U.S. citizens: Demand Congress investigate soaring excess death rates
BALTIMORE (LifeSiteNews) – The prestigious Johns Hopkins University must pay an additional $2 million into a settlement fund for students who never saw tuition refunds after the school canceled in-person classes in the name of containing COVID-19 during the first semester of 2020 for a total of $10 million.
The Epoch Times reported that the settlement stems from a class-action lawsuit by students who argued they were cheated out of the education they paid for when Johns Hopkins locked down in March 2020, halfway through the spring semester, and attempted to argue that online instruction sufficed to fulfill its end of the bargain.
Tuition averaged for more than $26,000 per semester at the time. A total of 10,851 students had already received or been slated for refunds previously settled. U.S. District Judge Julie Rubin ordered an additional $2 million be added to the fund this week to account for an additional 2,607 qualifying students having since been identified. The school must also pay $2.2 million in attorney fees.
“Defendant is attempting to replace the irreplaceable – on-campus life at an elite university – with ‘virtual learning’ via online classes and is attempting to pass off this substitute educational experience as the same as or just as good as fully (sic) participation in the university’s academic life,” argued the original May 2020 lawsuit led by former student Elena Botts.
As late as February 2024, Johns Hopkins still required COVID-19 vaccination for anyone studying or working on site. Later, it ended the general mandate for students while continuing to require the shots for individuals in healthcare settings.
A large body of evidence has found that mass restrictions on personal and economic activity undertaken in 2020 and part of 2021 caused far more harm than good in terms of personal freedom and economics as well as public health, and that lives could have been saved through far less burdensome methods, such as the promotion of established therapeutic drugs, narrower protections focused on those most at risk (such as the elderly and infirm), and increasing vitamin D intake.
In Florida, a grand jury impaneled by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is currently investigating the manufacture and rollout of the COVID vaccines. In February, it released its first interim report on the underlying justification for Operation Warp Speed, which determined that lockdowns did more harm than good, that masks were ineffective at stopping COVID transmission, that COVID was “statistically almost harmless” to children and most adults, and that it is “highly likely” that COVID hospitalization numbers were inflated. The grand jury’s report on the vaccines themselves is highly anticipated.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has called America’s COVID response one of “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country,” against which Congress, state legislatures, and courts alike were largely negligent to protect constitutional rights, personal liberty, and the rule of law.
U.S. citizens: Demand Congress investigate soaring excess death rates