Just when you thought the vaccine pressure campaign couldn’t get any heavier, it takes another lurch to the macabre. Former FDA Commissioner and Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb made his regular Sunday network news show rounds on Jan. 30 to chirp his delight that the federal government could approve a coronavirus jab for children aged four and younger by early March.
One day earlier, dominant media colossus The New York Times ran an Orwellian article openly promoting the dire need to convince parents to get their kids vaccinated. The wholly partisan piece, posted as straight news, was filled with heavy-handed propaganda jargon such as this:
“The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has just posted a free, online training course to help give pro-vaccine parents language and ways to approach their resistant friends. It provides vaccine facts, resources and techniques to engage them.
“One tip is to share personal stories about Covid, to ground the purpose of the vaccine in real-world experience. Another is to normalize Covid vaccination by proudly telling friends and family when children get Covid shots.”
Gottlieb is a “CNBC contributor” who regularly is called on to discuss the issue of coronavirus vaccines despite the jarring conflict of interest that comes with his Pfizer board position. The Peacock’s news umbrella is apparently quite content sloughing this off by adding a disclaimer on articles referencing his many televised appearances:
“Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing start-up Tempus, health-care tech company Aetion and biotech company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ and Royal Caribbean’s ‘Healthy Sail Panel.’”
(Photo by Nick Wagner/Xinhua via Getty Images)
That’s good to know if Gottlieb is ever asked to talk about cruise ships and COVID – which he has. Amazingly, in April 2021 he was touting cruise ships as a safer travel option in an appearance on CNBC. “I believe you can create a safe bubble around that experience, especially when you’re comparing it to other vacation experiences where you can’t control the environment,” Gottlieb warbled.
This is your big-box corporate media in action, folks.
Pfizer Man as News Commentator: Kids Need Pfizer Jab
Gottlieb also seems to be a go-to interview for CBS’s Face the Nation. On Jan. 30, he was on for a second straight week, this time to explain why it was important that a Pfizer jab for children four and younger was on the way. The pharma executive first discussed the dangers lurking in daycare settings, and how “it’s hard to ask a two- or three-year-old to wear a mask” before stressing that “what the vaccine is going to do is protect [young children] from bad outcomes. And we’ve seen a lot of bad outcomes with kids.” He then went on to add:
“[I]f the goal of the vaccine is to get baseline immunity in the kids to prevent really bad outcomes, and you’re really not using the vaccine as a tool to prevent infection in the first place, two doses could do that. Getting two doses into a child can provide baseline immunity that protects them from severe disease from hospitalization.”
Pfizer board member Gottlieb is telling America’s parents that their toddler can be kept out of the hospital if Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine for kids is approved by the FDA within the next month, as White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has requested.
NYT: Your Child Can Die Without It
The lines weren’t any less blurred at The New York Times. When it wasn’t touting a vaccine social pressure system for parents, the paper assiduously pushed the relatively new narrative that COVID does in fact pose a very grave threat to kids. This goes against almost all widespread reporting on the pandemic in 2020 and throughout most of 2021, which emphasized that the virus does not significantly impact children. Leftist media source Vox wrote as recently as October 2021:
“Compared to other age groups, people under 18 are at much lower risk of serious illness and death from Covid-19. The death rate for Americans under 18 who are infected is about 0.01 percent, compared to 5 percent for 65- to 74-year-olds, 12 percent for 75- to 84-year-olds, and 25 percent for people 85 and older. In total, people 50 and up make up 94 percent of Covid-19 deaths in the US, based on federal data.”
Yet The Times is here to say that this is all wrong. “Parents give numerous reasons for their [vaccine] hesitation. And with their innate protective wariness on behalf of their children, they are susceptible to rampant misinformation,” the paper asserts. “In fact, the vaccines have been shown to strongly protect against severe illness and death,” it goes on to state, echoing Gottlieb, “Recognizing the urgency, proponents of COVID shots are redoubling their efforts to convince parents.” Among the advocates mentioned are the Big Pharma-funded American Academy of Pediatrics, which “has put together talking points for pediatricians and parents,” and an exceedingly zealous school principal in Washington D.C.
Rupali Limaye, an associate scientist at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, refers to folks like the principal as “vaccine ambassadors.”
“Peer ‘vaccine ambassadors,’ as she calls them, have more time and exert less of a power dynamic than harried doctors,” The Times writes. A school principal is not a power dynamic? Brigham Kiplinger, principal of Garrison Elementary School, prides himself on his relentlessness, the paper tells readers.
“He badgers in any way he can: At lunchtime he asks students to raise their hand if they have gotten a Covid shot, applauds them and urges the others to keep prodding their folks,” the article declares. “’I’m a real pain in the a–,’ he admitted. ‘I lovingly harass them.’”
~ Read more from Joe Schaeffer.
