OPINION
Peter Allan Williams
peterallanwilliams.substack.com
Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.realitycheck.radio three days a week
John Appleton, the Lypospheric Vitamin C man (“Lypo with a Y is the one to buy!”) made an extensive submission to the New Zealand Royal Commission Covid 19 Lessons Learned.
With his permission, his entire submission is reproduced here. He writes under the headings provided by the Royal Commission.
1. Looking back – what would you like the Inquiry to know about your experiences of the pandemic?
How could I ever forget what happened to me, my family, friends and fellow Kiwis during the three years that we lived with the draconian measures put in place supposedly to control a novel virus. These measures were unprecedented and they brought unnecessary misery and grief to many thousands of New Zealanders. I recall the people who died alone in hospitals, the families who were prevented from being with their loved ones, those who lost their jobs, their businesses and those who were prevented from returning to their country. I recall unprecedented levels of censorship and the massive debt that was incurred, a burden that will have an impact on New Zealanders for generations.
From the outset as I saw it, we were subjected to an internationally orchestrated narrative of lies, deception, misinformation and disinformation. A narrative that was in word perfect ‘lockstep’ with many other Western nations. It was a massive red flag for me; something was very wrong. We were bombarded with a 24/7 propaganda campaign on TV, the radio and the print media and this was intended to create widespread fear. Populations are easier to control when they are fearful. The lockdowns, the mask wearing, social distancing and television messaging were tools used to ensure that people remained fearful. ‘Stay local, do not congregate, do not talk to your neighbours’ is just one example of how Jacinda Ardern used television messaging to keep us fearful.
When a Prime Minister on nationwide television states that ‘we drum in the messaging around the dangers of Covid pretty diligently for a full two week period of sustained propaganda’ this should have rung alarm bells as it should have when Jacinda Ardern stated that ‘we will continue to be your single source of truth’.
We were told early on that ‘the only way out of the pandemic would be a vaccine’ and it was clear to me that we were being softened up to accept a mass vaccination programme. The question I asked myself many times was ‘why can it only be a vaccine’? Why didn’t we investigate all options for dealing with the crisis?
The answer to this question is simple. In order to gain Emergency Use Authorisation for a vaccine, there had to be no other approved treatment option.
This is the reason why early treatment with ‘repurposed’ drugs (Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin) was discredited and their use prohibited. Ivermectin, whose developers won a Nobel price for medicine in 2015, was described as ‘horse paste’. This was a disgrace.
Natural immunity, which is how humans have protected themselves from disease for thousands of years, was totally ignored. Three simple nutrients, Vitamins C and D and Zinc could have supported natural immunity in our entire population. They were ignored and discredited by the ‘experts’.
For me one of the most concerning aspects of the Covid response was the use of PCR testing which was intended to show the numbers of New Zealanders who had been infected with Covid-19. PCR testing resulted in ‘case’ numbers which were reported daily by both Jacinda Ardern and Dr Ashely Bloomfield. The higher the case numbers the more fear was created and more restrictions were placed on us.
Illness has always been diagnosed by symptoms so why was there a need to bypass this time honoured way of diagnosing disease?
Kary Mullis who invented the PCR test says in this brief video clip that ‘if you increase the cycles of the test it’s possible to find anything in anyone. It doesn’t tell you that you are sick’.
I understand that in New Zealand our PCR testing was done at 45 cycles.
Dr Anthony Fauci says in this video clip ‘If you set a cycle threshold of 35 or more, the chances of it being replication competent are miniscule. You can almost never culture a virus from a 37 cycle test. If someone comes in with a test at 37 cycles 38 or even 36 you have gotta say it’s dead nucleotide period’.
SC VD 185N TRD H1N I1A M1A 16×9 (youtube.com)
Did we ever know how many people who were tested as positive were actually ill?
This OIA request response states – No documents have been identified that discuss or identify risks associated with completing a certain number of cycles. As such, I am unable to provide any information in response to this part of your request under section 18(g) of the Act. It also states – No documents have been identified that discuss the prevalence or risk of false positive PCR test results in New Zealand. As such, this part of your request is refused under section 18(g) of the Act, as the information is not held by the Ministry. h202008534_11_jan_2021_covid_pcr_testing_cycles_0.pdf (health.govt.nz)
When the vaccine arrived (Pfizer) we were told that it was safe and effective. These two words became a mantra around the world and when our political leaders and MOH officials claimed that the Pfizer vaccine was 95% effective, the message that New Zealanders took on board was that there would be a 95% chance of avoiding Covid if they were vaccinated. This was not true.
The 95% effective came from the Pfizer clinical trial where they present just one metric of their results. Pharmaceutical companies almost always promote their products using the metric Relative Risk Reduction as this can make their products look very good in the eyes of the regulators, the doctors and the public.
Our politicians and the MOH should however have considered the other two key metrics Absolute Risk Reduction and Number Needed to Vaccinate, prior to arriving at any decision to purchase and promote the Pfizer product.
Relative Risk Reduction data gives a percentage reduction in one group compared to another. This can be misleading and over-exaggerate how helpful something is.
Absolute Risk Reduction conveys the likely benefit or otherwise that an individual can anticipate from a treatment or medical intervention.
Number Needed to Vaccinate shows how many people will need to be treated in order to prevent one infection.
For the Pfizer vaccine, a paper published in the Lancet Medical Journal COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and effectiveness—the elephant (not) in the room – The Lancet Microbe reports on the metrics that we should have been made aware of.
The Relative Risk Reduction of 95% should be seen alongside the Absolute Risk Reduction of 0.84%
This means that for an individual the vaccine has an efficacy of less than 1%.
The Absolute Risk Reduction data is use to derive an estimate of vaccine effectiveness which is the Number Needed to Vaccinate. For the Pfizer vaccine (as per their trial data) the Number Needed to Vaccinate to prevent one case of Covid-19 is 119.
This means that 119 people need to be vaccinated in order to prevent one case of Covid-19.
Dr Nortin M. Hadler, professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill says “Anything over an NNV of 50 is worse than a lottery ticket; there may be no winners,” From what I have seen by investigating clinical trials of some drugs there are many lotteries out there. I suspect that an appropriate diet and plenty of exercise would record very low NNV figures – a lot cheaper too.
If this information had been conveyed to the public, how many New Zealanders would have agreed to take the vaccine and how could the government then agree to spend billions of dollars on purchasing the Pfizer product?
How many times were we told to ‘get vaccinated’ to protect ‘Granny’? This messaging alone was sufficient to encourage many thousands of Kiwis (many of them very young) to take the vaccine.
We learned that Pfizer’s pre-market trials never tested for reduction in transmission so how could our government be so confident that it did?
Over time the vaccine efficacy narrative morphed from you won’t catch Covid to, you can catch Covid but you will not have serious illness to you will not require hospitalization and you won’t die.
We should have been told from the outset that the Pfizer Covid Vaccine would not offer sterilizing immunity. Sterilizing immunity protects the individual and prevents transmission to new hosts, thereby contributing to protection at a population level.
We were never told that the Pfizer MRNA vaccine was a type of gene therapy. Stefan Oelrich, a board member of Bayer said at a World Health Summit, that the MRNA vaccines are an example of a cell or gene therapy. He said ‘if we had surveyed the public two years ago and asked if they would take a cell or gene therapy and have it injected into their body, we would have had a 95% refusal rate. Why weren’t we asked that question?
Safety and efficacy are always considered together when medical interventions are evaluated. One cannot assess one without the other. When it comes to safety, our so called ‘experts’ should have been well aware that with the Covid-19 infection it was the ‘spike’ protein that is directly related to the pathophysiology that underlies the Covid-19 viral illness. It is the most pernicious constituent of the Covid-19 causing SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Why, when it was known that the ‘spike’ protein is a potential pathogen, would our regulators who are responsible for our safety approve a vaccine that when injected would ‘instruct’ our cells to become ‘spike’ protein manufacturing factories that have no known off switch. ‘Spikeopathy’: COVID-19 Spike Protein Is Pathogenic, from Both Virus and Vaccine mRNA – PMC (nih.gov)
We were told that the Pfizer vaccine would stay in the deltoid muscle and be eliminated within a couple of days. This was a lie. We subsequently learned that the vaccine is made with highly inflammatory lipid nanoparticles which are used to ensure wide biodistribution throughout the body. N1-methylpseudouridine was used in the vaccine to prolong synthetic mRNA function.
We were only told that the vaccine would ‘teach’ our body to recognize the ‘spike’ protein and create antibodies against it. We were not told that, via the lipid nanoparticle mechanism, synthetic MRNA would be transported throughout the body invading all major organs, including liver, adrenal glands, ovaries and spleen. It would also cross the blood brain barrier.
Covid MRNA vaccines are far from safe and it’s extremely concerning that the Ministry of Health, Medsafe, senior doctors and politicians have ignored the many safety signals that have emerged. The VAERS reporting system in the U.S. records that there have been more adverse events linked to Covid vaccines than for all other vaccines over the past thirty years. Pfizer recorded 1,223 deaths within 90 days of the mandatory reporting period.
We know about Myocarditis and Pericarditis but there are hundreds of adverse effects that have impacted the lives of countess millions around the world. Vaccine injury can come in many forms and it’s alarming that our elected leaders are turning a blind eye to this.
Sudden Adult Death Syndrome is a term that has appeared since the rollout of Covid vaccines. People I have known well have simply dropped dead. New Zealand Herald death notices record many cases of died suddenly or unexpectedly. It’s extremely concerning that many of these deaths are young previously fit and healthy people. Athletes are collapsing and dying on the sports field, media personalities have died at their desks and pilots have collapsed at the controls.
Edward Dowd, a former Wall Street Fund Manager has documented hundreds of these cases in his book CAUSE UNKNOWN. This book should be mandatory reading for all associated with New Zealand’s Royal Commission of Inquiry – Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022 (HB) (thelittlebookshop.co.nz)
I have been shocked to learn how easy it was for our government to manipulate so many New Zealanders and to steer them on what was clearly a pre-determined and very dangerous path. How could this have happened? We must ensure that it never happens again.
2. Moving forward – what lessons should we learn from your experiences so we can be as prepared as possible for a future pandemic?
There are many lessons we must learn from our experiences of the government’s Covid Response.
Never again can there be a ‘single source of truth’ where the government narrative is the only permitted approach. Propaganda should never again be used by the government to provide only one side of the story in order to influence opinions and to gain control of behaviour.
All voices in the science and medical community within New Zealand and internationally must be listened to. There can never again be any censorship of dissenting voices. It’s only by hearing all sides of the ‘story’ that the best options will emerge. Censorship during the period 2020 -2023 was extreme and unprecedented. Anyone with a view that in any way differed from the approved narrative was discredited, called an anti-vaxxer, or spreader of misinformation.
Doctors and other medical professionals who openly questioned the Covid Response were attacked by the ‘New Zealand Medical Council and many lost their licenses to practice.
Experts must be entirely independent of government and ‘industry’. No expert should have any links to ‘industry’. Many believe that the so-called experts who were the go-to people whenever there was a need for expert comments were selected because of their willingness to support the government narrative. They were the only experts that we were permitted to listen to.
Never again can we allow government funding of the media. The Public Interest Journalism fund was clearly a means of ensuring that the media supported without question the government narrative.
Doctors must be allowed to be doctors.
The Declaration of Helsinki (World Medical Association 1964:
States:
• The health of my patient will be my first consideration, and the International Code of Medical Ethics declares that a physician shall act in the patient’s best interest when providing medical care.”
• It is the duty of the physician to promote and safeguard the health, well-being and rights of patients, including those who are involved in medical research. The physician’s knowledge and conscience are dedicated to the fulfilment of this duty.
If doctors had been permitted to use treatment options that in their judgement would be beneficial to their patients, it is clear that many thousands of lives may have been saved. This includes doctors in hospitals, on the wards and in the ICU. Many patients in hospitals in New Zealand and around the world died due to lack of treatment, the result of a total refusal to adopt the use of safe, cheap and effective repurposed drugs.
Vaccines can never again be the only tool used and no vaccine should gain approval for use until it has been properly tested first on animals and then in multi-stage clinical trials.
“The relevant matter in examining any form of treatment is not the reputation of its proponent, the persuasiveness of his theory, the eminence of its lay supporters, the testimony of patients, or the existence of public controversy, but simply…does the treatment work”?
Dr. David Karnofsky (American Oncologist born 1914)
All medical interventions that have been appropriately tested in trials should be considered based on the metrics of Absolute Risk Reduction and Number Needed to Treat. This will be invaluable when it comes to assessing the effectiveness of a treatment.
Natural immunity will always be important in the setting of a pandemic. The use of Vitamin C, Vitamin D and Zinc should be promoted. We will never prevent people from being infected with a virus, but it is possible to mitigate the impact of any illness with judicious use of simple safe and cheap nutritional support.
Commonsense must prevail. We should always be asking. What makes sense?
No government should ever again coerce New Zealanders or to mandate them to take a medical intervention without proper informed consent.
The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 states:
• Every person has the right not to be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation without that person’s consent.
• Everyone has the right to refuse to undergo any medical treatment.
Informed consent involves the exchange of information between the doctor and the patient. The patient must be able to make an informed decision about healthcare options, including the option of refusing the service. Doctors and other medical professionals should not be restricted in what they can say to patients.
During the time from when the Covid vaccine was rolled out New Zealanders simply presented themselves to be vaccinated because they had been told by the government that the vaccine was safe and effective. Many doctors who did provide appropriate information about the risks and benefits were found to be on the wrong side of the government narrative and they were censured.
Never again can a government divide a nation based on their willingness or not to agree to a medical intervention.
3. Feedback on expanded terms of reference
The terms of reference for a Covid Response Inquiry that will allow the truth to emerge mean those appointed to the Royal Commission must be totally independent of government and industry.
The most fundamental change required for the terms of reference is that the Covid Response Inquiry must take the form of an adversarial inquiry.
All those who took the decisions regarding the Covid Response must be accountable to the people. They cannot simply walk away and carry on their lives without taking any responsibility for their decisions that impacted the lives of almost every New Zealander.
The inquiry must have the power to compel witnesses to give testimony. No exceptions.
To ensure full public accountability, hearings should be live-streamed on the internet and a public television channel created and broadcast free through TVNZ.
The Inquiry must look into how and why the government of the time determined that lockdowns, masking and social distancing were appropriate interventions. Was it based on best available evidence or were these interventions used as a means of controlling the population and leading them into a mass vaccination programme?
They must also look very closely at vaccine efficacy and how the government and regulators determined that the vaccine (a novel gene therapy) was capable of preventing infection, transmission of the virus and reducing hospitalization and death. Local and international experts must be involved in this process.
All aspects of vaccine safety should be put under the microscope with the help of local and international experts. This will need to include data from the Pfizer clinical trials, what was known about safety prior to the rollout and safety signals that emerged on the VAERS adverse events reporting system in the US, the Yellow Card reporting system in the UK and our CARM reporting system in New Zealand.
The inquiry must look closely at vaccine injury in New Zealand and around the world.
Vaccine-injured New Zealanders must be given an opportunity to relate their stories in person at the inquiry.
The Royal Commission must also investigate the excess mortality statistics which we are seeing in New Zealand and many countries where there was mass vaccination of populations.
The primary objective of the Royal Commission of Inquiry should be to allow the truth to emerge so that we can all ensure that what we endured over three years from 2020 to 2023 will never happen again.
Read more about John Appleton and his successful battle against chronic illness at johnappleton.co.nz