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The National Guardsman and pink-shirted health department representative in this photo illustration are real door-knockers who were featured in a June 2021 news report in North Carolina

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ANALYSIS

July 30, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Before the White House announced the government would be “literally knocking on doors” to push coronavirus vaccines, health workers, military personnel, and volunteers in some states were already doing just that.

“We need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and oftentimes, door to door — literally knocking on doors — to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus,” President Joe Biden said on July 6, 2021. That same day, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki also said that a top priority for the administration is “targeted, community-by-community, door-to-door outreach to get remaining Americans vaccinated by ensuring they have the information they need on how both safe and accessible the vaccine is.”

Liberal media immediately jumped to defend the initiative, claiming conservatives had “mischaracterized the effort as the deployment of government agents to strong-arm reluctant Americans.” Rather, this is just a push to “enlist volunteers, including local doctors and pastors,” insisted ABC News, which was also forced to admit any White House messaging about the vaccine being a personal choice was subsequently “muddied … when Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told CNN in an interview that ‘it is absolutely the government’s business’ to know who isn’t vaccinated because of the money spent on the effort.”

A lengthy News & Observer piece ­­from June 11, 2021, details a door-knocking effort in by the Johnston County Health Department in North Carolina. It begins:

The knock on Josie Hines’ door came just after 9 a.m. Tuesday.

On the front stoop of her Smithfield home, a trio of National Guard troops flanked a petite woman with a clipboard, her pink floral top stark against the camo uniforms at her back.

Hines was expecting them.

About two weeks ago, a similar crew arrived on her doorstep offering COVID-19 vaccines in Woodall Heights, a neighborhood of public housing and private residences off Interstate 95. Hines and Reginald Archibald, who she lives with, accepted. So did their neighbor across the street.

A video accompanying the story shows burly, masked National Guardsmen helping the local health department set up an outdoor tent. One of the uniformed National Guardsman can be seen canvassing the neighborhood with a cheery-sounding woman, and standing by as the woman offers a resident the vaccine.

This sort of scenario — a government representative pushing an experimental vaccine at citizens’ doorsteps as a menacing solider stands by — is exactly what many Americans were worried about when then-President Donald Trump said in the fall of 2020 that the “military … is going to distribute the vaccine.” (Scroll down to read how legal experts recommend interacting with vaccine door-knockers.)

The News & Observer report makes it clear the people administering the vaccine know very little about the health history of the residents they’re injecting:

The convenience of Tuesday’s neighborhood clinic was hard to ignore.

“This your first one?” Mary Banks asked as she prepared to give [Briona] Davis her shot.

“First one,” Davis responded.

After two hours, with the street empty, the crew began folding up tents and tables. They filed forms, pamphlets and unused vaccine sticker sheets back into portable file boxes. The little freezer and its 12 remaining doses were returned to the trunk of Smith’s SUV.

No mention is made of what will happen if a person has a bad reaction (myocarditis, blood clots, Guillain-Barré syndrome, miscarriage) to one of the vaccines sometime “after two hours,” when the National Guard-manned injection tent has been taken down for the day and the needle-in-hand workers are gone. The News & Observer report does make it clear some of the people in public housing may not have access to “a car or affordable childcare.” Others may not have “paid time off from a minimum wage job” or “health insurance.”

Stating the obvious, the article added, “A lack of insurance might mean you don’t often interact with a medical provider offering the shot.”

So residents experiencing a medical emergency after the injection — or even just adverse vaccine effects — may be left with no choice but to call 911 (and be stuck with an ambulance bill of several thousand dollars), or just return to their minimum wage jobs and try to cope.

Teenage vaccine door-knocker: ‘We try to push’ people to take the experimental drug

It wasn’t just North Carolina: door-knockers in various states were also targeting people in their homes before Biden’s announcement, although it appears most were not actually bringing syringes with them.

FOX5 KVVU-TV reported on July 23, 2021, that “a group of local volunteers” in Las Vegas is “specially targeting Hispanic neighborhoods, talking to Latinos about the vaccine.”

The Las Vegas door-to-door campaign has been going on “for almost two full months now,” reporter Kim Passoth said in a video package about the program — meaning “volunteers,” like Johnston County, North Carolina, workers, have been targeting people in their homes since before Biden’s announcement.

“The east side is a lot of Hispanics and a lot of Hispanics don’t normally believe in vaccines in my experience, that was the thing with my family,” volunteer Leticia Rios told the outlet. Rios, who has been out of high school for just one year, admitted the door-knockers “try to push” people to take the experimental shots.

“There’s like just a few that say ‘no thank you’ and slam the door and you know it’s fine. We try to push to get vaccinated but if it’s an absolutely no for them you know that’s up to them,” Rios explained.

There is no indication in the report that Rios or any of the other door-knockers with whom she volunteers have any medical training or experience or are qualified in any way to speak with the public about the safety or efficacy of coronavirus vaccines.

Even Florida had vaccine door-knockers before Biden announcement

A May 3, 2021 report from ABC affiliate 13 News Now indicated residents of Hampton, Virginia, were being subjected to a door-knocking campaign by “vaccine outreach specialists” to get them signed up for a coronavirus injection.

Gaylene Kanoyton, “the founder of Celebrate Healthcare, a health insurance marketing and outreach company” and head of the door-knocking blitz, told the local news that signing people up to be vaccinated is “no different than voter registration. This is a campaign.”

“This is a campaign and we have two candidates: our candidate is the vaccine for life, and COVID for death,” she said. The Wuhan coronavirus has an extremely high survival rate; the U.S. government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is closing in on 500,000 reports of injuries or death following coronavirus vaccines.

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19-year-old Leticia Rios said on video she and other volunteers 'try to push' people to take the shots. Her quote also appears in print on the FOX5 KVVU-TV story accompanying the news video.

The left-wing website Refinery29 reported on May 20, 2021:

Organizations in a variety of communities run these types of [door-to-door] campaigns. A group of volunteers with a group called Together Louisiana started their own initiative in Baton Rouge, LA. Elsewhere, governments are helping fund these outreach efforts. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom allocated $10 million into funding the door-to-door effort and hiring around 2,000 “callers and door-knockers to help Californians make a plan to get vaccinated.” According to The New York Times, officials in New York City have said the city will give $9 million to community-based organizations promoting vaccine awareness.

All of these groups are employing similar tactics. A New Haven, CT, group, supported by the city’s Health Department, the American Red Cross, and Together New Haven, told the New Haven Independent that volunteers simply provide residents with information about the different vaccines and offer to answer their questions or address their concerns. Canvassers are equipped with fact sheets and common talking points, which include reminders that you don’t need an ID or insurance to get the shot. 

Refinery29 also noted that door-knocking firefighters helped convince over two dozen people in Florida — which, under the leadership of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, has made a name for itself as a “free state” when it comes to coronavirus — to take a coronavirus vaccine in one day.

“Orange County’s firefighters paired with crews from the state to get vaccines in the arms of the county’s most vulnerable,” reported WESH.com, an NBC affiliate. “The crews, around 150 people in total, headed out to the Pine Hills and Lockhart areas of Orange County early Tuesday morning. As of 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, officials said 29 people had been vaccinated so far. They were prepared to register and vaccinate on the spot.”

Orange County, Florida, is home to Disney World.

In early 2021, LA Sherriff’s Department forcibly injected disabled, special-needs people in their homes

Another pre-Biden announcement door-to-door vaccine campaign took place in California in early 2021. Called “Operation Homebound,” it consisted of members of the Los Angeles Sherriff’s Department (LASD) forcibly injecting people who are disabled and mentally handicapped with Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose COVID-19 vaccine.

Footage of the initiative shows two adults and a uniformed officer restraining a woman with special needs who is clearly terrified as a second uniformed officer jabs the needle into her arm.

Another clip shows a woman who is barely able to move and unable to speak being vaccinated. “It’s okay, hon. It’s okay. We just gave you a vaccination,” an officer says to the woman, who appeared to be asleep and awoke when the injection went in her arm.

Psychiatrist Peter Breggin, a champion of the right to informed consent who successfully campaigned in the 1970s against the psychiatric practice of surgical lobotomy for mental illness, told LifeSiteNews at the time, “The video is horrific.”

“It represents the worst of psychiatry, public health, and progressive politics coming all together in the service of globalism,” he said.

Showing up at Americans’ doors with ‘vaccine in hand’

Following Biden’s early July announcement of the government’s official door-to-door vaccine campaign, the Mecklenburg County Health Department in North Carolina announced it would use “innovative ways” to vaccinate the public.

“They’re not just gonna show up at your door with a needle in their hand,” a local WCNC news anchor said in a video package about the effort. She then went on to explain that the door-knockers actually were going to do just that: “They’re expanding on the efforts of ActionNC and other community partners who have already been canvassing in the areas of the county with lower vaccination rates. Now, instead of educating and encouraging people to go and get vaccinated, they’re actually gonna have a public health member on hand to be able to give a shot right on the spot.”

Action NC is a far-left pro-abortion group. On the “Race, Gender and Equity (RAGE)” page on its website, Action NC writes:

As of 2014, the majority of federal lawmakers in Congress and 28 out of 50 state governors have supported measures that restrict women’s reproductive rights, including abortion services, even though research shows that a woman’s ability to decide for herself when to start a family, how many children to have or not have and affordability and access to reproductive services are fundamental to increasing economic prosperity for women…

“Those individual conversations through partnerships such as Action NC have really been vital to really increasing vaccine uptake,” Dr. Meg Sullivan, Medical Director for the Mecklenburg County Health Department, told WCNC.

“Our staff will actually be going out with the canvassers with vaccine in hand,” Mecklenburg County Health Director Gibbie Harris confirmed in the WCNC report. The outlet wrote that the effort is “in line with the federal government’s strategy to get more of the country protected.”

Over the weekend, a Dallas FOX affiliate reported, “Friday morning, Dallas County Health and Human Services representatives pounded the pavement, going door to door in South Dallas, hoping to reach people who still haven’t gotten a COVID-19 vaccine.”

This week New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo spoke of going putting people “in a car” and driving them to “get that vaccine in their arm.”

“We have to get in those communities, and we have to knock on those doors, and we have to convince people, and put them in a car and drive them and get that vaccine in their arm. That is the mission,” said the left-wing governor.

Cuomo also announced six “community organizations” would be given $15 million in taxpayer funding to push the vaccine on people in their homes: “They are going to organize to get to these communities, to go door to door and have these conversations with people in the communities, to get those [vaccine] numbers up.”

How are neighborhoods or houses targeted?

Biden’s initial announcement about the door-to-door vaccine campaign left many questions unanswered. Who exactly would be knocking on doors — and, perhaps more importantly, how would the door-knockers decide which houses to target?

As detailed above, it seems the first question has at least partially been answered: In some areas, it’ll be the local health department or a “community organization” — a non-profit with volunteers — knocking on doors, and often those organizations will be working in tandem with or receiving funds from the state or local government.

After he faced criticism for saying it’s “absolutely the government’s business” whether someone is vaccinated, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra tweeted, “Some comments I made today are being taken wildly out of context. To be clear: government has no database tracking who is vaccinated. We’re encouraging people to step up to protect themselves, others by getting vaccinated. It’s the best way to save lives and end this pandemic.”

While there may not necessarily be a federal government “database tracking who is vaccinated,” in order to receive a free coronavirus vaccine in most places, Americans must present a photo ID. Furthermore, states (and usually counties and cities) keep track of how many of their residents are vaccinated and/or “total doses administered,” as evidenced by their health departments’ tracking “dashboards.” Some of these “dashboards” are broken down by county — and it’s clear door-knockers are targeting geographical areas and zip codes with “low” vaccination rates.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also have a “COVID Data Tracker” that allows anyone to see state vaccine reception statistics, including a breakdown by county. So while the federal government may not have a list or “database” of every individual’s vaccine status, it certainly has information about the percentage of people in any given area who have taken the shot(s).

Users of this CDC tool can see what percentage of the population in an area has had at least one vaccine dose and what percentage is “fully vaccinated” (as of July 27, 2021, the CDC defines “fully vaccinated” as two weeks after the second dose in a two-dose series vaccine series, such as the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or two weeks “after a single-dose vaccine, such as Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine”). This can also be broken down by age: partially or fully vaccinated people aged 12 and older, 18 and older, or 65 and older.

Chicago health department ‘gives canvassers spreadsheets to fill out … which are then entered into a database’

On July 22, 2021, the Hyde Park Herald reported, “Canvassers with the Department of Public Health’s Protect Chicago program are going door to door to encourage residents to get vaccinated in the 13 lowest-immunized community areas across the city.”

The article continued, “Armani Nightengale, who works for Protect Chicago in South Shore through the Calumet Area Industrial Commission, said CDPH gives canvassers spreadsheets to fill out with contacts once they are made, which are then entered into a database. Canvassers ask who in the house has been vaccinated; they can answer any questions, help with appointment scheduling and make follow-up visits … The canvassers are thoroughly trained in workshop seminars on countering misinformation about the vaccines as well as the science behind them.”

Mayor Lori Lightfoot “said the data of where in the city Chicagoans are getting vaccinated is determining the allocation of resources — … the city is running dozens of pop-up events every week at churches, transit stops and other spaces — and where canvassers are going door to door.”

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Lightfoot famously had her hair done during the first coronavirus lockdown, when normal Chicagoans were forbidden from operating or patronizing hair salons (“getting your roots done is not essential,” she’d said), and then defended doing so because “I’m the public face of this city.”

How should Americans react to vaccine door-knockers?

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The CDC's 'COVID data tracker' breaks down counties by vaccination rate

Many Americans may now find themselves wondering what to do if a stranger with a clipboard — or military personnel — shows up at their door ask invasive questions and encouraging reception of an experimental shot.

Greg Glaser, General Counsel for Physicians for Informed Consent, told LifeSiteNews, “There are many constitutional issues implicated here.”

“The first issue is whether the person knocking is from the government or is genuinely a private party, as this will affect how the door knocker could be sued for potential rights violations,” he explained. “For example, Federal courts have held that section 1983 civil rights lawsuits can proceed against government personnel even if the personnel believed that their conduct was lawful, because believing in illegal activity does not make it lawful.”

American courts have “consistently” championed privacy in one’s home, Glaser continued:

Secondly, privacy in the home is consistently championed by courts of law. For example, quoting the US Supreme Court, we read the following in the case of Good v. Dauphin Cnty. Soc. Servs. for Children & Youth, 891 F.2d 1087, 1092 (3d Cir. 1989), “‘Physical entry into the home is the chief evil against which the … Fourth Amendment is directed.’ United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297, 313, 32 L. Ed. 2d 752, 92 S. Ct. 2125 (1972). ‘At the very core [of the Fourth Amendment and the personal rights it secures] stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.’ Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511, 5 L. Ed. 2d 734, 81 S. Ct. 679 (1961).”

Regarding the question of informed consent, and whether a person can really consent to an experimental coronavirus vaccine if he is feeling pressured by the presence of a government health department agent or military personnel on his doorstep, Glaser explained that “in similar circumstances, courts have found that when government personnel ask a citizen to consent to a search without first clarifying the citizen’s right to decline, it can put the citizen under the false impression that consent is not an option.”

In a commentary titled The Right to Be Let Alone: What to Do When COVID Strike Force Teams Come Knocking published on the Rutherford Institute’s website, John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead wrote that Americans ought to be wary of anyone at their doors asking about their medical history:

Any attempt by the government to encroach upon the citizenry’s privacy rights or establish a system by which the populace can be targeted, tracked and singled out must be met with extreme caution. These door-to-door “visits” by COVID-19 surge response teams certainly qualify as a government program whose purpose, while seemingly benign, raises significant constitutional concerns …

While government agents can approach, speak to and even question citizens without violating the Fourth Amendment, Americans have a right not to answer questions or even speak with a government agent.

Courts have upheld … “knock and talk” [police] visits as lawful, reasoning that even though the curtilage of the home is protected by the Fourth Amendment, there is an implied license to approach a residence, knock on the door/ring the bell, and seek to contact occupants. However, the encounter is wholly voluntary and a person is under no obligation to speak with a government agent in this situation …

While in theory one can refuse to speak with police or other government officials during a “knock and talk” encounter, as the courts have asserted as a justification for dismissing complaints about this police investigative tactic, the reality is far different. Indeed, it is unreasonable to suggest that individuals caught unaware by these tactics will not feel pressured in the heat of the moment to comply with a request to speak with government agents who display official credentials and are often heavily armed, let alone allow them to search one’s property. Even when such consent is denied, police have been known to simply handcuff the homeowner and conduct a search over his objections.

“Interestingly, liberals in California, including Governor Newsom, advised illegal immigrants to refuse to open the door in cases where federal law enforcement came to arrest illegal immigrants,” noted LifeSiteNews Vice President Gualberto Garcia Jones, a legal expert on human rights. “While this is not great legal advice for those guilty of a federal crime, it is very good advice for those who wish to protect their privacy from an overreaching government official.”

“The White House has tried to downplay the vaccine door-to-door gestapo by stating that it would not be carried out by police or federal officials but by local community partners. In that case there is no possible situation where a resident would be obliged to answer the door and much less disclose private health information such as COVID experimental gene therapy injection status,” he emphasized.

CONTACT YOUR FEDERAL AND STATE LEGISLATORS: Tell them to reject door to door vaccinations! Click to contact your lawmakers now.

Garcia Jones explained, “It is well-established constitutional law that if a health inspector shows up to your home to perform a search of the home (or even more so of a person in the home) and that person objects, the health inspector must go to a judge and apply for a warrant.”

The Rutherford Institute commentary warned vaccine door-knocking could serve a “more nefarious purpose” for the government: “Of course, there is always the danger that this program could be used for other, more nefarious, purposes not related to vaccination encouragement. As with knock-and-talk policing, government agents might misuse their appearance of authority to gain entrance to a residence and obtain other information about it and those who live there. Once the door is opened by a resident, anything the agents can see from their vantage point can be reported to law enforcement authorities.”

“Moreover, while presumably the targeting will be of areas with demonstrated low vaccination rates, there is no guarantee that this program would not be used as cover for conducting surveillance on areas deemed to be ‘high crime’ areas as a way of obtaining intelligence for law enforcement purposes.”

Glaser also emphasized, “The first thing Americans should know is that you’re not required to open the door. But if you do open the door, you can state that you’re not interested in discussing your private medical condition. You do not need to answer questions.”

The attorney concluded, “America is a friendly and polite country. I think that a lot of folks will choose to refrain from rolling their eyes, and simply thank the door knockers for the information, respectfully decline to answer questions, respectfully decline the vaccine, and then softly close the door with a cordial ‘have a nice day.’”

“And of course certain Americans will choose to sue, because that’s American too.”