill additional confidence to get vaccinated. Today’s milestone puts us one step closer to altering the course of this pandemic in the U.S.”
Since Dec. 11, 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine has been available under EUA in individuals 16 years of age and older, and the authorization was expanded to include those 12 through 15 years of age on May 10, 2021. EUAs can be used by the FDA during public health emergencies to provide access to medical products that may be effective in preventing, diagnosing, or treating a disease, provided that the FDA determines that the known and potential benefits of a product, when used to prevent, diagnose, or treat the disease, outweigh the known and potential risks of the product.
Here's RoJo with more fearmongering, and bitching that the agencies aren't responding to him, and again pushing Ivermectin, with Bartiromo playing right along:
And of course the FDA will not answer my letter when I was asking them, “What are you doing here?” You authorize one. You didn't authorize the other. You extended the emergency use authorization. What is going on here? These agencies are not being transparent. They're not being honest with the American public.
BARTIROMO: Well, unfortunately there's a lot of politicization going on in every agency now. I've been asking the question, is the FDA in bed with big pharma?
I mean, look, you were one of the first to say let's try Ivermectin. This is a Merck drug. It's been used on billions of people for other disease. And Merck makes Ivermectin. Now we see that's off patent. It's only a couple of dollars a dose.
And yet, they've got a new drug now, Merck does, that's $700 a dose. They're going to be make big money on these vaccines and drugs, Pfizer and Moderna on the vaccines and Merck on this drug as well. What happened to Ivermectin?
JOHNSON: Well, there's not money in it. And so you have the drug companies, you have the FDA, you have the health agencies denigrating and scaring people about Ivermectin.
But here's the stats on Ivermectin, on the FDA's early warning system 379 deaths associated with Ivermectin over 25 years.
BARTIROMO: Yeah.
JOHNSON: 379 versus 16,766 with the COVID vaccine. What is going on? Same thing with hydroxychloroquine, 1600 deaths. So there's something going on here. I believe it's sinister. I can't explain it, but hopefully eventually the truth will come out.
Fox News and Ron Johnson continue to be a public health menace.
