Paula Schmitt | AstraZeneca, anti-science and uncritical thinking

“We do not accept that thrombosis syndrome with thrombocytopenia is caused by the vaccine in general terms”said the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca on a official announcement May 2023. The letter, registered in the records of a court case, was sent by the company to the Englishman Jamie Scott, affected by TTS 1 day after taking a dose of the AstraZeneca “vaccine”.

Now, 1 year and countless victims later, the company has stopped its gaslighting global for admit that, in fact, your vaccine can cause TTS.

The case of AstraZeneca is particularly shocking because this “vaccine” – which is known to not immunize or prevent contagion – was suspended in much of the developed world shortly after its application began, but it continued to be inexplicably applied in Brazil for another 2 years.

The evidence of permanent risks and harm was so obvious that in less than 3 months after the first application, AstraZeneca was suspended in Germany and several other European nations, including the United Kingdom, the country where it was developed in partnership with Oxford University. How, and more specifically becausedid this “vaccine” that does not immunize continue to be applied in Brazil for so long?

In December 2021, the newspaper The globe published an article that will go down in the annals of shame: “Without evidence, Bolsonaro associates the Covid vaccine with suspected embolism and thrombosis.” As a piece of propaganda, the article deserves an award, because right from the title, and before any other information is given, it entices readers in two ways that seem to be completely unrelated, but paradoxically start to confirm each other. The trick is simple, but it’s worth dissecting.

For newspapers that took advantage of the pharmaceutical industry’s money just when that industry should have been the subject of investigation and critical thought, the article d’The globe It’s a lesson in anti-journalism, and a masterpiece of two-way propaganda. When using the word in the title “Bolsonaro”and attribute a perfectly scientific criticism to it, the newspaper managed in one fell swoop to dismiss questions about the vaccine and harm Bolsonaro.

Aware of the intelligence quotient of its readers, the The globe surreptitiously advertised the vaccine by putting into Bolsonaro’s mouth the criticisms and questions that were, in fact, being made by some of the best scientists in the world. But the trick is exactly there: in pretending that you are supporting a debate of ideas, but relegating the opposing argument to the worst possible lawyer.

The serious effects of AstraZeneca are not limited to stroke, thrombocytopenia, clots and thrombosis. In January 2022, the Reuters informed what most of the press hid as an irrelevant note lost in the midst of overwhelming propaganda: the AstraZeneca vaccine could cause transverse myelitis, a spinal disease that provokes “muscle paralysis, back pain, muscle weakness, decreased sensitivity and paralysis of the legs and/or arms”.

When the AstraZeneca trial was stopped for causing transverse myelitis, the G1 published an article that would serve to debunk the concerns of well-informed people: “Disease that paused AstraZeneca trials may not be related to the vaccine, says Oxford”.

The article from G1translated from Reuters, does not offer any interview, quote or counterpoint to this manufacturer’s statement. But he has an interesting detail at the end. He says that vaccine trials were interrupted in the United States, but continued in 3 other countries: the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil.

In another article, the G1 use a OMS to defend AstraZeneca, and the message was clear: there was no reason to worry: “The World Health Organization (WHO) stated in a statement this Wednesday (September 9, 2020) that it is pleased to see the developers of the Oxford and AstraZeneca vaccine ensuring that the clinical trials have scientific integrity”.

But if the WHO did not serve to stifle doubts, the Globo made use of the once respected FioCruz. The interviewee was Margareth Dalcomo, a researcher at the institution who, despite being mired in conflicts of interest, continues to serve as a source for some journalists.

Second report (PDF – 4 MB) published by ABmes (Brazilian Association of Higher Education Supporters), Margareth Dalcomo is a member of the advisory board of several laboratories with very profitable purposes, such as Janssen, Abbot, Novartis, Eurofarma e Pfizer. But Margareth’s biggest conflict of interest is FioCruz itself, which transferred billions of reais from tax payers to buy the AstraZeneca vaccine in a contract that is under secrecy, decreed by the institution, for 15 years. According to Margareth, transverse myelitis “may or may not be related to the vaccine”.

If, on the one hand, several serious effects were being discovered, on the other, the ineffectiveness of the vaccine was being confirmed daily with hundreds of reports of vaccinated people infected by the virus that the inoculation once promised to combat. About that, scientific influencers and smaller journalists treated Astrazeneca as a reasonable option, as if the risk-benefit of that gene product made sense.

Second article do Telegraphpublished on April 24, those who will pay the bill for the serious side effects and deaths resulting from the AstraZeneca vaccine will be the tax payers themselves –“The government has already promised that it will subsidize legal costs [indenizações] is AstraZeneca”. This was another thing that Bolsonaro warned about, this time “with proof”. As the article itself shows, The globeand as I warned in article which spoke of the logical and legal atrocities contained in the contract with Pfizer, the Brazilian government was being pressured to assume the payment of possible compensation for deaths and serious effects. “Have you read the leaflets for these vaccines?”asked Bolsonaro. “Pfizer says: we are not responsible for side effects”these.

Bolsonaro was right, as is clear in report do Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Several other truths are being confirmed, years after they were treated by Consenso Inc as “denialism”, “genocide” and others slogans of Pavlov invented in advertising agencies. One of these truths was recently admitted by the WHO: masks were not as effective in protection against covid.

In a few years, we will have more reports recognizing these criminal errors, as was done by Pablo Ortellado, who he wrote an embarrassing article in which he admits the effectiveness of ivermectin and, consequently, his intellectual limitation in having let politics override science. The article leaves a lot to be desired, and is not a “MEA culpa”but even a weak half-guilt is better than nothing.