Like President Biden, who said in December 2020, “I don’t think it should be mandatory, I wouldn’t demand it be mandatory,” I was opposed to COVID-19 vaccine mandates from the start. Unlike President Biden, I haven’t flip-flopped.
In fact, my opposition to mandates is growing stronger with each new anecdote and piece of information that shows not only how futile they are but how devastating these self-inflicted harms will be. President Biden, his administration, corporate media, and social media are denying three realities:
1. The effectiveness of natural immunity and how medically unnecessary it is for the previously infected to get vaccinated.
2. The fact that fully vaccinated individuals are getting infected and transmitting COVID-19. Unfortunately, some are also becoming seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying. This is not, as President Biden repeatedly insists, a pandemic solely of the unvaccinated.
3. Vaccine injuries, including death, are occurring at far higher numbers than health authorities want to admit.
“Established in 1990, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a national early warning system to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines,” says its government website. As of October 1, 2021, VAERS has reported 16,310 deaths after COVID shots so far — with 5,326 (33 percent) occurring on Day 0, 1, or 2 after vaccination — and 778,685 total adverse events.
The two main criticisms of discussing this data from VAERS are that it does not prove the COVID injections caused these injuries (although these numbers should still alarm) and that VAERS significantly underreports vaccine injuries (which should increase alarm).
Those of us who attempt to inform the public of these three realities are not only the targets of vilification, we are also magnets for people who desperately want their stories to be told so others can avoid harm. Over the last few weeks, the stories have become more numerous and more alarming.
Three areas of particular urgency involve health care, the military, and aviation. Some of the stories have already been reported publicly, some have not. Here are but a few examples.
As we have seen in New York state, many doctors and nurses who refuse to be vaccinated now must leave health care, either voluntarily or involuntarily, due to vaccine coercion. Their decades of medical skill and knowledge will be lost to the mandates.
I have been inundated with testimonials from doctors, nurses, and other health-care workers asking for relief from the mandates and indicating they will not succumb to the pressure. New York’s experience will be replicated throughout America, and the negative impact on health care will be profound.
I have been in contact with Lt. Col. Theresa Long, an Army flight surgeon. Her affidavit, which was part of an amended filing in a lawsuit against the military regarding vaccine mandates and injuries in the military, was made public in late September and describes only a small portion of the alarming story she has to tell.
As a result of her efforts to alert her superiors, she is now a pariah to her senior command, and her medical license is being attacked merely for speaking out. The day before her superiors canceled all her appointments with patients, two out of five aviators she saw had developed pericarditis shortly after vaccination, only reporting their symptoms because they read an affidavit online. She has much more to tell but is under a gag order imposed by the military.
The recent flight delays involving Southwest Airlines are another harbinger of mandate harm. Although Southwest’s CEO and pilot union officially deny that delays are being caused by a worker slowdown in reaction to vaccine mandates, individuals are confirming what most of us view as obvious.
Last week, I received a letter from a Wisconsin constituent who is a pilot for a U.S.-based airline. His testimonial raises serious concerns regarding airline safety and demonstrates why we can add a growing pilot shortage to the self-inflicted harms of the vaccine mandate.
The most alarming anecdote in this letter involved a recently vaccinated pilot who “sustained, over a two-day period, partial blindness in one eye and then severe migraine headaches.” His doctor told him he had suffered “micro strokes.” The pilot did not report his medical condition to his Federal Aviation Administration medical examiner because he feared “he would lose his pilot certifications, and hence his livelihood.”
Long submitted her affidavit because her primary responsibility involves keeping military pilots healthy and flight-ready. Part of that responsibility involves grounding pilots when she judges them unready. She is highly concerned that for little to no benefit — these young healthy pilots have a very low probability of severe COVID-19 — we are putting their health and our military readiness at risk.
Unfortunately, we now know the vaccines do not preclude infection or transmission. As a result, we are forcing people to choose between their livelihoods and a freedom-robbing vaccination mandate with no rationale. We are only beginning to see the dire consequences of these ill-advised mandates.