Free Republic

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, told its campuses this month to fuggedaboudit when it comes to COVID-19 vaccine mandates.It's not clear the taxpayer-funded institution, which tested the jabs for reduction of symptoms but not transmission in clinical trials for Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, can forget about legal consequences, however.A lawsuit by independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Children's Health Defense seems destined for the Supreme Court to determine whether Rutgers "suspending" the mandate, as an April 1 systemwide email announced, is enough to end the litigation.The University of California Los Angeles didn't fare so well...

We just passed the fourth anniversary of “15 Days To Slow the Spread,” the start of the COVID lockdowns that did damage from which we still haven’t recovered. ... Anthony Fauci, Nancy Pelosi and Bill de Blasio were telling us not to worry, to take cruises and go visit Chinatown ... They reversed course like a week later. ... Neither the lockdowns nor the masking requirements did any good, though they caused a lot of trauma, inconvenience and colossal economic destruction. ... Then there were the deaths caused by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s program of moving still-contagious COVID patients into old-folks’...

The most high-profile opponent of Australia’s brutal COVID-19 lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and violent suppression of public criticism has been Monica Smit. Her resistance is continuing. She has announced that she will be suing the Victoria police. The court case is scheduled for July 23 and is expected to take 15 days.

New Report Details Horrifying Cost of Fauci’s FailuresIn the post-pandemic period of Covid, there’s now a concerted effort to comprehend and explain the damage that was caused by our capitulating to the hysterical overreaction and overreach of the ‘experts.’ There’s a long list of policy failures to examine; mask mandates were a disaster that accomplished absolute nothing of value, but instead led to tremendous harms, many of which continue today.Children were forced into masks for years on end, millions of people still wear masks when traveling or inside stores and restaurants, permanently convinced of the deliberate falsehood that masks are...

On Monday’s broadcast of NBC’s “Today,” President Joe Biden responded to a question on what he would say to people whose money isn’t going as far due to inflation by saying, “we have the best economy in the world. We’ve got to make it better.” And “we’re going to find out that what happened as a consequence of the crisis we had on health is going to have a lasting effect. We’ve just got to get people to move again. We’re ready. I think the country’s ready to come together…I’m truly optimistic.” Co-host Al Roker asked, “When people are saying,...

There is little doubt that the COVID-19 restrictions in place now have caused major disruptions in our daily life and have had negative economic impacts on California families, especially the working poor. But consider how much worse it would be if we in California hadn’t moved quickly to “flatten the curve.” An out-of-control pandemic would rage through our state at numbers unimaginable and would have much more severe consequences on the health of Californians, as well as the economy. Thankfully, California is once again leading the way by taking major measures such as shelter in place, physical distancing, orders to...

Not to downplay the damage done by COVID, but we’re still dealing with a far worse disease and will be for some time. It has no medical name but if it did, we’d call it the tyrannococcus. From the top we acknowledge that the novel coronavirus killed millions around the world. This is not a statistic but a procession of tragedies, and they happened despite the policy responses from those who claimed to be our guardians. Now, four years later, the experts are telling us to treat the disease similar to the way we treat the flu. The much-feared “long...

World-renowned infectious-disease epidemiologist and biostatistician Martin Kulldorff is no longer a professor at Harvard Medical School after refusing the COVID vaccine because he had infection-acquired immunity. Refusing the vaccine is a decision that lost him his appointment at a Harvard-affiliated hospital at the time several years ago — and this month led to his termination from the Ivy League school. “Harvard Medical School has affiliation agreements with several Boston hospitals which it neither owns nor operationally controls. Hospital-based faculty, such as Dr. Kulldorff, are employed by one of the affiliates, not by HMS, and require an active hospital appointment to...

Corporation cited for illegal religious discrimination.. A hospital in Grand Rapids, Mich., has agreed to pay a settlement to a job applicant who had been offered a position, but then was arbitrarily rejected because he declined to take a flu shot hospital officials demanded. ... The fight involved Trinity Health Grand Rapids, which previously was known as Mercy Health St. Mary's. The resolution includes a consent decree that allows paying of some $50,000 to the worker who was rejected. The case originally was filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and charged the hospital improperly denied a job applicant’s...

In a survey, 22 percent of respondents said they knew of at least one vaccinated person who suffered health issues after taking the injections. People who did not comply with COVID-19 vaccine requirements were hesitant because they knew someone who had experienced a health problem after getting the injection, according to recent research. “Knowing someone who experienced a health problem following COVID-19 injection reduced the likelihood of injection, the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research reported. Such people “were more likely to oppose injection mandates and passports. .. Conversely, “knowing someone who had health problems following the COVID-19...

The Association of Bioethics Program Directors (ABPD) represents nearly 100 bioethics centers across North America. The ABPD’s members are leaders in evaluating ethical practices in the health professions and have participated in drafting institutional, statewide, and national health policies. In fall 2021, the ABPD issued a statement and a companion piece for Health Affairs Forefront describing why universal COVID-19 vaccine mandates, with exceptions only for medical contraindications, were ethically recommended at that time. In fall 2023, the ABPD membership approved a new position statement that universal COVID-19 vaccine mandates are not presently ethically supportable.The values and principles that guided our...

Ending pandemics is a social decision, not scientific. Governments and organizations rely on social, cultural and political considerations to decide when to officially declare the end of a pandemic. Ideally, leaders try to minimize the social, economic and public health burden of removing emergency restrictions while maximizing potential benefits.Vaccine policy is a particularly complicated part of pandemic decision-making, involving a variety of other complex and often contradicting interests and considerations. Although COVID-19 vaccines have saved millions of lives in the U.S., vaccine policymaking throughout the pandemic was often reactive and politicized.A late November 2022 Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that...

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ended an injunction from a lower court allowing mask mandates in Texas schools. This came after families challenged an executive order from Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) prohibiting mask mandates in schools. Last year, Abbott issued an executive order prohibiting government entities from mandating masks — including counties, cities, school districts, public health authorities and government officials. For public schools, he said, "no student, teacher, parent, or other staff member or visitor can be required to wear a mask while on campus." Despite Abbott's executive order, many counties, cities and school districts...

A federal court dismissed a case Tuesday against Republican Iowa Gov. Kimberly Reynolds’ prohibition of mask mandate in school districts across the state, official documents showed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit found “persuasive” the argument that “the general risks associated with COVID-19, even though COVID-19 remains an ever-present concern in society, are not enough to show ‘imminent and substantial’ harm,” court papers showed in part. The court also decided that “because Plaintiffs have only alleged the potential risk of severe illness should they contract COVID-19 at school, the risk of harm is too speculative to satisfy...

Dr. Phil went on the View today to promote a) his new book and b) his new show. As a former daytime TV host, Dr. Phil seemed to get a lot of leeway from the ladies of the View who mostly seemed to be trying to help him promote his stuff. But that changed toward the end of the segment when the discussion turned to the influence of social media on children. ... Dr. Phil very briefly made the case that, starting around 2008, smartphones led kids to become observers rather than participants, something which he connected to "the highest...

Whilst Hypocritically Insisting That the Public Be Vaccinated.. ... “From 13 November 2021 to 26 September 2022, a total of 478 applications for Significant Service Disruption exemption (SSD) were received. 103 applications were granted, covering approximately 11,005 workers ... 95 consultants in the Dunedin region alone benefitted from vaccine exemptions. Another source has pointed to a group of doctors working in Northland who arranged among themselves to remain unvaccinated. The total appears to run to hundreds and possibly more. It seems that those granted exemptions were restrained by gag orders. In other words, they could not tell anyone that they...

As a primary care physician, I administer vaccines on a regular basis, from flu to tetanus to pneumonia to shingles. I bring these vaccines out during doctor visits, and I discuss the pros and cons with my patients while the vaccines are being displayed. I am completely open about potential side effects. The core vaccine conversation between doctor and patient is a risk/benefit analysis. It’s a discussion, one in which the patient decides. One of the big mistakes made by the Biden administration with the COVID vaccines is not having this discussion. Rather than keeping expectations realistic — telling folks...

A green nonprofit that is indirectly funded by a foreign billionaire is pressuring broadcasters to drop advertisements that criticize the Biden administration’s massive electric vehicle (EV) agenda. Climate Power wrote to numerous broadcasters this week demanding that they stop airing American Fuel and Petrochemicals Manufacturers (AFPM)-funded advertisements in swing state markets that rail against President Joe Biden’s plans to impose widespread EV adoption in the coming years. The charitable organization affiliated with Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss health care mogul and billionaire philanthropist, donates millions of dollars to the Fund for a Better Future, which was the fiscal sponsor for Climate...

Members of the California Assembly and Senate were exempted from COVID vaccine mandates – so was Congress and Biden’s Executive Branch... Isn’t it extraordinary that we see daily reports of young athletes, high school and college students, college athletes, pilots, members of the military and others dropping dead suddenly? Yet we aren’t seeing this same “died suddenly” phenomenon, as it is now called, in elected politicians – members of Congress, Governors, or State Legislatures. ... Before the vaccine rollout of 2021, these kinds of collapses were never seen before, and if they did happen, they were extremely rare. Now, it’s...

Harvard is among the many U.S. schools that remain committed ... as of February 6, 2024, an astounding 68 American colleges and universities still have Covid shot mandates in place. Yes, you read that correctly. There are 68 schools in the United States that continue to push the mRNA serum on college students across America. ... The list includes historically elite schools like Harvard and Johns Hopkins. It also includes a variety of ultra leftist colleges in California and New York, and elsewhere, coupled with a significant amount of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). ... Speaking of Harvard, they...