As moves are being made to blunt the voices of those who are raising questions about the experimental Covid-19 vaccines, officials say Black people are not getting the injections at the same rates as Whites—and polls show Blacks remain especially skeptical about the vaccines.
Instagram removed safe vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s account on Feb. 10, accusing him of “sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” said media reports citing Facebook, which owns Instagram.
Children’s Health Defense argued his account was removed without advance notice and added: “Dozens of media outlets reporting on this censorship asserted the account was removed over ‘false COVID vaccine claims’ or ‘vaccine misinformation,’ and some reports referred to Kennedy as an ‘anti-vaxxer.’ Kennedy, founder, chairman and chief legal counsel of Children’s Health Defense, unequivocally rejects those characterizations as false and misleading.”
“Every statement I put on Instagram was sourced from a government database, from peer-reviewed publications and from carefully confirmed news stories. None of my posts were false,” stated Mr. Kennedy.
“Facebook, the pharmaceutical industry and its captive regulators use the term ‘vaccine misinformation’ as a euphemism for any factual assertion that departs from official pronouncements about vaccine health and safety, whether true or not. This kind of censorship is counterproductive if our objective is a safe and effective vaccine supply,” he continued in a statement released on childrenshealthdefense.org.
“The pharmaceutical industry is hastily creating vaccines using taxpayer money and untested technologies. These include a rash of risky new products that are exempt from liability, from long-term safety testing and that have not received FDA approval. Emergency Use Authorization is a mass population scientific experiment. If it has any prayer of working, it will require extraordinary scrutiny from the press and the public,” argued Mr. Kennedy.
“Instead, the mainstream media and social media giants are imposing a totalitarian censorship to prevent public health advocates, like myself, from voicing concerns and from engaging in civil informed debate in the public square. They are punishing, shaming, vilifying, gaslighting and abolishing individuals who report their own vaccine injuries,” he continued. “Anyone can see that this is a formula for catastrophe and a coup d’état against the First Amendment, the foundation stone of American democracy,” concluded Mr. Kennedy.
“They cut me off of Instagram, and claiming that I said something false, but they cannot point to a single false question or false assertion I have ever made on my Instagram account,” he reiterated in a Feb. 15 interview with The Final Call.
“We don’t put anything on there that’s false. What they say is vaccine misinformation has nothing to do with whether a statement is true or not. It’s simply if it departs from government pronouncements and pharmaceutical industry pronouncements and orthodoxies, then they say it’s false, but it has nothing to do with whether it’s true or false. It’s just that they don’t want to hear it.”
Mr. Kennedy said he was removed from Instagram after making an observation that baseball legend Hank Aaron’s death came 17 days after receiving the Covid-19 vaccine. According to Mr. Kennedy, the baseball great’s passing was part of a wave of deaths that had followed the vaccine.
In “Death by Coincidence,” published Jan. 14, Mr. Kennedy wrote about problems with the government’s surveillance system for detecting vaccine safety prior to release.
On Feb. 8, Facebook announced it was running the largest worldwide campaign to promote Covid-19 vaccines and giving $120 million in ad credits to health ministries, non-governmental organizations and UN agencies working to get billions of people vaccinated.
No wonder there is a war against voices challenging the vaccine and raising legitimate questions, critics argued.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate, an international not-for-profit group based in Washington, D.C., and London, has put out a list targeting people it labels “anti-vaxxers” and who they want eliminated from Facebook and Instagram.
Mr. Kennedy was first on the list. Others include a holistic psychiatrist, medical doctors who specialize in preventive treatments, and advocates who speak out about concerns about vaccines.
Rizza Islam, an activist and social media influencer, appeared unfazed that he was placed 10th on the list. “The enemy, Satan, and all of his dumb devils are scrambling for solutions and tactics, because none of their tactics have worked,” stated Mr. Islam, a member of the Nation of Islam.
“The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has been so influential on a consistent basis that he and all of those who follow and/or echo the truth of the Teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and all of those who have been influenced throughout the last century, are creating a problem for this enemy’s world, and they see it,” said Mr. Islam.
“They know exactly who has the dominant influence, which is the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, and then who trickles down from that source of influence, which happen to be certain celebrities, artists, activists, researchers, etc.,” he said.
In October, Facebook began a campaign supporting public health experts’ vaccine efforts and banning ads discouraging vaccinations. Facebook admits it relies on the identification of opposing voices by the World Health Organization, the CDC, and other global organizations.
The enemy is trying their best to get around facing Min. Farrakhan and his spiritual and intellectual children born through the Teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, but nothing is working, despite their best effort with all of the plays in their playbook, argued Mr. Islam.
“By default, they have to now go on the offense to take down the voices of those who are influencing the people, seeing how they are not,” he stated.
Blacks distrust experimental vaccine
Meanwhile, polls say a third of U.S. adults are skeptical of the Covid-19 vaccine.
About 1 in 3 Americans say they definitely or probably won’t get the Covid-19 vaccine, and, according to a poll from the Associated Press with the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. “Black Americans appear less likely than white Americans to say they have received the shot or will definitely or probably get vaccinated, 57% versus 68%. Among Hispanic Americans, 65% say they have gotten or plan to get the vaccine,” reported AP.
The Pfizer and Moderna experimental vaccines granted emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration were developed in less than a year. The process usually takes 10 years or longer, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
The poll of 1,055 adults, taken Jan. 28 through Feb. 1. found substantial skepticism persists more than a month and a half since the U.S. began the vaccinations, with higher resistance among younger people, people without college degrees, Black people and Republicans, reported AP.
The poll found that of those who said they definitely will not get the vaccine 65% cited worries about side effects; about the same percentage said they don’t trust Covid-19 vaccines; 38 percent said they don’t believe they need a vaccine; and a similar percentage share said that they don’t know if a Covid-19 vaccine will work and that they don’t trust the government.
Fears of side-effects, more mutant strains
Reports of possible severe side effects may be adding to reluctance to get the vaccine. At least 36 people developed a rare life-threatening blood disorder (thrombocytopenia) after receiving Pfizer or Moderna Covid vaccines, reported the UK-based Daily Mail. Potential links are under investigation.
The Daily Mail reported the blood disorder cases occurred among a small number of those who received vaccines.
One case that raises concern is the death of a Florida doctor who died 16 days after getting the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. “Gregory Michael, MD, a 56-year-old obstetrician and gynecologist, died from an unusually severe blood disorder … . He was given the vaccine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Fla., on Dec. 18 and died 16 days later after a brain hemorrhage,” Becker Hospital Review reported.
“Shortly after he was vaccinated, Dr. Michael developed an extremely serious form of acute immune thrombocytopenia, which prevented his blood from clotting properly.”
Meanwhile, health officials across the country have reported more coronavirus mutations in their regions, such as the emergence of a “West Coast” variant in Southern California.
First discovered in Los Angeles County in July, then in October, the variant most likely emerged from New York via Europe early in the pandemic, according to a recent study.
As of January, it accounted for 35 percent (86 of 247) and 44 percent (37 of 85) of all samples collected in California and Southern California, respectively, and the West Coast variant has spread to 19 states, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported on Feb. 11.
The first case of a variant discovered in South Africa has emerged in North Carolina, according to state health officials. In New Hampshire, officials said they detected a fast-spreading UK.
Near the one-year anniversary of the global pandemic, and after an on-the-ground investigation in China, which began on Jan. 11, the World Health Organization said it is “extremely unlikely” that Covid-19 came from a lab in Wuhan.
But for nearly a year, former President Donald J. Trump insisted it did. His derogatory remarks linking the virus to China even led to harassment and backlash of people of Asian ethnicities across the U.S.
According to WHO, the virus likely originated with animals, then spread to humans, but how was unknown.
“You’re very concerned about this pestilence. All of us have witnessed the effect of this coronavirus. China says it was the U.S. Army that dropped it in China and America says Wuhan, China produced this virus and they could have told us what they were doing. Mr. Trump, and all your scientists, why don’t you put your mask on and sit down for a minute while one of the ex-slaves whom God has awakened gives you guidance on what you seek,” stated Minister Farrakhan in his July 4 message, “The Criterion.”
“I want to tell you right up front you will not conquer this virus because it didn’t come from Wuhan. It did not come from Fort Detrick in Maryland because if you had made it, you would know how to handle what you made. But you don’t know this virus, it’s new, it’s different. It mutates and goes in different directions with a different strain of itself. You’re running trying to get a vaccine like you’re really interested in saving the world from this virus,” warned Min. Farrakhan.
