My nephew tested positive for COVID in late August. He was asymptomatic. He sent medical documentation from three doctors to Brooklyn College notifying them that he was ineligible for their mandatory COVID vaccine as per CDC guidelines, which stipulate a 90-day waiting period between a positive COVID test and vaccination. CUNY’s Medical Advisor denied his case and notified him that without vaccination he will be dropped from his classes with no refund.
My friend’s daughter had COVID last year. She has antibodies and is eight months pregnant. She submitted a letter from her doctor to Rutgers University, advising against vaccination. Denied. This is the same university that barred a student from taking virtual classes remotely without a vaccine.
And then there’s my friend the nurse who worked through this past year’s crisis, daily treating patients when therapeutics were not yet available. She was shown the exit on September 27, when she refused the vaccine. With the stroke of a pen, she went from hero to lawbreaker, along with thousands of other healthcare workers.
Everyone has a story — anecdotal evidence of leftist politicians indiscriminately denying the very science they exhort us to follow. And wielding a dictatorial cudgel in the name of medicine that contravenes both medicine and common sense. Not to mention civil liberties.
Nowadays, policy seems to lead the science. Vaccine mandates ignore robust natural immunity among millions of citizens and force vaccines with known risk of immediate side effects, rare and otherwise, and unknown risk of long-term side effects.
No one disputes the dangers of COVID, especially for the elderly and those with co-morbidities. But one is branded a pariah if one voices any doubt about a one-vaccine-fits-all policy or opts for effective therapeutics against a virus with a 1% mortality rate for adults, according to Dr. Fauci, and a 0.00%-0.26% rate for children, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Saying no to a vaccine, whose waning antibodies do not sufficiently protect against breakthrough infections, transmission and hospitalization, is likely saying no to your job and your lifestyle.
Those who choose not to vaccinate, many of them who already had COVID, are not harboring a secret death wish. Nor are they uneducated conspiracy theorists. To the contrary — the health reasons behind their decision might be just as valid as those who choose to vaccinate. And they should be allowed their own health decisions without facing the mandate firing squad.
In the dystopian world of Mayor De Blasio, Typhoid Mary can now present a COVID vaccination card and enter any NYC restaurant or gym, no questions asked. But someone with naturally acquired antibodies and no card cannot.
Either antibodies work or they don’t. Have millions of Americans been reduced to a modern-day Shylock, vainly protesting, “If COVID infects us, do we not become immune?”
According to Pfizer’s own scientist, Nick Karl, those with natural immunity “probably have more antibodies against the virus” and those “antibodies are probably better than the vaccination.” Chris Croce, Pfizer Senior Associate Scientist, concurs, adding that “You’re protected for longer” with natural COVID antibodies compared to the vaccine.
Recently, Senator Rand Paul, himself a doctor, accused Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra of “being dishonest about naturally acquired immunity.” He said that the “vast preponderance of scientific studies, dozens and dozens, show robust long-lasting immunity after COVID infection.”
The senator also accused Dr. Fauci of “lying” when the coronavirus czar denied having a “thought” about naturally acquired immunity. “He is lying to you. The reason he [Fauci] won’t bring up natural immunity is because it foils his plans to get everyone possible vaccinated…if you ignore naturally acquired immunity then you’re saying we don’t have enough people, you have to force it on younger people…If you’re 85, your chances of dying are 10,000 times greater than if you’re 10. Should we treat a 10-year-old the same as we treat an 85-year-old? It is nonsense.”
Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA platform technology used in COVID vaccines, was censored for sharing vaccine concerns and believing that “people have the right to decide whether to accept a vaccine or not.” Like Senator Paul, he said, “The risk-benefit ratio for those 18 and below doesn’t justify vaccines.”
Yet, such concrete data is not enough to mitigate the strong-arm policies put in place that defy the Nuremberg Code of 1947. That code explicitly states that, “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential” for “permissible medical experiments.” And while mandate supporters claim that they are no longer “experimental,” pursuant to FDA approval in August, any long-term effects are certainly unknown and will be so for a long time to come.
HIPPA too is suddenly passe. Those who previously put a premium on medical privacy are now referencing precedents of states having the constitutional authority to compel vaccination. However, the facts here are widely dissimilar. Mandate advocates point to the 1905 Supreme Court case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, in which a Massachusetts resident challenged that state’s mandatory smallpox vaccine laws and the court upheld a state’s authority to enforce them.
But the first smallpox vaccination was engineered by Edward Jenner in 1798, a full 107 years before Cambridge pastor Henning Jacobson contested the successful and widely used vaccine. Democrats, from the president on down, have rammed a vaccine that went from experimental to mandatory use in only nine months — a vaccine developed by a multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry that makes up the country’s largest group of political donors and lobbyists and is promoted over many therapeutics.
For Biden especially, COVID is the gift that keeps on giving. Biden and the Democrats owe their 2020 victory to the pandemic. And in the spirit of never letting a crisis go to waste, Biden has been violating personal liberties and imposing vaccine mandates to deflect from the crisis at the Southern border, the catastrophe of Afghanistan and to promote reckless multi-trillion-dollar social spending bills. Simultaneously he is using fear- mongering to pit citizen against citizen and information against “misinformation.”
At the helm of the vaccine mandates, politicians, media and big tech have grown adept at shutting down dissenters, having an impressive history in cancel culture behind them. And it is becoming increasingly difficult to express a credible opposing opinion about something as fundamental as one’s health.
Vaccinations bring to mind the popular saying that “nothing in science is absolute.” Vaccination mandates bring to mind the popular saying that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Together, they present a lethal combination.