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Of vaccine geopolitics and guinea pigs

22 Sep 2021

  • Covid-19 as an ‘Over the Horizon’ war in strategic Sri Lanka?
BY Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake “Despite all the rhetoric about ending ‘forever wars’, the President was, in effect, calling for the initiation of a new conflict, the Over the Horizon (OTH) War of 2021. If we want success, we need to accept that this new war will almost certainly be difficult and costly in both blood and treasure. It also will be a long conflict, if not a ‘forever’ war.” – The dawn of America’s latest (“forever”?) conflict: The Over the Horizon War of 2021, Charles J. Dunlap, Junior  Strategically located at the centre of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), Sri Lanka appears to be flooded with Covid-19 vaccines at this time.  Many vaccine-producing countries are keen to gain a larger geopolitical foothold and influence in the island nation, now, through vaccine diplomacy due to its geostrategic location on one of the busiest trade, energy, and most important at this time, submarine or Undersea Data Cable (UDC) routes that are vital for global data, economic security, and cyber security. Just this week, China promised to donate another million Sinovac Covid-19 vaccines. The IOR has emerged as the epicentre of a new Cold War and amphibious Over the Horizon (OTH) hybrid war operation as the US withdraws from Afghanistan and redeploys against China in the so-called “free and open Indo-Pacific”. Indeed, just this week, Australia, the UK, and the US set up a new outfit called the AUKUS to produce stealth nuclear submarines, escalating an environmentally damaging arms race in the IOR. Remarkably, since the American occupation of Afghanistan ended on 31 August, Covid-19 has disappeared from that country, but gathered force and extended lockdowns in strategically located Sri Lanka at this time. While the President of this strategically located island who was until relatively recently a US citizen is away in the US and at the UN General Assembly in New York, its hapless natives will be in Covid-19 lockdown or lock up for two more weeks until 1 October. Big pharma guinea pigs winning the WHO’s global vaccine race? At this time of escalating militarisation of the IOR, geo-strategically located Sri Lanka, which is being kept in extended lockdowns is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world and certainly in the global south with more than 50% of its population double vaccinated through a highly militarised vaccination campaign (Sri Lanka has administered at least 24,349,601 doses of Covid-19 vaccines so far. Assuming that every person needs two doses, that is enough to have vaccinated about 55.8% of the country’s population). In comparison, Vietnam has a mere 4% vaccination rate at this time, and the entire continent of Africa has a less than 3% vaccination rate, while the US where Covid-19 hit hard has a double vaccine rate of 54%. Sri Lanka, in the crosshairs of the great power rivalry in the IOR is certainly winning the Covid-19 vaccine race in the global south, sponsored and funded by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and big pharmaceutical corporates that are earning big profits from vaccine sales, as economies crash due to Covid-19 lockdowns. Currently, the US-Germany-manufactured Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are competing with China’s Sinopharm and Sinovac. Russia’s Sputnik V and India’s Oxford-AstraZeneca are by now a distant third in the island. China and the US have been competing for geostrategic influence in the IOR using vaccine diplomacy while the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been conducting OTH Covid-19 scenario planning for selected strategic countries. As Sri Lankan medical authorities and the “medical mafia” for whom Covid-19 is big business, readies a new wave of vaccines for children with Pfizer messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines in a bid to win the WHO’s global vaccine race gold medal, a dangerous breach has occurred.  The National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) database, run by a private company named Epic Lanka, has suffered a data breach or cyber attack, and lost an estimated two terabytes – or 2,000 gigabytes – of classified information from the Lanka Government Cloud (LGC). The NMRA is the body that regulates the issuance of licences to pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and pharmacies in the country.  The files contained information pertaining to the formulation of drugs, vaccines, and other confidential supporting documents, so that monitoring emergency-use vaccines may now be impossible? Previously vaccine politics had plagued the NMRA which delayed the getting down of some brands of vaccines and authorising their use. Vaccinating children: Covid-19 as big business The highly indebted Government of this strategically located Indian Ocean island, whose currency is in free fall thanks to WHO expert committees-recommended Covid-19 lockdowns, has spent Rs. 700 billion on its Covid-19 response according to then Finance State Minister Ajith Nivard Cabraal at this time (August 2021).  Covid-19 testing, medical equipment and technology, digitalisation, big data, and surveillance is big business, globally and locally for vaccine, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical companies, and cyber-security corporations and their local business agents and media partners of the Colombo regime; from polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and rapid antigen tests (RATs), to testing machines, to labs, to ventilators, to oximeters, fleets of new ambulances, imported oxygen, personal protection equipment (PPE), and quarantine hotels, etc., not to mention the billions for emergency-use vaccines, despite a lack of data to show any significant emergency in the island. So too are special refrigeration storage facilities and trucks at the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation (SPC) for the highly marketed, Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines that the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) rushed to secure for children. Unable to leverage the country’s geostrategic location and rich mineral and Rare Earth Elements (REE) deposits which are being exported as “sand” (including graphite, that is turned into graphene used in mRNA vaccines), for economic growth, the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL), turning inwards, is now rushing to vaccinate children with the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine, which use brand new gene therapy and technology platforms that have not been adequately trialled and tested anywhere in the world, or among South Asian populations, particularly children.  Most trials have been conducted on animals with deleterious results. Sri Lanka’s giant neighbour India has not authorised or enabled the use of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines, also because of Pfizer’s demand for indemnity in the event of vaccine injury, even though the short, medium, and long-term impacts of these emergency-use vaccines are unknown. Questions now arise as to whether Sri Lankan children are being rendered “guinea pigs” for big pharmaceutical companies and their vaccines authorised for emergency use only, which were developed at “warp speed” in less than a year, and are untested in Asian countries. After all, it takes between seven to 12 years to adequately trial and test new vaccines, and the current vaccines were developed in less than a year, with phase two out of three trials ongoing!  Moreover, the annual mortality rate data now available from the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS), shows that there was no health emergency in the island last year (2020), the year of the so-called Covid-19 pandemic. Hence, the question arises as to why rush to vaccinate children who are a very low risk group for Covid-19 with vaccines authorised for emergency use when there seems to be no emergency in the country, aside from media hype and fear-mongering? At this time, British and Israeli researchers have noted a marked reduction in efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against the so-called Covid-19 Delta variant (B.1.617.2 strain of Indian origin) with some suggesting the need for a booster! So why vaccinate kids who are a very low risk group for Covid-19 with Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, for which boosters are already necessary? Will children become vaccine addicts?  Moreover, children in Sri Lanka, unlike kids in the US and the EU, already receive the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccines which provide broad spectrum protection against respiratory tract infections, both viral and bacterial, including Covid-19, vitiating the need for Covid-19 vaccines. If at all, there is a need to trial how Covid-19 vaccinations may interact or add any value to BCG-vaccinated children in the global south. Annual mortality data for 2020 now available from the DCS of the GoSL and comparative data on influenza and pneumonia cases in the past decade, indicate that there was no Covid-19 emergency in the country last year. On the contrary, there was a 10% reduction in the mortality rates last year (2020), compared to the previous year (2019). Yet, the country was kept in socially and economically devastating lockdowns for months and further debt trapped and asset stripped, also while US war games unfolded off the coasts of the island, causing mass beaching and deaths of pilot whales and dolphins Pfizer-BioNTech in the dock and no vaccine adverse reaction reporting Despite the rush to vaccinate citizens and increasingly children, a most vulnerable group, while the country is kept in WHO-sponsored lockdowns, the Sri Lankan Health Ministry (MOH), and various medical organisations and trade unions, such as the Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA) and the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA), do not maintain a vaccines adverse reactions reporting system or mechanism. That is, they have not performed due diligence with regard to the vaccination rollout in this strategic island. Covid-19 and post-vaccine-related deaths of high-profile individuals such as Rajamahendran of the News First media company and former Finance and Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera after double vaccination have been raising concerns in some quarters, particularly given Pfizer’s checkered history in the country. Various cases and deaths of post-vaccine myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the pericardium) have been reported anecdotally. Questions arise in the context of Pfizer’s checkered history in Sri Lanka with regard to Dr. Senaka Bibile’s “Pharmaceutical Policy” for patent-free, affordable drugs and vaccines was sabotaged by American interventions in the early 1970s.  More recently, Pfizer was fined by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), in 2009 for concealing the contents of drugs (and arguably now vaccines) in the US Opioid crisis investigations. Pfizer was fined by the DOJ for various marketing infractions for a range of drugs, leading to a then record $ 2.3 billion criminal penalty as part of its overall settlement. Pain drugs bextra and celebrex proved to be particularly costly for Pfizer, with the drug maker as recently as 2016 agreeing to shell out $ 486 million to settle a long-running shareholder suit alleging that Pfizer withheld information on the drugs’ cardiovascular risks. Sounds familiar; incidents of myocarditis and pericarditis due to Covid-19 vaccines?  Yet, Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, which the WHO rushed to authorise for emergency use in December 2020, granting the company brand recognition and first mover advantage, are marketed as the most desirable vaccine of them all – suitable for children who do not have the right to informed consent. In reality, neither are adults who have not been told about the short or long-term risks of inadequately trialled vaccines amidst a concerted global and local media campaign to promote indiscriminate mass vaccination. Not surprisingly, Pfizer announced $ 46 billion profits for the first three months of this year (2021) alone! In some quarters, however, there are growing concerns, particularly among parents, as to whether Sri Lankan children would be effectively guinea pigs for big pharmaceutical companies, particularly Pfizer, and its inadequately trialled and tested vaccines developed at “warp speed” which the WHO rushed to authorise for emergency use. Also a scenario of “vaccine addiction” is being propagated with talk of booster shots! After all, it takes between seven to 12 years to adequately trial and test new vaccines and there was no health emergency in the island in 2020 as annual mortality rate data now available from the DCS shows.  The US CDC withdraws PCR tests but Sri Lanka ramps up testing At this time, the strategically located island appears to be in a lockdown while a Covid-19 emergency is again being staged, based on highly questionable PCR test numbers and WHO epidemiology models. The PCR test has been discontinued by the US (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) CDC due to high false positive rates, inaccuracies, and the inability to distinguish Covid-19 from influenza. Once called the “gold standard’ for Covid-19 diagnosis, CDC has discontinued emergency-use authorisation of PCR tests because of high rates of false positives, and the conflation of seasonal influenza and Covid-19 cases, resulting in the inflation of case numbers and deaths by orders of magnitude. However, Sri Lanka has been ramping up PCR testing. What Sri Lanka has right now is a PCR test emergency, as flu and co-morbidities-related deaths might possibly be logged as Covid-19 deaths using false positive PCR tests, while the WHO and SLMA deny that ivermectin (medication used to treat parasitic infections) works for Covid-19 care, even though the Bar Association of India is suing the WHO Chief Scientist for making a similar claim.  The Colombo regime, apparently mired in corruption, has been unable to leverage the county’s valuable geostrategic location at the centre of the Indian Ocean Global UDC routes that keep the deeply inequitable global financial system and economy ticking and the island’s REEs and marine assets. Rather, the Government has focused inward and conducted a highly militarised vaccine operation with the support and applause of the WHO, another UN agency funded by big pharmaceutical companies that are producing Covid-19 vaccines, which also fund various national medical associations and organisations like the GMOA and the SLMA in the island that have been promoting indiscriminate lockdowns and mass vaccination. The Colombo regime which is in the dock for alleged war crimes in 2009, by the US, at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), appears to be hoping to score brownie points, winning the global vaccine race promoted by the WHO and big pharmaceutical companies marketing vaccines in Sri Lanka.  However, a scenario of law-fare, a process whereby the legal process and the law itself is used and manipulated to distort and debilitate truth and justice, appears to be unfolding in Geneva, Switzerland, at the UNHRC, where justice is second only to realpolitik.  Through the “novel” SARS-COV-2 virus (invented in labs through gain of function research corporation agreements between America’s bio-terrorism fortress at Fort Detrick and China’s Wuhan virology labs) narrative and the UNHRC show in Geneva, the US appears to be leveraging the Sri Lankan military and Rajapaksa regime at this time of OTH warfare. However, mortality and morbidity and comparative data on influenza and pneumonia from tropical Asian and African countries increasingly show that Covid-19 is like Asian seasonal influenza, or milder in these regions of the world.  Rather, it is the big pharmaceutical companies-funded WHO, and the local GMOA and SLMC-advocated policies of lockdowns, face masking, social distancing, and militarised mass vaccination that have debilitated and eroded societal, economic and institutional structures through the promotion of a fear psychosis and constant instability, enabling external actors and networks to control populations, and indeed re-colonise countries in the global south during the Covid-19 pandemic.  With the population in masks and lockdowns, and policy processes crippled, external networks and public private partnerships have gained access to policy-making institutions, and control of valuable mineral resources and coastal lands amid a pandemic of corruption. The strategically located, resource-rich Indian Ocean island nation is being systematically asset stripped in the wake of a deadly Covid-19 policy that has induced economic ruin, and the hunger virus stalks the country at this time. It is increasingly clear that Covid-19 fear, propaganda, and media hype by doctors’ organisations, instigated and funded by WHO, big pharma, and their local business partners has done to Sri Lanka what three decades of globally networked and often externally funded armed conflict and a CIA and Saudi-owned and funded so called IS attack in 2019 could not do. Covid-19 propaganda has caused a debilitating fear psychosis, confusing, paralysing, and debilitating the island’s society, social trust, and institutions, as people have been encouraged to disengage from social life and activism and retreat into “Covid-19 bubbles” of fear and ignorance in a frontal attack on the society, the economy and fundamental freedoms to move and communicate freely. (The writer is a social and medical anthropologist)


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