DOD 'bait and switch' with emergency and licensed COVID vaccines killed student, lawsuit alleges

The Pentagon conducted "human experimentation without consent" by falsely advertising a COVID-19 vaccine under emergency use authorization as fully licensed, a "bait and switch" that killed a college student, according to a new lawsuit against Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin by the student's estate.

George Watts was waiting for FDA approval of Pfizer's Comirnaty to fulfill the COVID vaccine mandate at New York's Corning Community College, which provided a 35-day grace period for compliance following Comirnaty's Aug. 23, 2021, approval, the filing states.

Yet what the 24-year-old received was the EUA version "after having been convinced of the vaccine’s purported robust safety," according to the estate, administered by Watts' father. His lawyer, Ray Flores, told Just the News that sentence means Watts was "unaware" he was receiving the wrong vaccine, not that the provider told him it was different but just as good as Comirnaty.

"Since DOD was the lead for implementing most vaccine-related initiatives within" Operation Warp Speed, it is responsible for a "deliberate and calculated mass-deception campaign specifically designed to obfuscate the fact" that the EUA vaccines were "merely experimental" – an act of "willful misconduct" that removes DOD's legal shield under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, the suit claims. 

The suit is funded by Children's Health Defense, the vaccine-skeptical nonprofit founded by Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.

Each is suing media organizations in the Trusted News Initiative for allegedly conspiring to censor disfavored narratives through a "classic group boycott."

Only licensed vaccines may be marketed as "safe and effective," whereas EUA versions must inform recipients they "may be effective" but cannot make safety claims. Twitter suspended Just the News founder John Solomon's account for sharing a report on the legal distinctions, which are relevant to vaccine mandates.

DOD's own policy requires service members only to take "FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines," a Congressional Research Service report noted after Comirnaty's approval. Pfizer continued distributing its EUA vaccine, however, claiming both have the "same formulation" and "can be used interchangeably" despite different labeling requirements. 

U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor ruled they were not the same in a challenge to the DOD mandate, since "FDA licensure does not retroactively apply to vials shipped" before approval and limits Comirnaty's manufacture to "approved locations." 

Comirnaty also has a supposedly inactive ingredient the EUA version does not, an "excipient" that may nonetheless "affect the safety and effectiveness of drug products,” said Winsor, citing an appeals court ruling on licensing and "active ingredients."

Watts experienced "medical symptoms" after the first EUA dose that grew far worse after the second on Sept. 17, 2021, including "extremity numbness, difficulty grasping and holding onto objects, sinus infection, cough and light sensitivity," the suit claims.

He went to the emergency room 25 days later with "sore throat, sinus congestion, and a cough" as well as a neck lump. Antibiotics didn't work, requiring two subsequent trips over the next two weeks, the second fatal after he started coughing blood and stopped breathing.

Watts died six weeks after the second dose, with "no past medical history to explain." The coroner-confirmed cause of death, the suit says, was "vaccine-related myocarditis," a known heightened risk for men his age who take mRNA vaccines. He tested negative for COVID in the postmortem.

The estate said it knows Watts received an EUA vaccine because of the lot numbers on the vials, which indicate they were manufactured July 31, 2021.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) demanded answers from Secretary Austin and officials from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after DOD whistleblowers found Comirnaty-labeled vials with lot numbers associated with EUA vaccines.

"DOD never initiated distribution of Comirnaty," as evidenced by a National Institutes of Health bulletin that said Pfizer was waiting until it ran out of EUA vaccines before producing Comirnaty, the suit states.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where the suit was filed, previously struck down DOD's attempt to force service members to take the "investigational" anthrax vaccine, making them "guinea pigs for experimental drugs," the suit noted.

"DOD was clearly aware of the legal distinctions" between the two vaccines, and the version Watts took – he original monovalent – never received a license before the FDA revoked its EUA following approval of bivalent vaccines, the estate claims.

"DOD refused to acknowledge past wrongs cited by this Court in Doe v. Rumsfeld [the anthrax case] when DOD ordered an initial 100 million doses and agreed to purchase up to 600 million additional doses of a prototype simply upon the issuance of the FDA’s EUA rather than licensure," showing it "utterly disregarded the illegality and the obvious risk inherent in its program," the suit concludes.