Don't you want to take a ride in Schizo-Simonyan's RT vax van?
You're an idiot if you question the long-term safety of barely-tested COVID vaccines, according to RT's editor-in-chief. Yikes.
By Riley Waggaman, a former RT.com editor
Every day, tens of thousands of disaffected Westerners—betrayed by the Fake News Media!—load up RT.com, the only outlet brave enough to report on America’s coercive vaccine mandates and Pfizer’s phony trial data.
“Finally, a network that understands it is wrong to strip people of their basic human rights if they refuse to take a rushed and completely unproven drug,” these grateful news consumers say to themselves.
Does this describe you? Because if it does, RT’s editor-in-chief thinks you are a complete idiot and wants nothing to do with you and your non-stop child-killing ways.
The message from RT’s big cheese couldn’t be more crystal-clear: If you haven’t been vaccinated yet, Margarita Simonyan “dislikes” you and “doubts your cognitive abilities.”
And now, because you “idiots” didn’t get vaccinated, “massive” amounts (citation needed) of children are dying from COVID!
In fact, according to Simonyan, all of you unvaxxed rodents will soon be “crawling along the corridors of crowded hospitals” as you beg for a ventilator—this will be very “good for you,” to pay the price for your anti-science sins!
While RT’s foreign language outlets pander to (justifiably) jaded westerners, its main Russian-language network is basically CNN multiplied by 100 MSNBCs, raised to the power of NPR. It’s a completely different media world, inhabited by hacks who actively defend and promote the soul-raping “public health” policies being imposed on the Russian people—policies that are overwhelmingly unpopular.
But you’re not supposed to know that. You’re supposed to think that RT is Questioning More.
For example: RT “journalist” Lesya Ryabtseva recently quipped: “there is no place in my life for [unvaccinated] people, although it is difficult to call them people.”
She sounds like Rachel Maddow—but she works for RT. Weird.
Is RT going to keep pretending that it’s irresponsible and evil for Russians to refuse the jab? Because we’re not sure if that’s such an airtight argument—which is probably why the Russian government has decided to stop pretending that the facts are on its side, and instead has resorted to coercion, threats and other forms of gangsterism.
It’s sort of impossible to fast-track long-term safety trials?
“Five months into the pandemic, Russia's first COVID-19 vaccine is in its final development stages, already proven safe,” RT English reported on July 27, 2020. Hyper-expedited Phase I trials, which involved 38 volunteers and lasted for less than two months, had completely obliterated Sputnik V’s cynical naysayers, according to the outlet. (This was actually before Russia’s flagship vaccine had a snazzy brand name.)
Less than five months later, on December 14, RT announced that “following a large scale trial, Russia's pioneering Sputnik V vaccine has proven to be 91.4 percent effective overall against COVID-19.” Despite the misleading wording, Sputnik V’s ludicrous-speed Phase III trials hadn’t yet finished (and still haven’t finished, according to TASS). But this is just a minor foible. The unimpeachable data was harvested using “the best international standards and practices,” RT insisted.
To put this all in context: it usually takes around a decade of trials before regulators will even consider granting approval to a vaccine. In a 2019 document titled “The Complex Journey of a Vaccine,” the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA), a leading pharmaceutical lobby, noted that vaccine development requires a “very large safety database”—a process that requires years of thorough testing and observation. Phase I trials typically take two years, while Phase III studies can sometimes last 10 years. The process of regulatory approval requires up to two years—longer than Covid-19 has even been around to vaccinate against.
Meanwhile, RT declared Sputnik V safe after 38 people got the shot as part of a 2-month “Phase I” trial. “Just following the science.”
“But wait!” we can already hear some of you shout. “Sputnik V is based on a time-tested, proven platform! There’s simply no need to worry about long-term safety, because the Gamaleya Center has a decades-long track record of vaccine excellence!”
Yeah, about that.
Sputnik V is based on a laughably unproven platform
The big Sputnik V meme is that Russia’s Gamaelya Center had a bunch of time-tested vector adenovirus vaccines just lying around that were modified to create an undoubtedly safe and effective COVID serum.
For example, Kirill Dmitriev, the Harvard-educated ex-Goldman Sachs banker who heads the Russian Direct Investment Fund (which provides financing for Sputnik V), claimed in an op-ed published by RT:
Russia has benefitted from modifying for COVID-19 an existing two-vector vaccine platform developed in 2015 for Ebola fever, which went through all phases of clinical trials and was used to help defeat the Ebola epidemic in Africa in 2017.
But Sputnik V’s own website tells a slightly different story:
About 2,000 people in Guinea received injections of Ebola vaccine in 2017-18 as part of Phase 3 clinical trial.
According to the WHO, Guinea was Ebola-free by June 2016—and remained that way until February 2021. So which “Ebola epidemic in 2017” did Gamaleya’s Phase III clinical trial (involving a grand total of 2,000 people) help defeat, exactly? Please RT, we need to know!
Oh, but it gets worse.
In 2016, Russia’s Association of Clinical Research Organizations (AOKI) found major discrepancies in GamEvac-Combi’s paperwork, suggesting Gamaleya’s Ebola juice cut corners in order to receive emergency use authorization from the Russian health ministry.
The Gamaleya Center has yet to seek emergency approval from the WHO to use GamEvac-Combi outside of Russia.
In February 2021, Guinea began an Ebola revaccination program—but obviously, without GamEvac-Combi. Why does Guinea hate science?
Another common myth (peddled by RT and others) is that the Gamaleya Center developed a proven vaccine for Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which is very convenient because MERS shares many similarities with COVID-19.
Except… the Phase I trials for this drug haven’t even finished (in fact, apparently the trial is still “recruiting”). A document published by the international health organization in 2020 doesn’t even list Gamaleya’s magic MERS drug as a candidate vaccine.
The Gamaleya Center admitted last year that “data on duration of vaccine-induced immune response against MERS is scarce.” Gamaleya’s MERS vaccine has been tested on… mice and primates.
“No vaccine or specific treatment is currently available [for MERS], although vaccines and treatments are in development,” according to the WHO.
Curiously, some news reports from the pre-COVID age suggested that MERS vaccines could actually “make people sicker.” We eagerly await the results of Gamaleya’s Phase I MERS vaccine results, to see if this is true or not!
Sputnik V is the Gamaleya Center’s first “viral vector-based” vaccine to receive emergency use authorization outside of Russia. Alexander Gintsburg—who has been the director of Gamaleya for more than twenty years—has yet to bring a fully approved vaccine to market, despite multiple attempts.
In fact, Gintsburg’s first vector adenovirus vaccine, AdeVac-Flu, resulted in a multimillion-dollar embezzlement scandal.
“[Gamaleya’s] scientists have ‘copy-pasted’ [Sputnik V] from their previous, not accepted by the scientific community, research. In their genetic memory—a criminal case, WHO skepticism and zero drugs introduced into the market,” read the teaser of an investigation published by fontanka.ru in July 2020.
Who can argue with a track record like that? Make Sputnik V compulsory, for everyone!
Russia has no system for monitoring adverse events, and is threatening to criminalize criticism of Sputnik V
Yes, yes, okay. Maybe there has been some slight exaggeration regarding Gamaleya’s non-existent vaccine triumphs, but if Sputnik V wasn’t safe, there would be reports about it, and the Russian government would take immediate action!
The Russian government does not have a VAERS-like database for reporting and monitoring suspected adverse reactions, and doctors who question the vaccine’s safety or efficacy are being threatened with exorbitant fines and prison time.
“The fact is that nothing is registered in Russia at all. Therefore, it is very difficult to understand how many serious complications there are. There are many cases, and we can say that they are related to the vaccine. There is a lot to say. Or you can stick your head in the sand and say that there is nothing at all,” Pavel Vorobyov, Chairman of the Moscow Scientific Society of Physicians, said in a recent interview, making him an anti-science hate speech criminal in the eyes of Russia’s benevolent health authorities.
This is probably why last month Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Pyotr Tolstoy conceded that the government had completely failed to convince the public that Sputnik V was safe and effective.
“There are few answers to the questions why those who are vaccinated are ill, why those who are vaccinated die, why there are problems and complications after the vaccinations themselves,” the high-ranking lawmaker said, like a terrorist would.
Enough already
How long can RT keep the charade going? And will RT’s rank-and-file continue to allow the network to regurgitate Kremlin talking points in support of compulsory vaccination and digital “health” IDs?
What is even the point of such policies, when it’s now clear that Sputnik V—like every other vaccine on the market—does not prevent transmission?
As Steve Kirsch—who is a must-follow for those who aren’t familiar with his work—jokingly argued: “COVID vaccine mandates are necessary because the protected need to be protected from the unprotected by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that didn't protect the protected.”
This is not science. This is not healthy. It’s transparent, Loony Tune madness.
Also, why are some people still pretending that Schizo-Simonyan isn’t a total schizo? That’s a very weird thing to do.
Good luck, dudes.
—Riley
Slavsquat is fighting the schizos! “Like” this article and share it widely!
It's been all downhill since Putin put on the hazmat suit.
What is non-RT Russian television & media like? E.g. Channel One or Russia-1. Cray cray too?