Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a lawsuit against Pfizer Thursday for “unlawfully misrepresenting” the company’s COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness and engaging in efforts to “censor public discussion” of the vaccine.
In a press release announcing Thursday’s lawsuit against the vaccine-making company, the Texas Attorney General’s Office stated, “Pfizer’s widespread representation that its vaccine possessed 95% efficacy against infection was highly misleading from day one. That number was only ever legitimate in a solitary, highly technical, and artificial way—it represented a calculation of the so-called ‘relative risk reduction’ for vaccinated individuals in Pfizer’s then-unfinished pivotal clinical trial.”
The press release claimed that the Food and Drug Administration’s publications note that relative risk reduction is a “misleading statistic” that can “unduly influence” the choice of the consumer.
The Texas Attorney General’s Office claimed that Pfizer violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by engaging in “false, deceptive, and misleading acts and practices” through “unsupported claims” regarding the effectiveness of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine.
“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,” Paxton stated. “The facts are clear. Pfizer did not tell the truth about their COVID-19 vaccines. Whereas the Biden Administration weaponized the pandemic to force illegal public health decrees on the public and enrich pharmaceutical companies, I will use every tool I have to protect our citizens who were misled and harmed by Pfizer’s actions.”
READ MORE: Vaccine-maker Pfizer sued by red state’s attorney general
According to the lawsuit, Pfizer claimed that its COVID-19 vaccine was 95% effective based on information obtained during a two-month clinical trial, during which, only 162 out of 17,000 placebo patients received the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Based on those numbers, vaccination status had a negligible impact on whether a trial participant contracted COVID-19,” the lawsuit states. “The risk of acquiring COVID-19 was so small in the first instance during this short window that Pfizer’s vaccine only fractionally improved a person’s risk of infection.”
The lawsuit also raises allegations that some regions experienced “negative vaccine efficacy” toward the end of 2021, with more vaccinated individuals infected with COVID-19 than unvaccinated individuals. Additionally, the lawsuit claims that some COVID-19 rates increased despite higher numbers of the population being vaccinated.
“How did Pfizer respond when it became apparent that its vaccine was failing and the viability of its cash cow was threatened? By intimidating those spreading the truth, and by conspiring to censor its critics. Pfizer labeled as ‘criminals’ those who spread facts about the vaccine,” the lawsuit states. “It accused them of spreading ‘misinformation.’ And it coerced social media platforms to silence prominent truth-tellers.”
Earlier in November, Paxton announced another lawsuit against Pfizer and Tris Pharma, which is a drug manufacturing company owned by the vaccine manufacturer, for allegedly “defrauding the Texas Medicaid program” by providing children with “adulterated pharmaceutical drugs,” which the company knew were ineffective.
