The COVID-19 Response Inquiry Submissions (Pfizer)
Pfizer to the rescue? Maybe. But only if the red carpet rolls out again.
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Pfizer Australia was one of limited few organisations to have been given the opportunity to provide duplicate submissions to Australia’s COVID-19 Response Inquiry, only one of which is publicly viewable:
Why the duplicate submission?
We asked the COVID-19 Response Inquiry Team who advised:
“Individuals and Organisations were not barred from making multiple submissions.
Some Individuals and Organisations made a second submission to remedy a mistake or replace a first submission.
Grattan Institute and Pfizer Australia made two submissions, the latter submission replaced an initial submission and only the latter was published.”
We inquired as to whether we could remedy our ironic submission, but were told it would not be published by the Inquiry Team because the public submissions had closed.
We wonder what mistake Pfizer Australia might have made to necessitate the second submission.
Did they mistakenly suggest something about vaccine safety or effectiveness?
Perhaps something about how the miracle therapeutics could reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 disease it causes?
Did they mistakenly leave in the chapter about the extraordinary rates of adverse events?
A typo?
The “real” Pfizer Australia submission
The public submission (Submission # 1451) is responsive to only two of the Inquiry’s eight terms of reference:
Key health response measures; and,
International policies to support Australians at home and abroad (including with regard to international border closures, and securing vaccine supply deals with international partners for domestic use in Australia).
Coming in at just over 4.5 pages in length, it’s a surprisingly limited submission for an organisation of such central importance in Australia’s COVID-19 pandemic response.
In sum, the submission omits any discussion of the failures and adverse effects of the Pfizer COVID-19 “vaccines”, presenting a sanitised narrative inaccurately crediting the Pfizer “vaccines” for the trajectory of the pandemic.1
The more telling theme of the Pfizer Australia submission, however, is the appeal made for changes to, or strengthening of Australia’s legislative and regulatory environment to benefit organisations like Pfizer Australia, highlighting the following:
Australia has inflexible trade legislation that increases Pfizer’s costs;
Australia needs stronger legislation to protect Pfizer’s intellectual property (IP);
Australia must provide greater incentives to guarantee Pfizer’s future research and development.
The implication of these combined notions in the submission is that when (not if) the next pandemic occurs, Australia’s COVID-19 response authorities should remember two important things:
Pfizer saved us from the worst of the pandemic;
Pfizer may not do it again so successfully (or at all) unless important changes are made.
What does Pfizer Australia want?
In its submission, Pfizer Australia details the “extraordinarily complex” nature of vaccine manufacturing, implying the need for both more flexible legislation to facilitate the efficiency of this global supply chain and stronger laws to protect its IP:
Perhaps the reference to the “extraordinary complexities of vaccine manufacturing” relate to the problems Pfizer has encountered with contamination of its vaccine goop from potentially carcinogenic parasitic and bacterial plasmid DNA.
The idea is not explored further and Pfizer Australia’s main theme in the remainder of its submission revolves around how the government can roll out the red carpet for Pfizer Australia in any future “pandemic”.
In a separate Pfizer publication (not connected with its submission) entitled “Key Medicine Supply And Public Policy During COVID-19”, Pfizer reveals more about their views on pandemic policies:
“While Pfizer leveraged one of the most sophisticated and resilient global supply chain systems in the industry to deliver beyond expectations, governments began implementing measures to ensure patients would have continued access to these critical treatments in their countries. These included proposals around export restrictions, weakening intellectual property rights, mandating stockpiles and other restrictive policies, which Pfizer knew would only have the reverse effect of tightening domestic supply chains.”2 [emphasis added]
So what do these mean?
Pfizer Australia hates export restrictions
First, during the pandemic, some governments required “vaccine producers” like Pfizer to ask for permission before shipping vaccines outside the region in which they were produced to “shore-up” vaccine supply early in the pandemic for its own populations. This meant that many nations prohibited vaccines from being sold outside the producing country.3 Given the Pfizer COVID-19 “vaccine” was manufactured entirely outside Australia, we believe export restrictions are less likely to be the main purpose of the Pfizer submission to the COVID-19 Response Inquiry.
Pfizer Australia wants stronger intellectual property rights
Second, at the height of the pandemic, a proposal aimed to ditch IP protections for COVID-19 products in the hope that poorer countries would get greater access to vaccines and therapeutics by weakening Big Pharma’s rights to monopolise the technology used to create them. It had widespread support, even in the USA, but Australia was a hold out to this “weakening of intellectual property rights”.4 Predictably, Pfizer was outraged by the proposals to weaken IP protections, spewing everything from how it would threaten vaccine supply and safety to the dog-whistle of “they took our jobs” to rally against the proposal.
Of course, like all corporate behemoths, Pfizer Australia had always powerfully lobbied for stronger IP legislation for its products. For example, in submissions to Australia’s Productivity Commission Inquiry into Intellectual Property Arrangements in 2015, Pfizer Australia’s Chairman and Managing Director, David Gallagher, submitted:
So, in 2015, one of Pfizer Australia’s head honchos said it took “an average of 10-15 years” and significant cost, research and development for a single new medicine, requiring sufficiently strong IP laws to incentivise this type of investment. But by March 2020, when a pandemic was declared, the process could be “warp-sped” without sacrificing any safety or clinical evaluation processes to which we had become unquestioningly accustomed.
Curious, no?
In its Final Report for this Inquiry, the Productivity Commission lamented pharmaceutical industry “policy placebos” comprising wasteful Australian Government spending and dreams of huge pharmaceutical investments in Australia that had “proven largely illusory”:
“Australia represents a meagre 0.3 per cent of global spending on pharmaceutical research and development. As pharmaceutical companies have acknowledged, the prospect of future returns in such a small market (accounting for only 2 per cent of global pharmaceutical revenues) provides little in the way of additional incentive.” [emphasis added]
Yet, in its submission to the 2023 COVID-19 Response Inquiry, Pfizer Australia contended:
“Pro-innovation policy settings, including strong intellectual property rules, are essential to Pfizer’s ability to commit the R&D investment required to make breakthroughs. . . . Waiving these protections will undermine the incentives to both the continued improvement of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, and the industry's response to the next pandemic.”
Pfizer Australia clearly holds two contradictory positions.
On the one hand, they argued that years of IP protection are required to incentivise its groundbreaking research and development and ensure returns on its investments. Yet, on the other hand, they were able to safely accelerate the development, manufacture, and distribution of an mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine; quite remarkably, the world’s first ever coronavirus vaccine using a technology that had never once been approved as a “vaccine” - within one year.5
Laughably, Pfizer Australia submits that waiving these IP and “pro-innovation” policy incentives would undermine the “continued improvement of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments", and the industry’s response to the next pandemic”. As though the “vaccines” and “treatments” had undergone any improvement whatsoever, and as if the Australian “consumer” had not clearly signalled their complete lack of interest in repeated COVID-19 “vaccination”, as now more sensibly guided by our health overlords.
Pfizer Australia wants smaller stockpiles
The Australian Government holds a National Medicine Stockpile, a “strategic reserve of drugs, vaccines, antidotes and personal protective equipment for use in national health emergencies . . . so Australia is more self-sufficient during an emergency and able to meet high levels of demand.”6
Even though stockpiling of medicines and vaccines results in more initial sales, Pfizer Australia might be opposed to the practice for various reasons.
First, it would negatively impact its production supply chain, especially if the demand from stockpiling was unpredictable (just like with the toilet paper panic-buying fiasco of 2020). Second, such stockpiling by wealthier nations could prevent Pfizer’s access to poorer nations and lead to situations where IP legislation could be temporarily suspended as discussed previously. Third, the practice could lead to significant wastage because the “vaccines” are perishable. On this point, Australia has been so “self-sufficient” with its stockpile that only 26% of the total 267 million purchased doses have been used and many more will soon expire.
Pfizer Australia wants a seat at the table for the next pandemic
As far as essential medicines were concerned, Pfizer Australia lists the many ways the global supply chain actually worked quite well during the pandemic due to the cosy relationship Pfizer Australia had with the government and key agencies to ensure continuity of supply. These included:
By Pfizer Australia’s own admission, in its close relationship with the Australian Government and other key agencies, it was able to direct medicine purchasing decisions of state hospitals to align with their anti-stockpiling desires, to engage in anti-competitive behaviour by suspending hospital tendering processes, and to collude with other manufacturers under the watchful eye of the Australian Competition Consumer Commission.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, Pfizer Australia performed exceedingly well from the pandemic in Australia because “the system” (to use its own words) which it had a direct hand in facilitating, valued its contribution.
Pfizer’s achievements
The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine prevents COVID-19 infection (seriously??!!)
In the most surprising aspect of all of its submission, Pfizer Australia asserts its “vaccine” was developed, manufactured and distributed for the purpose of active immunisation to prevent COVID-19 infection.
“We worked to safely accelerate the development, manufacture, and distribution of an mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine for active immunisation to prevent COVID-19 infection” [emphasis added]
Not serious illness. Not death. But infection.
This is an important difference from the wording in the TGA’s “Australian Public Assessment Report for BNT162b2 (mRNA)” (AUSPAR) which gave Pfizer Australia provisional approval on 25 January 2021 for the “vaccine”. In this AUSPAR, Pfizer’s “vaccine” was indicated for the prevention of COVID-19 disease.7
Disease is very different from infection.
An “infection” occurs when the virus is present and multiplying in the body, which might not show any symptoms. In contrast, “disease” refers to the development of noticeable symptoms or health issues due to the infection.
Pfizer Australia, in its submission, maintains its “vaccine” could prevent the virus from establishing an infection. The TGA’s provisional approval for the Pfizer product was for the prevention of symptomatic and severe outcomes of such infections.
If Pfizer Australia’s claim was accurate, perhaps we would not have even had a pandemic. If we cast our minds back to that period of lockdowns vaccination mandates the idea was:
We have too many cases!
Vaccines prevent cases!
Get your “vaccine” to continue working and prevent cases (or perhaps simply to leave your house you filthy plague rat vile scumbag)!
Recalling that Pfizer worked at the “Speed of Science” and never even tested for the effects of the vaccine on “transmission”:
So, Pfizer Australia wants to live in the fanciful world where its miracle elixir somehow reduced infection even though case numbers skyrocketed in late 2021 and early 2022 following mass inoculation of the adult population of Australia: largely with its product.
Looking ahead
Pfizer Australia’s submission concludes with this commitment to a “Healthier World”, promising to provide its:
“…full portfolio of patented and off-patent medicines and vaccines for which Pfizer holds global rights on a not-for-profit basis to 1.2 billion people living in 45 lower-income countries around the world.”8
In the next pandemic, knowing that the Australian Government could make the decision to compel Pfizer Australia to share its IP rights (as discussed earlier in this article) to meet the global demand for pandemic therapeutics, this feature of Pfizer Australia’s submission is evidently concerned with ensuring Pfizer Australia maintains its control of IP and “vaccine” hegemony rather than allowing the Australian Government to dictate who gets “vaccines” and how many they get.
Those countries targeted for the “full portfolio” (they should be so lucky, right?) are:
Which just so happen to be the countries with the highest fertility rates in the world too.
Nothing to see here.
The final kicker in the Pfizer Australia submission is the deference to the Halton Review (conducted by Jane Halton, lead conspirator at Event 201 which prepped us for COVID-19) calling for the mitigation of the risks (many of which never eventuated) such as “vaccine supply shortages” (despite millions of vaccines being thrown out in Australia) or “regulatory failures” (despite more than 95% effectiveness in TGA approvals for new therapeutics [pun intended!]).
Conclusion
Our analysis of Pfizer Australia’s submission to the COVID-19 Response Inquiry suggests Pfizer Australia’s strategic effort to influence legislative and regulatory frameworks primarily to protect Pfizer Australia’s commercial interests in future pandemics. Pfizer Australia argues for robust intellectual property protections, citing the need for sustained investment in drug development. This stance, however, sharply contrasts with its rapid production of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, which was developed in less than a year (that is of course if any of that story is to be believed)—contradicting its argument for the need for extended IP protections to foster innovation.
Pfizer Australia ignores the substantial body of public evidence showing the extreme harms caused by its “vaccine” in its submission.
Pfizer Australia also omits any discussion of negative vaccine-effectiveness and Vaccine-Associated Enhanced Disease of its product, sidestepping a critical issue which is now even receiving legacy media attention.
The Paradigm is shifting.
The plural is used here to indicate the many “updated” formulations of the original “vaccine”.
Pfizer, “Key Medicine Supply and Public Policy During COVID-19”, https://annualreview2020.pfizer.com/key-medicine-supply-and-public-policy-during-covid-19, accessed 25 April 2024.
A highly informative piece of investigative journalism covers this issue in great detail here https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2022-11-10/who-killed-the-vaccine-waiver/
For export restrictions from the European Union see https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-s-vaccine-plan-under-a-cloud-following-new-european-export-rules-20210127-p56x7b.html. For export restrictions from the USA see https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-s-pfizer-doses-are-coming-from-europe-as-us-limits-supply-20210707-p587rc.html. Both accessed 25 April 2024.
Pfizer, “Submission # 1451 to COVID-19 Response Inquiry”, https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/submissions/PMC-CGCRI-2023-1451.pdf, p. 1.
Department of Health and Aged Care, “National Medical Stockpile”, https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/national-medical-stockpile, accessed 25 April 2024.
Productivity Commission, “Intellectual Property Arrangements”, No. 78, 23 September 2016, https://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/intellectual-property/report/intellectual-property-overview.pdf, p. 22. In this context, the term “disease” could refer to lesser symptoms such as discomfort, dysfunction or distress, but it could also include serious outcomes such as hospitalisation or death. Here, we should pause to remember that Pfizer only had a pathway to provisional approval because it fell within the scope of “provisional registration pathway” because it was (as the AUSPAR of 25 January 2021 explains) a “new biological entity which aims at the prevention of a life-threatening disease and the preliminary clinical data demonstrating that the medicine is likely to provide a major therapeutic advance.” [emphasis added]
Pfizer, “An Accord for a Healthier World”, https://www.pfizer.com/about/responsibility/global-impact/accord, accessed 4 June 2024.
Pfizer is ass-blasted because Moderna got all the large-scale manufacturing contracts.