In this busy issue:
Primary election results – preliminary summary
Reader Poll: Will President Trump’s Vaccination Flexibility EO Effect WA Policies?
COVID Criminal Referral Requests Come To Washington
Department of Justice Finds Seven Cases of Healthcare Fraud in Washington
Washington Department of Health Expands Vaccine Marketing Efforts
ICWA to Host a Table at August 15 Summer Freedom Festival in Redmond
Research, Decide, Document
In Episode 378, guest Chris Downey, creator of VaxCalc, examines the top mistakes parents make when evaluating vaccines—from treating an entire “well-visit” as one decision to overlooking product differences, cumulative ingredient exposure, risk of the targeted illnesses, and what to monitor after vaccination. Chris walks us through the expanded VaxCalc platform and demonstrates how parents can prepare for the appointment, evaluate each proposed intervention separately, compare vaccine brands and ingredients, document their decisions, and develop a plan before they are asked to consent. We also look at the major new tools added to the platform since we last welcomed Chris in October 2024.
Watch replay on CHD-TV, and CHD-WA chapter’s: Website, Rumble, X
Listen to replay: KKNW AM 1150, SoundCloud, Apple Podcast, Spotify
Links:
Vaccine Risk/Benefit Practitioner Referral - Informed Choice Washington | ICWA
Acute exposure and chronic retention of aluminum in three vaccine schedules and effects of genetic and environmental variation McFarland et al - Study citing 7-year half-life of aluminum in humans
It’s a full week after the August 4 primary election, and some counties still have ballots to count. Most counties won’t certify results until August 18. But, with the large majority of votes processed, the results for most races should stand.
Our good news is that of the forty-one candidates who were endorsed (and recommended) by Vote for Health Freedom, all but six will be on the general ballot. Another two candidates, Spencer Meline (Congressional District 8) and Cliff Moon (LD 1, Pos. 2) are too close to call (as determined in analysis by our crack election staff).
That’s 33 to 35 candidates who Stand for Health Freedom on the general election ballot. Excellent news in our opinion.
Perhaps the most notable race was in Congressional District 4 where candidate Jerrod Sessler WILL NOT make it past the primary. However, the silver lining is that Amanda McKinney is by far the leader of this district just East of the Cascades. She was very active during the pandemic “challenging COVID overreach” as her website says. She testified regularly in Olympia, side-by-side with Informed Choice Washington in support of parent’s rights bills and initiatives.
Next week, we’ll report in more detail.
by Bob Runnells
The huge news of the week was Monday with President Trump signing an Executive Order (EO), along with RFK Jr., Jay Bhattacharya and Stephen Miller as witnesses in the Oval Office, titled: DELIVERING GOLD STANDARD CHILDHOOD VACCINE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AMERICANS.
In a quick summary, since meetings of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is tied up in the courts, this EO
is the next strategic counterpunch by Trump and the HHS to reform vaccine policies based on the actual underwhelming science that was used to approve shots in the first place.
Only eleven vaccines are now generally recommended for children, as opposed to the 2024 schedule that targeted seventeen.
All the other inoculations remain available, but are recommended for certain higher-risk groups or as doctor-parent shared decisions.
The AG shall challenge state policies that do not maximize parental authority and religious freedom and medical exemptions.
Perhaps most notable, because of the immeasurable amount of redemption for Andy Wakefield, the President is calling for the MMR to be split back into its three components.
As acknowledged during the 41-minute signing ceremony, the EO is most likely going to be embraced by ‘red states’ while ‘blue states’ will resist and continue following existing policies as supported by trade groups like the AAP.
But now, with a federal-level Executive Branch decree, some effects from the EO and other vaccine policy reforms must certainly be felt in Washington state.
Take the poll and predict how Washington will be effected.
And how will this affect well-child visits?
Add your prediction in the comments.
If you need help forming ideas and predictions on the matter, read Coffee and Covid’s glorious recap of the event.
Last week when Rand Paul’s Homeland Security Senate Committee voted eight to five to hold Tony Fauci in contempt of congress, NBC News reported that three states were issuing subpoenas to Fauci, alleging that he profited from the recommendations he made during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, West Virginia Attorney General John McCuskey and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said they would investigate awards, grants, professional opportunities and other financial gains to determine whether Fauci broke any state laws.
Uthmeier cited information contained in Fauci’s personal diary entries, which Paul released in advance of the July 29 hearing with Fauci.
Washington Attorney General Nick Brown is not one of those three listed above. However, AG Brown did come into play in general last week when Nicholas Hulscher from Focal Points reported that criminal referral requests were sent to all fifty state attorney generals to seek prosecutions of Fauci and top public-health officials.
Hulscher wrote the following:
The 50-state campaign was launched by Vires Law Group and Florida gubernatorial candidate Rachel Rodriguez through the Federal Accountability Freedom Operation. It represents the culmination of years of victim collection, witness testimony, legal analysis, and evidence gathering tied to COVID-era hospital policies and treatment protocols.
The requests cite potential offenses including murder, terrorism, racketeering, manslaughter, human trafficking, elder abuse, false imprisonment, kidnapping, aggravated assault, battery, and reckless conduct. They call on state prosecutors to examine senior public-health officials, hospital administrators, healthcare providers, and institutions accused of participating in policies that caused preventable deaths and serious injuries.
The individuals identified for investigation included Fauci, Cliff Lane, David Morens, Francis Collins, Deborah Birx, Rochelle Walensky, Stephen Hahn, Janet Woodcock, Rick Bright, Peter Hotez, Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric, and Christine Grady.
This further comes into play here in Washington because hospital administrators and healthcare providers are also named as potential subjects of investigation for implementing the policies and protocols at the center of the allegations.
Hulscher elaborated on this:
The strategy is centered on state and county prosecution because the deaths, injuries, and alleged unlawful acts occurred within state jurisdictions.
State prosecutors have authority over crimes including homicide, manslaughter, abuse, kidnapping, false imprisonment, human trafficking, terrorism, and racketeering. The requests argue that federal titles, former government positions, and federal pardons do not automatically prevent investigation of potential state crimes.
Each attorney general is being asked to examine the evidence, identify victims and responsible parties within the state, interview witnesses and surviving family members, and pursue charges wherever the evidence supports criminal liability.
The central legal argument is that senior officials cannot escape scrutiny simply because many of the disputed policies were carried out by hospitals and medical personnel further down the chain. The requests ask prosecutors to examine who designed the policies, who enforced them, who benefited financially, and who was harmed.
Getting back to Fauci, Hulscher wrote, “The filings describe a top-down system in which federal health agencies shaped COVID policy, hospital systems enforced it, and physicians and patients lost control over individualized medical decisions.”
The one at the top was Fauci, whom Hulscher wrote the following about in a second article on the Contempt of Senate vote:
Contempt of Congress is only one small aspect of Fauci’s illicit activities. He forced deadly mRNA shots on millions through illegal mandates, suppressed life-saving treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, promoted lethal hospital protocols involving remdesivir and ventilators, imposed country-destroying lockdowns that devastated millions, oversaw the destruction of federal records, and funded gain-of-function experiments that contributed to the pandemic… before working to cover it up with the CIA.
The deadliest of these top-down protocols from Fauci where patients lost control over individualized medical decisions was with remdesivir.
HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr’s book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health shows why so many were unwilling to take remdesivir.
Kennedy starts off with this:
In 2018, Gilead entered remdesivir in a NIAID-funded clinical trial against Ebola in Africa.
This is how we know that Anthony Fauci was well aware of remdesivir’s toxicity when he orchestrated its approval for COVID patients. NIAID sponsored that project. Dr. Fauci had another NIAID-incubated drug, ZMapp, in the same clinical trial, testing efficacy against Ebola alongside two experimental monoclonal antibody drugs. Researchers planned to administer all four drugs to Ebola patients across Africa over a period of four to eight months.
However, six months into the Ebola study, the trial’s Safety Review Board suddenly pulled both remdesivir and ZMapp from the trial. Remdesivir, it turned out, was hideously dangerous. Within 28 days, subjects taking remdesivir had lethal side effects including multiple organ failure, acute kidney failure, septic shock, and hypotension, and 54 percent of the remdesivir group died—the highest mortality rate among the four experimental drugs.
According to the book on the Real Anthony Fauci, while he was playing around with the placebo and end points of the NIAID funded studies, The Lancet had just published a placebo-controlled Chinese study that showed remdesivir utterly ineffective at keeping hospitalized patients alive or reducing the duration of hospitalizations. Even more important, remdesivir did not reduce the presence of the virus in the blood. Worst of all, the Chinese study confirmed remdesivir’s deadly toxicity. The Chinese regulators and researchers shuttered that trial because of potentially lethal side effects. Remdesivir caused serious injuries in 12 percent of the patients, compared to 5 percent of patients in the placebo group.
The Chinese study looked as if it would spell certain doom for remdesivir. But Dr. Fauci appeared at one of his regular White House press conferences, this one in the Oval Office. Seated on the couch next to Deborah Birx and opposite President Trump, Dr. Fauci declared that the data from NIAID’s clinical trial for remdesivir showed “quite good news,” glossing over the drug’s failure to demonstrate any mortality advantage. He boasted that the median time for hospitalization was eleven days for patients taking remdesivir, compared to fifteen days in the placebo group. He said to the press, “The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery.” He claimed that his study had therefore proved remdesivir so remarkably beneficial to COVID patients that he had decided that it would be unethical to deny Americans benefits of this wonder drug. He was, he declared, unblinding and ending the study and giving remdesivir to the placebo group. Remdesivir would be America’s new “standard of care” for COVID. The FDA then granted remdesivir Emergency Use Authorization.
As for Fauci’s remdesivir trickle-down effect, the Vires Law Group alleges that hospitals received financial incentives connected to COVID diagnoses, admissions, treatments, and institutional compliance. At the same time, patients were denied meaningful informed consent and physicians who challenged the protocols faced retaliation, termination, or threats against their licenses.
The materials specifically raised concerns about the use of remdesivir, the suppression of alternative treatments, the isolation of patients from family members, and the denial of requested care.
As for trickling down here to Washington, of the eighteen cases of COVID-19 hospital atrocities listed by Covid Human Betrayal Memory Project (CHBMP), nine of them were deaths following the administration of remdesivir. They are as follows:
Name of Victim: James Christopher Rutherford
James was sixty-seven years old when he was admitted to Skagit Valley Hospital in Mt. Vernon on October 5, 2021. They gave him remdesivir even though his wife, Barbara, had asked for Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin. James died two months after being admitted.Name of Victim: Barbara Daniel
Barbara was seventy years old when she entered Tacoma General Hospital on September 14, 2021. She was put on remdesivir for five days.Name of Victim: J. Allen Blodgett
J. Allen was sixty-two years old when he entered Providence Sacred Hospital on September 5, 2021. He died on September 30, 2021. He was on remdesivir for fifteen days.Name of Victim: Timothy D. Blankenship
Timothy went to the hospital with COVID-19, and they gave him remdesivir. His brother, daughter and ex-wife, through talking to Timothy on the phone and through text messages, advised him to refuse the remdesivir, but he placed his trust in the doctors and began to have renal failure. It was around this time they put him on the ventilator. At this point the doctors were mostly speaking with his wife, and she was adamant that they were both in agreement that his life wouldn’t be worth living if he got out of the hospital, and they put him on the end-of-life track. One week after his fifty-ninth birthday, they took him off the ventilator. He was breathing on his own and coherent, so, the doctors upped his dosage of morphine and midazolam until he expired.Name of Victim: Shannon Michael Washburn
Shannon was sixty-five years old when he entered the Kadlec Regional Medical Center on August 11, 2021. He died there on September 4, 2021. He was on remdesivir for five days. He was never informed of its EUA status or side effects.Name of Victim: Michael Hobbs
Even though Michael was never given informed consent, he was on remdesivir for five days. He was never told of its side effects or emergency use authorization status. “I was not allowed to accompany him or be in the hospital,” his wife, Terresa Hobbs, said. The hospital immediately began looking for another hospital to which to transfer. When a bed was found at University of Washington Medical Center Northwest, he was told he had to be intubated for the transfer or sign a DNR. He agreed to the ventilator for the transfer. After a brief call to Terresa on a nurse’s phone, he was sedated, intubated, and transferred. Terresa never spoke to him again.Name of Victim: Molly Reitz
Molly was seventy-seven years old when she entered Ferry County Hospital in central Washington on April 22, 2021. Her daughter was not allowed to see her. According to her daughter, the hospital staff kept telling Molly that she was going to die. Molly was on remdesivir for five days even though she was never told of its side effects or emergency use authorization status. The daughter is seeking an attorney to hold the hospital accountable for her mother’s death.Name of Victim: Phillip Carron (First covered by The Weekly News in November of 2022)
Thirty-two-year-old Phillip got just one dose of remdesivir, and that’s all it took for his liver and kidneys to start to shut down. Hospital attendants were overheard talking about Phillip Carron, Ashley Wines fiancé, while he lay in his hospital bed: “The unvaccinated get what they deserve.” Phillip had been admitted to St. Joseph’s Peace Health Hospital in Bellingham for COVID-19 on September 23, 2021. He had not received the COVID-19 shot. While Phillip was on the ventilator for fifteen days, he lost eighty-six pounds. After he initially refused remdesivir, he was put on morphine overnight. According to Ashley, this increases respiratory distress. It was one of over forty medications he was given. When Phillip was eventually weak enough, they convinced him to accept remdesivir, and he went into complete liver failure. He died on October 14, 2021.
Name of Victim: Donald Kale Lloyd
Born with asthma, was fifty-nine years old when he walked into Lady of Lourdes Hospital on September 11, 2021 with COVID-19 pneumonia and shortness of breath. According to Kristina, “They immediately started him on remdesivir without his informed consent or knowledge.” They also sedated him. “They gave him drugs so that he was not able to communicate verbally and had delirium,” Kristina said. Soon, he was pulling at his IVs and was trying to remove his BIPAP mask. According to Kristina, he wanted to leave, but they wouldn’t let him go home. “He was put on restraints, sedated, and then ventilated,” Kristina said. “My dad became a prisoner of the hospital.” Kristina is certain that the doctors knew that Donald had wished not to be intubated. But, with Kristina’s sister’s consent, they did it. Donald then got sepsis and, after initially refusing, was put on antibiotics just before he died on September 28, 2021 from acute hypoxic respiratory failure, adult respiratory distress syndrome, SARS COV2 pneumonia, and SARS COV2 infection. Other conditions listed were acute kidney injury, sepsis and septic shock, and acute fibrillation with rapid ventricular response. According to Kristina, no autopsy was done because it was a COVID-19 case.
The Vires Law Group’s nationwide action is rooted in testimony from families who say their loved ones entered hospitals seeking care and were instead isolated, denied requested treatment, subjected to rigid protocols, and ultimately killed or seriously harmed.
These families describe a recurring pattern: patients separated from loved ones, denied access to advocates, prevented from receiving requested medications, pressured into unwanted interventions, and placed on standardized protocols despite individual medical concerns.
Many of the above remdesivir entries from CHBMP reflect this recurring pattern. Yet another of this recurring pattern in Washington reported by CHBMP did not involve remdesivir but was just as harrowing.
The case involved seventy-two-year old Wendy Gene Nickelson. She entered PeaceHealth Southwest Hospital on January 1, 2022. The hospital also happened to be where her daughter Shannon Adams worked. She said the following about her experience:
My mother was denied a support person for six days. After we fought, they finally let my sister be her support person but wouldn’t let her use the bathroom, even in my mom’s room. I was told if I put one foot in my mom’s room, I would be fired. They denied my mom antibiotics for her pneumonia, failed to give her blood thinners until January 11, even with an elevated d-dimer, and bullied both my sister and me. When I went to the house supervisor, asking to be allowed to be a support person as well since my sister could not go more than seven hours without going to the bathroom or drinking some water, I was denied, even though that’s against the hospital’s own policy. I was told by the RNs that they were sick of the unvaxxed. When I asked the attending medical doctor to try other medications, he simply asked me whether my mother was vaccinated. I was shocked. When I told him that she was not, he said there was nothing he could give her. He did this to me two times. My mother’s HFN was found in her mouth one day instead of her nose. No one would take the time to help her prone or allow me to help even though I’ve worked in COVID-19 units throughout the pandemic. There were so many criminal things that happened.
Wendy died on January 24, 2022. Shannon said, “I’ve worked in healthcare for thirteen years and have never seen anything like what happened and is still happening.”
All of that discriminatory hospital treatment was enabled by Fauci’s public messaging, and probably some other guilty parties as well (e.g., Joe Biden’s ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’ comments).
Politically speaking, it will be no surprise when Washington AG Nick Brown chuckles at this criminal referral request before tossing it into the wastebasket. After all, Brown is a devoted Democrat, and Fauci has been strictly a partisan issue between the two major parties, as reflected in all five Democrat Senators voting not to hold him in contempt. In fact, this is what Democrat Senator Maggie Hassan said before the vote:
The goal was to wait for Dr. Fauci to make any kind of misstatement and then have a weaponized Department of Justice file criminal charges for that new statement that would not have been covered by the pardon, leaving Dr. Fauci little choice but to invoke his constitutional right to not walk directly into a trap.
Furthermore, Fauci still seems to have the support of many interest groups, notably the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), as ICWA Weekly News reported on December 4, 2024, in which it was dug up that the ACLU’s California chapter handed him a Bill of Rights Award in October of 2021. As if the bestowment of this honor isn’t weird enough, check out the ACLU’s write-up on Fauci:
No one has done more to guide the nation through the terrors of the pandemic than Dr. Fauci. As a passionate leader in the fight against health misinformation — even in the face of threats and attempts to discredit him by politicians, conspiracy theorists, and charlatans alike — he has never wavered in his drive to impart honest information rooted in science. As he said of anti-science forces, “I represent something that is uncomfortable for them — the truth.” He is a national hero, but not for the first time. In the 1980s, he was an advocate for compassionate, science-based treatment of people with AIDS at a time when those patients were so often shunned.
We at ICWA invite the ACLU of Southern California, Washington, or any other chapter, (or any other group for that matter) to point out our “health misinformation.”
Last Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced charges against nineteen defendants for “participation in various fraud schemes involving over four million dollars” in claims to Medicare and Medicaid home health aid schemes.
“That makes nearly 800 charges by the DOJ in its healthcare fraud crackdown in just over a year,” Highwire reporter Jefferey Jaxon wrote the following day. “For many Americans these headlines of a seemingly unstoppable robbery in progress cause stress and anxiety because solutions appear to be few.”
We know as of a June 23 Department of Justice announcement that this National Health Care Fraud Takedown has resulted in 455 defendants charged in connection with over $6.5 billion in alleged fraud.
The DOJ wrote:
The Justice Department today announced the 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, which resulted in charges against 455 defendants, including 90 doctors and other licensed medical professionals, for their alleged participation in health care fraud and opioid abuse schemes involving over $6.5 billion in false claims and significant patient harm, including death. Today’s Takedown represents a new era in federal, state, and international cooperation to combat health care fraud: cases in 56 federal districts and 45 U.S. states and territories, with 50 state Medicaid Fraud Control Units participating, the most in Department history. In addition, unprecedented international cooperation over the two-week Takedown resulted in the apprehension and return to the United States of the following health care fraudsters: one defendant in Kyrenia in connection with an over $3.7 billion scheme; two defendants in Estonia in connection with a previously charged $10.6 billion scheme; and, in the Philippines, one of FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters in connection with a previously-charged $1.2 billion telemedicine fraud scheme. The Takedown involves the cutting-edge use of data analytics to target the worst actors; the seizure of over $182 million in cash, luxury vehicles, jewelry, and other assets; and full-spectrum accountability for all criminal actors from doctor’s offices to corporate boardrooms.
“Health care fraud steals from taxpayers, exploits vulnerable patients, and puts lives at risk,” said HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. “Today’s historic enforcement action sends a clear message: if you use our health care system to enrich yourself at the expense of patients or the American people, we will find you, we will prosecute you, and we will hold you accountable. HHS will continue working with our law enforcement partners to protect patients, safeguard taxpayer dollars, and restore integrity to our health care system.”
So how much of this fraud has the DOJ been able to uncover here in Washington?
The Criminal Division of the DOJ provides a webpage that lists summaries of the cases, including seven instances of fraud here in WA. All of these cases, which are listed below, were prosecuted or settled by working through assistant AGs of the Washington Attorney General’s Office.
Comfort Dental Vancouver, located in Vancouver, Washington, and its owner, Dr. Eric Wood, reached a civil settlement to pay $230,000 to resolve allegations regarding upcoding practices that resulted in $152,974.53 in loss to Medicaid. As alleged, the practice billed Washington Medicaid for parenteral medicaments, which are drugs administered by means other than the digestive tract, when the services actually involved over-the-counter doses of ibuprofen. The settlement was handled by Assistant Attorney General Naomi Smith of the Washington Attorney General’s Office, Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Division.
Dentist at Felida, located in Vancouver, Washington, and its owner, Dr. Christian Okafor, reached a civil settlement to pay $360,300 to resolve allegations regarding upcoding practices that resulted in $211,936.95 in loss to Medicaid. As alleged, at least 95% of Dentist at Felida’s billings for palliative treatment (emergency pain) and alveoloplasty (preparing jaw bone for dentures) were billed without proper documentation, medical necessity, or were otherwise not in compliance with Washington Health Care Authority billing guidance and the Core Provider Agreement. The settlement was handled by Assistant Attorney General Naomi Smith of the Washington Attorney General’s Office, Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Division.
Devina Hernandez, 28, of Yakima, Washington, was charged by information with theft and false statements in connection with fraudulently claiming home health care hours when none were provided, resulting in a loss to Medicaid of $18,966.16. As alleged in the certificate for probable cause, Hernandez, a home health care provider, claimed home health hours while the client was in the hospital and she was not providing care. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant Attorney General Nick Carter of the Washington Attorney General’s Office, Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Division.
Jacquelin Montano, 42, of Moses Lake, Washington, was charged by information with theft and false statements in connection with billing for personal care service hours that she did not work, resulting in a loss to Medicaid of $23,615.39. As alleged in the information, Montano, worked as an individual provider for Washington State’s Consumer Directed Employer program for two different clients, providing in-home care services to support seniors and people with disabilities. As alleged, Montano billed for care hours that she did not work, including submitting hours past her termination date, billing for hours when she was not working for or at the client’s home, and adding additional hours after her shift had ended. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant Attorney General Rachel Sterett of the Washington Attorney General’s Office, Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Division.
Lina Parada, 21, of Burien, Washington, was charged by information with theft and false statements in connection with fraudulently claiming home health care hours when none were provided, resulting in a loss to Medicaid of $27,446.47. As alleged in the certificate for probable cause, Parada, a home health care provider, was approved to work as a home health care provider for a patient. In reality, she never provided any care, but filed claim hours as if she had. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant Attorney General Nick Carter of the Washington Attorney General’s Office, Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Division.
Toothdocs, formerly known as Comfort Dental Camas, located in Camas, Washington, and its owners, Dr. Brady Smith and Dr. Erica Lenz, reached a civil settlement to pay $500,000 to resolve allegations regarding upcoding practices that resulted in $371,255.57 in loss to Medicaid. As alleged in the settlement agreement, the practice billed Washington Medicaid for parenteral medicaments, which are drugs administered by means other than the digestive tract, when the services actually involved over-the-counter doses of ibuprofen. The settlement was handled by Assistant Attorney General Naomi Smith of the Washington Attorney General’s Office, Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Division.
Nicole Presnell, 48, of Spokane, Washington, Jason Ross, 51, of Spokane, Washington, Amanda Vermeulen, 43, of Spokane, Washington, and Tracey L. Walker, 56, of Spokane, Washington, were charged by informations with conspiracy to commit theft, theft, Medicaid false statement, and solicitation to commit Medicaid false statement in connection Medicaid fraud in the amount of $141,584.54. As alleged in the information, from July 2023 to October 2025, Walker conspired with in-home care providers Presnell, Ross, and Vermeulen to bill for hours they did not work. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant Attorney General Rachel Sterett of the Washington State Attorney General’s Office.
This summer marks three years since ICWA Weekly News first reported on Attorney Aaron Siri’s nearly two hours of testimony to the Arizona state senate about the federal government’s policies that have led to public distrust in vaccinations, most notably the COVID-19 shots.
At the 1:09:42 mark of the presentation, Siri showed the FDA home page as captured in a screenshot for that time period:
“Does this look like a regulator to you?” Siri asked as he got a few laughs from the senate. “What does this look like? It looks like a marketing ad. What is the FDA’s job? To ensure that the product is safe and effective to its standard. That just creates a real problem: The FDA does not stay in its lanes, so to speak; it should be a cold, hard, regulating agency that critically looks at the data and decides whether it’s safe and effective and nothing more. But instead, it uses itself as part of an industry and goes out and promotes these products even before it’s licensed. I just want you to really think about that for a minute. If an atomic/nuclear regulatory agency, as being responsible for the safety of nuclear power plants, was doing this kind of promoting, people would freak out.”
That same ICWA Weekly News article further noted that if Siri were to look at the Washington Department of Health (DOH), he’d see the same problems. The DOH home page at that time for the COVID-19 shot had made the following undocumented claim:
The closing of the DOH’s Power of Providers Initiative at the end of July because of a loss in federal funding raised the hope that the department would be cutting back on its marketing of vaccines.
But with this month of August being National Immunization Awareness Month, which is by itself a marketing effort, the DOH ballooned its marketing scope.
The evidence comes straight from the DOH’s advent of its new newsletter called the “Immunization Insider.”
Check out this heading in their inaugural newsletter:
A New Name. A Bigger Mission.
They then explain the expansion of their marketing efforts:
The Vaccines for Respiratory Illnesses Newsletter has been renamed to the Immunization Insider, which will cover all vaccines, not just vaccines for respiratory illnesses. Instead of biweekly, this newsletter will be sent out monthly on the first Friday of the month. For important news between issues, visit the Immunization Insider WA Portal.
The DOH then uses National Vaccine Awareness month to further promote Big Pharma’s vaccination products:
The DOH then aims their marketing toward Washington kids:
Back-to-School Immunization Resources
Help families get ready for the new school year with trusted vaccine resources. These free toolkits include social media posts, educational materials, and other resources to support back-to-school immunization efforts.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Vaccine Confidence Campaign toolkit materials include back-to-school social media posts encouraging vaccination in both English and Spanish
Vaccinate Your Family (VYF) has created a back-to-school campaign with free English and Spanish resources to help families make sure children are up to date on vaccines before the first day of school. Visit VYF’s campaign page to learn more.
Unity Consortium has created social media posts and other information to support teen vaccination efforts for the new school year. Check out the resources on their webpage.
(Editor’s snark: Oh great, another teen vaccination promotion group/site!)
The DOH then markets healthcare professionals with a “Together for Health Vaccine Confidence Toolkit,” which offers ways to sell vaccines to patients.
CHW Vaccine Confidence Communications Toolkit
The Together for Health vaccine confidence toolkit helps community health workers (CHWs) have clear, confident conversations about vaccines. You can use the toolkit as a complete guide or explore individual resources based on your needs.
Reviewed by community-based organization partners, the toolkit is available in nine languages and includes print and digital materials, with or without the DOH logo. You can download, share, or print the full toolkit as a single PDF from the Booklet page.
The following excerpt from their Conversation Guide toolkit reflects the DOH’s coaching efforts toward healthcare workers:
A successful conversation might:
FOCUS ON RESULTS. For example: “Vaccines are the best way to protect yourself from many diseases and reduce the severity of illness.”
EMPHASIZE THE PERSONAL BENEFITS OF VACCINATION. For example: “I can tell you are concerned about your family’s health. Vaccines can keep you and them from getting sick.”
INCLUDE PERSONAL AND ENCOURAGING STORIES ABOUT VACCINES. For example: “I decided to get vaccinated because I didn’t want to get sick around my elderly father and my kids. I am happy with my decision.
To further help OB/Gyns and other health providers sell Big Pharma’s vaccines, the DOH offers them the following two free marketing materials:
The Vax for two. Strong mom. Healthy baby poster is now available in 5 languages to order and hang up in your clinic or center. The poster shows which vaccines are recommended during pregnancy and the benefits to mom and baby.
Laminated Childhood Immunization Schedules are available for vaccine providers. They’re pocket-sized for quick reference and laminated for long-lasting durability.
The posters and immunization schedules are available free of charge and can be ordered by following the step-by-step ordering instructions (PDF). Search for “vax for two” or “immunization schedule”. You can also email the Office of Immunization and include material(s) you want to order, quantity of each material, your name, address, and phone number.
And how about this conflict of interest between the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine and Pfizer in this inaugural DOH newsletter:
The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) and Pfizer are offering competitive grants of up to $200,000 to support U.S.-based quality improvement (QI) projects that increase maternal immunization, with a focus on RSV vaccination during pregnancy. The opportunity prioritizes scalable, system-level strategies to improve vaccine access, reduce missed opportunities, strengthen patient engagement, and enhance care coordination.
Application deadline:September 10, 2026, at 8:59 p.m. PDT.
Speaking of competition, in his book Punished by Rewards, Alfie Kohn wrote in the chapter “Skinner-Boxed” about how rewards stymie critical thinking and creativity.
In that chapter, he wrote the following about this do-as-you’re-told mentality:
Teresa Amabile, who specializes in this topic, asks us to picture a rat in the behaviorist’s maze trying to find its way to the cheese. The rat does not stop to weigh the advantages of trying another route, starting off on a path where the cheddar smell is less pronounced in the hope of finding a clever shortcut. No, it just runs toward where it thinks its breakfast waits, as fast as its tiny legs can take it. “The safest, surest, and fastest way out of the maze [is] the well-worn pathway, the uncreative route,” says Amabile. “The more single-mindedly an external goal is pursued, the less likely . . . that creative possibilities will be explored.” The narrow focus induced by rewards is similarly worrisome, she adds, since being open to “the seemingly irrelevant aspects [of a task] might be precisely what is required for creativity.”
With this rat in a behaviorist’s maze in mind, the DOH Immunization Insider made two announcements about winning vaccine awards.
The first was the announcement of the 2026 Immunization Champion Award:
The Immunization Champion Award, presented annually by the Association of Immunization Managers and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recognizes people who make outstanding contributions to immunization in their communities.
Washington’s 2026 Immunization Champion is Alyssa Caucci! Congratulations to Alyssa and all of this year’s nominees for their dedication to protecting the health of people across our state. View and learn about all 48 national 2026 Immunization Champion Award winners.
The second was the announcement of monetary awards for supporting community-based projects that increase access to vaccines, build trust in health care, and strengthen immunization efforts:
Applications are now open for the 2026-2027 SQuaring Up Against Disease (SQUAD) Community Activation Awards, which support community-based projects that increase access to vaccines, build trust in health care, and strengthen immunization efforts.
U.S.-based organizations are eligible to apply for awards ranging from $1,000 to $8,000. Organizers anticipate funding five to 15 projects during the 2026-2027 award cycle.
Applications are due by 11:59 p.m. ET on August 30, 2026. Visit the application webpage for eligibility requirements and submission instructions.
Are you astounded as we are at the effort and dollars spent on injecting something that’s supposed to be good for you?
ICWA and CHD Washington Chapter will be at the Saturday, August 15 Summer Freedom Festival hosted by Let’s Go Washington.
This third annual event will be held in Redmond from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Speakers will be Brian Heywood, Brandi Kruse, and Ari Hoffman.
You must RSVP to get the specific address.
“We’ve been planning this family-friendly event for months and we’re so excited to finally get to celebrate our great state with you this Saturday!,” Let’s Go Washington said this week. “In case you’ve missed it, Freedom Fest is an outdoor festival with music, local food vendors, inflatables for kids, and time with supporters working to fix what’s broken in Washington State. At this event, you’ll hear more about the initiatives and the people supporting them, connect with fellow Washingtonians and enjoy a day of family fun in our great state.”
Meet up with ICWA and Children’s Health Defense chapter organizers and members at the Summer Freedom Fest.
Pick up a new book that promotes natural health and provides options for your health freedom
Join us for live music, fun, community and celebration!
Meme time:
See more memes at Patrick.net.
(As an Amazon Associate, ICWA earns commissions from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.)
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.