Vaccines may not be the most spectacular of all the miracles of modern medicine, but they are arguably the most beneficial. They have virtually eliminated the infectious diseases of childhood, including measles, diphtheria, mumps, rubella, smallpox, and polio that were once the sources of unimaginable worry and grief for parents everywhere.
Vaccines are estimated to have saved over 150 million lives in the last five decades, cutting infant mortality by 40% globally and over 50% in Africa. Closer to home, of all babies born in the U.S. in 2001 alone, a 2005 study showed that vaccines prevented 33,000 deaths and 14 million illnesses. Vaccines are also the most cost effective of all medical interventions, easily yielding the greatest amount of benefit received per dollar spent.
Like all medical treatments, vaccinations have side effects and risks, but they are rare and mostly insignificant, like a sore shoulder. There was for some time a concern that vaccines or the mercury in them caused autism, understandably so because autism was becoming much more frequently diagnosed just as vaccine use was expanding worldwide.
The scientific community took the threat seriously. Today, many exhaustive studies involving hundreds of thousands of children have all shown the same thing: vaccines don’t cause autism.
Yet in spite of the record of success and all the lives and dollars saved, experiences with COVID have led Americans to become less trusting of vaccines. Before COVID, America was a world leader in vaccination rates with 95% coverage. Since 2020, though, the percentage of children receiving the recommended vaccines has declined by 2% or about 70,000 children.
The result has been a resurgence of childhood diseases once considered vestiges of the past. Measles was considered to be entirely eliminated in 2020, yet last year multiple outbreaks sickened hundreds of children. Cases of chickenpox, whooping cough, and pneumonia are all on the rise. Trend lines don’t look good.
Clearly, millions of Americans have become skeptical of medical authority, especially that coming from government. What happened to cause Americans to adopt behaviors that re-introduced these diseases into the population and caused needless suffering?
The answer is that our public health establishment became politicized, shilling for approved government policy rather than acting as honest, reasonably humble stewards of the public good. The bonds of trust were broken because we were often manipulated rather than informed. We were proselytized rather than respected. Vaccines were rushed to market and their benefits oversold.
Fairly or not, the bulk of criticism has centered on Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Chief Medical Adviser to the President on COVID. Dr. Fauci was a respected, competent public health physician until he became a celebrity. Signature prayer candles, action figures, and other trappings apparently caused him to lose his way.
For example, Dr. Fauci early on warned against dependence on mask wearing, citing “unintended consequences” and noting that they didn’t provide much protection. Yet he later repeatedly overstated the known benefits of masks and never disavowed his previous declarations, leading many to conclude that his counsel seemed rooted more in shifting public perceptions than actual evidence.
Fauci also had the exasperating habit of changing his estimate regarding the percentage of the population needing to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, the point at which protection effectively extends to all, vaccinated or not. He finally admitted that he changed his statements based only on his assessment of what the public was ready to hear.
He recommended mandating six feet of distance from others in public, although he later admitted it was nothing more than a personal guesstimate. He initially was an enthusiastic supporter of gain-of-function research in China’s Wuhan lab, but later evaded questions and denied involvement when the consequences of the catastrophic lab leak became known.
What Fauci left unsaid was equally harmful. He neglected to point out that participating in a George Floyd riot was as unhealthy as mingling in any other crowd in 2020 and that there was no evidence supporting school shutdowns.
Fauci indignantly informed his critics that “I am the science.” But the days of authority-based science are past. Fauci’s self-serving deceptions broke the trust relationship with the American people. We may be reaping the consequences for years to come.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
It’s time for COVID mandates to go away forever. And last month, one Arizona town took a step in this direction when it passed a resolution that needs to be a trend in every city throughout our state.
With a desire to take proactive measures to protect citizens’ constitutional rights, the Queen Creek Town Council passed Resolution No. 1540-23 with a unanimous vote during its regular meeting in September. And it’s quite clear. While the town recommends that people exercise personal responsibility to prevent illness, it committed to not implementing mandates concerning masks, vaccines, business closures, curfews, or “any similar measure.”
COVID mania just won’t go away. The deadly strains of the virus have been gone for two years now, and yet the recent outbreak of a mild flu-like variant is again stoking panic on the Left.
Nearly 100 universities are requiring masks this fall.
Lionsgate movie studios in Los Angeles and Atlanta-based Morris Brown College this week stated they are reinstating not just mask mandates but social distancing measures and contact tracing.
CNN, which led the panic in 2020 and 2021 — causing manic school, restaurant and business shutdowns and vaccine mandates — recently put out a headline on its website that encouraged its readers not to go outside without a mask on. Really? The latest evidence finds this is less dangerous than a normal flu virus and tracking data suggest that the wave has already peaked.
What’s even more disturbing here is that the leftist medical community and the media aren’t renouncing their calls for mitigation strategies that were catastrophically wrong in the panic era of 2020 and 2021 — but instead calling for more of these assaults on freedom in the future.
It is one thing for well-meaning medical experts to have disagreed about how to best combat a once-in-a-half-century deadly virus. We didn’t know exactly what we were dealing with. But now we know with concrete scientific evidence that most mandates and lockdowns had a small impact on the spread of the virus and on fatalities. It turns out there was almost no difference in death rates in states with strict lockdowns and no lockdowns at all. The same is true of cross-country evidence.
Healthy children were never at risk from COVID (something we knew early on), so shutting down schools for one or two years was a sop to the teachers unions but a disaster for this generation of kids. Test scores are the worst in 30 years.
Before the pandemic, only 15% of public school students were chronically absent — more than 18 or more days a year.
Stanford University education professor Thomas Dee’s data shows an estimated 6.5 million additional students are now chronically absent. In Connecticut and Massachusetts, chronic absenteeism remains double its pre-pandemic rate.
But polls show that Democrats — even those that are highly educated — generally still support the lockdowns that were mandated. These are the same people who lecture about “following the science.” The most comprehensive study by experts at Johns Hopkins University found death rates from lockdowns were reduced by 0.1 percent. But how many people died from the isolation of lockdowns, delayed health screening from cancer, the increase in drug overdoses?
Biden’s vaccine mandates only made Americans more resistant to get pricked. They backfired.
Worst of all, Anthony Fauci, who remains a hero of the Left, recently not only refused to admit the errors of his advice but said the “lockdown was absolutely justified.”
Why does this bizarre rewrite of recent history matter? Because the fearmongering Left can’t wait to install new lockdowns every time we have a new flu virus and health scare. They’ve even started putting out feelers for occasional climate change economic shutdowns.
Those who love freedom must strenuously resist this coming tyranny.
A freshman Arizona Senator is alerting her constituents of the laws protecting their freedoms in the event that another round of politicized COVID-19 cases sweeps the nation.
Senator Janae Shamp sent out a press release on Thursday, “reminding Arizonans of the safeguards put in place by Republicans at the Legislature to protect against future outrageous overreach and scientifically baseless restrictions.”
Shamp’s motivation was seeing “fear over mask mandates and the politicization of COVID-19 from the Left once again become a focal point heading into the upcoming 2024 election cycle.”
The Republican Senator issued the following statement: “With election season upon us, we’re once again witnessing COVID-19 fearmongering from the Left as liberal entities in Georgia, New York and California are now once again overstepping their authority in dictating mask mandates. As a registered nurse who has been detrimentally impacted by government infringement not based on scientific evidence, I want you to rest assured that I will fight tooth and nail to make sure you’re protected from this gross overreach. If you want to wear a mask, wear a mask. If you don’t want to wear a mask, don’t wear one. This is a personal choice that our citizens are allowed to make. If a business wants to force you to wear a mask and you don’t wish to, you have the right to take your business elsewhere. I will work to provide more guidance for you and your family as needed, and I vow to craft more legislation next session that further protects your God-given freedoms.”
Senator Shamp shared four laws:
In 2021, A.R.S. 44-7951 was enacted to protect businesses in Arizona from being required to enforce a mask mandate established by state, city, county and town governments, or any other jurisdiction within Arizona.
In 2022, A.R.S. 1-611 was enacted to protect students under the age of 18 at public district or charter schools from being required to wear a mask without the express consent of the child’s parent or guardian.
Additionally in 2022, A.R.S 36-681 was enacted to protect the public from forced masking at any government building or premises, except where long-standing workplace safety and infection control measures that are unrelated to COVID-19 may be required.
Furthermore, should the Governor implement a state of emergency for “public health” reasons, last year’s enacted A.R.S 26-303 would require the Governor to first get permission from the Legislature in order to extend the emergency past 120 days.
Reports have surged about an increase in COVID-19 cases with the spread of the EG.5 (“Eris”), FL.1.5.1 (“Fornax”), and BA.2.86 (“Pirola”). These developments have led to the return of some masking requirements around the nation. In Atlanta, Morris Brown College sent an email to its faculty, staff, and students, announcing the reinstatement of its COVID-19 mask mandate because of “reports of positive cases among students in the Atlanta University Center.” The college also reimposed physical distancing and gathering restrictions on campus.
The movie studio Lionsgate in Los Angeles also brought back its mask mandate for the office, as did Kaiser Permanente for its Santa Rosa (California) hospital and medical offices.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently warned, “This week’s national ensemble predicts that the number of daily COVID-19 hospital admissions will increase, with 1,100 to 7,500 daily COVID-19 hospital admissions likely reported on September 18.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
The overwhelming majority of people are done with COVID restrictions. Just look at the reaction when mask mandates were put to an end on airplanes last month. Cheering. Celebration. Throwing masks away. There’s nothing surprising about this—unless of course you’re a member of the liberal media.
With a desire to tackle COVID overreach head on, our own state lawmakers got to work last year. And through a series of Budget Reconciliation Bills, they took important steps to protect Arizonans from more COVID mandates.
But then in November, some of the protections were thrown out in court on procedural grounds. Thankfully, the Arizona legislature didn’t ignore the problem and got back to work this year. Now, they have passed several significant bills that are officially signed into law to protect against future COVID and government overreach…
