The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ (ACIP) recommended the COVID-19 vaccine last week be administered to children, paving the way for a continued and guaranteed source of demand for the vaccines and liability protections for Big Pharma.
The COVID-19 pandemic is officially over, or at least, President Biden finally admitted so to 60 Minutes in September. Yet, this long-awaited admission by the President engendered pushback from public health experts and even Biden’s own health advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci. In response to the President’s assertion, Fauci said: “We are not where we need to be if we’re going to be able to, quote, ‘live with the virus,’ because we know we’re not going to eradicate it.”
It’s not just rhetoric. In fact, Fauci’s primary focus now is continuing vaccination efforts. In early August, Fauci—who will continue to serve as President Biden’s chief medical advisor until December—warned that those who are not up to date on their vaccinations are “going to get into trouble” if they do not “get boosted.” In addition, he has long advocated for vaccinations to be extended to children.
The Biden administration has also remained interested in continuing the vaccination effort. In early September, the Biden administration announced an update to its COVID-19 vaccination plans, informing Americans to anticipate annual updates with a booster shot, like the flu vaccine.
This was followed last week, on October 19, 2022, by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voting to recommend the COVID-19 shot for inclusion in the CDC’s vaccine program for children, which provides free shots to millions of kids each year. Though this decision does not mandate a vaccine, it opens the door for individual states to require the vaccine for school attendance.
Why would the Biden administration, which has admitted that the pandemic is over, be so interested in prolonging the use of the COVID-19 vaccines, which have caused much controversy.
Look no further than the pharmaceutical industry. There are two key motivations guiding this: profits and liability protections.
The pandemic has been quite lucrative for Big Pharma. Initially, three vaccine makers received federal money for vaccine development: AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna. Though Pfizer did not accept federal money, the federal government signed multi-billion-dollar pacts with Pfizer to purchase vaccines for distribution to U.S. citizens for free. By the end of 2022, Pfizer is projected to “to become [a] $100B behemoth” due to the COVID-19 vaccine and drug, according to analysts, reaching a level of revenue unheard of for a pharmaceutical company.
The Big Pharma companies received another boost when the FDA authorized the booster shots for adults. In the first quarter of this year, Pfizer’s profits “soared,” leading the company to revise its 2022 forecast. Continued government promotion of the vaccine, especially for schoolchildren, means that Big Pharma will have a guaranteed number of vaccine dose requests, ensuring that the products remain profitable long after the COVID-19 pandemic has ended.
Besides the guarantee of continued profits, there is another, more sinister reason that Big Pharma would like Biden’s CDC to recommend their vaccines for children: The attendant liability protections.
In 1986, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which guaranteed that vaccines covered under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) would be subject to liability protections. This essentially prevents a person from suing the vaccine producers until they “exhaust the remedies available under the VICP.”
However, this is not the scheme under which the current COVID-19 vaccinations are protected from liability. That comes from the PREP Act, a piece of legislation which provides for broad liability protections during emergency declarations, like the COVID-19 “public health emergency”. Yet, when that emergency expires, the liability protections will as well, opening up Big Pharma to lawsuits. Before the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted last week to recommend the COVID-19 vaccine for childhood immunizations, the liability protections were set to end with the termination of the Public Health Emergency for COVID-19. The current extension is set to expire on January 11, 2023, 90 days from its last renewal.
But now, the COVID-19 vaccines are well on their way to more permanent liability protections under the VICP. Since the vaccine is recommended for children, it must now be “subject to an excise tax by federal law, and added to the VICP by the Secretary of Health and Human services.”
After the vote last week, the COVID-19 vaccines have passed the first of three hurdles for official enrollment in the program and for Big Pharma to acquire more permanent liability protections.
