November 18, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – The Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, which is pending government approval but is expected to be rolled out across the U.S. later this year, has to be stored at -70°C (-94°F) – nearly twice as cold as the North Pole’s average temperature in the winter.
According to NASA, the average temperature at the North Pole during the summer is 0°C (-32°F). During the winter, the North Pole’s average temperature is −40°C (which, because this is where the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales meet, is also −40°F).
The Pfizer vaccine must be stored at a temperature that is “20 degrees colder than extreme winter temperatures at the South Pole,” CBS News noted, predicting distribution would be a “logistical nightmare.”
“The reality is there has never been been a drug that required storage at this temperature,” Soumi Saha, a pharmacist and director of advocacy at Premier (which is “a purchasing agent for hospitals across the country”), told CBS.
Messenger RNA is ‘a vaccine technology that’s so new,’ it’s never been approved by the Food and Drug Administration
In an article titled “Why Does Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine Need To Be Kept Colder Than Antarctica?”, NPR reported:
Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine candidates use a new approach to unlock the body's immune defenses. The approach uses messenger RNA, or mRNA, to turn a patient's cells into factories that make one particular coronavirus protein.
That protein kicks off an immune response as if there was a real coronavirus infection (to be clear, since it's only one virus protein, there's no way the vaccine could actually infect someone or make them sick with COVID-19). Then, if someone who was immunized gets exposed to the coronavirus later on, their body's immune system will be able to fight it off more easily and they're more likely to avoid serious illness.
It's a vaccine technology that's so new, no mRNA vaccines have ever been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
…
Here's an analogy: Think of the vaccine as a chocolate bar that melts easily. Just as there are ways to keep the chocolate from melting into goo, there are things the drugmakers did to protect their COVID-19 vaccines.
NPR quoted a vaccine researcher who said the first step “was to modify the mRNA nucleosides — the ‘building blocks’ of the RNA vaccine. ‘They've used modified versions because those are more stable,’ she says. ‘This would be like changing the chocolate recipe so it's not quite so melty.’”
“The next step was to use lipid nanoparticles, which… ‘is kind of like putting your chocolate inside a candy coating — you have an M&M, so the chocolate doesn't melt.’”
Pfizer says its coronavirus vaccine is “90% effective.”
On Monday, Moderna said its COVID-19 is “94.5% effective” – and doesn’t need to be deep-frozen.
According to National Geographic:
The reason Moderna’s vaccine is more durable in regular refrigeration because its scientists have figured out how to keep it more stable. That was accomplished by mastering a strategic formula of lipid nanoparticles—the structural backbone of the vaccine that doubles as a mode of transporting the drug into human cells, says Aliasger K. Salem, chair of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Iowa. While the details of Moderna’s science are proprietary, Salem says the company’s COVID-19 vaccine likely builds on its previous work using lipid nanoparticles in immunizations for other infectious diseases, such as respiratory syncytial virus.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are the current coronavirus shot frontrunners.
‘Serious injury rate,’ safety and ethics concerns
Children’s Health Defense reported earlier this month:
…the New York Times pointed out that Pfizer’s data — delivered in a news release, not a peer-reviewed medical journal — “is not conclusive evidence that the vaccine is safe and effective, and the initial finding of more than 90 percent efficacy could change as the trial goes on.”
…Fast Company reported on the development by reminding readers that the Pfizer vaccine, if approved, will be the first to use “an as-yet-unproven technology platform that relies on something called messenger RNA, usually shortened to mRNA.”
Moderna is also working on an mRNA COVID vaccine. In May, Children’s Health Defense reported that clinical trials for Moderna’s vaccine had a 20% “serious injury rate” in its high-dose group.
Children’s Health Defense is run by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the nephew of John F. Kennedy and an environmental attorney. Kennedy has been outspoken in outlining reasons for concern about various vaccine projects. He has been raising awareness about children injured by vaccines since before the coronavirus outbreak.
Children’s Health Defense described mRNA technology as “an experimental approach designed to turn the body’s cells into viral-protein-making factories.”
On August 6, the advocacy group wrote of mRNA:
A key technical challenge is to get the vaccines’ bulky RNA “payload” into the cells intact—without it breaking down prior to arriving at its destination. In other words, mRNA vaccines will not work without an in-built delivery mechanism that enables the mRNA to shove its way into a cell’s cytoplasm. The chosen solution is to use trendy biotech “carrier systems” involving lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). LNPs “encapsulate the mRNA constructs to protect them from degradation and promote cellular uptake” and, additionally, rev up the immune system (a property that vaccine scientists tamely describe as LNPs’ “inherent adjuvant properties”). The LNP formulations in the three Covid-19 vaccines are also “PEGylated,” meaning that the vaccine nanoparticles are coated with a synthetic, nondegradable and increasingly controversial polymer called polyethylene glycol (PEG).
In the corporate prospectus supporting Moderna’s stock market launch in late 2018 (an initial public offering that set a record for the biotech industry), the company was frank that its technical approach has numerous risks. Specifically, Moderna acknowledged the potential for its proprietary LNPs—and PEG—to produce “systemic side effects,” particularly given the scientific literature’s documentation of these types of side effects for other LNPs. In comments not generally seen by the public, Moderna stated (p. 33):
[T]here can be no assurance that our LNPs will not have undesired effects. Our LNPs could contribute, in whole or in part, to one or more of the following: immune reactions, infusion reactions, complement reactions, opsonation reactions, antibody reactions . . . or reactions to the PEG from some lipids or PEG otherwise associated with the LNP. Certain aspects of our investigational medicines may induce immune reactions from either the mRNA or the lipid as well as adverse reactions within liver pathways or degradation of the mRNA or the LNP, any of which could lead to significant adverse events in one or more of our clinical trials. [Emphases and links added by Children’s Health Defense]
There remain serious questions about the ethics of the coronavirus vaccines in production.
Dr. Helen Watt of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, England, told the Catholic Herald that the Pfizer vaccine “makes no use of a foetal cell-line in the production process itself, and no use in the design,” but that “[o]ne of the confirmatory lab tests on the vaccine did sadly involve an old foetal cell-line.” The Children of God for Life organization says that the Pfizer vaccine is tested using the HEK 293 cell line, which is derived from kidney tissue taken from a healthy baby who was aborted in the Netherlands in the 1970s.
Children of God for Life also says the Moderna vaccine has been tested on a cell line of an aborted child.
While a vaccine being tested on rather than actually containing in the syringe cell lines (or proteins or DNA) derived from aborted babies may arguably be less shocking to the average pro-lifer, questions about the ethics and safety of any such vaccine remain.
Furthermore, the connection of even non-abortion-tainted vaccines to pro-abortion, pro-contraception figures (such as Bill Gates) gives many pro-life activists pause, as does the fact that in the U.S., pharmaceutical companies are not liable for deaths or injuries caused by their vaccine products.
The vaccine-injured or their relatives are unable to sue vaccine companies thanks to a little-known law from the 1980s.
Earlier this year, in an interview with CNBC, after speculating that as many as 700,000 people might suffer side-effects from a vaccine, Gates said that “there will be some risk and indemnification needed” before vaccines are administered.
If we have you know one in 10,000 side effects that's you know way more 700,000 you know people who will suffer from that…It's very, very hard and that actual decision of “okay let's go and give this vaccine to the entire world.” Governments will have to be involved because there will be some risk and indemnification needed before that can be decided on.
Kennedy’s organization Children’s Health Defense notes in another article that earlier this year “the U.S. quietly pushed through Federal regulations giving coronavirus vaccine makers full immunity from liability.”
Russia approved a coronavirus vaccine in August. One of President Vladimir Putin’s daughters reportedly received both doses of it.