California to Ditch Plans to Mandate COVID Vaccines for Schoolchildren
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 2, 2023
California will end plans to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for schoolchildren when the state ends its COVID-19 state of emergency on Feb. 28, California Department of Public Health officials told EdSource, which reported the news on Wednesday.
Commenting on the news, Michael Kane, national grassroots organizer for Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and founder of NY Teachers For Choice, told The Defender :
“We [in the movement] have some really good momentum right now, and what just happened in California is indicative of that.
“People are done with this. They’re done with the most extreme portions of this COVID agenda, the idea of this shot in kids is a no-starter for anybody.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in October 2021, that California would be the first state to require COVID-19 vaccinations for children to attend school. It was also the first to mandate masking and staff vaccination measures.
At the time, state Sen. Richard Pan proposed legislation to strengthen the vaccine requirement even further by eliminating personal and religious exemptions. The legislation didn’t pass.
The vaccine requirement for children was originally set to kick in on July 1, 2022, when it was expected the vaccines, still under Emergency Use Authorization at the time, would be fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
But in April 2022, California announced it would delay the mandate to July 1, 2023.
The FDA still has not fully approved the COVID-19 vaccines for anyone under age 12. The CDC recommends the vaccines and the bivalent boosters for children ages 6 months and older.
The bivalent boosters were authorized for emergency use without any human clinical trials.
In California, 67% of 12- to 17-year-olds and 38% of children ages 5 to 11 have received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine primary series. Less than 42% of 12- to 17-year-olds and less than 30% of 5- to 11-year-olds have been boosted.
Those numbers are higher than national averages. Only 58% of children ages 12 to 17 and 32% of children ages 5 to 11 have received two doses of the vaccine.
“The booster uptake is a complete failure, so this idea of routinizing a COVID shot for school every year, which is what they wanted, is failing in all the states they thought it was a guarantee in,” Kane said.
California ended the school mask mandate in March 2022, and ended the vaccine mandate for teachers and school staff in October 2022.
‘This kind of coercion never should have been normalized’
In the last two years, while state lawmakers debated California’s school vaccine mandate, school districts across the state proposed and passed their own COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Alex Gutentag, former Oakland public school teacher and political analyst, told The Defender :
“Newsom has referred to California as ‘the true freedom state,’ but he more than any other U.S. governor has tried to undermine the medical freedom of kids and their families when it comes to COVID-19.
“It is definitely a positive development that California is ending its plan for a school mandate, but it’s important to remember that many kids have already been coerced into vaccination through the threat of both statewide and local mandates.
“Several California cities, including Los Angeles, told families that COVID vaccines would be required to attend school in person, but eventually had to scrap and delay these plans. It was a clear effort to increase vaccine uptake, and was a major abuse of power. This kind of coercion never should have been normalized.”
The pressure to scrap mandate plans came in part from attorneys and citizen advocacy groups who brought three major lawsuits against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the Piedmont Unified School District and the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD).
Children’s Health Defense-California Chapter (CHD-CA) and Protection of the Educational Rights of Kids (PERK), a California-based child advocacy group, used state laws to rule out local policies and pause vaccine mandates in the LAUSD and the Piedmont school district.
They sued the LAUSD, the second-largest school district in the U.S., alleging the district lacked the legal authority to impose a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for students ages 12 and older.
The mandate would have excluded 32,000 students from in-person classes.
After Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff ruled the case could go forward in April 2022, the LAUSD announced it would delay the COVID-19 vaccine requirement until July 1, when the state mandate kicked in.
Piedmont also voted to repeal its mandate after a judge granted CHD-CA and PERK’s Application for an Alternative Writ of Mandate and ordered the district to show why its policy could not be struck down.
In San Diego, a group called Let Them Choose filed a lawsuit contesting the SDUSD’s vaccine mandate for school children ages 16 and up. The court ruled, and in December 2022, an appellate court affirmed, that the district’s mandate violated state guidelines.
According to Rita Barnett-Rose, legal director of CHD-CA, the San Diego ruling established that individual school districts cannot institute COVID-19 vaccine mandates at the district level, because there is a statewide statutory scheme in place to set mandates.
That means the end of the California COVID-19 vaccine mandate for children at the state level will effectively end all school mandates in California.
Political will for mandates faltering across the country
Rita Barnett-Rose underscored that California health officials have not yet made the news about ending the mandate for the state’s schools official. However, she said, “Right now it looks like positive news.”
However, Barnett-Rose said, “The question still remains, are they [state legislature] going to try to put something on the legislative agenda this year?”
Gutentag also noted the lack of an official announcement:
“I also think it’s notable that officials only said they were not going to implement the mandate after EdSource pressed them for answers. State leaders probably knew that there were too many legal and logistical challenges, but did not want to admit this in order to save face.
“All Californians should be concerned that our state government is not honest and direct with us about major policy decisions.”
This shift in California’s school mandate decision is the latest in a string of developments calling into question the COVID-19 vaccines and marking a shift in public consensus on vaccines.
“I’m not surprised at all that California is admitting that it’s not politically possible to force a shot that’s unnecessary and dangerous on children to attend school,” Kane said, adding:
“It makes perfect sense to me, given what I am seeing in New York that this same type of pressure is in California.
“The entire thing is political. The whole thing is what can we politically do? They can’t politically force the shot on kids. The fallout is too much. They just can’t risk it, you know.”
Barnett-Rose told The Defender she thinks that when Newsom announced the mandate he thought a lot of other states would follow suit.
“I’m hoping this signifies that the political will to force these mandates on kids is really declining significantly.”
CDC adds COVID shots to child immunization schedule
California reversed its vaccine mandate decision despite the fact that in October 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended adding COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months old to the new Child and Adolescent Immunization Schedule, which will be rolled out this month.
The revised recommendations include the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as 6 months and the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as 12 years.
All COVID-19 vaccines being administered in the U.S. to people under 18 are still Emergency Use Authorized (EUA) products.
The FDA did grant full approval to Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine for ages 12 and older. However, the Comirnaty vaccine is not available in the U.S. — which means all children who get the Pfizer vaccine are getting an EUA product.
The FDA also informed a congressional committee in May 2022 that the COVID-19 vaccines for children under 6 would not have to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold required to obtain EUA.
COVID-19 vaccines for adolescents, teens and adults had to meet the requirement.
“If these vaccines seem to be mirroring efficacy in adults and just seem to be less effective against Omicron like they are for adults, we will probably still authorize,” Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.
Last week, The Epoch Times reported that recently released emails revealed top officials, including Marks, rushed approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to enable vaccine mandates, despite concern by others in the agency that the rush compromised the integrity of the approval process.
On Dec. 9, 2022, the CDC expanded the use of updated (bivalent) COVID-19 vaccines for children ages 6 months through 5 years. They made that decision despite the fact that the bivalent shots were approved for adults without any clinical data and have yet to show efficacy.
In an amicus brief for a lawsuit challenging the vaccine mandate for school children in the state of Louisiana, CHD wrote:
“Simply put, the COVID vaccines have not been shown to be either effective or safe for children. The benefits to children are minuscule, while the risks — including the risk of potentially fatal heart damage — are ‘known’ and ‘serious,’ as the [FDA] itself has acknowledged.”
The Louisiana Department of Health rescinded the mandate.
Legal struggles continue over age of consent for vaccines
Legal battles over vaccines for children in California and elsewhere are ongoing.
In California, Maribel Duarte is suing the LAUSD and Barack Obama Global Preparation Academy alleging they vaccinated her 13-year-old son without her consent.
A vaccine clinic was set up in his school — Barack Obama Global Prep Academy — and he was allegedly bribed with a pizza to get vaccinated without parental consent.
One of the adults at the clinic requested the teen provide a parent-signed consent form, which he did not have. The child was then told to sign his mother’s name and not tell anyone.
Currently, Sen. Cheryl Kagen of Maryland is proposing Senate Bill 378, which would allow children 14 and up to consent to vaccination themselves and prevent parents from accessing medical records.
California attempted to pass a similar bill, SB 866, for children ages 12 and up.
The District of Columbia also attempted to pass a similar law, for children 11 and older, but a preliminary injunction issued in March 2022 temporarily blocked the district from implementing the law.
CHD and the Parental Rights Foundation sued the district and are seeking to declare the D.C. act unconstitutional.
The D.C. school district still plans to mandate children be vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend school starting in the 2023-2024 school year, just not without their parents’ consent.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
First RSV Emergency Declared as Pfizer and GSK Race to Get Vaccines Approved
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 8, 2022
Southern California’s Orange County Health Department this month declared a local health emergency over concerns around the rising number of pediatric cases of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).
County officials also declared a Proclamation of Local Emergency, allowing them to access state and federal resources in response to the spread of RSV.
The news came amid media warnings of a looming “tripledemic” of RSV, influenza and COVID-19 and news that Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) are close to securing regulatory approval for their RSV vaccine candidates — including Pfizer’s RSV vaccine for pregnant women.
RSV was first identified in 1956, and frequently affects children, with a majority of childhood cases occurring before age 2. For most children, symptoms are similar to those of the common cold, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
It can, however, cause serious symptoms in the very young and the elderly, although childhood deaths are infrequent, according to CDC data.
According to California attorney Rita Barnett-Rose, there’s no evidence to support claims that Orange County hospitals are overextended, or to justify a state of emergency.
In an interview with The Defender, Barnett-Rose drew parallels between Orange County’s emergency declaration for RSV and other state, local and federal emergency declarations for COVID-19:
“One of the other alarming things that happened with COVID is when [Gov. Gavin] Newsom declared the state of emergency in COVID. He also waived the 30 and 60-day review periods for all local governing boards.
“So, yeah, so that’s what everyone is concerned about, this perpetual state of emergency.
“And the other thing that it triggers is it asks, once they declare a state of emergency, aside from getting the funding, it also triggers a request to Governor Newsom to declare a statewide state of emergency and then also to have Newsom ask President Biden to declare a national state of emergency.”
That could lead to Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of RSV vaccines, according to Barnett-Rose, who told The Defender there may be an avenue to challenge the legality of the latest Orange County emergency declaration.
Is pharma using the COVID playbook to push RSV vaccines?
Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, Orange County’s health officer, said in a press release county officials issued the declaration due to “rapidly spreading virus infections causing record numbers of pediatric hospitalizations and daily emergency room visits.”
The declaration will allow the county to access state and federal resources and to allow non-pediatric hospitals to offer beds to sick children, Chinsio-Kwong said.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) California Chapter notes that this declaration was unanimously ratified “over the objections by members of the public who showed up to speak against the declarations.”
Dr. Melaine Patterson, chief nursing officer for Children’s Health Orange County, said area hospitals are seeing an “unprecedented” volume of children visiting their emergency rooms — approximately 400 per day, with wait times of “four to 12 hours.”
She also said that, as of Nov. 1, there were 285 patients in her hospital, compared to 188 on that date last year, adding that 11 of those current patients were placed in ICU as a result of RSV infections. RSV cases also are on the rise nationally.
Chinsio-Kwong advised the public to remain “up to date with other vaccinations such as flu and COVID-19” to “reduce the burden on hospitals this fall and winter.”
“Our best shot at protecting ourselves and our children from respiratory illnesses continues to be the same things we practiced throughout the pandemic including the use of masks when indoors around others and staying home when you are sick,” Chinsio-Kwong said.
However, Barnett-Rose said hospitals in Orange County may be overextended not due to an unusually high number of admissions, but due to unvaccinated staff having been let go.
She told The Defender :
“I do think that has a big role in it, and a lot of people pointed that out during the hearings and public comments were made about that.
“They were trying to claim … there were not enough pediatric experts or pediatric-trained doctors and medical professionals, so they needed to go outside of the county. And I do think a big part of that is that they did let go of many pediatric nurses and pediatric physicians that refused to take the vaccines. So I do think that this is a crisis of their own making … if there is even a crisis.”
San Diego County also issued a warning to its residents Nov. 4 over rising RSV cases but stopped short of declaring an emergency.
CHD California questioned why Orange County would declare a “Local Health Emergency” now — even though local COVID-19 states of emergency haven’t been lifted.
Despite claims that the purpose of these new declarations is exclusively meant to help county hospitals, CHD California said, “the language of the emergency Resolutions says something else entirely”:
“Both the Resolution to ratify the Local Health Emergency under Health & Safety Code section 101080 and the Proclamation of a Local Emergency under Government Code section 8630 declare the need for these local emergencies not only based on the asserted need to handle allegedly rising cases of RSV — but also because of other unnamed ‘other respiratory illnesses’ that were not discussed during the special meeting or otherwise disclosed to the public.”
Barnett-Rose provided insights into the legal meaning underlying these declarations. She told The Defender :
“There’s a local health emergency, which is declared by the public health officer as opposed to the [county] board … and that is when the health officer says … ‘I’ve been talking to the hospitals and we’ve done some assessments and there’s an increasing rate of respiratory illnesses and the children’s hospitals, and so, because of this, I am asking to declare a local health emergency.’ …
“But her authority to declare a local health emergency only lasts for seven days unless it’s ratified by our board of supervisors. And so, on Nov. 2, our board ratified that, which means now it’s in place and it needs to be renewed or looked at every 30 days, unless Governor Newsom waives that condition.”
CHD California argued that the “overly broad language used in these emergency declarations should be deeply concerning to anyone wary of a repeat of the “public health” measures ordered under COVID-19,” noting that adding the vague statement referring to “other respiratory viruses” creates “plenty of room for further abuse.”
Barnett-Rose told The Defender that, during the Nov. 2 meeting, Chinsio-Kwong said, “No restrictions are currently [emphasis added] in place,” a statement that “caused … a little bit of an uproar during the hearing because of her wording, which suggests that indeed they may end up rolling out mask mandates or some other mandates.”
Under this type of “slippery language,” argued CHD California, even the common cold could be used to issue an emergency declaration.
Barnett-Rose agreed:
“How do you measure that? How do you dispute it? How do you examine it? How do you end it?
“If you’re going by one infectious disease, at least you can try to find some data on hospitalizations or cases or deaths or ICU beds. But when it’s everything, it can still include COVID, flu, cold, COPD, a whole bunch of things that would qualify as respiratory illnesses.”
Barnett-Rose said that attempts will be made to legally challenge these declarations as “overbroad,” noting, however, that while case law precedent exists to challenge overbroad legislation, there is no such precedent in place for states of emergency.
Barnett-Rose she’s looking into whether there’s some way to litigate against these broad states of emergency.
When statutes are overbroad, she said, sometimes you can challenge them for being overley broad or too vague, but she’s not sure if there’s a similar precedent for challenging an overly broad state of emergency.
Declaring a local state of emergency at the county level could trigger a chain of events leading all the way to a national declaration of emergency, according to CHD California:
“By ratifying and/or declaring these local emergencies, the Board has now triggered an official request to Governor Newsom that he also declare a state-wide state of emergency on the same overly broad basis — and to ask the President of the United States to declare a national state of emergency.”
“A nationally declared state of emergency may trigger all of the same measures that have already deeply divided our country: masks on airplanes, business and school closures, and coercive school and employee mandates for experimental ‘vaccines’ offered as the ‘only solution’ back to Freedom,” CHD California argued.
Barnett-Rose said the emergency declaration in Orange County may be tied to the fact that there are multiple RSV vaccines already in the pipeline:
“The reason this is becoming really huge news is because this is what happened with the COVID state of emergency, too, it kind of went like that in dominoes.
“Once Biden declares a national state of emergency, then that triggers all of the emergency use authorizations that allowed the so-called vaccines for COVID. And I’m sure you already know that there’s vaccines in the works now for RSV that they’re floating out there in the news as well.”
Recounting events that occurred in relation to COVID-19, Barnett-Rose told The Defender that Orange County and some other counties in California declared a state of emergency, “then it went to the state, then it went national, and then, of course, once there’s a national emergency, you can go into Iowa.”
“So I do think that this is very suspicious timing, the articles that we are seeing in the news about being close to this RSV vaccine,” Barnett-Rose said. “And so, I do think that they’re trying to repeat the same playbook.”
Up to 30 RSV vaccine candidates already in pipeline
Pharmaceutical industry publication FiercePharma reported that Pfizer and GSK “moved closer to regulatory approvals” in the past week, and “could each see the first-ever approvals for an RSV vaccine in 2023.”
GSK’s candidate will be reviewed May 3, 2023, while Pfizer is “eyeing an approval filing by year-end.”
In all, up to 30 RSV candidate vaccines have been identified by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
GSK has secured priority review status for its RSV vaccine following the submission of data from its AReSVi-006 phase 3 trial. The candidate vaccine exclusively targets adults 60 and older, and the data reportedly “showed high overall vaccine efficacy against RSV lower respiratory disease” at a rate of 82.6%, Fierce Biotech reported.
GSK initially intended to develop an RSV vaccine for older adults and for infants, but plans for the latter were shelved due to a “safety concern.” Nevertheless, GSK CEO Emma Walmsley in a call last week with investors described GSK’s new vaccine as “a very significant scientific achievement.”
Previous efforts to develop an RSV vaccine have failed because they “had a persistent tendency to cause worse disease,” due to “a phenomenon known as antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE).”
Dr. Ruth Karron, a pediatrician and professor of international health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, “The difference this year is the general public for the first time is probably eagerly awaiting an RSV vaccine, because they’re seeing firsthand just how much of a problem RSV can be,” in a statement drawing a clear connection with the reported increase in RSV cases this year.
Pfizer announced Nov. 1 that its own candidate RSV vaccine wrapped up its phase 3 trial for efficacy early. Unlike GSK’s candidate vaccine, Pfizer’s vaccine targets pregnant women. The vaccine is designed to be administered early in the third trimester with the intent that the vaccine-induced antibodies be passed from the mother to her newborn.
Pfizer, in its Nov. 1 announcement, claimed that its bivalent RSV prefusion vaccine candidate RSVpreF, also known as PF-06928316, delivered “broadly positive” results — namely, a significant reduction in the rate of respiratory illness in newborns and their mothers.
Pfizer claimed 81.8% efficacy against severe cases of RSV for babies up to three months, and 69.4% efficacy after six months.
Pfizer’s MATISSE (MATernal Immunization Study for Safety and Efficacy) trial involved 7,400 pregnant women and their newborns, tracking the infants for one year following birth, and some for two years. It was conducted in 18 countries beginning in June 2020.
Pfizer’s vaccine trial did not deliver statistically significant results regarding the prevention of infant medical visits caused by RSV, including for non-severe cases.
Nevertheless, Pfizer said there are “no major safety concerns” with its product, adding:
“At the recommendation of the DMC [Data Monitoring Committee], and in consultation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Pfizer has stopped enrollment in the study.
“Based on these positive results Pfizer plans to submit a Biologics License Application (BLA) to the FDA by the end of 2022 for the vaccine candidate followed by other regulatory authorities in the coming months.”
Pfizer’s phase 3 trial data has not yet been vetted by independent experts, and has not been peer-reviewed or published.
On March 2, 2022, Pfizer’s candidate vaccine received a Breakthrough Therapy Designation from the FDA, while previously, in November 2018, the FDA granted it Fast-Track status, according to the Pfizer release.
“Pfizer’s investigational RSV vaccine candidate builds on foundational basic science discoveries including those made at the National Institutes of Health (NIH),” the vaccine maker said in its press release.
The NIH research in question also was “key to the hugely successful COVID-19 vaccines,” according to ABC 7 Los Angeles.
Others looking to develop an RSV vaccine include Moderna and AstraZeneca and Sanofi, in a joint initiative. Moderna received fast-track designation from the FDA on Aug. 3, 2021, for its mRNA-1345 RSV vaccine for older adults, while AstraZeneca and Sanofi are developing a viral vector RSV vaccine by the name of “nirsevimab.”
An August 2021 article in The Defender predicted that RSV would represent the “new frontier for vaccine development,” as pharmaceutical companies would be “lured by the prospect of a large untapped global RSV vaccine market,” leading to a vaccine development “gold rush.”
Media tout benefits, ignore safety concerns
Online news portal Vox described the development of new RSV vaccines as “very, very good news” in a recent article.
Coupled with media coverage about “rising” RSV cases nationwide, it appears the stage is being set to create an emergency in the public consciousness, which could lead to EUAs being granted to the new vaccines and a rush to get the public vaccinated.
Blogger James Roguski, however, called into question the results of the Pfizer phase 3 trial, raising many safety concerns that are indicated in the company’s own data but were downplayed by Pfizer in its public proclamations. In a recent post, he wrote:
“In the Phase II study, researchers found that women who received RSVpreF vaccine containing aluminum hydroxide had a higher incidence of local reactions than those who received RSVpreF vaccine without aluminum hydroxide.
“It seems like 1 of the 117 infants in the placebo group suffered fetal death and 6 infants in the ‘vaccinated’ group are unaccounted for.”
Roguski also highlighted the many adverse events that were recorded for both infants and pregnant mothers who participated in the study, none of which were recorded for the placebo group.
For infants, some of these adverse events included acute respiratory failure, bronchiolitis, cardiac murmur, chordee (bent penis), conjunctival hemorrhage, hypoglycemia, jaundice, low birth weight, neonatal hypoxia, neonatal respiratory failure, seizure, sepsis, upper respiratory tract infection and vascular malformation.
Pregnant women, in turn, experienced adverse events including fetal growth restriction, fetal tachycardia, gestational diabetes, nonreassuring fetal heart rate pattern, premature labor, premature separation of placenta, vaginal hemorrhage and thrombocytopenia.
For some, these safety concerns are conjuring up memories of previously failed attempts to develop an RSV vaccine.
A vaccine tested in 1966 led to the deaths of two toddlers as a result of “enhanced disease symptoms,” while many infants “suffered worse symptoms than usual, and needed to be hospitalized.”
As previously reported by The Defender, RSV itself originated in monkeys housed in a Maryland facility where they were used to conduct polio vaccine research. Remarking on this and the connection to RSV vaccine development today, Brian Hooker, CHD’s chief scientific officer, told The Defender, “It is incredible that the vaccine industry can create a disease — RSV from the polio vaccine — and then create another vaccine to ‘prevent’ that disease. Talk about a business proposition!”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Doctors File First Lawsuit Challenging California Law That Seeks to Punish Physicians for COVID ‘Misinformation’
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 6, 2022
Two doctors on Tuesday became the first to file a federal lawsuit to stop a new California law that subjects the state’s doctors to discipline, including the suspension of their medical licenses, for sharing “misinformation” or “disinformation” about COVID-19 with their patients.
Dr. Mark McDonald, a Los Angeles psychiatrist, and Dr. Jeff Barke, an Orange County primary care physician and founding member of America’s Frontline Doctors, filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
The lawsuit names 12 members of the Medical Board of California and California Attorney General Robert Bonta.
The plaintiffs also filed papers seeking a preliminary injunction to protect their free speech rights as the case unfolds.
Barke told The Defender :
“[This new law] puts patients at risk. Requiring physicians to consider the state’s narrative when making a medical decision, is bad medicine and dangerous. Consensus in science only occurs when dissenting opinions are censored.”
Commenting on the lawsuit, Mary Holland, president and general counsel for Children’s Health Defense, said, “California’s new law is a clear violation of the First Amendment. It’s startling that the legislature and the governor would even attempt to pass such legislation.”
Holland added:
“Censoring information about health never leads to health, but it certainly can and has led to medical catastrophes. I look forward to courts striking this law down.”
The Los Angeles Times today reported that some doctors fear California’s new law “could do more harm than good.”
“What was misinformation one day is the current scientific thinking another day,” Dr. Eric Widera, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, told LA Times.
Liberty Justice Center, a national nonprofit law firm dedicated to protecting Americans’ constitutional rights, is representing McDonald and Barke.
Daniel Suhr, managing attorney at the center, said, “We rely on our doctors to give us their best medical advice, yet the State of California is stopping doctors from doing just that. That’s not just wrong, it’s unconstitutional.”
He added, “Doctors enjoy the same free speech rights as other Americans. The State of California cannot define a so-called scientific consensus on an issue and then punish anyone who dares challenge it.”
Law is ‘at odds with the scientific method itself’
California Assembly Bill 2098 (AB 2098), signed into law Sept. 30 by Gov. Gavin Newsom, defines “misinformation” as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care” and “disinformation” as “misinformation that the licensee deliberately disseminated with malicious intent or an intent to mislead.”
Newsom said the law applies only to physicians’ speech with patients during discussions directly related to COVID-19 treatment.
But Drs. McDonald and Barke allege AB 2098 violates the First Amendment, imposes “government-approved orthodoxy” and “is at odds with the scientific method itself.”
The lawsuit states:
“Disagreement is integral to the progress of medical science, a value that cannot be served by using the power of the state to punish those who dissent from the official line.
“This is particularly objectionable in the context of a new disease like COVID-19, about which consensus opinions and official guidance have regularly adjusted as new information is learned.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, public health authorities insisted that the public not wear masks, arguing they would provide little benefit and should be reserved for front-line medical professionals — that was soon replaced with broadly mandated mask wearing for much of the population.
“Schools were closed in the face of the fear that the disease would spread among children too young to adhere to quarantine procedures — but it turned out that the young were at the least risk, and that such closures may well have been harmful to their development.
“Reasonable minds disagreed then, and continue to disagree now, about any number of such topics, but the search for truth cannot be furthered by a government edict imposing orthodoxy from above, punishing those who disagree with the loss of their profession and their livelihood.”
The lawsuit also alleges that AB 2098 “intrudes into the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship” by “replacing the medical judgment of the government for that of the licensed professional and chilling the speech of those who dissent from the official view.”
The plaintiffs asked that the court “enjoin enforcement of AB 2098 and leave these important matters to the marketplace of ideas.”
AB 2098 was introduced in mid-February by California Assemblymember Evan Low — one of seven Democratic lawmakers who in January formed the Vaccine Work Group to develop legislation promoting the use of COVID-19 vaccines while “battling misinformation.”
The American Medical Association (AMA), which strongly supports the bill, hopes other states will follow suit in “ensuring that licensing boards have the authority to take disciplinary action against health professionals for spreading health-related disinformation,” according to a new policy adopted at its mid-June annual meeting aimed at addressing public health “disinformation.”
The AMA’s adopted policy expanded on prior efforts and called for the organization to work with “health professional societies and other relevant organizations to implement a comprehensive strategy to address health-related disinformation disseminated by health professionals.”
Language in the bill points out that the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) has warned that physicians who spread misinformation or disinformation “risk losing their medical license, and … have a duty to provide their patients with accurate, science-based information.”
The FSMB, as previously reported by The Defender, takes money from Big Pharma and has a history of challenging and attacking non-pharmaceutical medical approaches used by integrative doctors as falling outside the “standard of care” as they define it.
“If this period has taught us anything,” McDonald said, “it is that the scientific and medical environments are constantly evolving, as new information and studies confirm or reject prior policies.
He added:
“Doctors need the freedom to explore alternatives and share opinions that challenge the scientific consensus — that is inherent in the nature of the scientific enterprise.
“California cannot insert itself into the physician-patient relationship to impose its views on doctors and end all debate on these important questions.”
Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Gavin Newsom Sics California’s Medical Boards on Doctors who Challenge the Coronavirus Party Line
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | October 1, 2022
On September 8, I wrote about California Governor Gavin Newsom having AB 2098 — legislation that “tells the state’s medical boards to punish doctors who challenge the coronavirus orthodoxy” — on his desk for him to either veto or sign into law. The punishment the state medical boards could impose under the legislation includes revoking doctors’ medical licenses.
Here is an update. On Friday, Newsom signed into law this bill directing the prosecution of an attack on free speech, medical freedom, and the pursuit of better health.
The coronavirus orthodoxy, or party line, the legislation seeks to protect has repeatedly been wrong — from promoting “social distancing” and mask wearing that have not been shown to provide a net benefit in countering coronavirus to advocating that everyone take the “safe and effective” coronavirus “vaccine” shots that turned out to be both exceedingly dangerous and ineffective. The coronavirus orthodoxy also demanded that much of the economy and social interactions be shut down for an extended period of time in a supposed effort to reduce the spread of the not-very-threatening-to-most-people coronavirus. In short, the coronavirus orthodoxy is an enemy of wellbeing.
Newsom’s decision to sign AB 2098 into law is not surprising given that he has been one of the governors most adamant in imposing a coronavirus crackdown.
Repressive Legislation in The New Abnormal
Doctors To Be Silenced
By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | September 30, 2022
Kim Iverson, a TV journalist formerly at The Hill and now streaming her own show on YouTube, has been one of the most honest and courageous voices during the pandemic. She is the rare journalist today who is willing to follow the evidence wherever it may lead. I sat down with her this morning for an interview about California’s latest attempt to suppress the free speech of physicians and undermine the doctor patient relationship. Assembly Bill 2098, which I have posted about previously—see Punishing Dissident Physicians and The Censorship of Medicine—is set to become law unless the governor vetoes it today.
I also had a wide-ranging two-part conversation with Dr. Drew Pinsky on his podcast recently, where we discussed my new book, The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State. It’s available on the Apple Podcasts (link to Part 1 and Part 2), or your other favorite podcast app.
You can pre-order the book here and it will ship in one month…
California Asks Residents Not to Charge Electric Vehicles, Days After Announcing Gas Car Ban
Samizdat | August 31, 2022
California’s power grid operator warned residents of the Sunshine State that it will issue voluntary calls for power conservation in the coming days, as a heatwave threatens to interrupt the supply of electricity.
The California Independent System Operator (ISO), which manages the state’s power grid, said on Tuesday that it will issue a series of ‘Flex Alerts’ during the upcoming days, the Sacramento Bee reported. These alerts call for residents of the state to keep their thermostats above 78 degrees Fahrenheit (25.5 Celsius), avoid using large appliances, and turn off all unnecessary lights.
Among a litany of power-saving tips, the ISO also urges Californians not to charge electric vehicles during the daytime.
Heatwaves increase the risk of blackouts, as households are forced to crank up their air conditioners. This risk is greatest during the early evening, when solar panels no longer function, but homes still need cooling and lighting. With temperatures set to reach 10-20 degrees above normal from Wednesday through to next Tuesday, peak demand is set to be reached on Monday, or Labor Day.
The ISO’s warning came less than a week after the California Air Resources Board voted to approve a plan by Governor Gavin Newsom to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars in California by 2035. While Newsom claimed that the ban would cut “915 million oil barrels worth of emissions” out of the air, the San Francisco Chronicle noted that it would require California to expand the capacity of its power grid by 30%.
An analysis by CalMatters, a nonprofit news organization, found that Newsom’s plan could also put almost 32,000 mechanics out of business.
Newsom has urged state lawmakers to give up to $1.4 billion to power company PG&E Corp to keep California’s last remaining nuclear plant open for another 10 years to avert the consequences of his own ban.
What The Future Holds For Our Climate Leaders
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | July 28, 2022
If my posting has been a little light for the last month or so, it’s because I’ve been working on a big Report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation on the subject of energy storage as a means to back up electricity generation from wind and solar facilities. The Report is basically finished, and now going through an editing process. It will probably be published some time in September.
In doing the research for the Report, I have had occasion to look carefully into the plans of many countries and U.S. states that claim to be the “leaders” in climate virtue, specifically on the subject of how they intend to reach the goal of Net Zero carbon emissions from generation of electricity. These climate “leaders” include, in Europe, Germany and the UK, and in the U.S., California and New York. One would think that for any jurisdiction pursuing Net Zero ambitions, and seeking to abolish use of fossil fuels, it would be completely imperative that some energy storage solution absolutely must be found to provide back-up for the electricity system when the wind and sun are not producing. But what my research has shown is that every one of these jurisdictions seeking to be the leader toward Net Zero has given astoundingly insufficient consideration to the energy storage problem.
I previously have covered some of the more incredible deficiencies in the Net Zero planning of these places, for example in “Can California Really Achieve 85% Carbon-Free Electricity By 2030?” on May 16, and “And The Winner Is, Germany!” on June 29.
The single most astounding universal failure of all jurisdictions pursuing Net Zero is the failure to pursue any sort of working prototype or demonstration project of a Net Zero electricity system before committing the entire jurisdiction to the project on the basis of a blank check to be paid by the taxpayers and ratepayers. Who has ever heard of such a thing? in the 1880s, when Thomas Edison wanted to start building central station power plants to supply electricity for his new devices like incandescent lightbulbs, he began by building a prototype facility in London under the Holborn Viaduct, and followed that with a larger demonstration plant on Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan that only supplied electricity to customers within a few square blocks. Only after those had been demonstrated as successful did a larger build-out begin. Similarly, the provision of nuclear power began with small government-funded prototypes in the late 1940s and early 1950s, followed by larger demonstration projects in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Only in the late 1960s, twenty years into the effort and after feasibility and cost had been demonstrated, were the first large-scale commercial nuclear reactors built. No competent person would take any other approach.
But somehow our politicians have now become so filled with hubris that they think they can just order up a functioning wind/solar electricity system and assume that backup energy storage devices will magically get invented and it will all work fine and not be financially ruinous, all by some arbitrarily-ordered date in the 2030s.
Today, all the mentioned jurisdictions and many more have embarked on ambitious Net Zero plans, and yet there does not exist anywhere in the world a functioning prototype or demonstration project that has actually achieved Net Zero in electricity generation, or anything even close. Indeed, it’s worse than that. There is a fairly substantial project that set out to achieve Net Zero (although they weren’t using the term at the time, which was 2014), and has fallen remarkably short. That project is on the island of El Hierro, one of the Canary Islands off the coast of Spain. El Hierro installed a collection of wind turbines and a pumped storage/hydro reservoir as back-up to great fanfare, but it struggles to achieve 50% of the electricity from the wind/storage system over the course of a year. The rest comes from a diesel generator. The system operator puts out monthly statistics (with substantial lag), typically with excited verbiage about “tons of carbon emissions saved,” without ever admitting that the system has totally failed in its original goal of getting rid of the fossil fuel piece. Instead they now have three redundant systems for providing the electricity — wind turbines, hydro reservoir and turbines, and the diesel generator — all of which must be paid for, and all to provide the same electricity that the diesel generator was fully capable of providing on its own. The cost has been calculated at about 80 euro cents per KWh, roughly 7 to 8 times average U.S. consumer rates; but the cost is largely hidden from El Hierro ratepayers by subsidies from the EU and government of Spain.
My research also covered in depth the question of how much energy storage would be needed for various jurisdictions to fully back up a predominantly wind/solar generation system without any use of fossil fuels. Credible calculations previously discussed here have included the calculation of Roger Andrews, done in 2018, that either California or Germany would require at least about 25,000 GWh of energy storage to back up a fully wind/solar generation system for a year without use of fossil fuels; and a calculation by Ken Gregory done on very similar methodology in late 2021 showing that the full U.S. (lower 48 states) would require about 250,000 GWh of storage for the same purpose. These are truly huge numbers.
Facing such requirements to reach Net Zero and banish fossil fuels from the electricity system, the plans of these jurisdictions for acquisition of storage are quite shocking. The consultancy Wood Mackenzie reported on April 11, 2022 that Germany had announced plans to acquire all of 8.91 GWh of energy storage by 2031 — a ridiculously puny amount if Germany is actually serious about Net Zero. Utility Dive reported on April 12, 2022 that New York had plans to acquire all of 6 GW of storage (likely corresponding to about 24 GWh, since the batteries are to be of the lithium-ion type that generally have capacity for four hours of discharge at full capacity). This figure is only slightly less puny than Germany’s. Another piece from Utility Dive on April 6, 2022 reported that California’s regulators had ordered utilities to acquire what would be the equivalent of about 42 GWh of storage as part of the Net Zero plans of that jurisdiction. All of these storage acquisition plans are in the range of about 0.1% to 0.2% of the storage that would actually be needed to achieve the Net Zero goal.
So what will the future of energy usage actually look like in these places as fossil fuels get phased out and wind and solar take over, with woefully insufficient energy storage to cover the intermittencies? To get an idea, let’s take another look at the Report for California put out by consultancy Energy Innovations on May 9, with the title “Achieving an Equitable and Reliable 85 Percent Clean Electricity System by 2030 in California.” Note that this in not actually Net Zero, but only 85% of same. Here are a few tidbits. First, their graphic on the nature of the transition:
We’re going to have a “paradigm shift” in “RA,” which seems to mean “Resource Adequacy.” Check out that list on the right under “clean reliability resources” — “Energy availability depends on weather.” Are you starting to get the picture now?
Read through the report until you get into pages in the mid-30s, where the subject becomes what they euphemistically call “demand response.” It’s a lot of bafflegab to make it seem oh so pleasant. Excerpt:
Demand-side measures can substitute for supply-side resources and therefore contribute to resource diversity; their increased availability hedges against the risk of deploying new clean supply-side resources too slowly (including generators and storage). For example, the technical report finds that deploying Load Shift could reduce load by 1,500 MW in the early evening hours solar output falls, hedging against battery deployment challenges such as supply chain. . . . Demand-side measures also provide complementary reliability, resiliency, and public safety benefits to supply-side solutions or imports, as they lie closest to the affected load. While centralized generators provide the bulk of our power under most system conditions, they can be rendered less effective or useless under certain disaster conditions.
This is bureaucratese meaning “we’ll turn off your electricity at random times when we feel like it.” Get ready for this, California, Germany, et al. I guess New York is on the same path too, but I have my secret escape plans ready.
California bill 2273 would require websites and apps to verify visitors’ ID
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | June 28, 2022
California’s bill CA AB 2273, designed to enact the Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) is just one among the bills raising concerns in terms of how they might negatively affect the web going forward.
Like their counterparts in the EU, legislators in California, according to their critics, present online child safety as their only goal – and a stated desire to improve this is hard to argue with, even when arguments are valid – such as that the proposed bills may in fact do nothing to better protect children, while eroding the rights of every internet user.
Among other things, AB 2273 aims to require sites and apps to authenticate the age of all their users before allowing access. Attempts to introduce mandatory age authentication have also cropped up in other jurisdictions before, but have proven controversial, technically difficult to implement, with a high potential to compromise user data collected in this way, and intrusive to people’s privacy.
In California, the situation doesn’t look much different as critics of this bill say that authentication will require site operators and businesses to deal with personal data collection from every user, and worry about using and storing it securely.
We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.
In addition, some kind of government-issued ID – or surrendering biometric data such as that collected through facial recognition – is necessary to prove one’s age in the first place; and this is where forcing sites and services to require this information would effectively mean the end of anonymity online.
As ever, this is a threat that is disproportionately felt by vulnerable categories of internet users such as various dissidents, contrarians, minorities, as well as whistleblowers and activists. And, the right to remain anonymous online also ties in with First Amendment protections in the US.
Anonymity is under threat considering that age authentication would be imposed on all internet users, and it also means that the way people use the internet today would change for good from the user experience point of view, with “age authentication walls” raised by websites. On top of that, the verification would have to be persistent (or require users to repeat the process each time they access a site or service), further aggravating privacy and data security concerns.
2022 is the year of US (midterm) elections, so focusing on this type of “feelgood” legislation, such as making children safe, is a way politicians are expected to pander to their constituencies, regardless of all the “unintended consequences” or even the low likelihood that the scheme could be efficiently implemented, purely from the technical point of view.
In other words, these proposals are not properly thought through or debated, and aren’t even based on particularly successful attempts to square the same circle elsewhere in the world. The AADC is said to be inspired by UK’s Children’s Code, aka, Age Appropriate Design Code, which is a set of standards.
With the California proposal, the scope of issues covered by the bill is of particular concern to its critics. Privacy and safety of children are only one direct component, with others reaching as far as content moderation and consumer protection in general.
This raises fears among those critical of the bill that broad regulation of the internet could be introduced thanks to a seemingly innocuous act, in effect giving California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) new powers that would allow it to start acting as the state’s overall internet regulator.
And the CPPA is seen as an agency that is neither interested nor competent enough to strike the right balance between a number of sensitive issues that would be covered by the new law, while at the same time getting the chance to usher in more censorship.
US federal legislation that deals with the same issue, Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) kicks in when online services are aware that their users are younger than 13; with the CPPA, these services are expected to assess when it is “reasonable to expect” a child – under 18- might be accessing them.
The plan is currently for the act to become law and be enforced to enact the AADC starting July 1, 2024, but the current wording of the draft leaves it unclear who exactly, and how it would be enforced.
Critics warn that among those considered in California this year, AB 2273 is a bill of particular concern, given the possible consequences.
Biden declares US energy emergency
Samizdat | June 6, 2022
President Joe Biden has blamed Russia for another crisis, saying the US might not be able to generate enough electricity to meet consumer demand partly because of Moscow’s military offensive against Ukraine.
The president declared an energy emergency on Monday, saying national security and quality of life are jeopardized by potential shortfalls in power supplies. He invoked the Defense Production Act – originally part of an industrial mobilization effort in response to the Korean War – to spur domestic production of solar panels and other forms of “clean” energy to boost power supplies.
“Multiple factors are threatening the ability of the United States to provide sufficient electricity generation to serve expected customer demand,” Biden said in his emergency declaration. “These factors include disruptions of energy markets caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change.”
Increased reliance on renewable energy sources has been blamed for disruptions to power service in such states as California and Texas. Solar and wind power are intermittent, so periods of high demand aren’t always matched by supplies. For instance, wind turbines froze up during an historic winter freeze last year in Texas, contributing to blackouts that caused 246 deaths and at least $195 billion in damage.
Biden’s emergency declaration included a two-year exemption from tariffs on solar panels from four Southeast Asian countries. The proposed tariffs had been blamed for delaying major solar projects in the US. About three-fourths of the solar modules installed in the US are imported from Southeast Asia.
The president has blamed Russia for record US fuel prices and a surge in inflation to a 40-year high. He’s also attributed a looming global food crisis to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Biden’s Most Preposterous Lie Is Too Much Even For The Washington Post
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | June 03, 2022
When President Biden talks, there may or may not be any connection between what he says and the real world. Yes, you need to give every politician some leeway, since most of what any politician says will fall in the general realm of political exaggeration or hyperbole. But even within the disreputable category of politicians, Biden can take the lack of connection with reality to a whole new level.
You may have your own favorite among Biden’s preposterous statements. For me, the very most preposterous is one that he has been making repeatedly for the past several months, namely that his energy plans, including expansion of wind and solar electricity generation together with fossil fuel suppression, will save American families the very specific amount of $500 per year each. This claim has popped up in multiple places and multiple formulations. One example came in the State of the Union speech back in March, where Biden said, “Let’s cut energy costs for families an average of $500 a year by combatting climate change.”
It’s just not possible for anyone who thinks about the subject for even a few minutes to believe that building more and more wind and solar generation facilities as our primary sources of energy will do anything other than vastly increase the costs of energy for the American people. Even in the early phases of the process, where wind and solar generation are well less than half of electricity generation (and electricity is then only about a third of total energy consumption), you obviously need full backup from some dispatchable source, almost always fossil fuels, to make your electricity grid work. That means that you will come to have two fully redundant electricity generation systems, when previously you had only one to produce the same amount of electricity. Two fully redundant systems can’t possibly be cheaper than just one. Then, if you insist on phasing out the fossil fuel backup and replacing it with battery or some other storage, you have to add the cost of that storage to the mix. Readers here know that the cost of backing up wind and solar electricity generation with battery storage is truly monumental, potentially a large multiple of the entire U.S. GDP. For more on that subject, see some of my prior posts, for example here and here.
And this is not just a question of models and projections that can be debated. As more and more wind and solar generation facilities have been added to the electrical grid in various places, the inevitable dramatic rise in cost to the consumer has in fact occurred. Steven Hayward at PowerLine in a post on Wednesday reproduces graphs showing the results for two of the most enthusiastic adopters of the wind and sun for electricity, California and Australia. Here is the chart for California:
As California has added more and more wind and solar generation, its electricity rates to the consumer have followed a sharply increasing pattern, up some 58.3% from 2008 to 2021. Even after adding all that renewable capacity, the percent of California’s electricity production from the wind and sun in 2020 was still only about a third, according to a February 2022 Report from the California Energy Commission. Thus California has not yet even begun to confront the challenge of phasing out fossil fuel production and trying to back up its electricity grid with batteries — that will occur when the percentage of electricity from intermittent renewables gets past 50%. But note that dotted red line near the bottom of the chart: the 41 states with “low penetration” of wind and solar generation only had rate increases of 9.5% between 2008 and 2021.
And here’s the chart for Australia:
After declining gradually for decades, Australia’s consumer electricity prices have about doubled since 2005. The doubling coincides with the rapid addition of new wind and solar generation facilities since that time. And as with California, Australia’s generation from the intermittent renewables remains well below 50% of electricity generation, meaning that again the vast cost increases inherent in phasing out fossil fuel backup have not yet begun to hit to any significant degree.
Similar patterns of electricity prices soaring as renewable generation increases can be found in other places with high penetration of renewables, for example Germany and Denmark.
With these data and plenty more like them out there, Biden continues to double down on his assertion of the supposed $500 per family per year “savings” from his plan for green energy transition. In a an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on May 30, Biden put it this way:
A dozen CEOs of America’s largest utility companies told me earlier this year that my plan would reduce the average family’s annual utility bills by $500 and accelerate our transition from energy produced by autocrats.
That line finally got the Washington Post’s “fact checker,” Glenn Kessler, on the job. Kessler’s June 2 piece has the headline “Biden’s fantastical claim of $500 in annual utility savings.” Kessler started by tracking down a White House transcript of the meeting that Biden held in February with the group of utility executives. There was no mention at all of a supposed $500 projected saving in “annual utility bills”:
But when we located the transcript of Biden’s conversation with utility executives on Feb. 9, we found no reference to $500 in utility savings. The figure was also not mentioned in the White House readout of the meeting.
When Kessler asked the White House for the source of Biden’s number, he was then referred to a report of something called Rhodium Group that projected an approximate $500 per household saving by 2030 not from lower utility bills, but largely from consumers switching to electric cars. Putting aside for a moment whether consumers switching to electric cars could save anybody any money as the government strives to destroy the electrical grid, Kessler points to these obvious flaws in Biden’s statement:
But he didn’t hear that [$500 figure] from utility executives. And the report he is citing is not about household utility-bill savings. Most of the claimed savings comes from the reduced cost of driving. And the estimate is for 2030 — when he would no longer be president, even if he served a second term.
Kessler then awards Biden four Pinocchios. And that’s without even figuring out that Biden’s plan to add more wind and solar to the grid is guaranteed to make electricity prices soar.
Poll: Growing Intensity Among Californians Against Medical Freedom/Privacy Bills
Children’s Health Defense | May 12, 2022
Los Angeles, CA – Following one of Los Angeles’s largest rallies in recent times where an estimated 25,000 Californians rallied against a series of bills restricting medical freedom, a new poll of 805 likely California voters conducted by Zogby Strategies on April 19th, commissioned by Children’s Health Defense (CHD), shows an overwhelming majority oppose bills like SB920 and SB866.
SB920 (allows the California Medical Board to inspect records of patients without their consent) is opposed by 68% of likely California voters and is supported by 26%. Among the 68% who oppose, 49% strongly oppose the bill. Notable demographics opposing the controversial bill include:
- 77% Republicans
- 72% Independents
- 70% Women
- 68% Whites
- 68% From Los Angeles/San Diego
- 63% From the Bay area
- 60% Democrats
- 60% Parents with children under 12
- 58% 18-29-year-olds
- 56% Liberals
SB866 lowers the age of vaccination consent to 12 (without parental consent). Overall, 55% of Californians oppose the bill (36% strongly oppose) vs. a total of 37% who support the bill. Notable demographics in opposition:
- 73% Republicans
- 64% Independents
- 59% Women
- 58% Whites
- 57% From Los Angeles/San Diego
- 53% Parents with children under the age of 12
- 50% Hispanics
- 43% Democrats
Regarding SB920 and SB866, in both cases those who strongly opposed the bill outnumbered or equaled the total percentage of combined support (respondents had the choice of “strongly” or “somewhat” regarding their support or opposition).
“This level of intense opposition should come as no surprise given that, historically, the more voters know about vaccine policies, the more convinced they become that the policies run counter to medical freedom.,” said CHD executive director Laura Bono.
At the beginning of the survey, voters were asked whether or not they support COVID mandates in general. This question yielded 68% in support and 30% in opposition.
As the survey continued and voters were asked about specific pieces of legislation using exact language from the bills, support dropped dramatically.
“It is incumbent upon CA voters to demand transparency regarding legislation that could change their lives and the patient-doctor relationship so dramatically,” said Ms. Bono.
###
Children’s Health Defense is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Its mission is to end childhood health epidemics by working aggressively to eliminate harmful exposures, hold those responsible accountable, and establish safeguards to prevent future harm. For more information, visit ChildrensHealthDefense.org.
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When Trump’s NIH pulled Peter Daszak’s grant to Wuhan in April 2020, the pushback was unimaginable
77 Nobel laureates begged NIH to give it back. So did 31 different “scientific societies” — see an article in SCIENCE magazine, the journal of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science
By Meryl Nass | March 28, 2023
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