Twitter has officially clipped the punditry wings of author and analyst Alex Berenson for challenging the media’s and current administration’s narrative about the COVID-19 vaccine.
Berenson’s account was banned Saturday after “repeated violations” of the rules, a Twitter spokesperson told NBC News in a statement.Berenson, a one-time New York Times reporter, addressed the suspension in a Saturday night post to his Substack page, blaming his removal from Twitter on a recent post where he was critical of the coronavirus vaccine.“It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine,” the tweet read.“Think of it — at best — as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS.”
Berenson briefly discussed the ban on his Substack:
This was the tweet that did it. Entirely accurate. I can’t wait to hear what a jury will make of this.Meantime, guess you’ll be getting more Substacks.
Let’s unpack the tweet in its entirety to determine whether it is “misleading” as Twitter claims or accurate as Berenson asserts.
Point – Berenson.
Before the COVID-19 vaccine was distributed, who had ever heard of the term “breakthrough infection”? And while there are many cases to offer as an example, I am going to cite this article from the “respected source” NPR detailing a discussion by vaccinated parents possibly infected by their COVID-infected children.
“We were so careful,” says Alysha Johnson, a resident of Discovery Bay, east of San Francisco. “I’m a germaphobe. When this whole thing happened, we didn’t leave the house for six months.”Johnson was crushed when her toddler caught COVID-19 at a summer play group recently.”It was a pretty big deal how sick he got,” says Johnson. “It wasn’t just a little sniffle.”Her 2-year-old suffered a sore throat, a cough and a 104-degree fever. The bout lasted more than a week and sickened Alysha Johnson, her boyfriend and her sister — all of whom had been vaccinated against COVID-19.
Point – Berenson.
Vaccinated people transmit the virus, as the “respected source” CNN reports from the “trusted science” offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Fully vaccinated people who get a Covid-19 breakthrough infection can transmit the virus, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Thursday.”Our vaccines are working exceptionally well,” Walensky told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “They continue to work well for Delta, with regard to severe illness and death — they prevent it. But what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.”
3 Points – Berenson.
Point 1: Loss of efficacy The current vaccines appear to decline steadily in efficacy over the course of only a few months. While there are many studies now confirming this fact, following is a recent report from “trusted source” CBS relaying information from the arbiters of “COVID-fact,” the CDC.
…[W]hen it comes to preventing infection from COVID-19, CDC researchers in another study turned up evidence suggesting immunity might be starting to decline among some of the most vulnerable Americans who were vaccinated earliest in the nationwide rollout: nursing home residents.In nursing homes, the effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines dropped to 53.1% during the surge in Delta variant cases this summer, the CDC calculated, down from 74.7%.
Point 2: Terrible side effect profile. The following report is from the “very trusted” source, The New York Times.
The Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine is associated with an increased risk of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, a large new study from Israel confirms. But the side effect remains rare, and Covid-19 is more likely to cause myocarditis than the vaccine is, scientists reported on Wednesday.The research, which is based on the electronic health records of about two million people who are 16 or older, provides a comprehensive look at the real-wold incidence of various adverse events after both vaccination and infection with the coronavirus.Although the study did not break down the myocarditis risks by age or by sex, the median age of people who developed the condition after vaccination was 25, and 19 of the 21 cases were in males, the researchers reported.
Point 3. Therapeutic….dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. When the vaccines were distributed, they were touted as preventing COVID. The reality turned out to be less than advertised: The shots reduced symptoms if taken before infection occurred (per “trusted source” The Wall Street Journal).
[Vaccines from Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer approved in the US] were primarily tested in large clinical trials for their efficacy at preventing symptomatic disease, rather than their ability to prevent infection completely. While the vaccines seem to be slightly less effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 from the Delta variant, research has shown that they remain highly effective at preventing serious illness and hospitalization.
The data suggesta that Berenson wasn’t spreading “misinformation” and was merely providing context and insight that goes against the preferred narrative.
The trouble is that often reality doesn’t align with narratives, and smearing something as “misinformation” isn’t going to prevent reality from being real.
Here is Berenson on Tucker Calrson’s show discussing the suspension from Twitter he had previously experienced.
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