(LifeSiteNews) – Government mandates that citizens submit to COVID-19 vaccines have negatively impacted personal liberties and welfare, trust in public institutions, and confidence in vaccines more generally, according to a new study conducted by a group of researchers from prestigious medical institutions around the world.
Published in BMJ (British Medical Journal) Global Health, the paper “The unintended consequences of COVID-19 vaccine policy: why mandates, passports and restrictions may cause more harm than good” was written by scientists from Johns Hopkins University, Oxford, Harvard, the University of Washington, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the University of Toronto, and Dalhousie University in Halifax.
It posits a “comprehensive set of hypotheses for why these policies may ultimately be counterproductive and harmful” according to “four domains: (1) behavioral psychology, (2) politics and law, (3) socioeconomics, and (4) the integrity of science and public health.” Despite evidence to the contrary, the authors treat as a given that the shots “appear to have had a significant impact on decreasing COVID-19-related morbidity and mortality burdens,” but argue that policies to require individuals take them “are scientifically questionable and are likely to cause more societal harm than good.”
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Even from a pro-COVID-vaccine perspective, the authors argue, mandates fail to adequately account for “significant waning effectiveness against infection (and transmission) at 12–16 weeks,” similar transmission rates among the vaccinated and unvaccinated, “the extreme risk differential across populations” with variables such as age, and the “protective role of prior infection” (natural immunity).
Among the negative consequences identified by the authors are “erosion of civil liberties” of individuals who refuse the shots, “political polarization” stemming from the bitter debate over the vaccines and associated mandates, “disunity in global health governance,” “increasing disparity and inequality” based on vaccine trust and access, “reduced health system capacity”’ due to layoffs of unvaccinated medical personnel, “exclusion [of the unvaccinated] from work and social life,” and the erosion of “key principles of public health ethics and law” (such as proportionality and right of refusal) and of “trust in regulatory oversight.”
“Governments have refused to disclose the details of contracts with manufacturers, including for additional doses or ‘next-generation’ vaccines,” the study notes. “Vaccines are typically not approved until 2 years of follow-up data are gathered, but given the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic and international harmonization of new agile regulations, the novel mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were placed into emergency use in Europe and North America in late 2020. There is concern that, in the fog of crisis, vaccine policy is being driven by vaccine manufacturers rather than independent scientific and regulatory review.”
“It is important to emphasize that these policies are not viewed as ‘incentives’ or ‘nudges’ by substantial proportions of populations especially in marginalized, underserved or low COVID-19-risk groups,” the authors conclude. “Denying individuals education, livelihoods, medical care or social life unless they get vaccinated—especially in light of the limitations with the current vaccines—is arguably in tension with constitutional and bioethical principles, especially in liberal democracies. While public support consolidated behind these policies in many countries, we should acknowledge that ethical frameworks were designed to ensure that rights and liberties are respected even during public health emergencies.”
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Despite the authors’ confidence in the COVID vaccines themselves, a steadily growing body of evidence reveals the negative effects many patients have seen from the shots, which were developed and tested in a fraction of the time vaccines usually take, thanks to former President Donald Trump’s “Operation: Warp Speed” initiative.
In late February, during a COVID vaccine hearing held by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), in the United States, attorney Thomas Renz presented medical billing data from the Pentagon’s Defense Medical Epidemiology Database showing that 2021 saw drastic spikes in a variety of diagnoses for serious medical issues over the previous five-year average, including hypertension (2,181%), neurological disorders (1,048%), multiple sclerosis (680%), Guillain-Barre syndrome (551%), breast cancer, (487%), female infertility (472%), pulmonary embolism (468%), migraines (452%), ovarian dysfunction (437%), testicular cancer (369%), and tachycardia (302%).
The Defense Health Agency’s Armed Forces Surveillance Division spokesperson Peter Graves confirmed the existence of the records but claimed that a conveniently-timed “data corruption” glitch made the pre-2021 numbers appear far lower than the actual numbers of cases for those years, a claim the media has been largely uninterested in investigating further.
This March, it was found that 11,289 cases of pericarditis/myocarditis after COVID vaccination were reported to the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database between January 1 and February 25 of this year, which is already 47% of the 24,177 reports for the same submitted in all of 2021. COVID shot defenders claim that VAERS offers an exaggerated view of a vaccine’s potential risks, as anyone can submit a report without vetting it, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention researchers have acknowledged “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.
In April, a peer-reviewed study of more than 23 million people in the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden published in the Journal of the American Medical Association also found that the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna come with a higher likelihood of myocarditis.