Virginie Joron [00:01] My dear friends, thank you for meeting us for this second episode of interview with Christine Cotton, whom you know, she will tell us everything she thinks about vaccines, and Virginie Jauron, your heroine from the European Parliament. Today we are going to talk about vaccines, vaccination, the role of the European Commission in vaccination. We’re going to talk about why Ursula von der Leyen did so much good, if I dare say so, to Pfizer and his CEO Albert Bourla. But I wanted to start, Christine, whether or not to issue a conditional marketing authorisation to the Pfizer vaccine.

Christine Cotton [00:50] I’m going to answer in a word. No. At least it was short. We’re going to develop anyway because unlike the government and the whole policy of Europe, I look at the reports. Why not? For three reasons. We have a main criterion of efficiency which, in its method of collection, and biased, that is, we can’t be sure of the result. That criterion of effectiveness that we were told…

Joron [01:27] That is, when the lab, I translate for simple people like me who don’t understand anything, when a lab says my vaccine is effective, the question is what does it mean to be effective? That is, what makes the lab say that it’s effective, that’s not effective, that’s the subject.

Cotton [01:45] Exactly. As in any clinical trial, it is effective because a criterion has been chosen, which is the main criterion of effectiveness, which in this case for Covid trials and the symptomatic Covid cases confirmed by PCR test. This criterion in its collection mode, it is biased since we have elements that distort the result. This is the first thing.

Joron [02:14] So what elements?

Cotton [02:17] For example, it is the participants who report the symptoms. He, when he comes to get vaccinated during the trial, he goes home quietly. And when he has symptoms, he is supposed to report them. Except that we have reactions to the vaccine and symptoms that are Covid’s suspicions. So he’s calling to report his symptoms, except he’s allowed to take antipyretics, so no symptoms, no calls, no tests.

Joron [02:48] So antipyretics, it’s dafalgan, paracetamol, etc.

Cotton [02:54] So they suppress certain symptoms, for example fever or pain. So no symptoms, no test, no test, no Covid. So that’s good, it’s no problem if we have the same number in each group of left. But we have three and a half times more in the vaccine group. So that means I have three times as many people for whom I’m suppressing symptoms, so my 95% is wrong.

Joron [03:17] But who knows that? When did Pfizer say that? How did you know that?

Cotton [03:24] So, how did I know? Because it’s the biostatistician who does the methodologies of clinical trials and does the analyses. So actually, if behind the results are not read, by biostatisticians, I understand that we can go through, but logically to give AMMs, when I participated in file filings for agencies, we had questions.

Joron [03:51] So at the limit, that it’s biased… wait, because you don’t arouse ambiguity in people’s minds. You, you haven’t been involved in Pfizer vaccine trials. Of course not. It’s in your previous life. Exactly. You’re doing testing for pharmaceutical labs. You don’t do it like that.

Cotton [04:09] When I was doing the statistical analyses of certain products that were sent to the authorities, we have my company, and I too, since I was validating a number of results from my statistician employees, so we had questions from the agencies. We could have questions from the IDF that told us yes, but how does that happen? It makes sense.

Joron [04:31] The IDF, I translated for the Federal Food Drug Administration, so it’s the American Agency, the equivalent of the American EMA Security Agency.

Cotton [04:42] That’s right, we have that. And this criterion here, the symptomatic Covid case confirmed by PCR test, for me, it’s not representative of real life. That was for effectiveness. What does that mean? It means that in real life, Covid cases are not only symptomatic Covid cases confirmed by PCR test. Indeed, we do PCR tests, but we can know that we had Covid, for example, with anti-nucleocapside serologies. It’s going to tell us whether we were positive or not.

So I was saying at the time I wrote this test expertise that the lab could have performed serologies to see if people had Covid during the trial or not. What would it have changed to the result? So we’re just going to come here because they did it. So that was the first point of effectiveness. The second very important point is the famous immunogeneity, that is, how long it protects me. And that’s on the basis of antibodies that have been measured that are neutralizing antibodies.

So, what do we see here? We see that in the preclinical study of monkeys, we have these antibodies that, after two months after vaccination, begin to decrease. This, we find in phase 1-2, the results in humans, in phase 1-2. And what do I see in my phase 3? We don’t make any dosage of these antibodies after these famous two months after dose 2. So why don’t I have a three-month antibody assay? Would it have shown that the effectiveness of the vaccine was falling ? two months after the injection. It would have shown that the antibodies were decreasing to three months, since they had already started to decrease to two.

So we don’t see how something that started to do that would suddenly go back to three months, so what would we have seen? That, that. What would we have said to the lab? Gentlemen, thank you for stopping by. Take your thing again. Your protective period lasts three months. And what do we know? It’s that in December 2020, as if by chance, we have Pfizer studying a boost While we’re on TV, yes of a dose and then you’re going to get back to your normal life and by December 2020 they’re studying a boost. It’s highly convenient when they, months after then, because obviously they didn’t know about it. Months later, he tells us it’s stupid, so immunity, we find that antibodies decrease after 4, 5, 6 months. And now, we know, it decreases every 4 months.

So what are they going to tell us? We have to go to the vaccine every 4 months. But this, we know since December. We know since December. For someone who can read the results. 2020. For someone who can read the data, everything is already in that report. So we only have confirmation in the others. So the third point is that at the level of the follow-up of the participants at the moment we do the intermediate analysis, so we have the people, they are recruited in the trial, after a moment we say hop stop, we do the intermediate analysis. And there those people who were recruited, they have between 15 days of follow-up up to max 3 months. and half to less than two months.

So already, what is the medical justification for analyzing these famous three months? Since in addition, once again, we did not dose the antibodies at three months. So then, what can be observed over a follow-up period like this? We will look at the short-term effects, the short-term side effects. At the level of tolerance, we will not see the medium or long term. What they write in their documents. And so, as in all trials, we have a number of unstudyed populations that are pregnant women, immunocompromised patients, fragile patients with co-morbidity. There is no interaction study with other vaccines, no clinical trials on this subject at the time when we give the authorizations.

So let’s admit, we’re making a mistake in December 2020, finally a mistake, we’re going to say we’re going a little fast. And we’re saying, here’s the emergency, blablabla, we’re all going to die, so we’re giving the first authorization. But this way of proceeding, maximum three months, no antibody assay, this main criterion a little tedious, we will say. We do the same again in April 2021 over the 12-15 years and we still do the same again in October 2021. In other words, at the time of the 12-15 year analysis, the same duration of follow-up, the same methodological biases, the same way of collecting. And we don’t think at that time, when we’re an agency, well, we were a little bit quick the first time because there was an emergency, blablabla, well maybe there for teenagers, kids, we’re going to have a longer observation time, especially since we’re on weak samples. Because as much as we have 38,000 in the analysis of December 2020, so much after we have 2000 about in the 12-15 and in the 5-11. So we have a small sample, we have a duration followed by max 3 months. We do not know what it will give on these populations, who do not have the same immunity, finally the same immune system as adults. And then we say no, it’s okay, we’ll do the same, max 3 months and then we’ll see real life finally how it goes.

Joron [10:07] When you say “we thought,” who is “we”?

Cotton [10:12] So logically, the lab him, he provides his document, he provides his report. Now, if in the health agencies, no one finds anything to say and finds it extraordinary, is that, besides, it’s a question that I ask, have these reports been read by biostatisticians? That is to say by people whose job it is to do the methodology and the analyses of the tests, and I am frankly not sure.

Joron [10:41] You who have an experience… you know very well what I’m trying to get you to say. You who have an experience testing this whole universe, we’re going to call that certification. How do you explain on a vaccine as sensitive, as important, as publicized as there are such methodological biases in one way or another validated by the independent agencies of the drug?

Cotton [11:09] I can’t explain. This is inexplicable because when we know all the documents that are precisely what are called guidelines, that is, recommendations that are supposed to frame every part of the clinical trial, every task, every type of profession, When we know all the controls we have to do when we have a company like I had, the audits that we can have, that is, people who come every two years almost audit to see how we work until we know who has the code of access to the computer server room, how many air conditioners we have if it ever fails, who validated what, how it is plotted, who signed. There is an incredible level of traceability and rigour. And all these practices, these recommendations, what are called good clinical practices, they have only one purpose, minimize the risk of using in a trial a product that would be toxic or ineffective to the limit, it is not serious, but that could be dangerous.

So a fortiori, we don’t want to put people at risk in a clinical trial, so a priori even less to people living real in the population. And all that regulation that’s there to protect patients from trials and the population, none of that is respected in the Covid trials. So we end up with something we’re told about. It’s great, 95%, it’s over-efficient. Now, we have this story of data that has been made public by procedures in the United States. And then, looking through this data, we find that we’re going to find a number of things that will fit in with what I wrote in my report. I don’t know if we’re talking about it right now,

Joron [13:19] I’m going to put it in a provocative way, I know she’ll tell me no in this form. Can we deduce in the face of this kind of amazing indigence that Pfizer has benefited from? Can we infer that there is complicity in the commission between Pfizer and the public authorities, since it is public authorities, who decide to buy vaccines?

Cotton [13:48] Indeed, this is a question that we are asking ourselves, and I too, because when we see this whole strategy put in place by the committee, an excessive purchase of doses, a year ago, they already knew at the time, and it is good to have stressed the fact that there was already a problem of validity of the dose since indeed when we see that there are 4.2 billion orders, I would remind you that the European population is 447 million Europeans.

So even if after we want to give the stock, some stocks to the whole world, I mean it’s about 8 to 9 doses per person. Which means that already they knew at the base that this vaccine required boost It’s not effective enough. They knew there was this problem and they could have told us in advance. A product, if after you have to buy 3 or 4 cartridges, we want to know in advance, how many doses we’re going to have? At least, it’s honest, if we’re told we need a dose every 3 months, but that’s not at all what we’ve been sold. We’ve been told two doses, it’s okay, you’re immune.

So there’s already this lack of transparency. Indeed, it raises questions because there is always this story of hidden contracts, because they are hidden contracts. And then, as you can see, there were several competitors at the beginning. There was Moderna, AstraZeneca, there was Johnson. Then you realize that in the end, there is only Pfizer. Pfizer with Madame van der Leyen who goes to Washington to give her the trophy of the best businessman.

Joron [15:31] She answered the question.

Cotton [15:33] He sold his soup very well. Indeed, a lot of questions. That is why it is not a thin file, and we will see that Bob Pfizer is well present. We will see with a new report that the Commission is proposing, which is the creation of a health data space in the European Union. A data space where the laboratories, the Member States are going to make a kind of hub where we are going to exchange our data. Well, Pfizer is right now on the circuit and will go back to the instances to be able to manage also because necessarily to make a good vaccine, it has to integrate the network. So yes, it raises the question of conflict of interest.

Joron [16:17] I take the opportunity to bounce, but I can’t talk about everything, it’s gigueugne dolls. But the French who have been very alerted about my health area, the fact that France has entrusted French health data to Microsoft, are not yet necessarily aware that there is a European health area project and that social security data are supposed to be absorbed by a European level.

Cotton [16:41] But that’s part of the digital identity portfolio project.

Joron [16:46] Which we’ll talk about later.

Cotton [16:48] It’s all connected, you can’t believe everything’s done by chance.

Joron [16:53] There’s an agenda, there’s a lot of questions, everyone knows Ursula von der Leyen’s son works at McKinsey’s. Everyone knows that her husband, Heiko, and vice-president I believe from a pharmaceutical laboratory not very far from Maastricht, at least not far from Brussels, and that this laboratory works in the vaccine universe and is part of Pfizer. Can we think that there are today in the choices made in favour of Pfizer conflicts of interest that pose serious democratic questions?

Cotton [17:32] This is a question that has been asked of the European Ombudsman, since, as you know, there have been negotiations, exchanges by SMS. The Ombudsman has asked the Commission to transmit these texts, and so far there are still no results, so all this, indeed, you are right to recall this context which is so special. And we see it with another example of this power of private firms that are very present also in Brussels. We have seen it in France, but everything is connected. I mean, there are no borders. And we see it with McKinsey who just got a contract of 2.7 million euros in the midst of a crisis at our home from McKinsey who does not pay his taxes in France.

So I asked the committee, I tabled it last week, where in fact the Brussels commission is awarding a contract of 2.5 million. The subject of the contract, a 70-page report, we now know what it is, with lots of pictures, big titles and that’s all. And the subject is to evaluate the manufacturing options of medical countermeasures in the face of serious transfontary threats to health. So still this area a little blurred of health. And this is the Commission. And then you can go see on the Commission’s website, there is a register of transparency.

So unfortunately, we do not see all the content of the meetings, of the meetings of Mrs van der Leyen, but we see that she regularly has meetings with, for example, Global Citizen, an NGO, which fights poverty and for vaccination at the global level. We also see that she has a lot of meetings with Bill Gates. So, indeed, all this raises questions. I go in stages because going too fast, without springing, is after deciphering our action.

But all this, I call… our listeners, those who look at us, to go see. There, for the moment, it’s transparent. So, unfortunately, we don’t have the content, these meetings, but we see that there are regularly, there are all these foundations, there is also Soros, Open Society, which is also around the Commission. So it doesn’t come on its own, it’s not the Commission officials who decide, well, come on, we’re going to do this, we’re buying fast because the urgency has made it possible to sweep away from the back of the hand, the rule of law, scientific studies, debates, this emergency has allowed to put in place this system which is unfortunately well anchored. and we see it with another example, we don’t have time to talk about it with the Ukrainian crisis, it has the same thing, and then we are forced to do things without debate and with powers, as I said, which were not attributed to the Commission.

Cotton [20:14] Especially now, the emergency, we’re not in the emergency room anymore, exactly, there’s nothing that prevents us from going back.

Joron [20:21] We are going to talk about vaccination in the third episode, because what we are interested in is the side effects of the vaccine and the Commission’s compulsory vaccination.