According to CNBC, Pfizer and Moderna cannot be sued if someone has severe complications after taking the vaccine, and the government won’t compensate you for damages either.
The news outlet says both companies are protected by the PREP act, which allows them complete immunity from liability if something unintentionally was to occur with their vaccines.
Lawyers told CNBC that basically, no one is to blame if the vaccine goes wrong.
“It is very rare for a blanket immunity law to be passed,” said Rogge Dunn, a Dallas labor and employment attorney. “Pharmaceutical companies typically aren’t offered much liability protection under the law. ”
The Food and Drug Administration is also protected despite the fact the agency is responsible for authorizing the vaccine’s release.
“You can’t sue the FDA for approving or disapproving a drug,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law. “That’s part of its sovereign immunity.”
What is even more disturbing is that employers can’t be held liable either. If your employer mandates inoculations, they too are protected if the employer suffers side effects.
A fund was created for those that have lost wages and/or had to pay for out of pocket medical expenses if they have been irreparably harmed by taking a vaccine or other countermeasure. However, it’s hard to get it. Less than 6% of people have received its compensations over the past ten years.
PREP, formally known as Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, was put in place by Alex Azar, the Health and Human Services Secretary. The act was established to protect companies who manufactured or distributed critical medical supplies—such as the covid-19 vaccination and other treatments. Companies are protected unless proven there was “willful misconduct” on the company’s behalf.
The protection will last until 2024, which basically means from now until then, these companies can’t be sued for injuries others may endure.
The covid-19 protection is unprecedented and could be because of its expedited timeline.
“When the government said, ‘We want you to develop this four or five times faster than you normally do,’ most likely the manufacturers said to the government, ‘We want you, the government, to protect us from multimillion-dollar lawsuits,'” said Dunn.
It took four years to develop a vaccine to treat mumps in 1967. Although technology has sharply advanced, the vaccine for COVID-19 has been found and distributed in less than a year. This fact alone has aided in the public’s mistrust of the 2020 vaccine.
A study conducted by Pew Research Center learned that around 4 out of 10 Americans say they would “definitely” or “probably” not agree to take the vaccine. The numbers have declined from the survey conducted two months prior. However, it’s a significant gap that indicates the mistrust issue.
Pfizer continues to encourage Americans to be open to taking the virus, adding no shortcuts to produce it. “This is a vaccine that was developed without cutting corners,” CEO Dr. Albert Bourla said in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday. “This is a vaccine that is getting approved by all authorities in the world. That should say something.”
It’s important to note that the legal protection offered to these drug-making companies helps lower the vaccine price.
“The government doesn’t want people suing the companies making the Covid vaccine. Because then, the manufacturers would probably charge the government a higher price per person per dose,” Dunn explained.
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