OPINION:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called on the White House to demand tens of billions of dollars more — that’s billions with a “b” — for COVID-19 mitigation efforts. More than $40 billion, in fact.
For what? Enough with the taxpayer-funded COVID-19 aid.
As much as the Democrats try to insist otherwise, fact is, coronavirus is so yesterday.
According to the latest figures, the United States has seen a total of 79.6 million cases of coronavirus, give or take, resulting in 969,000 deaths. Do the math is what that means is 1.2% of U.S. coronavirus cases have been fatal. Do the subtraction and that means 98.8% of those in the United States who’ve tested positive for the coronavirus go on to fully recover from the coronavirus.
And guess what: that case count versus recovery rate has hovered around those numbers for quite some time now.
It’s high time for Americans to realize that when Anthony Fauci says coronavirus, citizens should say yawn. The obese, those with diabetes, the elderly, those with a handful of existing medical conditions — but mostly, the obese and elderly — may want to take extra precautions to protect themselves from the virus because these are the population groups most adversely affected by COVID-19. But once again, we’ve known that for some time. Big Pharma, bent on delivering booster after booster after booster into the arms of not just Americans, but men, women and children around the world, doesn’t want that talked up and broadcast. And neither do Big Pharma’s partners in politics and medical bureaucracies.
Pfizer made more than $11 billion in the first half of 2021 from its vaccine. Johnson & Johnson earned about $766 million from its own version of the shot during the first nine months of 2021, even as the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued warnings about blood clots from J&J’s vaccine and recommended pausing production. BioNTech was reporting earnings of $15 billion in COVID-19 vaccine sales by mid-2021, sparking company CEO Ugur Sahin to confidently proclaim his quest to become a “global immunotherapy powerhouse.” And Moderna raked in such high multi-billion dollar amounts from its shot in 2021, the estimates for its profits from the same for 2022 were increased from $20 billion to $38.7 billion.
In November, 2021, the news arm of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna were making combined profits from their various COVID-19 shots of $65,000 — every minute. That’s $1,083 every second.
And boy, does the money flow into governments’ hands, as well.
After receiving $8 billion of public funding to assist with the development of COVID-19 vaccines, “Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have used their monopolies to prioritize the most profitable contracts with the richest governments,” the OCHA’s Relief Web cited Maaza Seyoum of the African Alliance and People Vaccine Alliance Africa as saying.
Then there was this, from Doctors Without Borders, from a November 4, 2021, press release, right after Moderna announced a year-to-date vaccine sales figure of $11.3 billion: “The US government has provided Moderna with nearly $10 billion in taxpayer money for both research and development and for the purchase of 500 million doses of this mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. This includes almost the entire cost of clinical development.”
Ain’t taxpayer pockets grand?
From taxpayer to Big Pharma to select governments and chosen bureaucrats — no wonder the boosters keep on coming.
President Joe Biden requested $22.5 billion in new funding to fight the coronavirus — the coronavirus with a near-99% recovery rate.
Congressional Republicans cut that request to $15.6 billion — still an astonishingly significant amount to fight a coronavirus with a near-99% recovery rate.
Now comes Pelosi with a breathtakingly ridiculous request to double what Biden wanted.
“I think they should be double what they asked for because even when they were asking for like 20-some [billion] is was only going to get us to June,” Pelosi said, The Hill reported.
Sure. Why not? At a certain point, the numbers become meaningless. Fifteen billion dollars, $20 billion, $40 billion — it’s all tax-paid, all coming from others’ pockets, all just redistributing dollars from some to give to others.
As if on cue, too, Fauci burst back into the public spotlight with his usual obfuscations about the potentially hazardous outcomes of not taking the potentially best medical protections by potentially implementing the same potentially regulatory actions that didn’t work before but that potentially could now. Or something to that effect.
“We have to be careful that if we do see a surge [of coronavirus and variant cases] as a result of that, that we’re flexible enough to re-institute the kinds of interventions that could be necessary to stop an additional surge,” Fauci said, during an interview with ABC 10 News in San Diego.
With science like that, who can argue?
Here’s a thought: taxpayers.
America’s taxpayers must take back the reins of control on government spending, on COVID-19 spending in particular, and demand elected leaders quit the insanity. The emergency is ended — despite the fact the Biden administration just issued another order extending the COVID-19 emergency. The recovery rates show natural immunity has won — despite the fact many in medicine and politics and the pharmaceutical industries have tamped down talk for months about natural immunity, all the while insisting on mass vaccination and even more mass boosters.
It’s truly time to return to pre-pandemic normalcy.
It’s truly time to stop the COVID-19 bilking of hard-working, tax-paying American citizens.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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