Wednesday, FNC host Tucker Carlson opened his program in support of those skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccine, who in some cases have been maligned by politicians, the media, and other aspects of American culture.
Carlson said the vaccine was not without some level of risk, and the discussion of that risk was being shut down.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Here’s a very simple question. How many Americans have died after taking the COVID vaccines? That’s not Americans who have been killed by the virus? That’s a huge number. It is how many Americans have died after getting the vaccines designed to prevent the virus? Do you know the answer to that question? Do you know anything about the downside? We know a lot about the upside of vaccines, we’ve been completely in favor of vulnerable people taking vaccines.
But what about the potential risks? You think you would know more about that than you do? We talk a lot about vaccines constantly, not just on this show, but in this country. Joe Biden was on TV yesterday talking about vaccines. He wants you to get one. Everyone in authority wants you to get one.
In fact, you probably already had your shot and good for you.
If you haven’t had your shot, you’re under enormous pressure to get your shot. You understand that soon, you may not be able to fly on commercial airlines or go to work at the office or send your children to school if you don’t have the shot.
Meanwhile, the social pressure is enormous. Friends may have informed you already that you are not welcome at their parties or their weddings, if you haven’t been vaccinated. So there’s a lot of pressure to comply.
At some point, you probably will comply. It’s just too difficult not to be vaccinated in this country. But before you do comply, ask yourself do you know anything about the potential risks? Probably you don’t know much. We assume the risks are negligible.
Vaccines are not dangerous. That’s not a guess, we know that pretty conclusively from the official numbers. Every flu season, for example, we give influenza shots to more than 116 million Americans. Every year, a relatively small number of people seem to die after getting those shots.
To be precise, in 2019 that number was 203 people. The year before that 2018, it was 119 people. In 2017, it was a total of just 85 people who died after getting the flu shot.
Now, every death is tragic, obviously. But big picture, we do not consider those numbers to be disqualified. And we keep giving flu shots and very few people complain about it.
So the question is, how do those numbers compare to the apparent death rate from the coronavirus vaccines now being distributed across the country? That’s worth knowing.
So we checked today and here’s the answer and these numbers come from the same set of government numbers that we just read to you from. Here they are.
Between late December of 2020 and last month, a total of 3,362 people apparently died after getting the COVID vaccine in the United States, 3,362. That’s an average of roughly 30 people every day. So what does that add up to?
By the way, that reporting period ended on April 23 and we don’t have numbers past that. Not quite up to date.
But we can assume that another 360 people at that rate have died in the 12 days since. You put it all together and that is a total of 3,722 deaths. That’s almost 4,000 people who died after getting the COVID vaccines. The actual number is almost certainly higher than that, perhaps vastly higher than that.
The data we just cited come from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, VAERS.
VAERS is managed by the CDC and the FDA VAERS has received a lot of criticism over the years, some of it founded. Some critics have argued for a long time that VAERS undercounts vaccine injuries.
Report submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services in 2010 concluded that, quote, “Fewer than one percent of vaccine adverse events are reported by the VAER System.” Fewer than one percent.
So what is the real number of people who apparently have been killed or injured by the vaccines? Well, we don’t know that number. Nobody does and we are not going to speculate about it on this show.
But it’s clear that what is happening now, for whatever reason, is not even close to normal. It is not even close to what we see in previous years with previous vaccines. Most vaccines are not accused of killing large numbers of people. The MENVEO vaccine, for example, is given to people around the world, often children, to prevent bacterial meningitis.
In this country, only one person died from that vaccine in the entire period between 2010 and 2015 — one.
So compare that to what is happening now with the coronavirus rollout. In just the first four months of this year, the U.S. government has recorded more deaths after COVID vaccinations than from all other vaccines administered in the United States between mid-1997 and the end of 2013. That is a period of 15 and a half years.
Again, more people, according to VAERS have died after getting the shot in four months during a single vaccination campaign than from all other vaccines combined over more than a decade and a half. Chart that out. It’s a stunning picture.
Now the debate is over what it means. Again, there’s a lot of criticism of the reporting system. Some people say, well, it’s just a coincidence that someone gets a shot and then dies, possibly from other causes. No one really knows is the truth.
We spoke to one physician today who actively treats COVID patients, he described what we’re seeing now as the single deadliest mass vaccination event in modern history. Whatever is causing it, it is happening as we speak. So you’d think that someone in authority might want to know what it is, what’s going on.
If the vaccine injury reporting system is flawed, and clearly it is flawed, why hasn’t it been fixed? And more to the point? Why has there not been an independent vaccine safety board impaneled to assess what is happening, and reassure people who stumble across official government numbers on the internet.
But amazingly, none of that has been done. No one even mentions the numbers. And in fact, you’re not allowed to, you’ll be pulled off the internet if you do.
The people in charge do not acknowledge them. Instead, they warn us about what might happen if we don’t take the vaccine. Here’s Joe Biden.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I know there’s a lot of misinformation out there, but there’s one fact I want every American to know. People who are not fully vaccinated can still die every day from COVID-19.
This is your choice. It is life and death.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: “People who are not fully vaccinated can still die every day from COVID-19,” Joe Biden said, and as a factual matter, that is true, but it is also misleading. Not all Americans are at similar risk of dying from COVID- 19. Some are at relatively high risk, the old in the sick, they might want to get vaccinated, most do. Some are very low risk of dying, the young and the healthy.
Others appear to be essentially no risk at all. That would include anyone who’s had COVID and recovered. Virtually all of those people seem to be immune and that’s true for many viruses.
So those second two categories, the young and the healthy and the previously infected may add up if you combine them to hundreds of millions of people in this country. The funny thing is, the White House, the official policymakers who are designing the vaccine rollout, do not acknowledge that those categories even exist.
Health authorities are pretending that everyone’s health and risk potential is exactly the same as everyone else’s, and that’s why Joe Biden has demanded that 70 percent of all American adults regardless of age, regardless of health condition, regardless critically of pre-existing antibodies from previous infections, get the COVID shot by the Fourth of July, two months from now, or else.
Now this might be an acceptable policy. It would ever be an ethical policy, but as a practical matter, it might be acceptable to the country if COVID vaccines we could show conclusively came with no risk and if we truly understood the long term effects of those vaccines, but neither one of those things is true.
We know that according to the government reporting system, thousands of people have died after getting the shot. That is true in this country, where it is hotly debated, when it is talked about at all, but it is also true in European countries whose record-keeping on this question is if anything more reliable than ours.
Many thousands of other people appear to have been injured after getting the vaccination. VAERS records nearly 900 nonfatal heart attacks in people who just received the shot, 2,700 people reported unexplained chest pains.
In all, the vaccine, according to the government reporting system appears to have contributed to at least 8,000 hospitalizations. Some of the side effects defy easy explanation.
Researcher Alex Berenson has noted that coronavirus vaccines now account for almost one-third of all tinnitus reports in the various database, tinnitus, the ringing in your ears.
The American Tinnitus Association says it has received many questions on that link. It is still not known if there is a link, but there is concern about it.
Meanwhile, researchers at Oxford and UCLA began tracking coronavirus vaccine side effects across eight separate countries. What have they found, among other things, quote, “Women aged 18 to 34 years old had a higher rate of deep vein thrombosis than men of the same age.” They also found that heart attacks were quote, “common in people 85 years and older who had taken the vaccine.”
They found some serious potential side effects in some children, quote, “anaphylaxis and appendicitis were more common in young people.”
Now vaccines are complicated medicines and as with any drug, it can take a long time to get it precisely right, the dosage for example, and this is not the first time that people have been hurt during a vaccination campaign. That is bound to happen. What’s different this time and so striking is the reaction to these numbers.
Here’s a contrast for you. In 1976, the U.S. government vaccinated 45 million people for the swine flu, a total of 53 people reportedly died after getting that shot and the U.S. government immediately halted the vaccination program. Why? Because the authorities decided it was too risky, it wasn’t worth it.
Contrast that with what’s happening now. This time, our health authorities have reserved their energy for anyone who dares to question vaccines. Lifesite News, it’s a nonprofit news organization just found itself permanently banned from Facebook. Why? Because it reported government numbers from the various database, something that we just did on the air.
Famously, when podcaster Joe Rogan asked whether healthy young people ought to be getting the COVID vaccine, the media treated him like a war criminal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: We know the anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories have been proliferating online, but it doesn’t help, but when people with major platforms feed that beast, like Spotify’s $100 Million Man, Joe Rogan.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dr. Fauci before I let you go, I do want you to weigh in on Joe Rogan. How frustrating is it for you for this misinformation to continue to spread about COVID-19 especially when there are folks still out there saying it’s a hoax?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It’s disappointing. Joe Rogan is a hugely influential person with a massive audience. It’s mystifying why he would give people such bad information that puts them in harm’s way.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Joe Rogan, who is one of the world’s highest-paid and most popular podcast host is giving air to anti-vaccine narratives/
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Anti-vaccine narratives. He did nothing of the sort. Almost everything you just heard was a lie that obscured a very simple and potentially relevant question that he asked which is, should healthy young people receive the vaccine? We’re not precisely sure what the risks are, it is a lie to say there are no risks. There are risks in everything, including in getting a vaccine.
So why not rationally weigh the risk-reward ratio? As we do with every decision that we make — for that he was denounced as an anti-vaxxer kook, a danger to public safety. Yahoo News published a piece entitled, “Joe Rogan, who’s not a doctor, (in contrast to the Yahoo News reporters) gives terrible vaccine advice.”
Keep in mind, this is the same Yahoo News that published this piece, quote, “Five things Bill Gates wants you to know about COVID-19 variants.”
One of the very few elected officials in the country who has said a word about any of this, who has asked the obvious questions, not attacking vaccines, wondering about their effects, which is a legitimate thing to do is Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Last week, Johnson asked Francis Collins, the director of N.I.H., why so many Americans, according to the government’s own numbers appear to be dying after getting the shot.
Maybe there’s a good answer for that, Collins wouldn’t even acknowledge that was happening. Instead, Collins fretted that if the population focuses too much on the potential harm from vaccines, people might be hesitant to get them.
“I challenged his use of the term ‘vaccine hesitancy,'” Ron Johnson told us in a conversation today. “I told him that based on the various deaths and my conversations with people who have chosen not to get vaccinated, a better description would be people who are hesitant to be coerced into participating in the largest drug trial in history,” end quote.
Why is that an unfair description exactly? There’s a reason that many states have more vaccine doses than they can use. Some people just don’t want the vaccine and that is their right. Period. And not all of them are crazy.
Health decisions used to be considered personal choices. We didn’t ask about them. They were considered personal as recently by the way as last fall. It was in September of 2020, at the height of the presidential campaign that a CNN reporter asked Kamala Harris, whether she would be willing to take the coronavirus vaccine once it became available. Her response quote, “Well, I think that’s going to be an issue for all of us.” Harris responded, “I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump.”
A month later at the vice presidential debate, Harris was if anything more emphatic on the subject, quote, “If Donald Trump tells us we should take the vaccine,” she declared, “I’m not going to take it.”
Kamala Harris has, of course since changed your mind. She is no longer skeptical of the vaccine nor does she tolerate the skepticism of others. Instead, she is an enthusiastic participant in COVID Theater, and that’s really the only name for it.
Just today, Kamala Harris and her husband made a point of kissing each other in front of photographers while wearing masks. They did that despite the fact that they are married, that they live together that they were standing outside at the time and despite the fact that both have been vaccinated.
Now a number of crude jokes come to mind, but for once we’re going to pass on that. What exactly are we watching here? We’re watching the crudest kind of propaganda designed by the cynical for the benefit of a population they consider stupid and weak and malleable.
And such as Kamala Harris, everyone is in on it, even the corporate comedians. Watch this buffoon do what we assume is an unpaid ad for Moderna.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, but you read something On Facebook.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your friend from high school who sells jewelry, she posted it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The one who is 53 and still builds doll houses?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You heard what? On whose podcast?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is he a doctor? No. Scientist? No.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can he name one of the ingredients in the vaccine?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can he point to his glabella?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Then tell him to shut the [bleep] up. The glabella is right here, by the way.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get the vaccine.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get the vaccine.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just get the vaccine.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Roll the [bleep] up and get the vaccine.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And tell your friend on Facebook just stick to jewelry.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It doesn’t make you laugh, it makes you nervous. Why are they talking to you that way? Why are they giving you the finger on TV?
No matter how many fingers they give you, it doesn’t change what remains true for the country. If American citizens are going to be forced to take this vaccine or any other medicine, they have an absolute right to know what it is and what its effects might be and they have an absolute right to ask that question without being silenced or censored or mocked or given the finger.
And no amount of happy talk or coercion or appeals to false patriotism can change that. Period.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor