Unreported: Why was ‘Immunize Under Fives’ group demonstrating at the FDA?

Special to WorldTribune, May 12, 2022

Analysis by Joe Schaeffer, 247 Real News

An organization pressuring the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to urgently expedite a review of the coronavirus vaccine for children under the age of five presents itself as a grassroots movement fueled by concerned parents. A closer examination finds Big Pharma-tied physicians and professional vaccine activists leading the way.

As usual, a demonstration by the group Monday had Big Media air cover. ABC-7 TV in Washington, D.C. reported May 9:

Parents with Protect Their Future rallied outside the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland on Monday. The parents demanded an urgent review of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine for their children.

The vaccine company submitted its request for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to authorize its vaccine for children ages 6 months to 6 years old. Right now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends children 5 and older get vaccinated.

Activists outside FDA headquarters rally for authorizing the jabbing of kids under age 5. / WorldTribune / John Davidson

“Broken Truth” host John Davidson stumbled onto one of the protests over the weekend. He told WorldTribune that he tried to speak with a woman taking part. “I asked her what they were protesting as she was leaving. She said they wanted to get Moderna vaccines into kids without waiting for Pfizer data in June.

“I said, ‘So you’re protesting for MORE vaccines?’

“She said yes and then I asked her if they had spoken with any families harmed by the vaccines. She stormed off. I tried to apologize and say I wasn’t trying to be rude but she was not having any of it.”

What explains the skittishness? Information on Protect Their Future is hard to find. The group’s website provides no details of leadership or staff much less any possible financial backers. But gleaning the friendly big-box media coverage PTF receives offers clues.

From a March 23 USA Today article on the Moderna jab for the youngest of kids:

“We saw the devastating impact omicron had on children under 5 who are still vulnerable without any access to vaccines,” said Dr. Katherine Matthias, pediatrician and co-founder of Protect Their Future, a grassroots group advocating for child COVID-19 vaccines. “A significant portion of pediatric deaths occurred during that surge, and we cannot permit any more of these preventable losses. No more parents should have to bury their children, especially when there is a safe and effective vaccine available.”

Dr. Matthias is on the faculty at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Greenville. Her university bio shows her to be a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and its “Section on International Child Health.”

WorldTribune reported of that organization in January:

AAP is a deeply compromised organization funded heavily by Big Pharma:

Numerous big-box media outlets have dutifully reported that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), “an organization of 67,000 pediatricians,” has recommended that all children over the age of two wear masks at school. What is not being mentioned is that this group’s current “corporate partnersand “top 10 donors” include Big Pharma goliaths Johnson & Johnson and Merck, as well as multinational corporations, such as Nestle, that sell health-related products aimed at children.

At least USA Today openly disclosed Matthias’s role at Protect Their Future. Which is more than one can say for the British newspaper heavily funded by Bill Gates.

From a gushing Feb. 1 article in The Guardian on Pfizer’s bid to seek authorization of its vaccine for kids under five:

Parents and experts mostly remain cautiously optimistic, but many say they want to see the results of the trial first.

“Everybody is really excited about the news,” said Katherine Matthias, a pediatrician in South Carolina and the parent of two children under five. “We’re moving the needle on things, but we still need to see the data.”

These back-to-back paragraphs are pathetic:

“If two doses are authorized, parents will have the opportunity to begin a Covid-19 vaccination series for their children while awaiting potential authorization of a third dose,” Albert Bourla, chairman and CEO of Pfizer, said in the statement.

“Getting that series started now, instead of three to four months down the road after so many children inevitably contract Omicron, is a huge win,” Matthias said.

The paper sorta kinda throws in Matthias’s Protect Their Future affiliation at the end, though it does not name the group. Also absent: any mention of “concerned parents,” only doctors and scientists involved in the lobbying effort:

Matthias is among a group of physicians and scientists who are advocating for the FDA and the CDC to allow off-label use of the vaccine among younger children at high risk, before it’s authorized in this age group.

The Protect Their Future website features a physician’s letter to the FDA calling for urgent review of the jab for under-fives.

The first two signees are AAP’s New York chapter 2 and its Wyoming branch.

The third name listed is Mark W. Kline. As WorldTribune reported in January:

Meanwhile another very prominent doctor, whose credibility merited journalistic scrutiny, is saying the mild variation known as Omicron poses a deadly threat to kids:

Dr. Mark Kline, chief medical officer at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, says he has serious concerns as the Omicron variant continues to fuel the spread of COVID-19.

“We’ve seen what delta and now omicron can do to children,” Kline said. “We know that they are at risk for serious disease and even death.”

Kline’s Big Money ties are not hard to uncover:

Before moving to New Orleans, Kline spent 23 years at Baylor University’s College of Medicine, rising to the top of the leadership ladder there.

He was a close associate of noted vaccine fanatic and establishment media darling Dr. Peter Hotez.

Like Hotez, Kline has benefited greatly from funding by Bill Gates.

A search of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation website shows nine grants doled out to Baylor College of Medicine while Kline was on staff. All told, the grants total more than $7 million….

Kline is also the “former chair of the AAP [American Academy of Pediatrics] Committee on Pediatric AIDS.”

The fourth signee on the letter is Matthias.

The more one looks, the phonier things get.

Maryland’s Prince George’s Community TV interviewed one of the “grassroots concerned parents” at the FDA protest. She can be seen at the :30 mark of the video.

But far from being merely a regular parent voicing her opinion, Amanda Makulec is a rabid professional pro-vaccine activist.

Makulec is Executive Director of an organization called The Data Visualization Society.

In Feb. 2021, on behalf of that group, she created an extensive “data” report promoting mass coronavirus vaccination.

Yes, understanding what share of the population is hesitant or unlikely to get the COVID-19 vaccine is important, particularly when we understand why they’re hesitant or who is likely to influence them, in order to tailor public health messaging and connect with community leaders. But we have a more immediate challenge right now related to supply and logistics constraints to overcome on the path towards herd immunity.

She references ruling elite pillars The New York Times, NPR, the World Health Organization, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Johns Hopkins University in her work.

Makulec herself is credentialed in the world of Big Medicine. Her bio at the end of the report reads:

[She] holds a Masters of Public Health from the Boston University School of Public Health. She worked with data in global health programs for eight years….

In a remarkable coincidence, Makulec just so happened to write an op-ed for The New York Times published two days after the FDA protest in support of jabbing toddlers on how anti-vaxxers mentally tortured her over the sudden death of her 2 ½ month baby.

This is how networks operate.

Of course, the truth is not as simple as that.

Makulec, who writes that she has “dedicated my career to creating responsible visualizations of public health data,” stated in a now-deleted tweet in July 2021:

I was so relieved to get vaccinated for COVID-19 while I was pregnant this year, and to have some reassurance that I’m sharing my immune protections with my newborn now through breastfeeding.

Happy to chat with expectant moms about questions if you’re feeling hesitant.

She then went on to tweet the intensely private news of her baby’s death to the world two months later.

Makulec made her jabbed pregnancy not only a matter of public record but offered herself as a health authority willing to give advice to other mothers contemplating doing the same and then publicly revealed that the baby involved had tragically died.

In other words, she made her devastating experience a story.

The negative replies she inevitably received allowed her to be interviewed by NBC News’s outrageously biased “reporter” Brandy Zadrozny and then to write her highly praised op-ed in The New York Times, both framing her as the victim of savage and inexplicable anti-vaxxer cruelty.

It’s ghoulish, but it’s also so transparently contrived.

The drive to “Immunize Under Fives” feels similarly orchestrated in the most leaden of ways. There is nothing subtle or clever about the attempted manipulation. The proponents of jabbing toddlers don’t seem to feel a need to hide the heavy-handed stage management behind their feeble “grassroots” narrative.


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