Texas Attorney General Sues Pfizer Over COVID Shot

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, has sued pharmaceutical company Pfizer over its Comirnaty mRNA ((messenger ribonucleic acid) COVID-19 gene therapy. Paxton contends that Pfizer misled the public by claiming that its product, which had a purported 95 percent efficacy rate against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, would end the COVID pandemic.¹

The lawsuit filed in Lubbock County state court seeks more than $10 million in fines from Pfizer for committing false, unsupported and misleading acts, practices and claims.^{2 3} Paxton said that Pfizer was guilty of “unlawfully misrepresenting the effectiveness of Comirnaty and attempting to censor public discussion of the product.”⁴

Pfizer Used Relative Risk Reduction Not Absolute Risk Reduction When Reporting Trial Results

The lawsuit alleges that Pfizer used misleading data to base its claim that the shot had a 95 percent efficacy rate. Pfizer used a method called relative risk reduction to come up with the 95 percent statistic. Relative risk reduction shows how much an intervention such as the COVID shot reduces the risk of a “bad outcome,” i.e. being infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, compared to the to a control group which did not receive the intervention.⁵

The 95 percent efficacy rate proclaimed by Pfizer was based on the relative risk reduction method a mere two months into the drug company’s on-going pre-licensure clinical trial. During the two months of the trial, only 162 of the 17,000 trial participants who received the placebo came down with COVID. Accordingly, because the risk of getting COVID in that two-month window was so small, the benefit of the shot in preventing COVID was minimal. When looking at the absolute risk reduction, the U.S. Federal and Drug Administration’s (FDA) preferred efficacy rating, rather than the relative risk reduction, the shot proved to be only 0.85 percent effective.⁶

Ronald Brown, PhD at the School of Public Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo in Canada explained that relative risk reduction acts to obscure the true value of risk reduction when used in clinical research.

Dr. Brown writes:

The absolute risk reduction is shown to be a more precise and reliable measure of treatment and vaccine efficacy in clinical research studies. The absolute risk reduction reciprocal also measures the number needed to treat or vaccinate, and is a more accurate measure than the relative risk reduction for comparing risk reductions of clinical studies.⁷

Pfizer Alleged Deceptive Marketing Campaign and Silencing of Critics

The allegations against Pfizer include the pharmaceutical giant implementing a three-pronged deceptive marketing campaign that hid key facts, including the fact that the shot’s efficacy rapidly waned, that there was no evidence the shot protected against transmission of the virus, and that the shot did not protect against SARS-CoV-2 variants.⁸

As it became clear that the vaccine efficacy was not as promised, it is alleged that Pfizer conspired to silence critics of the shot, labeled any information disputing its claims as “misinformation,” and coerced social media platforms to shut down negative comments critical of the shot.⁹

The Complaint reads:

In summary, Pfizer intentionally misrepresented the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine and censored persons who threatened to disseminate the truth in order to facilitate fast adoption of the product and expand its commercial opportunity. In light of the multi-billion dollar bet that Pfizer made on the vaccine and its need to quickly establish the product as the marketing leader, Pfizer was heavily incentivized to, and in fact did, make misrepresentations intended to confuse and mislead the public in order to achieve widespread adoption of its vaccine. This suit seeks to hold Pfizer responsible for its scheme of serial misrepresentations and deceptive trade practices.¹⁰

Pfizer’s marketing campaign is alleged to have violated federal and state laws that regulate misrepresentation and deceptive trade practices, including the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act preventing misbranding of regulated products, the Federal Trade Commission Act which bans deceptive behavior in commerce, and the Texas Health and Safety Code prohibiting the misbranding of consumer products.¹¹

More COVID Deaths in 2021 Following Pfizer’s Release of Comirnaty Compared to 2020

The Complaint also points out that more people died in 2021 after Comirnaty was available than in 2020 when the pandemic began, and that government reports reveal a greater percentage of COVID deaths occurred in vaccinated individuals.¹²

Pfizer’s marketing practices proved lucrative. Pfizer reported more than $74 billion dollars in revenue from Comirnaty in 2021 and 2022.¹³ In 2021 alone, Pfizer’s revenue increased by $38.4 billion, almost double of what it was the year before, the vast majority of which was due to the Comirnaty.¹⁴

Paxton proclaimed:

We are pursuing justice for the people of Texas, many of whom were coerced by tyrannical vaccine mandates to take a defective product sold by lies.¹⁵

Pfizer Says Claims Have “No Merit”

In response to the lawsuit, the pharmaceutical giant issued a statement claiming the lawsuit had “no merit” and set forth…

Pfizer is deeply committed to the well-being of the patients it serves and has no higher priority than the safety and effectiveness of its treatments and vaccines. Since its initial authorization by FDA in December 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine has been administered to more than 1.5 billion people, demonstrated a favorable safety profile in all age groups, and helped protect against severe COVID-19 outcomes, including hospitalization and death. The representations made by the company about its COVID-19 vaccine have been accurate and science-based.¹⁶

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