Half of Americans Say They Will Not Get CCP Virus Vaccine, Citing Safety Concerns

Some are relying on possible drug treatments as an alternative

A nurse prepares a shot of COVID-19 vaccination at Research Centers of America in Hollywood, Fla., on Aug. 7, 2020. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The first CCP virus vaccine is due to complete its phase 3 trial by the end of October, but almost half of Americans say they will not get the vaccine.

In a recent Pew Research Center poll on whether Americans will get the vaccine, only 51 percent said they would, down 21 percent from May. The other 49 percent cited concerns about the vaccine’s potential side effects as to why they wouldn’t get it.

The unprecedented speed of vaccine development was made possible by Operation Warp Speed. It’s the partnership created to address the manufacturing, development, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics by the Trump administration.

Although many people are hoping for a vaccine to possibly end the pandemic, the rate at which the vaccines are being developed has raised concerns about the safety and long-term effects of the vaccine.

For high schooler Sam Leong, who is up to date on her vaccines, she said she would skip it due to “limited testing” and safety concerns. “How would we truly know if the COVID vaccine even works? It’s not like it protects you from getting COVID 100 percent,” Leong told The Epoch Times in an email.

Leong, who is a senior this year, said she was also concerned about the manufacturer’s lack of transparency, bringing up the “UK vaccine testing [that was] stopped” and then resumed without a clear explanation. “They have not released why and have continued to test,” Leong said. “There has been no transparency.”

Multi-national company AstraZeneca is leading the UK study. In the United States, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson (J&J), are racing to provide a potential vaccine to combat the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus that causes the disease COVID-19.

AstraZeneca halted its trial for several days after one participant was suspected of coming down with transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder that causes inflammation on both sides of the spinal cord. Symptoms include muscle weakness or paralysis, pain, and diminished sensation to light, touch, and temperature. There is no cure for the disorder and the cause is unknown in many cases.

AstraZeneca’s U.S. trial continues to remain on hold as of the publication of this story. The FDA is reportedly investigating if similar adverse effects emerged in the earlier trials of similar vaccines developed by the company’s partner, Oxford University.

A subject receives a shot in the first-stage safety study clinical trial of a potential vaccine by Moderna for COVID-19 at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle on March 16, 2020. (Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

In Moderna’s first clinical trial of 45 people, three of the participants in the high dose group all experienced a “grade 3” systemic adverse reaction to the vaccine and one from the lowest dose group developed transient urticaria (hives).

According to the FDA, a grade 3 adverse event (pdf) is a “severe or medically significant but not immediately life-threatening; hospitalization or prolongation of hospitalization indicated; disabling; limiting self care ADL [activities of daily life].”

“We have no way of knowing who will react and you will not be compensated financially,” Pam Long, a Medical Intelligence Officer for NATO Peacekeeping Forces and spokesperson for the Colorado Health Choice Alliance, told The Epoch Times. “There is no liability in the U.S. for vaccines, their manufacturers, and the doctors who administer them.”

Congress passed the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act in 1986 that gave vaccine manufacturers and those who administer the vaccine immunity from lawsuits by parents of a child that has been vaccine-injured. Parents have to file a claim with the federal government instead, under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Claims can only be filed for adverse events listed on the vaccine injury table (pdf).

Countermeasure Injury Compensation Program

Vaccines, drugs, and other countermeasures granted emergency authorization are also given immunity from lawsuits. Congress passed the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act (pdf) in 2005 allowing the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to issue a PREP Act declaration giving liability immunity to “entities and individuals involved in the development, manufacture, testing, distribution, administration, and use of such countermeasures.”

Countermeasures that are covered include (1) drugs, biological products, or devices authorized for investigational or emergency use, (2) “qualified pandemic or epidemic products,” or (3) “security countermeasures.”

People injured or died from vaccines granted emergency authorization have only one year after “receiving the countermeasure” to file a claim and prove their injury under the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, a federal government program established as a result of the PREP Act.

The PREP Act declaration for COVID-19 (pdf) went into effect on February 4, 2020.

Hydroxychloroquine

There are still no medications approved by the FDA to treat COVID-19, but many are being tested, including the much “controversial and politicized” hydroxychloroquine. Researchers around the world continue to look at its dosage, use in combination with other drugs, and timing.

“There are now more than 80 studies that show that prophylactic (pre-infection) or early use of hydroxychloroquine prevents or significantly reduces the severity of COVID-19,” Dr. Simone Gold, MD, and founder of America’s Frontline Doctors told The Epoch Times in an email. “All studies that failed to show a benefit to being on hydroxychloroquine had one of these three flaws: the drug was given late in the disease (hospitalized), or at too high a dose, or without zinc.”

Gold says that zinc is actually what “blocks viral replication” and hydroxychloroquine “only facilitates the zinc.”

One of the main reasons the drug was declared “ineffective” and why the World Health Organization temporarily halted its hydroxychloroquine studies around the world was due to a large study conducted by Surgisphere Corporation that declared “hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine (with or without a macrolide) was associated with no evidence of benefit, but instead was associated with an increase in the risk of ventricular arrhythmias and a greater hazard for in-hospital death with COVID-19.”

The study, published in one of the most prestigious medical journals, The Lancet, was retracted two weeks later on June 5, after an independent third-party auditor was refused access to the raw data to “replicate the analyses presented in the paper.”

Surgisphere took down its website on June 15, along with its social media accounts.

Prior to the pandemic, hydroxychloroquine was safely used throughout the world by people of all ages, including pregnant women and immune-compromised patients. The drug has been approved for over 65 years by the FDA for malaria, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus.

“Since it came out 70 years ago in 1955, several million patients have taken the drug,” Dr. Daniel Wallace, a prominent rheumatologist and Associate Director of the Rheumatology Department Cedars Sinai Medical Center said in an interview with Dr. Mehmet Oz back in April. “There have not been any reported deaths from using this agent as monotherapy or taken only by itself.”

Addressing the fear that hydroxychloroquine may cause heart problems, Wallace who has 42 years in clinical practice said, “It is a problem with chloroquine, which is its first cousin, and it was a problem with hydroxychloroquine in the 1950s and 60s when doctors were using two to three times the usual dose. In the current recommended dose [400 mg], it really does not occur.”

According to Zion Market Research, the global vaccine market was worth $41.7 billion in 2019 and is expected to “reach over $69.8 billion by 2026” as a result of an “increase in infectious diseases.”