WARNING!
This is an older article that may not reflect Dr. Mercola’s current view on this topic. Use our search engine to find Dr. Mercola’s latest position on any health topic.
The White House is pouring taxpayer money into free advertising for a booming and liability-free vaccine industry,1 which doesn’t seem quite right. Since the beginning of human existence, greed has played a central role in the corruption of man.
The phrase “follow the money” was popularized in the film, “All the President's Men,” a docudrama about the break-in at the Watergate office building and the subsequent political scandal that ultimately brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon.2
The movie, based on the nonfiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, suggests that by following the money, political corruption will be exposed. In the past 18 months, there’s been so much money promised, allocated, provided and spent in relation to the COVID pandemic that it’s difficult to tease out the origins.
The amounts of money reported in the news or announced by government agencies are so large it’s easy to believe the pot of money is endless. Yet, that pot of money is funded through your tax dollars, and those tax dollars have plummeted in the last 18 months as more and more businesses closed, shutting more and more people out of a paycheck.
In comparison, in 2008, one of the worst recessions in recent history, the average unemployment rate was 5.8%.3 But in 2020 the jobless rate rose to a record high of 14.7%4 and one year later is still above the 2008 recession rate, averaging 6.1% in April 2021.5 As a comparison, the average unemployment rate before the pandemic, in 2018, was 3.9%.6
Although these seem like small percentage differences, they represent large numbers of people and sums of money that were not being paid in taxes. For example, 5.8% of the population in 2008 (304.09 million people7) was 17.6 million people not working and contributing to the tax pool; 6.1% of the population in 2020 was 20.17 million people. In 2018, the average tax bill in the U.S. was $15,322,8 which means if you do the math, the U.S. was short $309 billion in tax money in 2020.
$3 Billion in Free Advertising Goes to Big Pharma
In January 2021, the Department of Health and Human Services9 announced $22 billion to support expanded testing and vaccine distribution. In March 2021, the White House announced10 they would spend another $10 billion to expand access to vaccines and “build confidence” in them in designated areas.
Twelve days later, April 6, 2021, the CDC announced11 they would again dip into taxpayer money through Washington’s Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act to spend $3 billion to support an “ad campaign to combat vaccine hesitancy.”12
In the CDC announcement they said the money would fund “innovative partnerships with community-based organizations to increase vaccine uptake.”13 This begs the question, hasn’t there been enough free publicity in the news and on television about the pandemic and the “need” for vaccination to return to “normal”?14,15
The advertisements were played on network TV and cable throughout April 2021 in English and Spanish in the hope they would reduce vaccine hesitancy as “skepticism about the vaccines also remains high.”16 Yet, as the National Vaccine Information Center points out, you only have to turn on the evening news on any major television network in the U.S. to see one long COVID vaccine commercial.
As Jeffrey Zients, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, commented in a press briefing about the $3 billion being used to bolster information about the COVID vaccine in communities, "Building vaccine confidence and increasing access to vaccination is central to our efforts.”17
At the beginning of the pandemic, major drug companies were funded with taxpayer dollars to develop COVID vaccines to the tune of over $9 billion.18 They were then handed a liability shield,19 which ensured if the product did not work or a person were hurt by using it, the company was shielded from any lawsuits.
In other words, the vaccine industry was given billions of dollars to develop a vaccine, then shielded from any liability if their vaccines didn't work or if they hurt people. Next, the government poured billions more taxpayer dollars into advertising those vaccines and spreading information that might help people to decide to get the vaccines.
It is important to note that the government is providing the vaccine free of charge to you regardless of your health insurance status.20 FiercePharma21 reported in February 2021 that the cost to the government per dose for COVID-19 vaccines was:
- $19.50 Pfizer
- $16.00 Novavax
- $15.00 Moderna
- $10 Johnson & Johnson
- $4 AstraZeneca
So, added to the billions already given to the vaccine companies to develop the vaccine, free advertising for their product through the news media and billions poured into increasing access to their product — plus additional paid ad campaigns — all paid for by the government, vaccine companies are now charging the government for each individual dose they deliver. This may make the COVID-19 vaccine the best return on investment for drug development and sale in history.
Department Launches Grassroots Campaign
But the amount of money, time and effort being poured into vaccinating as many people as possible in the shortest time possible doesn’t stop there. In early April 2021, the Department of Health and Human Services22 launched a grassroots ad campaign for the COVID vaccine industry called the COVID-19 Community Corps.
This is a group of leaders within communities that “people know and trust,”23 whose goal is to encourage Americans to get vaccinated. The group was invited to:24
“… receive timely, accurate information to share with your family, friends, and neighbors. By encouraging them to get vaccinated, you’ll help protect them – and allow all of us to safely gather together again.”
The New York Times25 reported that 275 organizations had signed up for the COVID-19 Community Corps by mid-May 2021, including the Catholic Health Association, the North American Meat Institute and NASCAR.
It's expected that many of the Catholic and evangelical groups will work at a community level to address the concerns surrounding the use of abortion-derived fetal cell lines in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
While some have tried to debunk this concern using general terms, the answer lies in the technicalities of how the cell lines have been used, as detailed in ”Several COVID-19 Vaccines Are Made Using Aborted Fetal Cells.” The general terms that self-declared fact-checkers like to use when rating something false or misleading is in fact, false and misleading.
There have been cell lines commonly used in vaccine development that originated from aborted fetuses.26 Several vaccine makers used at least one of these cell lines in the development of COVID-19 vaccines, including Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
One argument for using fetal cell lines during the production of vaccines is the claim that the cells are clones of the original. This is like saying your 20-year-old or 40-year-old body is no longer your body since all the cells are copies of those when you were a baby.
They are, in essence, a clone of the original. However, there is virtually no difference between cells that grow and multiply in a petri dish and those that grow and multiply in your body during your lifetime. If the cells in your body are still you, then the cells in the petri dish are still those of the original aborted fetus.
Agencies Soft Pedal Reasons for ‘Vaccine Hesitancy’
The government agency reasons given for the slowdown in vaccinations, which threatens to create a situation where supply exceeds demand for the vaccine, are superficial. The New York Times quotes Shirley Bloomfield, chief executive of NTCA — The Rural Broadband Association as saying:27
“I’ve got some pockets where they cite religious reasons with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. There are a lot of pockets where people have already had Covid and a sense of, ‘Well, we’ve all already gotten it, so we’re not really pressed.’”
In early May 2021, the White House announced that 100 million people in the U.S. were fully vaccinated.28 According to a reporter from The Hill, “Authorities need to dispel the legitimate concerns that make people hesitant, while also stopping waves of misinformation.”29 How do you dispel concerns that are legitimate without using your own misinformation?
The news media appears to classify those who are vaccine hesitant based on their political affiliation, continuing to cite Trump supporters as those who might want to create chaos around vaccinations. Yet, according to a recent poll reported in The Hill,30 only 30% of Republicans said they would not get the vaccine, and only 35% of the U.S. is fully vaccinated.31
As the number who are willing to get jabbed by a genetic experiment begins to wane, it's difficult to justify how vaccine hesitancy can fall along political lines. To put this another way, 40% of the U.S. population now identifies as Republican,32 and 30% of those said they would not get the vaccine. If politics were a significant factor for vaccine hesitancy, then only 12% of the U.S. population would not be willing to be vaccinated.
Some of the reasons being cited for an unwillingness to take an experimental vaccine include some of the side effects without talking about the side effects, potential safety without describing why there may be safety issues and a belief that COVID-19 isn’t a problem. In each case, the reasons for hesitating are downplayed and countered.
Who Has More Medical Knowledge — Joe Rogan or Bill Gates?
In a slightly comedic turn of events, Dr. Anthony Fauci and White House communications director Kate Bedingfield questioned radio blogger Joe Rogan’s medical knowledge after he made comments in his popular podcast that young people likely didn’t need to be vaccinated, which he possibly based on these facts:
- The CDC states:33 “Children and adolescents have had lower incidence and fewer severe COVID-19 outcomes than adults; 2.5% were hospitalized, 0.8% required ICU admission, and <0.1% died.”
- The vaccine may not prevent you from getting COVID-19 but reduces your symptoms.34
- Researchers are not sure if you can spread COVID-19 after vaccination.35
This means young people are not at significant risk for severe disease and death. Since the vaccine may not prevent a mild to moderate illness in this age group and the vaccine may not prevent transmission, Rogan’s statement doesn’t seem like misinformation. Yet, Bedingfield told CNN:36
“Did Joe Rogan become a medical doctor while we weren’t looking? I’m not sure that taking scientific and medical advice from Joe Rogan is perhaps the most productive way for people to get their information.”
The same question could be asked of Bill or Melinda Gates. Did either of them become doctors when we weren't looking? Yet, Gates:
- Is called the “world’s most powerful doctor” in reference to his influence over the World Health Organization,37 years before the COVID-19 pandemic
- Hosted Event 201 with the World Economic Forum in October 2019,38 which was a highly predictive novel coronavirus pandemic exercise of the events that transpired over the coming 12 months
- Set up,39 and influences the actions of,40 GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, with a grant of $750 million to start and a subsequent infusion of $50 million in 2020; GAVI claims they are a key partner in shaping the vaccine market across the world
Government officials are crying out over the dissemination of “misinformation” surrounding COVID-19 and the vaccine, all while demonizing those who have the audacity to use their First Amendment rights to free speech. Public health experts, while being allowed their own opinions, said Rogan's comments could perpetuate vaccine hesitancy.41 But they didn’t stop there.
Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association, told Rogan, “You have a responsibility as an adult, you have a responsibility as a community leader, your responsibility as a communicator to get it right.”42 He later went on to talk about developing trusted COVID messengers, saying:43
“I just think they have to speak the facts. You speak the facts, and anytime you discover the facts that are incorrect, you try to correct them. And ... I don't think you demonize the individual, nor do I think you try to pin motive to it, because you don't know what the motive is.”
In other words, he implied that Rogan was acting like a child and an irresponsible community leader, but those who are “sent” as community messengers must not be derided or demeaned since “you don’t know what the motive is.” In other words, the objective is to “try to correct” the information.
These are the insidious ways that anyone with an opposing opinion who does not align with the desired rhetoric is discredited. It’s an effective technique that uses a deep understanding of psychology to sway your beliefs and your opinions. It is vital at this time in history to read the information and make up your own mind.
While it may be easier to listen to the “experts,” many don’t have your individual best interest in mind and are likely leading people down a primrose path to a future they design and control. Consider the information shared in the following articles and decide for yourself.