WASHINGTON (LifeSiteNews) — Vaccine maker Pfizer’s CEO said Sunday that COVID variants will likely continue to develop in the coming years and that, for a return to normality, “the most likely scenario is annual revaccinations.”
Chairman and CEO of Pfizer, Dr. Albert Bourla, made the comments in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, defending the decision of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky to recommend booster doses of the company’s experimental mRNA shot for COVID-19.
Bourla commented that the decision to allow booster shots “is a very good one” and claimed, without supporting evidence, that through its COVID-19 jab the company had “saved millions of lives.”
However, evidence mounts to suggest that the Pfizer jab is the most dangerous of all available COVID shots. Pfizer’s experimental mRNA shot is associated with just under 52 percent of all adverse event reports between December 14, 2020, and September 17, as well as with a staggering 68 percent of the 15,386 reports of deaths following a COVID “vaccine.”
Despite the growing number of injury reports, the head of the pharmaceutical giant boasted that “there’s no other company that can claim that we have done so much good to humanity as we have done.”
“We are very proud of what we have done,” he added.
Bourla suggested “normal life” could be restored “within a year,” but only for the vaccinated, since he expects variants of COVID-19 will continue to develop for some time. Accordingly, he stated that “I don’t think that this means that we should be able to live our lives … without having vaccinations basically.”
“The most likely scenario for me it is that, because the virus is spread all over the world, that we will continue seeing new variants that are coming out and also we will have vaccines that they will last at least a year,” the Pfizer chairman said.
He thus advocated for “annual revaccinations,” but did not clarify whether those who had not received the jab would be able to live a “normal life” without the jab.
Walensky made the decision to recommend the Pfizer jab on September 24 for a number of groups deemed “at risk,” including “people aged 65 years and older, residents aged 18 years and older in long-term care settings, people aged 50–64 years with underlying medical conditions.” In so doing, Walensky pulled rank on the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which had recommended booster doses only for people with underlying health conditions and those over 65, six months after the two-dose regimen was first completed (which the CDC is now calling the “primary series”).
Walensky added that “people aged 18–49 years with underlying medical conditions [and] people aged 18–64 years at increased risk for COVID-19 exposure and transmission because of occupational or institutional setting” are also eligible to receive a booster shot, if they wish.
The CDC recommendation came just two days after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced its authorization of booster doses of the Pfizer shot for people 65 years old and above, as well as “healthcare workers, teachers and daycare staff, grocery workers and those in homeless shelters or prisons, among others,” acting FDA commissioner Janet Woodcock said.
Competitors Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have yet to have booster shots approved, with the latter yet to submit an application to the FDA.
President Joe Biden swiftly threw his support behind the authorization of Pfizer’s booster shot, declaring Friday that 20 million Americans are now eligible to take their third shot.
The White House COVID-19 task force announced plans to roll out booster shots in their millions at the end of August, pending FDA approval, but the push to rush out the additional jabs was met with profound disagreement from top officials at the FDA, two of whom resigned amid the conflict.
Marion Gruber, who has worked at the FDA for more than three decades and now serves as director of the agency’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review, will leave the FDA in October along with her deputy director, Phil Krause, who will depart the agency in November.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed reservation over the implementation of booster shots, announcing that the data on the effectiveness and safety of the extra jabs “is not conclusive.” Days after the Biden administration announced its intention to work on distributing booster shots to 80,000 destinations across the U.S., the WHO warned that “before we launch into full-scale booster programs for the whole population there are a number of questions that need to be answered.”
On Friday, however, Biden attempted to encourage those who can now receive a third Pfizer shot to do so, advising that “[l]ike your first and second shot, the booster shot is free and easily accessible.” Biden got his own booster shot Monday.