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Dec. 26, 2021 - Epoch Times

25:03

Think Big Pharma is Profiting Off the Virus? THIS IS NEXT LEVEL | Facts Matter

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	Good evening and happy National Chocolate Cupcake Day, which apparently is a real thing.
	Now to start with, a new COVID pill, which can purportedly cut the risk of both hospitalization as well as death from COVID by as much as 50%, it is now in the process of getting emergency use authorization.
	However, according to several researchers, the technology that this pill uses runs the risk of potentially causing cancer.
	Although, according to one researcher that we here at the Epoch Times spoke with, he said that we likely won't know until many years later.
	Regardless, though, according to this contract here that was signed between Merck and the U.S. government all the way back in 2020, once they gain authorization, Merck is set to rake in massive profits on these pills.
	That's because the markup on them is astronomical.
	And lastly, I had the opportunity to sit down and speak with Mr.
	Zach Voorhees, who was a senior software engineer over at Google before he became a whistleblower, and he explained to me how a system that Google built called Machine Learning Fairness works behind the scenes to censor what Americans like you and me Can see, hear, and talk about.
	Actually, come to think of it, isn't YouTube owned by Google?
	This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
	And now let's start today's discussion by talking about the COVID pill.
	Specifically, this COVID antiviral pill that is being mass-produced by Merck, and it's officially called Molnupiravir.
	Although that's so hard to pronounce, I'm just going to refer to it as the COVID pill moving forward.
	Now, this pill, it was created to combat cases of mild or moderate COVID. And the idea is, you take it shortly after you're diagnosed with COVID, and it's supposed to fight off the infection by essentially killing the virus inside of your own body.
	And according to the results of their Phase 3 trial, Merck said that this pill is very effective at cutting the rates of hospitalization as well as death by close to half.
	However, that is of course the statement that was released by Merck themselves, and so take it with a grain of salt.
	In fact, this drug has both proponents, people who are for it, as well as many detractors.
	For instance, the former commissioner of the FDA, he said this during a statement during an interview with CNBC. This is a phenomenal result.
	I mean, this is a profound game changer.
	To have an oral pill that had this kind of effect, this magnitude of effect in patients who are at high risk, who are already symptomatic?
	However, other people, particularly other scientific experts, they have said that they are worried about the mechanics behind how this pill actually attacks the virus.
	That's because the way that this pill works is that this COVID pill embeds itself into the virus's genetic material, and it causes a high number of mutations to occur, which then ultimately overwhelms the virus and causes it to become extinct, which is a process that's technically called lethal mutagenesis.
	However, according to researchers who published this study right here, if you want to read it for yourself, you can find it over in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
	On the NIH.gov website, this method, the method that this COVID pill uses, carries the potential for substantial risk because, quote, which in plain language means that the method of operation that this pill uses to attack the virus could actually hurt the DNA of the person that the virus has infected.
	By the way, they also said that this could further contribute to the potential development of cancer or cause birth defects in an unborn baby.
	In fact, the researchers, they found that that was exactly what was happening during their testing of the NHC, which is the compound that is created by this pill.
	Here's in fact how one of these researchers summed up their findings in an interview with Barron's Magazine.
	There is a concern that this will cause long-term mutation effects, even cancer.
	Now, we here at the Epoch Times, we got a chance to speak with Dr.
	Michael Caron, who is the director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, and he told us that these concerns are theoretical for now, given the fact that these types of rare adverse reactions would only be detectable with a large and long-term trial.
	However, he said that the trials that are often done in the pre-market phase, well, they typically only involve several thousand participants.
	Here's specifically what he told us in an interview.
	The FDA is never going to require studies that involve clinical trials that involve tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people to increase that signal detection.
	That's just the nature of the regulatory review system.
	He further told us that in order to detect these types of adverse reactions, meaning like cancer and birth defects in unborn children, we'll just have to wait.
	For rare types of serious events, they're not going to be detected except in the post-marketing surveillance phase, the post-approval phase, and lots more people are exposed to the drug for longer periods of time than the drug was used in the clinical trials.
	Meaning that, very likely, several years after the drug is given authorization, we can figure out what the rare adverse reactions actually are.
	And this, by the way, would not be the first time that this type of thing would happen.
	In fact, as an example of this already having happened before, Dr.
	Karome told us about how U.S. regulators, years ago, approved a class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolins.
	However, several years after they were approved, these regulators were able to detect instances of hypoglycemic coma, and then they added a warning label to the drug.
	They added a warning label many years after they gave it approval, because it took many years to have a large enough and long enough timeline to Now, we here at the Epoch Times, we reached out to Merck for comment on these researchers' comments, but we have yet to hear back.
	However, Merck's CEO, right after they submitted an application to the FDA for emergency use authorization, He said this, And so now, the drug is currently being considered for emergency use authorization over at the FDA, which certainly has helped the stock price of Merck, which is of course a publicly traded company.
	In fact, right after they announced the positive results of their clinical trial, Merck's stock price jumped up by as much as 12.3%, hitting their highest level since February of 2020, of last year.
	But it's not only the jump in stock price that will help Merck's bottom line with regards to this new drug.
	Instead, when you look at what they're actually going to be charging the U.S. government, meaning you and me, the American taxpayers, what we're going to be charged for this new drug, well, the profit margins are astronomical.
	And I'll tell you more about them in a quick moment, right after a super fast word from the sponsor of today's episode.
	That's right, Roman.
	The sponsor of today's episode is an awesome company called AMAC. That's A-M-A-C. And it stands for the Association of Mature American Citizens.
	Now, what I learned earlier today, though, is that you don't actually need to be a mature American citizen yourself in order to join AMAC, because even though they're an organization that's geared towards people who are 50 years of age and above, you can actually join at any age as long as you're an American-loving patriot.
	And so what they say is that as our fundamental freedoms here in this country are being threatened by politicians who don't even necessarily know how to balance their own checking accounts, And as there is a concerted effort to censor conservatives by this woke ideology, one thing that you can do to fight back is to join the two million people who are already members of AMAC. And by joining, you'll have access to three main benefits.
	The first benefit is the money-saving benefit because by joining, you'll have access to discounts on things like vitamins, restaurants, retail shops throughout the entire country.
	Second of all, you will gain access to the AMAC website The AMAC app as well as the AMAC magazine, which gives you something that the mainstream media doesn't, which is honest news that is grounded in facts.
	And third of all, and this is what a lot of people say is their favorite benefit, is that AMAC has your back over on Capitol Hill.
	Because with two million freedom-loving members, they are a voice for conservatives that cannot be ignored.
	And so, if you are a person who considers themselves a constitutional conservative, then I would consider joining AMAC. You can do so over at amac.us.
	That's amac.us.
	So consider signing up, consider helping AMAC's effort, and getting access to these excellent membership benefits.
	So, AMAC, thank you so much for sponsoring this episode.
	Now, Roman in the studio, back to you.
	Now, before we dive into the actual markup, I'd like to give you a bit more background on this pill.
	To start with, it was originally developed by Emory University with the support of U.S. government funding.
	And last year, in 2020, the drug was licensed by a company called Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.
	And if you look on their website, you'll find that that company is based in Miami, Florida, and their mission statement is to, quote, develop potential medications to treat infectious diseases that have limited or no treatment options like Ebola and COVID-19.
	Now, Ridgeback Biotherapeutics made the attempt to get their drug authorized last year, meaning in 2020, but that didn't really go anywhere.
	They were not able to get authorization from the U.S. government.
	And so what they did is they turned to Merck.
	Merck is, of course, the large pharmaceutical company that we mentioned in the earlier segment.
	And what Ridgeback did was that they gave exclusive worldwide rights to develop this COVID pill over to Merck.
	In fact, here's how Merck described the deal in one of their news releases that was released on July 1st, 2020.
	Quote, under the agreement, Merck, through a subsidiary, has acquired exclusive worldwide rights to develop EIDD-2801, which is just the name of the COVID pill, and related molecules in collaboration with Ridgeback.
	Going forward, the parties will collaborate on clinical development for COVID-19 and manufacturing to be led by Merck.
	And then they added one more sentence, which will become relevant in a moment.
	They wrote, quote, Merck and Ridgeback are committed to ensure that any medicines developed for SARS-CoV-2 will be accessible and affordable globally.
	Now you might be asking yourself, how affordable exactly?
	And that depends on who you ask.
	Because all the way back last year, before the drug was even approved, Merck signed a purchase agreement with the US government.
	And they sold them about 1.69 million doses of the treatment for a total amount of just over $1.2 billion.
	That means every one treatment will cost us American taxpayers $712.
	And just for reference, by the way, one treatment with this particular drug is defined as, quote, a collection of pills given over the course of five days.
	However, do you know what that same treatment will cost over in India?
	Well, if you guessed $12, you'd be correct.
	Over in India, the same treatment, which will be made by an Indian manufacturer in a generic format, will cost 60 times less.
	In fact, according to this paper right here that was put together by two researchers, one from Harvard and the other from King's College Hospital over in London, they ran the calculations and found that producing the full five-day treatment will cost Merck approximately $17 and Here's in fact what these researchers concluded as a part of their study.
	Quote, Assuming optimization of the pill synthesis and a resulting drop in API cost, the US price would be equal to about 161 times the estimated sustainable generic price.
	And so you might be wondering, how in the world did the US government agree to pay so much money for this treatment?
	Well, to start with, this contract was actually signed prior to the drug's approval, and in fact, this contract only goes into effect once the drug receives regulatory clearance.
	Although that doesn't really explain the discrepancy in price, given the fact that by this time, by the time this deal was signed, Merck very likely already knew the full ingredient list that they needed to make each pill.
	Now, we here at the Epoch Times, we reached out to Merck for comment on this unique pricing structure, But they did not respond to us.
	However, they did receive so much public criticism regarding this pricing that it caused one of their executives to make a statement to the Associated Press.
	We set that price before we had any data, so that's just one contract.
	Obviously, we're going to be responsible about this and make this drug as accessible to as many people around the world as we can.
	Furthermore, exactly one week ago, Merck released a public statement regarding its pricing, saying this in part, We are committed to providing timely access to Molnupiravir globally, if it is approved or authorized, Now, by the way, this type of pricing discrepancy is not the first of its kind during the COVID pandemic.
	In fact, it was reported earlier that remdesivir, which is the only officially approved treatment for hospitalized COVID patients, it costs only about $5 to produce.
	However, it was sold to the U.S. government for $2,340 a course.
	And you know, I would like to get your opinion on this matter.
	Do you think that pharmaceutical companies are justified to charge such crazy high premiums in order to recoup their research investment?
	Do you think that the government regulators are in league with these pharmaceutical executives in order to stop other lower-cost alternatives that I can't mention on YouTube from being adopted?
	And generally, what is your opinion of pharmaceutical companies making billions of dollars in profit on products that in some cases Americans and people around the world are actually legally required and forced to take?
	I'd love to know your thoughts about all those questions.
	Please leave them in the comment section below.
	I'll be reading them tonight as well as tomorrow.
	Otherwise, if you'd like to read about anything that we discussed so far, such as this new COVID pill, as well as this contract with the U.S. government, I'll throw all that into the description box below this video so you can check it out for yourself.
	And all I ask in return is that you take a quick moment to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm so this YouTube video can be shared out to as many more people as possible, letting the truth be known far and wide.
	And now let's move on over and talk about censorship.
	While I was down in Texas, I took the opportunity to sit down and speak with Mr.
	Zach Voorhees, who was a senior software engineer over at Google before he became a whistleblower, and he explained to me how a system that Google built called Machine Learning Fairness works behind the scenes to censor what Americans like you and me can see, hear, and talk about.
	Take a look at that awesome interview.
	Can you tell our viewers, who might not necessarily be dialed in, they're not following what's really going on in big tech censorship, but they're just a casual user of Google.
	They might Google things throughout the day.
	How is Google working behind the scenes in terms of what you exposed?
	Yeah, so they've got this project called Machine Learning Fairness.
	Started off in Stanford about 2014, was slowly brought into the company, and then...
	They turned it on originally in the 2016 election and they were filtering fake news, which is actually how I found out about it.
	They actually admitted that they were using it to filter the fake news at an all-hands meeting with the entire company that was live-streamed.
	And once I found out that they were They were filtering the fake news with machine learning.
	I started digging in, like, well, what's the definition of fake news?
	Okay, they've defined it as, you know, having to do with Hillary Clinton.
	It was actually most of their examples.
	So I said, okay, well, if there's a definition of fake news, then what's the implementation?
	What's the system that's going to actually filter it?
	And I found the name of that system.
	It's called machine learning fairness.
	And to my surprise, it was being rolled out into every single major product that they had.
	Google Search, Google News, YouTube.
	And I was like, man, this is a massive project for not even being talked about at all.
	They hadn't really communicated this machine learning fairness.
	And so I just started collecting a lot of data on this.
	And the way that it works is it's a type of artificial intelligence.
	And the way that machine learning works is that you create a training data set.
	So let's say there's a bunch of articles and a bunch of humans go through and say, well, this is fake news and this is true.
	And then they take that pile, like let's say you have a stack of fake news, you've got a stack of real news, you feed it through the machine learning algorithm and it tries to figure out what makes this fake news and what makes this not fake news.
	And it comes up with word associations.
	And so they use this in order to...
	Once it's trained, it's called a classifier.
	They run this classifier on novel input.
	And then it's able to lightning fast detect whether something's fake news and censor it immediately.
	A lot of YouTubers are like, man, I put this video up and then immediately got censored.
	How did that happen?
	Well, it's the machine learning fairness running on...
	A transcribed version of their audio when they submitted the video.
	And it works in seconds, and they can take it down.
	And so that's how censorship works at Google.
	It sounds like they're kind of doing the same thing at Facebook and Twitter, even though I haven't really looked at the algorithms.
	It sounds very similar to this artificial intelligence, machine learning, fairness system that Google was employing on their products.
	So in the example that you gave where they fed these two types of stories, real stories and fake stories that they classified as fake.
	So then the machine was able to then, using that as the sort of the seed data set, they were able to then say, oh, this is fake, this is real, this is not.
	Yeah.
	It changes all the time, right?
	So are they continuously feeding?
	Are they continuously doing this?
	Because, you know, the example of Hillary Clinton, well, that's now well passed, right?
	Nobody's really talking about Hillary Clinton as much anymore now.
	It's many other subjects.
	Is this a continuous process?
	Or how is the machine continuously learning about what is fake and what is not?
	So the definition of what real news is is whatever the mainstream media is putting out.
	CNN, New York Times.
	One of the documents that I leaked showed how Google rated the different companies.
	Of course, the New York Times is right there at the top, right?
	And Next News Network, which is one of the largest networks on YouTube, rated as like a negative three, okay?
	And Alex Jones is right there near zero, okay?
	And the New York Times would be like eight.
	And so what they define as the source of truth is what the New York Times or the Washington Post or any of these other global MSM outlets are saying.
	And then if you're close to that, then you're allowed through the filters.
	If you're not, if you're one of these negative categories, like let's say Infowars or Alex Jones, then any story that's similar to that also gets censored and filtered and deranked off of their search engine.
	Wow, that sounds like a monopoly.
	Yeah.
	I mean, but when AT&T came in, it took 30 years or something for them to gain a monopoly.
	Google could be just dethroned like MySpace can in a matter of, I think it's happening right now, kind of like DuckDuckGo has had exponential growth.
	And they're just like this.
	And so that's one of the silver lining about how fast technology is moving today is that, you know, yes, they had a monopoly in 2016.
	Does Google still have a monopoly today?
	Maybe not.
	You know, there's a lot of alternatives.
	Before it used to be Twitter.
	Now it's Gab, it's Getter.
	There's a plethora of choices now.
	And I really think that what we're seeing right now is the self-destruction of big tech.
	They're destroying their products.
	They've destroyed their brand.
	They're now on par with the totalitarian censorship of the Nazi regime and the Stalinist empire and the Soviet.
	And so what do we do from here?
	Now that we know this, well, the consumer behavior is changing, and now we're going to these other products.
	And I really think that there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
	So there's a lot of lawsuits happening.
	James O'Keefe with Project Veritas right now is suing Twitter.
	So that's one route.
	But you're suggesting that what might actually happen is people will just abandon these platforms and move over, and that'll be the solution to it.
	Look, I raised money to sue Google, $135,000.
	It was called punchgoogle.com.
	I got my hands dirty.
	With what a lawsuit entails, it turns out the entire judicial system is rigged.
	The monopoly antitrust argument for content is getting less significant every day because of the different platforms that are out.
	So in terms of Trump with his lawsuit, everyone's really excited about this.
	Look, I've been down this path.
	I don't think that it's going to be successful.
	I do think, however, that the defamation lawsuits that Project Veritas is doing, and I don't know if Trump's got a defamation component on his lawsuit, but I think that's got a really good chance.
	And the reason why is because...
	In order for these big tech companies to censor, they have to declare you as a bad person worth censoring.
	Like Laura Loomer.
	She's like something close to a domestic terrorist.
	Labeled her like an undesirable.
	Once one place defames you, all the other big tech networks also start to ban you.
	Patreon.
	If Patreon bans you, then it's probably going to be YouTube and You know, Facebook and then Uber and, I mean, even PayPal is banning people.
	And Wells Fargo is now banning people.
	What's the justification?
	It's circular.
	Well, these other places banned them, so we're going to ban you as well.
	And the thing is, is that will that defamation be allowed to stand, especially when it's, you know, without merit?
	Or are they going to be liable for that defamation?
	I think this will succeed.
	I don't think we should allow Google to make up a social credit score on an individual, which is essentially what they're doing now.
	And I think that that's really scary.
	I think that the judges are going to toss that back in their face and say, no, you can't just declare someone a domestic terrorist and strip them from access to the economy.
	So I think that defamation will succeed.
	I think that antitrust is maybe leading to probably not going to succeed in court.
	So prior to this conversation, you said that it's gotten progressively worse since you blew the whistle in 2019.
	Laura Loomer was actually, what, in 2019, right?
	Yeah.
	Can you describe why you think it's getting worse?
	Oh man, COVID-19, right?
	I never thought, like I knew Google was like a little psychotic with their...
	I never thought that they would actually ban people talking about vitamin C and vitamin D and how to use that to alleviate some of the problems with COVID-19.
	The fact that they went on and said as a policy they're going to ban vitamin C, vitamin D to merit conversations If they are related to the COVID-19, that's when I realized these people are just complete, either completely evil or completely controlled puppets of some shadow government that I don't really have a lot of insight into.
	I just know that the censorship, whatever the censorship I thought existed in 2020 with the COVID-19, It completely blew away all expectations.
	And now I see it as an existential threat.
	I now see Google and the rest of the big tech not as social services, but as foreign propaganda outlets that are actively subverting the people of their host nation in order to bring about some sort of global communism.
	Now, if you'd like to read more about what Mr.
	Voorhees discussed, the Machine Learning Fairness Program, I'll throw a link into the description box below to an article where you can read more.
	Now, lastly, since you've completed this episode of Facts Matter, I would highly recommend that you go on over to Epic TV and check out the latest episode of The Larry Elder Show, where Larry Elder sits down and talks about why, in his opinion, the recall election failed.
	Here's a trailer for that episode.
	Now, as you know, the recall effort failed.
	And I'll tell you why.
	There was an SNL skit about the Salem Witches They were on trial for witchcraft.
	Here's what happened.
	That, in essence, is what Gavin Newsom did.
	Crime.
	Crime is up.
	Violent crime up in L.A., in Oakland, in San Francisco, in San Diego, in L.A., shootings up 41%.
	That's all they did.
	This brings us to the treatment I received in the New York Times.
	Now, I never suggested anybody should vote for me because I'm black.
	I never suggested anybody should vote against me because I'm black.
	Never made a big deal about the fact that had I won, I would have been the first black governor of California.
	As far as I'm concerned, after the first black president, Barack Obama, everything else is anticlimactic.
	But that's not how the left feels.
	If you want to check out that episode, as well as all the other phenomenal content over on Epic TV, I'll throw a link to it.
	It'll be right there at the very top of the description box.
	I hope you click on it.
	I hope you check it out.
	I hope you subscribe.
	And I hope that you join us on this journey of exploring this beautiful, beautiful world through honest journalism that is based in truth and tradition.
	Now lastly, if you haven't already, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
	Subscribe to this YouTube channel if you haven't already in order to get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed while YouTube still allows it.
	Also, consider hitting that notification bell so you can actually be notified of any new videos as we release them.
	And lastly, if you have an Instagram account, consider following me at EpicTimesRoman.
	I publish behind-the-scenes research as well as spicy memes.
	And then until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epic Times.

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