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Things have been very interesting in Israel, and not just because of the actions of Hamas. Israel signed a contract with Pfizer for the COVID vaccine, as many countries did. But Israel, while it has a Ministry of Health (MOH), does not have enough capacity for it go through a testing process the way the US does to verify if a drug is safe to use and is actually able to do what it says. So Israel apparently depends on the US determinations of safety and efficacy in order to decide whether to approve drugs for use in the country. Fine. No problem there. Dr. Yosef Zernik sent a letter to MOH, asking for information in a process that sounds very similar to our Freedom of Information Act, Israel's Freedom of Information Law. Dr. Zernik wanted to see the actual signed agreement between Israel and Pfizer. The agreement that was released on January 17, 2021 was not signed and had significant redactions. Some redactions aren't necessary a concern--I could definitely see Israel wanting to protect a vaccine (we'll set aside whether that is an accurate term for now) from possibly becoming a vector used by its enemies to hurt the Israeli people. But apparently the agreement had redacted the page numbers. Weird. Very weird. The lack of any signature is still significant because it means the document may not represent the actual agreement that was signed, as our lawyers well know. Dr. Zernik is from Alertness for Human Rights Association; he sent the request wanting to verify that the document that was presented was, indeed, the actual signed document between Israel and Pfizer. But as is all too familiar to us, the MOH asked for a 30 day extension, and then delayed and delayed and ignored the request. So in September 2022, Dr. Zernik submitted an administrative petition to the Jerusalem District Court, asking for the agreement. A month later, MOH released a new copy of the agreement. The new agreement was apparently different from the first released version, but still unsigned and still with significant redactions. Well, the MOH claimed that it couldn't find the signed agreement. The idea that a government office cannot find a legal document that it signed knowingly and widely announced seems absolutely crazy. They repeated to the court repeatedly that they could not find the agreement. Dr. Zernik persisted and would not take no for an answer. MOH came back again and said there is no signed agreement. Until suddenly, there was. In December 2022, MOH finally released the agreement, still with redactions, but of their own volition; the court did not force them to do this. "Attorney Gur, [presumably the counsel for Dr. Zernik --vxb] who examined the new documents, says that the information indicates that there are at least four key agreements/documents that the IMOH signed with Pfizer, and that all four were signed before the vaccine received the EUA from the FDA. Even worse, it appears that an attempt was made to actively conceal the date of the real signing of the deal, and apparently even lying about it and creating a false representation that it was signed later." There are also concerns that the agreement was really only signed just before it was released, but for now I'm just going to assume the signed contract (at least, what we can see of it) is correct. Sasha Latypova has published a graphic to lay out the sequence of when each part was signed against the timeline of US approval of the vaccine. (Fair warning: A lot of what Sasha writes sounds like huge conspiracy theory stuff; she has been doing years of research into the legal framework for government control of medicine and health, both in the US and in the UN. I don't have the legal background to determine how much of what she writes is accurate. But she quotes repeatedly from specific legal documents and therefore seems to have at least some solid footing on what she writes.) 
Follow the second link in the previous paragraph to see this graphic at full size. The first link is to Sasha's full article on this topic. The first agreement was a confidentiality agreement signed even before Pfizer had started Phase 3 trials, when the drug was tested in humans. Then there was a "document of principles" signed after that. Then there is the "Real-World Epidemiological Evidence Collaboration Agreement" that was signed on December 1, 2021, before the CDC gave emergency use authorization (EUA) for the COVID vaccine on December 11. Why did Israel only in December release the signed document? Why did they make everyone think the deal was signed after EUA approval was granted? Did Israel know that Pfizer was going to go through Phase 3 trials successfully? Did Israel already know that the US was going to approve the drug under EUA? How confident was Pfizer that their vaccine was going to get approval from the US so far in advance to have Israel and how many other countries sign these staged agreements? One other note: according to the first link in my post, "[t]he stated purpose of this agreement was to collect and analyze epidemiological data resulting from the vaccination of the Israeli population, and to determine whether herd immunity would be achieved as a result of the vaccine." My belief--and I have no evidence to support this assertion--is that this agreement was to do more than just share herd immunity statistics but to also share any and all epidemiological data--reported side effects, doctor visits, hospitalizations, subsequent medical issues after vaccination, and deaths and time of death after vaccination. I tried to follow the links to see the document, but so far I have not been successful. The link I followed from the RTMag site apparently takes me to the Israeli government website, written in Hebrew, which appears to be the equivalent of a "404 - Not Found" page. Now again, this evidence sharing agreement was announced back in January 2021, and there were articles written about it then. But given the actual timeline of signed agreements and actual FDA approval, this really looks hinky. And when researchers and doctors in the US have asked the CDC to release all the same epidemiological data, all requests are turned down (based on my shaky memory; I could, of course be wrong). It just is another layer of stink on the whole COVID vaccine rollout. And now Pfizer is laying off staff, reducing its expected sales of COVID vaccines, and a part of me think Dr. Bourla doesn't care because he already has made money in the bank on all of this.
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JCM
10/15/2023 5:09:30 PM
