Tucker: Most basic questions of civil liberties are in the balance
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' discusses push for young people to get the COVID-19 vaccine
In January, Israel became one of the first countries in the world to give the new coronavirus vaccine to young people. At the time, Israel's Education Ministry said the vaccine was necessary so that students could sit for in-person exams. Schools mandated the shot; kids got it.
So what happened next? This week, we found out. Israeli health officials released a report showing that vaccinated young people, particularly young men, were developing a potentially fatal complication — a heart inflammation called myocarditis — and they were developing it at extremely high rates. Researchers determined that the incidence of myocarditis in vaccinated young men was fully 25 times the usual rate. Some of them died.
In Canada, at least one public health official observed the same thing. Dr. Peter Liu is the chief scientific officer at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and an expert in myocarditis. Liu began to notice heart inflammation in patients who’d received the vaccine. "It is more than coincidental," he said.
In Germany, authorities concluded the same thing. The German government just announced that healthy young people should avoid the vaccine. It’s too dangerous.
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This is a serious development for us in the United States. If statistical trends observed in Israel hold here, as many as 150,000 young Americans will develop a potentially fatal heart disorder because of the COVID vaccine. That’s not alarmism or some kind of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theory. It’s real. Just this afternoon, the CDC confirmed what appear to be dangerous side effects.
The country’s two biggest vaccine monitoring systems -- the Biden Administration’s Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (known as "VAERS"), and the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink -- show strikingly high rates of myocarditis in young people who’ve been vaccinated. "We clearly have an imbalance there," a CDC official announced today. "Imbalance" is one way to put it. "Potential emergency" is another way.
Given these numbers, it’s possible that healthy young people will much more likely to be harmed by the vaccine, than by COVID itself. That would be a disaster. In fact, it would be the definition of a preventable disaster. How have our institutions responded to these developments? Mostly by ignoring them completely. In fact, in just the last week, many American colleges and universities have announced they’ll require proof of vaccination before they allow students to return to campus. At some schools, the mandate applies only to students. For reasons no one has explained, or could possibly defend, it does not apply to faculty and staff. They’re not required to be vaccinated. As for the huge number of young people who have already recovered from COVID — and therefore likely have more robust immunity, at least as robust as they could get from any vaccine — they will be required to get the shot too. These are big numbers. There are close to 20 million college students in this country. In the end, most will have no choice but to take a drug other government have concluded is dangerous for them to take.
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Yesterday, Virginia’s state university system announced that vaccine exemptions will be nearly impossible to get. An exemption, "will not be granted based on a philosophical, moral, or conscientious objection." In other words, your conscience is irrelevant. Personal autonomy means nothing. It is no longer your body, it is no longer your choice. When it comes to the vaccine, there is no escape.
You wonder, watching this, how it could happen in a free country. It’s hard to believe it is happening. As a medical decision, it’s reckless. What are the long-term effects of forcing these drugs on millions of young people, many of whom don’t need it? We don’t know the answer. We don’t know what the long-term effects are. Anyone who claims to know is lying. At this point, there’s literally no way to tell.
Just today, the FDA’s advisory panel met to discuss the rise in cardiac emergencies in healthy young people who’ve been vaccinated. So far, the rate of myocarditis is more than twice what authorities anticipated. As one Tufts Medical School professor who sits on the panel put it: "before we start vaccinating millions of adolescents and children, it’s so important to find out what the consequences are."
You’d think it would be important to find out. But Joe Biden doesn’t want to wait. Biden promised universal vaccination, whether we need it or not, and he plans to get it done. Last week, he told you to shut up and take the shot.
JOE BIDEN: You know, some people have questions about how quickly the vaccines were developed. They say they’ve been developed so quickly, they can’t be that good. … The bottom line is this — I promise you: They are safe. They are safe. And even more importantly, they’re extremely effective.
"I promise you: they are safe. They are safe." If the numbers out of Israel turn out to be real and applicable to this country, that statement will live forever as one of the most destructive things a sitting president has ever said from a podium. Maybe the worst part is, the administration should have known this could be coming.
Pfizer's own clinical trials of the vaccine showed disturbing effects on young people. Pfizer gave the vaccines to one group of children between the ages of 12 and 15. The rest got a placebo. Among children who received just the first dose of the vaccine, rates of serious symptoms were higher across the board, including symptoms consistent with myocarditis.
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Just a few weeks ago, the FDA approved the vaccine for 12-to-15-year-olds anyway. Now the age threshold may be dropping.
The New York Times is reporting that drug makers, including Pfizer and Moderna, are gearing up to vaccinate children as young as 6 months old in the fall.
As a scientific question, none of this is necessary.
Studies in medical journals around the world — the Lancet, for example, as well as the Journal of the American Medical Association — have shown that COVID is not a grave threat to children and that young people don't play a significant role in spreading COVID. But that hasn’t stopped the Biden Administration.
Joe Biden’s personal COVID adviser demanded that all college students — in addition to millions of other people — get the shot.
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EMANUEL: There are clearly places where you’re congregating people that we should have mandates: students in universities – my university, for example, faculty and staff. Health care facilities. Every health care worker ought to be vaccinated. I shouldn’t have to worry whether my doctor or nurse has been vaccinated. … And I think employers ought to take this very seriously and consider mandating and requiring their workers to get vaccinated – especially if they’re coming back to the office.
You must get vaccinated. Ok, what’s the risk?
It tells you something that no one in authority ever seems to assess that or even mention the downside of vaccination. Every drug has potential side effects - every drug - from Advil to chemotherapy. That doesn’t mean we don’t take them. It does mean we have a right to know exactly what those drugs do. Transparency is the essence of medical ethics. What is the harm rate from the COVID vaccines? You’re not allowed to ask. Have you noticed? They’ll shout at you if you ask.
Several weeks ago, we quoted numbers from the administration’s own reporting system, VAERS, that show a massive increase in deaths from this vaccine. Even if you believe the VAERS system is profoundly flawed — and it seems to be — it’s hard to explain the jump in fatalities in relative terms. Same system, different results. Between July 1, 1997 and the end of 2013 — fifteen and half years — there were 2,149 deaths reported in the U.S. for all vaccines combined on the VARES system. Yet in just six months, the last six months, there have been more than 5,160 deaths associated with the COVID vaccine, as reported to VAERS. That’s more than double the deaths, in less than one-tenth the time. What does that mean? How do you explain that?
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Oh, but those numbers are wrong, claim the usual liars with maximum hysteria. OK, let’s say they are wrong. So what are the real numbers? How many people have been killed or injured by the COVID vaccines? Does anyone know the answer? More to the point, is anyone in authority making a good faith effort to find out who’s being hurt and how? Would they tell us if they knew? Honestly, it’s outrageous. If you’re going to force people to take a drug, you have a moral obligation, an absolute moral obligation, to understand exactly what the effects of that drug might be, and then be honest about what they are. But they’re not doing that. We can say that conclusively. The people closest to these decisions have a pretty good sense of what’s going on. They know transparency when they see it, they also know lying when they see it. You may have noticed the other day that the heads of NIH and the CDC admitted that up to half of their employees haven’t been vaccinated. Why is that exactly? You’d think the people who work at NIH or the CDC would be first in line. Why aren’t they? It’s not because they’re ignorant. Maybe the opposite. In Texas, one group of health care workers — some of the most informed patients in America — are revolting at the thought of mandatory vaccines.
REPORTER: Houston Methodist hospital requiring all staff members to get vaccinated for COVID-19 or be fired.
NURSE JENNIFER BRIDGES: Right off the bat, I pretty much decided I was not going to do it. Everybody in America should have the right to decide what they put in their body.
REPORTER: Jennifer Bridges has worked at Houston Methodist in Baytown for more than 6 years
BRIDGES: I planned on staying with Methodist for the rest of my life.
REPORTER: she spent the last year and a half treating coronavirus patients, and even got sick herself.
BRIDGES: I just had an antibody test a week ago, but it doesn’t count for them. It doesn’t work.
REPORTER: more than a hundred co-workers have joined Jennifer with this lawsuit against the hospital. It claims Methodist is forcing its employees to be human guinea pigs.
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The most basic questions of civil liberties are in the balance here, and at some point, they’ll be resolved. At some point, courts will decide whether it’s legal to force American adults to take medicine they don’t want. But millions of college students don’t have the luxury of waiting for a court decision. Because in just weeks, they’ll have to show their vaccine passports, or they’ll be barred from school. What should they do? How should they respond?
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the June 10, 2021, edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
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