Liberty Counsel | July 29, 2022
Today, Liberty Counsel settled the nation’s first classwide lawsuit for health care workers over a COVID shot mandate, for more than $10.3 million. The class action settlement against NorthShore University HealthSystem is on behalf of more than 500 current and former health care workers who were unlawfully discriminated against and denied religious exemptions from the COVID shot mandate. The agreed upon settlement was filed today in the federal Northern District Court of Illinois.
As a result of the settlement, NorthShore will pay $10,337,500 to compensate these health care employees who were victims of religious discrimination, and who were punished for their religious beliefs against taking an injection associated with aborted fetal cells.
This is a historic, first-of-its-kind class action settlement against a private employer who unlawfully denied hundreds of religious exemption requests to COVID-19 shots.
The settlement must be approved by the federal District Court. Employees of NorthShore who were denied religious exemptions will receive notice of the settlement, and will have an opportunity to comment, object, request to opt out, or submit a claim form for payment out of the settlement fund, all in accordance with deadlines that will be set by the court.
As part of the settlement agreement, NorthShore will also change its unlawful “no religious accommodations” policy to make it consistent with the law, and to provide religious accommodations in every position across its numerous facilities. No position in any NorthShore facility will be considered off limits to unvaccinated employees with approved religious exemptions.
In addition, employees who were terminated because of their religious refusal of the COVID shots will be eligible for rehire if they apply within 90 days of final settlement approval by the court, and they will retain their previous seniority level.
The amount of individual payments from the settlement fund will depend on how many valid and timely claim forms are submitted during the claims process. If the settlement is approved by the court and all or nearly all of the affected employees file valid and timely claims, it is estimated that employees who were terminated or resigned because of their religious refusal of a COVID shot will receive approximately $25,000 each, and employees who were forced to accept a COVID shot against their religious beliefs to keep their jobs will receive approximately $3,000 each.
The 13 health care workers who are lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit will receive an additional approximate payment of $20,000 each for their important role in bringing this lawsuit and representing the class of NorthShore health care workers.
Liberty Counsel will receive 20 percent of the settlement sum, which equals $2,061,500, as payment for the significant attorney’s fees and costs it has required to undertake to sue NorthShore and hold it accountable for its actions. This amount is far less than the typical 33 percent usually requested by attorneys in class action litigation.
In October 2021, Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter to NorthShore on behalf of numerous health care workers who had sincere religious objections to NorthShore’s “Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination Policy.” If NorthShore had agreed then to follow the law and grant religious exemptions, the matter would have been quickly resolved and it would have cost it nothing. But, when NorthShore refused to follow the law, and instead denied all religious exemption and accommodation requests for employees working in its facilities, Liberty Counsel filed a class action lawsuit, along with a motion for a temporary restraining order and injunction.
Liberty Counsel Vice President of Legal Affairs and Chief Litigation Counsel Horatio G. Mihet said, “We are very pleased with the historic, $10 million settlement achieved in our class action lawsuit against NorthShore University HealthSystem. The drastic policy change and substantial monetary relief required by the settlement will bring a strong measure of justice to NorthShore’s employees who were callously forced to choose between their conscience and their jobs. This settlement should also serve as a strong warning to employers across the nation that they cannot refuse to accommodate those with sincere religious objections to forced vaccination mandates.”
Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel said: “This classwide settlement providing compensation and the opportunity to return to work is the first of its kind in the nation involving COVID shot mandates. This settlement should be a wake-up call to every employer that did not accommodate or exempt employees who opposed the COVID shots for religious reasons. Let this case be a warning to employers that violated Title VII. It is especially significant and gratifying that this first classwide COVID settlement protects health care workers. Health care workers are heroes who daily give their lives to protect and treat their patients. They are needed now more than ever.”
The Defender | July 28, 2022
More than two years after Operation Warp Speed began, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) commissioned John Zogby Strategies to conduct two surveys about attitudes and the overall health of American adults.
The first survey of 1,038 adults found that 67% of respondents received one or more COVID-19 vaccines, while 33% are unvaccinated. Furthermore, among those vaccinated, 6% received one dose, 28% received two doses, 21% received three doses, and 12% took four or more.
Of those receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, 15% say they’ve been diagnosed by a medical practitioner with a new condition within a matter of weeks to several months after taking the vaccine.
A follow-up question provided a list of medical conditions and asked diagnosed respondents to “select all that apply.” Among those who were medically diagnosed with a new condition within a matter of weeks to several months after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, the top five cited conditions were:
Overall, 67% reported that getting the vaccine was a good decision, 24% were neutral and 10% regret it.
Survey participants were then asked if someone they personally know had been medically diagnosed with a new medical condition within the same time frame. Overall, 26% reported yes, while 63% reported no.
In the second survey of 829 adults ages 18-49 found that 62% of respondents received a COVID-19 vaccine, while 38% are unvaccinated.
Among those receiving any COVID-19 vaccine, almost one quarter — 22% — report being medically diagnosed within a matter of weeks to several months after the shot.
The top five cited new conditions include:
Regarding describing the conditions, 47% report mild, 43% report serious and 10% report severe/still recovering.
Describing their experience with taking one or more COVID-19 vaccines, 58% report it was a good decision, 28% are neutral and 14% regret it.
Finally, 30% of those ages 18-49 report knowing someone else who has been medically diagnosed within a matter of weeks to several months after taking a COVID-19 vaccine.
In other findings, regarding trust in the government to handle future pandemics among the all-adults survey — 23% say it has increased, 34% say it has decreased, 32% say it has remained the same and the rest were unsure.
The surveys included 1,038 American adults of all ages (MOE +/- 3.1) and 829 18-49-year-olds (MOE +/- 3.5). Both polls were fielded July 22-24, and data sets were pre-stratified and weighted to be representative of their respective populations. Error margins are higher for subgroups.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | July 28, 2022
Twitter suspended a record 4,466 accounts for violating its “COVID-19 misinformation” rules in H1 2022, according to the latest stats in its COVID-19 Misinformation Transparency Report. This represents a more than 70% increase from its previous record of suspending 2,614 accounts for violating the COVID-19 misinformation rules in H2 2021.
The report also revealed that Twitter removed 13,803 pieces of content and challenged (forced the account owner to verify their account with an email or phone number) 7,025 accounts for violating its COVID-19 misinformation rules in H2 2021.
One of the most controversial aspects of Twitter’s far-reaching COVID-19 misinformation rules is that users who repeatedly claim that vaccinated people can spread COVID-19 can be banned from the platform.
When Twitter introduced this rule, even the CDC was admitting that vaccinated people can become infected and “have the potential to spread the virus to others.” More recently, former White House COVID response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx admitted during congressional testimony that the US government’s claim that the vaccinated can’t spread the virus was based on “hope” and acknowledged during a recent interview that she “knew” the vaccines do not protect against infection and that the US government “overplayed them.”
Despite these admissions and acknowledgments, this rule that bans users from saying vaccinated people can spread the virus is still in place.
Other claims that are banned under Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation rules include “claims contrary to health authorities” that Twitter deems to “misrepresent research or statistical findings pertaining to the severity of the disease, prevalence of the virus, or effectiveness of widely accepted preventative measures, treatments, or vaccines” and claims that the vaccines are part of a “global surveillance” effort.
Twitter hasn’t published its censorship stats for July but several high-profile COVID commentators, including British consultant surgeon Tony Hinton and epidemiologist Andrew Bostom, have already been banned from the platform this month.
TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT | JULY 25, 2022
Tucker Carlson reveals the shocking side effects of antidepressants and calls out Democrats for not holding Big Pharma accountable. His full opinion piece can be read here: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-drugs-not-answer-every-human-problem
By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | July 27, 2022
LAST week the New Zealand government called for mask wearing to be enforced in schools – and many schools have apparently decided to punish students who do not comply.
Asked whether she was happy with that situation, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ducked the question, denied the mandate, passed the buck, and still managed to appear happy for students to be punished.
She said: ‘We are really open-minded on this issue. We in fact went back multiple times to education and health and said, “Look, if you believe we should bring that mask mandate back we are happy to do that. Whatever you think is going to be in the best interest of our learners, our schools, and our health outcomes.”
‘They came back to us and said we should strongly encourage their use, but we should still allow schools to implement the policies themselves. That’s where we have landed. We have not said mask wearing is compulsory, but we are strongly encouraging it.’
You can watch the full interview here. There is plenty of spin, but not a lot of ambiguity. Head teachers have been given a green light to dust off the detention book.
Some schools are giving students detention either during lunchtime or after school (the modern equivalent of writing out ‘I will wear my mask’ a thousand times), which translates into loss of opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities and sports. This should be unacceptable and is certainly deleterious to a student at any age and may result in them becoming alienated or adversely affected emotionally or socially. Students go to school to learn and understand the process of verifying knowledge, to engage socially, and to develop skills in communication; whereby they may debate and agree or disagree with one another, without the fear of being punished or discriminated against.
There is a considerable body of scientific evidence pointing to the ineffectiveness of masks to stop transmission. Long-term mask use also poses health risks and causes significant learning deficits.
Some parents, and hence their children, will be well aware of this. A policy of punishment for non-mask wearers is the antithesis of a constructive learning environment and teaches: ‘Comply without question or face a penalty.’
School attendance in New Zealand is already at an all-time low. As a result of this move, it is going to fall further. The opportunities for constructive debate are fast disappearing in education, and we can understand why many parents are turning their thoughts to home-schooling.
The problem here is that the public is being deliberately kept in the dark about the ineffectiveness of masks and the dangers of prolonged mask-wearing. Most are following government advice, thinking that they are protecting themselves and others from Covid. They are ending the day with a headache and a sore face, but sure that they have thereby saved the world.
So far, the NZ government has kept a tight hold on the Covid narrative by warning people that alternative news sources and social media conversations are full of misinformation, whilst government announcements are closely following ‘the science’. They also give cash grants to the mainstream media and advertise to the point of saturation.
That is all set to ramp up from today. The government has concluded a formal binding agreement with Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, Google (Gmail and YouTube), Amazon (Spark) and Twitter to limit the availability of harmful content including ‘misinformation and disinformation’ in New Zealand.
In a world first, the code is described as ‘voluntary’, but it includes a ‘commitment’ to being held ‘accountable’ which allows its provisions to be ‘enforced’. How is that for doublespeak? And who is deciding what is harmful?
The mask mandate rules and the information censorship have something in common. The government is asking others to do its dirty work, then asking us to believe it has nothing to do with those others. We are not naive: we already know how this works.
The agreement cleverly conflates things that we all feel should be controlled, such as child sexual exploitation and incitement to violence, with rational discussions about drug safety and effectiveness.
YouTube has previously withdrawn Covid content from view at the private request of the Ministry of Health. Apparently this can happen if any content causes the NZ government embarrassment.
I don’t suppose it has escaped your notice that internet censorship is a tool of oppressive governments. The dangers are becoming all too obvious here, where the majority of the public, subjected to blanket government advertising, still believe that regular mRNA boosters and flu shots offer protection for life that is stronger than natural immunity.
This is all taking on a macabre aspect, because official Covid data here and in the EU is showing that boosted individuals are increasingly more likely to die with Covid than are the unvaccinated. The apparent reluctance on the part of the government to engage with the implications of this official Covid data is seriously worrying. Governments traditionally have a general duty of care when it comes to policing public health measures.
This year has been one of the wettest on record in NZ. As a result, ants are coming into homes in record numbers and you may have been struck with how expendable ant populations are.
Ant colonies appear to have a centralised administrative policy whereby any number of workers can be put at risk in the search for homes and food for queens. This is a sort of groupthink which starkly contrasts with human ethics, wherein the individual is highly valued.
Here in New Zealand, we are 90 per cent mRNA vaccinated and we currently have the highest rate of all-cause mortality in the world. Even the Ministry of Health has admitted this is not because of Covid. Yet if you follow the government advertising and press statements, you will probably be unaware of this and happily sure that ‘the science’ is being followed.
I don’t need to draw conclusions for you here. If you are following the current Covid science journal publishing, you will be well aware of mathematical arguments entirely based on collected data which are taking place within a rational framework. Ignoring or hiding these is dangerous.
The author is in New Zealand
This blog is co-authored with Narayani Hatchard.
By Ramesh Thakur | Brownstone Institute | July 26, 2022
Deborah Birx was the White House Covid-19 response coordinator under President Donald Trump. Jeffrey Tucker recently wrote a brutal takedown of her deliberate misrepresentations of science and data in order to manipulate Trump into going along with her preferred but misguided policy interventions to deal with the Covid outbreak.
In an ABC podcast on December 15, 2020, she said: “I understand the safety of the vaccine … I understand the depth of the efficacy of this vaccine. This is one of the most highly-effective vaccines we have in our infectious disease arsenal.”
Appearing on Fox News on July 22, however, she claimed: “I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection. And I think we overplayed the vaccines. And it made people then worry that it’s not going to protect against severe disease and hospitalization.”
This might help to explain why there has been such a concerning collapse of public confidence in leading health institutions and “authorities.”
Biden’s claim of a pandemic of the unvaccinated
During a CNN Town Hall event on July 21, 2021, President Joe Biden said: “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in an ICU unit, and you are not going to die.”
On May 16, 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci claimed that vaccination did not just protect the individual, but also the community, because “by preventing the spread of the virus … you become a dead end to the virus. And when there are a lot of dead ends around, the virus is not going to go anywhere.”
Relying in the judgment of his chief medical adviser, Biden took to talking about the pandemic of the unvaccinated in a two-track effort both to encourage vaccine takeup and to vilify, demonize and shame those who remained uncertain enough of the balance of benefits and short and long-term risks of the rushed Covid-19 vaccines to avoid succumbing to the multiple pressures to go along with the zeitgeist in order to get along with everyone.
We have now had both Dr. Fauci, the public face of the US management of the pandemic, revered in some quarters and reviled in others, and President Biden himself get infected with Covid, despite both being double-vaccinated and double-boosted.
Inevitably, to try and stop the official narrative on the benefits of the vaccine from unraveling completely and in order to encourage continuing vaccine and boosters takeup, they insist that their updated vaccination status helped to limit the severity of their infection. This is based on a cult-like faith, akin to self-validating and self-canceling explanations put forth by astrologers for predictions that come true and don’t, as the case may be.
Although on July 20, Fauci admitted that the data do make it clear that “vaccines – because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus – don’t protect overly well, as it were, against infection.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked why the media was not holding Fauci “accountable for the costly national policies and the lockdowns that were utterly built upon his initial assertion that the vaccines would prevent transmission and end the pandemic.”
Equally, of course, one must ask again: if vaccines don’t stop transmission, how does the government justify vaccination mandates for travel to the US?
In a matching vein, the New South Wales (NSW) Health report for the week ending 16 July claims that: “The minority of the overall population who have not been vaccinated are significantly overrepresented among patients in hospitals and ICUs with Covid-19.”
The following challenges that claim using their own data.
By drawing on the distinction between the efficacy and effectiveness of vaccines, it’s possible to argue that in NSW, rather than a pandemic of the unvaccinated, what we have witnessed is a pandemic of the triple-vaccinated.
NSW health facts
In September 2021, NSW had 844 staffed ICU beds, of which 173 (20.5 percent) were occupied by Covid-19 patients. (Australia-wide, the number of ICU beds is 2,183.) By January 2022, the number had increased to around 1,000. If necessary, this can be bumped up further by utilizing the limited number of ICU beds in private hospitals.
There are 9,500 general ward beds in public and another 3,000 beds in private hospitals in NSW. In mid-July 2022, there were 2,058 people in hospital with Covid-19 in NSW, or 21.7 percent of the public system’s capacity and 16.5 percent of the state’s total hospital beds capacity. An additional 6,500 people were in hospital for non-Covid reasons.
During the week of July 10–16, a total of 806 people were admitted to hospital with Covid-19, another 77 into ICU, and 142 people died with Covid-19 illness (though not necessarily as the primary cause of death). Moreover, of the 142 deaths, only four were aged below 60, so that people aged 60 and above accounted for 97.2 percent of all Covid-related deaths in the state.
Additionally, of the 142 dead, the vaccination status of 2 was not known. One hundred and eighteen of the remaining 140 – 84.3 percent – were at least double-vaccinated and 69 had received three doses of the vaccine: by far the biggest single cohort and almost equal to all the others combined. Hence the thought that perhaps what we are experiencing is a pandemic of the triple-vaccinated.
Efficacy vs. effectiveness
The Cambridge Dictionary defines efficacy as “how well a particular treatment or drug works under carefully controlled scientific testing conditions.” By contrast, effectiveness is defined as “how well a particular treatment or drug works when people are using it, as opposed to how well it works under carefully controlled scientific testing conditions.”
Thus doubts about the effectiveness of a new product in treating any disease can only be resolved once the vaccine is widely available and administered in the target population. GAVI (the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization), now called Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is a partnership between the World Health Organization, Unicef, the World Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Writing for GAVI, Priya Joi offers similar definitions, describing “efficacy” as the measure of how much a vaccine prevents infection (and possibly also transmission) under ideal, controlled conditions where a vaccinated group is compared with a placebo group. She adds: “Vaccines do not always need to have an exceptionally high effectiveness to be useful, for example the influenza vaccine is 40-60% effective yet saves thousands of lives every year.”
Examining the percentage of the thrice-jabbed in hospital admissions, ICU beds, and dead against the baseline of their share in the overall population, preferably age-adjusted, is critical to calculating vaccine efficacy. I’m not sure how helpful that is to assessing the effectiveness of vaccines in keeping the absolute numbers down below the state’s or country’s capacity thresholds of hospital and ICU beds.
If the primary public health justification for universal vaccination is to reduce the burden on the health infrastructure and prevent hospitals and ICU capacity from being overwhelmed – which was indeed the main justification in the language of two-three weeks to flatten the curve – then the key question becomes: How effective are the vaccines in preventing hospital admissions and ICU occupancy? Their role in preventing infection by itself is less important than their effectiveness in controlling the severity of the disease.
For example, a report from the Dutch health ministry found that the effectiveness of two doses of vaccines after one year had fallen overall to 0 percent against hospitalizations and minus 20 percent against ICU admission. Perhaps more pertinently in relation to NSW, Dr. Eyal Shahar notes signs in Israel of a short-term fatality rate of a third dose.
Efficacy is more helpful to an individual in assessing the relative risk of infection if vaccinated or not. Because Covid vaccines were granted emergency-use authorization and long-term efficacy and safety profiles were simply not available, doubts have persisted about the integrity, credibility and long-term reliability of data and results from the trials conducted by the vaccine manufacturers.
Moreover, as we’ve been made aware with respect to the UK, different branches of the government like the Health Security Agency and the Office of National Statistics use different and hotly contested methodologies for calculating the numbers and proportions of the population infected by Covid, which in turn determines the estimated infection fatality rate (IFR).
In any case, even if we agree that the IFR and case fatality rate (CFR) of flu and Covid are broadly comparable by now, the scale and magnitude of Covid means that similar IFR and CFR still produce vastly different orders of challenges for public health policy.
By contrast the effectiveness of the vaccines for controlling hospital admissions, ICU bed occupancy and mortality is measured by solid and reliable information that is both accurate and comprehensive in Western countries. This makes vaccine effectiveness a better policy tool for deciding on population-wide mandates while efficacy might be the more relevant for informed individual decisions.
Covid in NSW
In the period for the weeks ending May 28 to July 16, 2022 in NSW, of those whose vaccination status was known, only eight unvaccinated people were among the 3,509 who required hospital admission (Figure 1). The numbers in ICU were 5 unvaccinated and 316 with 2-4 doses (Figure 2); the number of Covid dead were 110 unvaccinated and 662 with 2–4 doses (Figure 3).
With 83 percent of people at least double-vaccinated, they accounted for 99.4, 96.3, and 85.4 percent, respectively, of NSW Covid hospital admission, ICU and deaths in these seven weeks.
In the final week of this seven-week period, of those whose vaccination status was known, there were exactly zero – zilch, nada – unvaccinated people among the 624 hospital and 59 ICU Covid-19 admissions, compared to 615 with two, three and four vaccine doses in hospital and 58 in ICU beds. Just the triple-vaccinated, who account for 68 percent of the population of NSW, made up 57.5 percent in hospital, 53.7 percent in ICU and 53.5 percent of the Covid dead.
The claim that the unvaccinated are “significantly overrepresented” in Covid-19 hospital admissions and ICU occupancy is not just misleading, it’s downright false. Seriously, do they look at the data in their own reports before drawing policy conclusions?
As knowledge about the rapidly fading efficacy of the vaccines, and in particular of each successor booster dose, has firmed, and also as the vaccine escape properties of the newer variants of Covid-19 have become better known, the equivalent question now is: are we into the era of the pandemic of the triple -vaccinated? The biggest strain on NSW hospitals and ICU beds is coming from their numbers.
Public health officials can talk and dissemble all they want about the baselines for comparisons and pretend to possess great sophistication in their understanding of the current state of the disease. They still cannot spin their way out of the hard data.
Instead they are exhibiting a severe case of cognitive dissonance in encouraging the double-vaccinated to get boosted and double-boosted. The ineffectiveness of vaccines in reducing hospital admissions and ICU demand is in itself sufficient to torpedo vaccine mandates. Doubts on their efficacy and concerns about their adverse effects and long-term safety further strengthens the case against mandates.
Ramesh Thakur, a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, is emeritus professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | July 25, 2022
Schools in Washington, D.C., will require all students ages 12 and older to get the COVID-19 vaccine before they can attend school in the fall, despite warnings from legal experts who say the mandate violates federal law.
The Office of the State Superintendent of Education announced on July 19 that student immunization requirements for the upcoming 2022-2023 school year will include the COVID-19 vaccine for all students who are of an age for which there is a vaccine fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“On July 8, 2022, the FDA fully approved the COVID-19 vaccine commonly known as the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for individuals 12 to 15 years old,” said State Superintendent of Education Christina Grant in a press release.
“The approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for individuals 12 to 15 means that, unless exempted, any student age 12-15 at the start of the 2022-23 school year must have received the primary COVID-19 vaccine series or have started receiving the shot by Sept. 16, 2022,” she said.
“We want to make sure that all of our students have everything they need for a healthy start to the school year,” Grant added. “This means making sure children see their primary medical provider for a well-child visit and receive all needed immunizations.”
D.C. law requires students in all area schools, including private, parochial and independent schools, to be fully compliant with mandated vaccinations, unless they have an approved exemption. The law also requires schools to verify immunization certification for all students.
The requirement was detailed in a law the D.C. Council approved last year and is the first legislation of its kind in the region.
CHD demands D.C. Schools rescind mandate
In a letter sent today to Grant, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman and chief legal counsel for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), asked Grant to rescind the program or CHD would sue to overturn the mandate.
Kennedy said Grant’s press release was incorrect because the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was never fully approved and still remains under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).
The FDA earlier this month granted full approval to Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine for adolescents 12 through 15 years old, without convening its vaccine advisory panel.
In August 2021, the agency granted full licensing of the Comirnaty vaccine for ages 16 and older.
However, there are no Comirnaty-labeled vaccines available in the U.S., for any age group.
Although courts have upheld many childhood vaccination requirements for licensed and approved vaccines, no court has ever upheld a mandate for schoolchildren for an EUA vaccine, according to Kennedy.
Kennedy wrote:
“In fact, a District of Columbia United States District Court held that EUA vaccines cannot be mandated to soldiers in the U.S. military, who enjoy far fewer rights than civilians. Doe #1 v. Rumsfeld, 297 F.Supp.2d 119 (2003). That court held: ‘… the United States cannot demand that members of the armed forces also serve as guinea pigs for experimental drugs.’ Id. at 135.
“Federal law 21 U.S.C. § 360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III) requires that the person to whom an EUA vaccine is administered be advised, ‘of the option to accept or refuse administration of the product, of the consequences, if any, of refusing administration of the product, and of the alternatives to the product that are available and of their benefits and risks.’
“The reason for the right of refusal stems from the fact that EUA products are by definition experimental.
“Under the Nuremberg Code, a universal legal norm, no one may be coerced to participate in a medical experiment. Consent of the individual is ‘absolutely essential.’ The liability for forced participation in a medical experiment, not to mention liability for injury from such coerced medical intervention, may be incalculable.”
Commenting on the D.C. mandate, CHD President Mary Holland said, “It violates fundamental human rights and international law to force people, and especially children, to take experimental medical products.”
“We sincerely hope the District will reconsider its misguided policy for schoolchildren,” Holland added.
Another organization — Liberty Counsel — said it may also challenge the District of Columbia’s vaccine mandate.
“There is no FDA-approved COVID shot available and therefore, individuals have a right under the emergency use authorization to refuse these shots,” Matthew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, told The Epoch Times.
Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, people receiving an EUA product must be advised that some benefits and risks “are unknown” and given the “option to accept or refuse administration of the product.”
“It is your choice to receive or not receive [the vaccine],” Staver said. “Should you decide not to receive it, it will not change your standard medical care,” according to FDA fact sheets on EUA COVID-19 vaccines.
Several other school systems have attempted, so far unsuccessfully, to implement a COVID-19 vaccine mandate:
• Louisiana: The Louisiana Department of Health in May said it would no longer seek to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for the upcoming school year because the shot had not received full FDA approval for people under the age of 16.
The decision came after CHD and thousands of concerned parents on March 16 filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit seeking to stop the Louisana Department of Health from adding COVID-19 vaccines to the state’s school immunization schedule.
The joint lawsuit was filed in December 2021, by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and state Rep. Raymond Crews against Gov. John Bel Edwards after he announced COVID-19 vaccines would be mandatory for all children age 5 and over at public or private schools.
• Los Angeles: Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Superintendent Alberto Carvalho on April 28 recommended the district postpone its COVID-19 student vaccination mandate until at least July 2023 because the FDA had not fully approved the COVID-19 vaccine for all ages covering grades 7 through 12.
LAUSD officials announced last fall students 12 and older would be required to be vaccinated by the start of the 2022-2023 school year but delayed the mandate because tens of thousands of students still had not complied with the requirement.
• Washington: The Washington State Board of Health in April voted unanimously against adding COVID-19 vaccines to the requirements for students to attend K-12 schools this fall after its advisory group recommended against the requirement. The board said more data was needed about vaccines for ages 5 to 11 and raised concerns that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has yet to be fully approved for ages 5 to 15.
Megan Redshaw is a staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense and a reporter for The Defender.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
By Julie Comber, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 25, 2022
Groups in Canada and Australia are urging public health officials to reconsider rolling out COVID-19 vaccines for young children, following the authorization earlier this month in both countries of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 6 months to 5 years.
The Australian Vaccine-risks Network (AVN) on July 19 sent an open letter to Dr. Brendan Murphy, secretary of Australia’s Department of Health and Aged Care, voting members of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation and members of parliament threatening to “move forward with preparations for seeking the intervention of the Federal Court of Australia” if officials don’t respond.
The Canadian COVID Care Alliance (CCCA) on July 14 published an open letter to Canadian health officials stating their members would “be happy to meet you to discuss findings documented in this letter in greater detail.”
Both letters emphasized three arguments against authorizing the mRNA shots in young children and babies:
Both letters also referenced the June 30 open letter to U.K. health officials from more than 70 physicians and scientists warning against vaccinating younger children against COVID-19.
The U.K. letter, written in response to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in mid-June of the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shots for children as young as 6 months, urged U.K. health officials to not “make the same mistake” the FDA made.
All three letters referenced Søren Brostrøm, director of the Danish Health and Medicines Authority, who in June said, “We did not get much out of having children vaccinated against coronavirus last year.”
Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration on July 18 provisionally approved a pediatric dose of Moderna’s Spikevax COVID-19 shot for children ages 6 months to 5 years old. Rollout of the vaccines is contingent on input from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation.
A few days earlier, on July 14, Health Canada authorized the use of Spikevax for children 6 months to 5 years of age. According to the statement, “As a result of this authorization, approximately 1.7 million children are now eligible for vaccination against COVID-19.”
Risks ‘far outweigh’ benefits for children
The 11-page CCCA letter contains 117 references and six pages of figures and graphs to support the group’s argument that “the data shows that, in the Omicron era, when population-based immunity is widespread, the risks associated with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines far outweigh the benefits in children.”
The authors of the CCCA letter criticized the FDA, stating, “no gold standard, placebo-controlled disease endpoint trials, large enough [with at least 800,000 participants] to categorically establish the clinical safety and long-term efficacy of the Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccinations in children 12- to 15-years-old, 5- to 11-years-old, 2- to 4-years-old, and 6-months-old to 23-months-old have been undertaken.”
Instead, the EUA for Pfizer was “based on the preliminary results of four very small immuno-bridging trials, enrolling fewer than 3,000 participants each.”
The CCCA letter presented data from the Canadian province of Ontario, which “reported a negative dose-response effect for the COVID-19 vaccinations [original emphasis].”
The letter continued:
“In other words, the proportion of cases of COVID-19 were highest among those who had been ‘boosted,’ lower among the ‘fully inoculated’ and least among the ‘not fully inoculated’ (which includes the ‘uninoculated’).”
The authors presented graphs from the Public Health Ontario website, noting a similar pattern was observed in the 12- to 17-year-olds and the 5- to 11-year-old age groups.
“Additionally, a greater proportion of ‘boosted’ Ontarians have died, revealing that the vaccinations may be associated with serious secondary effects.”
The CCCA letter concludes:
“We trust that our research has provided you with evidence needed to adjust Canadian health policy to protect our children from undue harm. We would be happy to meet you to discuss findings documented in this letter in greater detail.”
‘Huge gap’ in Pfizer’s vaccine trial documentation
According to the authors of the AVN letter, the Pfizer documentation presented to the FDA had huge gaps in the evidence provided.
For example, the letter stated:
“The protocol was changed mid-trial. The original two-dose schedule exhibited poor immunogenicity with efficacy far below the required standard. A third dose was added by which time many of the original placebo recipients had been vaccinated.”
The AVN letter argued the Moderna shot for young children fails to meet Australia’s regulatory requirements to be granted “provisional determination” (similar to EUA in the U.S.) under regulation 10L(1)(a) of the Therapeutic Goods Regulations.
To receive provisional determination, there must be “an indication of the medicine is the treatment, prevention or diagnosis of a life-threatening or seriously debilitating condition,” the letter stated.
The authors said Australia’s health department and TGA did not “show any data or science to support a conclusion that COVID-19, and particularly the Omicron variant now widespread across Australia, is ‘life-threatening’ to infants aged 6 months up through 4 years, nor indeed that infants 6 months up through 4 years suffer ‘seriously debilitating’ symptoms when infected with COVID-19.”
The authors also addressed the issue of manipulative strategies used to promote COVID-19 vaccination of children, and said pushing unnecessary and novel mRNA-based vaccines onto young children risks undermining parental confidence in routine immunization programs.
Julie Comber is a freelance science reporter for The Defender.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
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By Jeb Smith | The Libertarian Institute | April 20, 2026
In Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, Professor Todd Rose explains that to belong to a group, people “keep twisting [themselves] into pretzels, trying to conform to what we falsely believe everyone else expects of us.” Seeking acceptance from the group, we conform in language, behavior, beliefs, and practices. As a result, we lose our individuality and aggregate into herds. Within our group we create an alternate reality to fit whichever collective mindset we attach ourselves to, and interpret the world through those lenses—our innate desire to belong overrides reality.
Rose says these illusions “have become a defining feature of our modern society.” In other words, the collectivist mindset is a great conduit for spreading illusions; thus, it is the politician’s favored form of governance.
Rose points to studies in psychology and neuroscience showing we delude ourselves into believing what the majority does, even if it is not what we desire or know to be accurate. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
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