Christmas 2020 in Germany: The Gift of the BioNTech Vax

The extremely creepy Santa-died-from-Covid “John Snow Project” video has left many both puzzled and outraged. David Bell, for instance, described it in a tweet as “Using Christmas to promote pharmaceutical sales.” 

But what about not just exploiting Santa and Christmas to promote Covid-19 vaccines, but indeed exploiting Christ and Christianity itself? Consider the below cover of the German mass-circulation weekly Stern from December 23rd, 2020. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine had become the first Covid-19 vaccine to be authorized in the European Union two days earlier on December 21st; rollout of the vaccine in Germany would start the day after Christmas.

The main title reads “Vaccination: An Act of Brotherly Love.” It already thus suggested what would become the underlying premise of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign as the latter gradually morphed into a campaign of not just mass vaccination but indeed virtually universal vaccination: namely, that even persons who are at little or no risk from the illness should still get vaccinated to somehow protect others.

Note how the vial in the Stern cover-image is turned so that “BioNTech” is in the centre and clearly legible, whereas the lettering of “Pfizer” is compressed by the perspective and the curve of the vial. The rest of the world might be confused about whose “vaccine” this really is and mistakenly believe that it is Pfizer’s. But in Germany there was never any doubt that it is BioNTech’s product.

In Germany, the vaccine was thus presented as not God’s gift to humankind, but literally as humankind’s gift to God. And this meant Germany’s gift to God, since it was developed by a German company which, perhaps not coincidentally and as discussed in my first article on BioNTech here, had been promoted and kept afloat by the German government ever since the time of its founding in 2008. Indeed, as discussed in my article, BioNTech’s very founding was sponsored by the German government. 

This sacralization of the BioNTech vaccine upon rollout may help to explain why, while all the other Covid vaccines which were rolled out at roughly the same time have either been withdrawn from the market (Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca) or had their use restricted (Moderna), the BioNTech-“Pfizer” vaccine has remained entirely untouched by regulatory action. The sacred vaccine has necessarily to be without fault.

Or even when some fault is admitted by regulators or in scientific journals, the invariable conclusion is that the benefits outweigh the risks. How indeed could it be otherwise? This conclusion appears to be literal, unquestionable dogma. To question it is to be a heretic and to find oneself censored or banned by a new inquisition.

And note that we are still required to draw this conclusion even though it is now widely admitted, even indeed by the German minister of health, that the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine does not provide the benefit which it was authorized to provide: namely, it does not prevent Covid-19. The famous “95% efficacy” which was being touted at the time of the publication of the above Stern cover referred to prevention of Covid-19 and nothing else.

It is impossible to escape the impression that inoculation with the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine has become an end in itself. It is a sacrament which the faithful are expected periodically to perform.

Some have tried to explain the remarkable deference towards this drug as an effect of “regulatory capture,” and some sort of “capture” must indeed be involved in the US, for instance. But in Germany, no capture was needed, since, as touched upon above, the German government has always been the state sponsor of BioNTech and its product. 

Indeed, as discussed here, the German vaccines regulator, the PEI – which is responsible for batch release of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine throughout the European Union – has acted more like a partner of BioNTech, enabling the development and commercialisation of its drug, than an arms-length regulator overseeing it. The outgoing president of the PEI, Klaus Cichutek, who announced his retirement last week, has even published a paper with BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin on developing a Coronavirus vaccine. 

Cichutek, moreover, has boasted that “We are the EMA” – i.e. the German PEI “is” the EU regulator, the European Medicines Agency – “since we’re doing the scientific work there.”

This implies in turn that the German PEI has done the “scientific work” underlying the authorisation of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine not only for the entire EU, but even for a country which has left the EU: namely, Great Britain. This is because the British authorisation is in fact nothing other than a rebranded version of the EMA authorization, as can be seen here (bottom of page) and below.