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Shots for Tots Rollout Flops in New York City

By  Susan C. Olmstead

COVID-19 shots for babies and young children were granted Emergency Use Authorization last week, but this week’s low turnout at vaccine centers in New York City and around the country shows parents are not convinced their kids need the vaccine.

The response to the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines for babies and young children has been tepid, said political commentator Kim Iversen of The Hill’s “Rising” on Thursday.

A push to vaccinate children 6 months to 5 years old began early this week, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on June 17 granted Emergency Use Authorization for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine in children 6 months through 17 years, and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in children 6 months through 4 years.

In a June 17 news release, FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert M. Califf said, “Many parents, caregivers and clinicians have been waiting for a vaccine for younger children and this action will help protect those down to 6 months of age.”

But maybe not, said Iversen.

“There’s a problem,” Iversen said. “Parents don’t seem to want it. News outlets across the country have been reporting about low turnout and empty centers.”

While this might be expected in certain parts of the country, such as red states and especially Florida — where Gov. Ron DeSantis did not order any shots for this age group — “this was even happening in New York City at a high-profile center set up in Times Square,” Iversen said:

“The city’s health commissioner came out with cameras, hoping to greet long lines of relieved, grateful parents but instead saw the opposite: no lines and empty chairs.”

“Turns out parents are not convinced their tots need the shots after all.”

New York City ordered 20,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine for children, according to Gothamist, and expected more batches to come. The outlet reported those parents who brought their children to city vaccine centers on Wednesday were grateful, but that turnout was low.

“It could be that parents don’t feel the urgent need when seroprevalence data shows over 70% of kids 4 and under have caught and recovered from COVID — many of them without any symptoms at all,” Iversen said.

Moderna trials found “it’s [a] 50-50 [chance] or less that if you get your kid vaccinated the vaccine will prevent symptoms, and those results came with very low confidence,” Iversen said.

Add to that the Pfizer data showing uncertainty about whether the vaccine prevents hospitalization and death — and the possibility of adverse events — and it’s no wonder parents aren’t “lining up in droves” to have their children jabbed, she said.

What she called “frightening chatter” about mandating the vaccines for schoolchildren has started to surface, Iversen said.

“Some doctors and worried parents are concerned about the low vaccine uptake for toddlers and children under 12 and are now advocating for the government to mandate COVID vaccines.”

“They specifically want to make it impossible for kids to attend school or preschool without having gotten the jab,” she said.

While so far it’s just a small few calling for this, “we know how quickly these seemingly fringe ideas can grow,” Iversen said.

She offered as an example this tweet from a doctor:

Childhood uptake of covid vaccine is alarmingly low. Only a national public school mandate for covid vaccine would move the “needle” so to speak. We need to demand the Biden administration to pass a national mandate for all public school and preschool programs immediately.

— AshwaniGarg (@agargmd) June 22, 2022

An education official in California, the first state in the U.S. to propose vaccine mandates for schoolchildren beginning in July 2023, called the authorization of COVID-19 shots for babies and toddlers “a game-changer.”

California Deputy Superintendent of Superintendent Initiatives Malia Vella told ABC 10 News, “When we see enrollment numbers down, when we see children struggling to adapt to distance learning, when we see children suffering from mental health issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, this news is really a step in the right direction to mitigate all of those concerns.”

[…]

Shots for Tots Rollout Flops in NYC

UK Makes First Payments to Compensate Injury or Death from Vaccines

Jacqui Wise

British Medical Journal

The first compensation payments in the UK have been made to families who have been bereaved, or to people who have been injured, as a result of a covid-19 vaccine.

Vikki Spit from Cumbria is believed to be the first person to receive compensation, after her 48 year old partner, Zion, became ill eight days after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine. Zion, a former rock singer, died at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle in May 2021.

A handful of other people have received payments in the past few days under the government’s vaccine damage payment scheme (VDPS), which pays out up to a maximum of £120 000 (€140 000; $150 000).

Sarah Moore, a partner at the Hausfeld law firm, which is representing people seeking compensation, told The BMJ it was an important moment. “While the VDPS payments are very modest in amount, and will do very little to alleviate the financial difficulties with which many families are now struggling as a consequence of injury or bereavement, the fact of payment for some will mark a moment of vindication in that it is the clearest statement yet, by the government, that in some rare instances the covid-19 vaccines have caused very significant injury or death.”

However, it was “far too little, too late,” she said. “With a 60% disability eligibility criteria, a historical acceptance rate of 1.7%, and a maximum cap of £120 000, the inadequacies of the scheme mean that some families will have no choice but to look at litigation in order to access substantive financial support.”

Moore added that she believed that most of the payments so far have been made as a result of an individual experiencing vaccine induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT) or cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) after vaccination. But she said she knew of one payment for someone who had developed Guillain-Barré syndrome after covid-19 vaccination.

The NHS Business Services Authority, the body that handles the VDPS, confirmed that as of 20 May 2022 it had received 1681 claims in relation to covid-19 vaccines. A spokesperson emphasised that the VDPS was not a compensation scheme but one for payments to help ease the financial burden for those people who are severely disabled as a result of vaccination against a specific disease. All claims are medically assessed by an independent, third party medical assessor.

“The covid-19 vaccines are new. Establishing a causal relationship between the vaccines and their potential adverse effects is not a straightforward matter and has taken time,” the spokesperson told The BMJ. “It was vital we didn’t make assessments before the scientific evidence reached a more settled position, to avoid claims resulting in inconsistent outcomes, or disadvantaging claimants.

“We have to follow due process when progressing claims to ensure they are assessed in a fair and consistent way. As part of this process we must ensure that decisions are made based on all the evidence available. This requires gaining access to people’s medical notes and their previous medical history, so that the assessor can, having looked at all the evidence, determine whether there is a causal link and level of disability in each individual claim.”

The spokesperson said that the average (non-covid related) claim takes around six months to process from the date a claimant’s medical records are requested, because of the need to gather records from the claimants’ GPs, medical care providers, local authorities, or other relevant healthcare providers. “This can vary from case to case, and for covid-19 claims it has taken longer. We understand the frustration this is causing for claimants, and we appreciate their continued patience. We have scaled up a dedicated team of caseworkers to help speed up this process, support claimants through the application process, and provide regular updates on the progress of claims.

“Based on current timescales, once medical records have been sent for assessment, we expect to receive an outcome for most cases from the independent medical assessor within 12 weeks.”

Via https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj.o1565.short

“Polio Outbreak” – The WHO, Bill Gates, emergency vaccines & more of the same

Kit Knightly

Polio is on the front pages of British newspapers again for the first time in decades. What a time to be alive.

For those who missed it, two days ago the UK government declared a “national incident” after traces of the polio virus were detected in sewage from North London.

Yes, a “national incident”…for traces…found in sewage.

This is a massive escalation, even compared to the pandemic. Covid and Monkeypox at least had the good taste to wait for a single person to actually have the disease (allegedly) before hitting the big red panic button.

In a somewhat startling coincidence, just two days before the “polio in London” news broke, Forbes published an article headlined…

There May Be A New Polio Epidemic On Its Way- If So, What We Can Do

It’s totally unrelated, talking about a “polio-like” enterovirus that hasn’t yet had a vaccine approved in the US, and never mentions London once.

The same (or similar) news hitting headlines around the world for (supposedly) totally different reasons makes my inner-cynic twitch.

So, what’s going on here?

While it may look like polio is suddenly back in the news, it’s actually been there longer than you’d think and has been building to this point.

The truth is it all fits into a very predictable pattern.

In November of 2020, a new “genetically engineered” and “triple-locked” polio vaccine was the first vaccine to be granted “emergency use listing” by the World Health Organization, despite there being only around five thousand cases of polio in the world over the last decade.

In October 2021, the government of Ukraine declared a “biological emergency” due to the “re-emergence” of polio, which was blamed on low vaccine uptake.

This was steadily reported in back pages of the news for months. Culminating in headlines like “Polio Makes a Comeback in Ukraine as War Halts Vaccination Campaign”, following Russia beginning its “special operation”.

Later, in March of this year, Israel reported they too had a “re-emergence” of polio after allegedly detecting “vaccine-derived” polio in the stool of a young girl suffering from paralysis.

At this point, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) started speaking out. GPEI is a project co-funded by the WHO, the US CDC, GAVI the vaccine alliance and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

…in other words, exactly who you’d expect.

Following the reported case in Israel, GPEI released a statement calling for “enhanced surveillance”…

The GPEI partnership urges all health authorities to enhance surveillance for poliovirus and implement enhanced vaccination response to prevent further transmission, so that no child is at risk of lifelong paralysis from a disease that can so easily be prevented. GPEI is committed to assisting the health authorities in their efforts to stop the cVDPV3 outbreak.

A month later, in April of this year, using alleged “re-emergence” as a springboard, GPEI called for “renewed efforts” to combat polio, launching their new “Strategy” and claiming to need a further 4.8 billion dollars in funding.

Then in late May, at the WHO’s 75th World Health Assembly, “global health leaders” called for “urgent action to end polio once and for all before a unique window of opportunity closes for good.”

The same week, the WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus addressed the assembly regarding polio [emphasis added]:

“Worrying developments in recent months highlight how fragile this progress [of eradicating polio] is […] This year, we have the real opportunity to halt wild poliovirus transmission. At the same time, we must respond faster and better to cVDPV outbreaks, to interrupt all transmission by end-2023.”

…which brings us to June, and scare-stories on both sides of the Atlantic warning of “low vaccination rates”

Note that the WHO report claims the virus entered the UK on someone who received a “live vaccination” overseas, and the alleged outbreak in Israel is “vaccine-derived”.

Do you see how this works yet?

The WHO approves “emergency use vaccine”, bypassing need for trials and safety dataA handful of cases of polio are reported (as they are every year)Gates/WHO funded thinktank calls for “increased surveillance”, meaning more testing (using PCR tests)More testing inevitably finds more “cases”Cases are blamed on the old vaccinesNew “modern” and “safer” vaccines are rolled out.Everyone makes a LOT of money.

[…]

Via https://off-guardian.org/2022/06/24/polio-outbreak-the-who-bill-gates-emergency-vaccines-more-of-the-same/

 

 

Will the Roe V Wade Decision Save the Democrats in November?

Prior to the Supreme Court decision earlier today, the majority of polls showed the Democrats losing by a landslide in November. The massive popular uproar in the hours since the decision (see Crowd Grows Quickly Outside Supreme Court Protest Update) suggests this decision may prove extremely beneficial to the Democratic Party in the midterm elections – at least if the mainstream corporate media gets its way. I am frankly dismayed at the total lack of context, ie the omission of legal and historical facts, conveniently overlooked in all the media hysteria.

1) No mainstream outlet seems to question how the supposedly liberal Democratic Party can support a woman’s right to choose if she is pregnant but not if she chooses to not to take a dangerous experimental gene therapy masquerading as a vaccine.

2) No mainstream outlet tries to examine exactly where the Constitution guarantees the right to abortion. I sure can’t find it. In fact, it’s my view that any federal guarantee of legal access to abortions must be legislated by Congress, not by the courts. I also believe the Democrats have essentially abandoned working women by failing to pass a federal law guaranteeing abortion rights during numerous periods (over the last 50 years) when they enjoyed super majorities in both houses of Congress.

3) Also omitted in all the mainstream coverage is that poor American women lost guaranteed access to pregnancy termination over 40 years ago – when Congress passed the 1980 Hyde Amendment, barring the use of federal Medicaid funding to pay for abortions.

4) In all the media hype I’ve seen so far, there’s a consistent failure to examine what the SCOTUS actually decided, namely to allow Mississippi to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. First trimester abortions are still perfectly legal, even in the state of Mississippi.

Though I personally support a woman’s right to choose (especially in the case of rape or when underage girls are impregnated by manipulative older men), I also believe pregnancy termination would be unnecessary in a just society where 1) young women have full and free access to safe birth control and 2) where public policies guarantee the financial security of all babies and children, rather than condemning the majority of single mothers to a life a poverty.

 

BRICS Nations Call for Nuclear Disarmament

Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in the 14th BRICS summit. © Sputnik / Mikhail Metzel

RT

The member states of BRICS have called for “a world free of nuclear weapons” in a joint declaration adopted on Thursday.

“We reaffirm our commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons and stress our strong commitment to nuclear disarmament and our support to the work on this subject during the session of 2022 of the Conference on Disarmament,” the declaration reads.

The group also lauded a joint statement by the permanent members of the UN Security Council (P5) – China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US – affirming that a “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” The major nuclear powers managed to show a rare display of unity earlier this year.

Apart from that, the BRICS resolution rallied support towards “negotiations in bilateral and multilateral formats to resolve all issues pertaining to the Korean Peninsula, including its complete denuclearization.” The group also urged to “resolve the Iranian nuclear issue through peaceful and diplomatic means.”

The BRICS bloc – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – has convened for its 14th summit, hosted by China, which currently holds the rotating presidency within the group. The BRICS leaders held a meeting on Thursday via a video link.

https://www.rt.com/news/557710-brics-nuclear-weapons-declaration/

The Multiethnic Origins of the Muslim Conquest

Episode 19: Islam and the Caliphates

Barbarian Empires of the Steppes (2014)

Dr Kenneth Harl

Film Review

In this lecture, Harl focuses mainly on the battle for control of the Muslim caliphate following the birth of Islam in the 7th century AD.

The key dates he cites are

622 AD – the prophet Muhammad migrates to Medina from Mecca owing to conflict with Mecca elites.

632 AD – Muhammad dies after returning to Mecca with his followers.

633 AD – Muslim armies conquer the Sassanid Empire (Persia).

634-634 AD – Muslim armies conquer the Middle East Byzantine provinces and the Levant. [1]

641 AD – Muslim armies conquer Egypt (where they are welcomed after seven centuries of oppressive Roman rule).

642 AD – Muslim armies march east across North Africa and west into lower Indus Valley (modern day Pakistan).

656 AD – Arab army mutinies in Egypt (over lack of pay), marches back to Medina and kills the reigning caliph Uthman, who they replace with Ali, a Shia [2] cousin of Muhammad. A civil war ensures, with the Sunni Ummayad caliphate eventually assuming power  and establishing Damascus as their capitol.

700 AD The Sunni Ummayad faces serious military (suffering defeat in their efforts to conquer Constantinople, the Khazars and the Turks in Transoxiana [3], political and fiscal challenges. Muslim soldiers (many of whom are nomad mercenaries) garrisoned in the steppes cities become increasingly independent and “rapacious.”

711 AD – Muslim armies cross into Iberian peninsular, smash the Visigoth kingdom and overrun most of Spain.

749 AD – Umayyad caliphate overthrown by a mixed army (many of whom identify as Shia) of Arab tribal regiments and Persian converts. Replaced by Abbasid caliphate (descended from Muhammad’s uncle), who move capitol to Baghdad. [4]

809 AD – New civil war results from the conflict between the brothers al-Amin and al-Ma’mun over the Abbasid Caliphate succession.

909 AD – organized Berbers swept across North Africa to occupy Egypt where they set up a Fatima (Shia) caliphate which, in alliance with the Byzantine Empire, takes over Baghdad and much of the Levant, as well as the holy cities on the Arabian peninsula.

945 AD – Seljiud Turks who have converted to Islam invade from the East and restore power in Baghdad to the Abbassid caliphs.

[1] The Levant refers to a large ancient historical area on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.

[2] Shia Islam, the second largest branch of the religion, holds that Muhammad designated his cousin Ali as his successor.

[3] Transoxiana is the Roman name for the central steppes region roughly corresponding to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and southern Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

[4] According to Harl, this move cements the caliphate in the Persian (Sassanid) cultural world and turns the empire from an Arab empire to a multi-ethnic Muslim empire. Ultimately 34 of the 37 Abbassid caliphs were sons of non-Arab Persian slaves.

Film can be viewed free with a library card at Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5694984/5695024

Matt Gaetz Pushes to Reinstate Service Members Dismissed Over Covid Vaccine

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) By Mary Margaret Olohan

Daily Wire

WASHINGTON — Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) plans to introduce an amendment Wednesday reinstating armed service members who were dismissed for refusing the COVID vaccine.

When the House Armed Services Committee marks up the National Defense Authorization Act, Gaetz will introduce an amendment protecting armed service members who refuse to get the COVID vaccine, reinstating members who were dismissed over their refusal at the same rank and grade, and providing back pay and benefits to the members who were dismissed.

“I see the impact on our readiness from these mandates,” he said during a Tuesday afternoon phone interview with The Daily Wire. “We are hundreds of pilots short in the Air Force and and we’ve lost a number of pilots as a consequence of these mandates.”

The Florida Republican expressed frustration to The Daily Wire that the opposition to his amendments does not merely come from Democrats, warning that the leading Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, Mike Rogers (R-AL), has expressed public support for the military vaccine mandate.

“I hope that number reaches 100% quickly,” said Rogers of the number of vaccinated service members in August 2021.

“That is not my view,” Gaetz said of Rogers’ remarks, “and I doubt that’s the view of a majority of Republicans.”

As of late May, the Army had discharged at least 742 active-duty soldiers for refusing to get vaccinated, Military.com reported, noting that the number had more than doubled since the previous month.

The publication reported that 3,416 general officer reprimands, widely seen as “career killers in the military,” had also been given out to soldiers who refused the vaccine, and the Army had only granted nine out of 4,428 religious exemption applications.

“These are kitchen table issues in my district because I represent the district that has the highest concentration of active duty military in the country,” Gaetz explained, emphasizing that after Afghanistan, mental health and “a sense of self-worth” among many active duty military and veterans has deteriorated.

“I saw that in higher call volumes to our veterans service organizations,” Gaetz said. “This has compounded that malaise and frustration in our ranks because people feel like they didn’t have any agency in how the military that they’ve given their lives to is making decisions.”

Many of the service members who submitted religious exemption requests got back blanket form letter rejections, the congressman said.

“That violates the law,” Gaetz insisted. “Each exemption is entitled to an individual review, and our service members were denied that opportunity with these blanket form letter rejections.”

“Our military is not stronger today as a consequence of these vaccine mandate separations,” he added. “It’s weaker.”

The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Wire addressing how many service members had been discharged for failing to get vaccinated, as well as how many religious exemption requests have been filed and how many have been granted.

“We deserve a military that is apolitical and doesn’t cater to any ideology other than American success,” Gaetz said on Tuesday. “Unfortunately, we now have a military that embraces Critical Race Theory, that teaches socialism at the National War College, and it drives out patriotic Americans who are religious and faith based. Those features of the current military leadership are having a compounding negative effect on the fighting force and our nation’s readiness.”

Via https://www.dailywire.com/news/i-see-the-impact-on-our-readiness-matt-gaetz-pushes-to-reinstate-service-members-dismissed-over-the-covid-vaccine

Larry Summers warns unemployment must rise to cool inflation

Larry Summers says the unemployment rate will likely rise much higher as the Fed tightens policy. Getty Images

Thomas Barraby

New York Post

Ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers warned that millions of currently employed Americans must lose their jobs in order for the Federal Reserve to succeed in its bid to cool inflation.

Summers, an outspoken critic of the Fed’s delayed response to surging inflation, said the national unemployment rate will likely rise far above its current level of 3.6% to bring down steep prices currently slamming Americans’ wallets.

“We need five years of unemployment above 5% to contain inflation — in other words, we need two years of 7.5% unemployment or five years of 6% unemployment or one year of 10% unemployment,” Summers said Monday during a speech in London, according to Bloomberg. “There are numbers that are remarkably discouraging relative to the Fed Reserve view.”

The Fed last week hiked its benchmark interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point for the first time since 1994. The move exacerbated concerns about its ability to bring prices down without upending the labor market or triggering a recession.

The central bank currently projects that inflation will return to the approximately 2% level it deems acceptable by 2024 – even as Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned that “further surprises” could be in store in the coming months.

At present, the Fed expects the national unemployment rate to tick slightly higher to about 4.1% in 2024, well below the level Summers warned was possible to sufficiently address the inflation crisis.

“The gap between 7.5% unemployment for two years and 4.1% unemployment for one year is immense,” Summers added. “Is our central bank prepared to do what is necessary to stabilize inflation if something like what I’ve estimated is necessary?”

Higher levels of unemployment have historically accompanied the tightened monetary policy required to lower inflation. Companies often cut jobs and slash budgets in response to higher interest rates.

As The Post reported, cryptocurrency firms such as Coinbase and real estate firms Redfin and Compass have already announced job cuts this month in response to worsening market conditions.

Summers’ remarks were the latest indication of his bleak outlook for the US economy. Last week, he said that he viewed an economic recession within the next two years as increasingly likely.

“When inflation is as high as it is right now and unemployment is as low as it is right now, it’s almost always been followed, within two years, by recession,” Summers said during an appearance on CNN.

Meanwhile, President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have insisted that a recession is still avoidable, despite mounting warnings from banks and prominent economists.

 

 

Publix Pharmacies Refuse to Offer Covid Vaccines to Children Under Age

NWO Report

Posted BY: Adan Salazar

Florida-based grocery chain Publix says it will not issue Covid jabs to children younger than 5, despite an announcement by the CDC last week recommending the jab for children aged 6-months and older.

A representative for Publix on Wednesday said the company would not offer the jab at its more than 1,200 stores to children under 5 “at this time,” adding they would not be issuing a formal statement on the decision.

The Tampa Bay Times said it spoke with a mother who’d scheduled an appointment at a Publix to have her 3-year-old jabbed, but she later received a phone call telling her “that her chosen location was not authorized to vaccinate children under 5.”

The company’s decision comes as the CDC last week issued a recommendation approving the jab for children 6-months-old and older, claiming it helps parents “better protect them from COVID-19.”

The Florida grocer’s new policy also follows state Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Lapado’s announcement in March advising parents against getting youngsters jabbed, saying it provides no benefit to healthy children.

The retailer, Florida’s largest employee-owned grocery chain, reportedly distributed hundreds of thousands of Covid vaccines back in early 2021 when tapped by Governor Ron DeSantis (R) to lead the state’s vaccination effort.

The Times reports the company is still offering flu shots for children as young as 6 months old.

Meanwhile, many including the UK’s Daily Mail are questioning the grounds on which the jab was approved for youngsters, considering Pfizer based its approval on research that only studied three children, not to mention the fact Moderna has admitted its jab is only 37% effective.

“We should just assume that we don’t have efficacy data,” Drexel University College of Medicine pediatrics professor Sarah Long admitted to the New York Times last week.

[…]

Via https://nworeport.me/2022/06/23/publix-pharmacies-refuse-to-offer-covid-vaccines-to-children-under-age-5/

Whistleblower Says With 120,000 Troops Still Unvaccinated, Army May Move June 30 Deadline Far Into Future

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

An active-duty senior Army official told The Defender, on condition of anonymity, the U.S. Army is strongly considering pushing the June 30 deadline for compliance with the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate far into the future — but will not announce the date change until closer to, or even after, the upcoming deadline.

As the June 30 deadline nears for compliance with the U.S. military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, U.S. Army officials publicly claim a very small percentage of its members are unvaccinated, reporting 96% or more of its members are fully vaccinated.

However, the Army’s vaccination rate is in fact significantly lower than 96%, an active-duty senior Army official with access to senior-level information told The Defender — so low, that if the Army were to enforce the deadline, the loss of up to 120,000 service members would render it “combat-ineffective.”

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Army is strongly considering pushing the June 30 deadline much further into the future — but will not announce the date change until closer to, or even after, the upcoming deadline.

Concern about the number of unvaccinated service members was the topic of recent senior-level briefings, according to the official.

He said he’s blowing the whistle now because many service members who remain unvaccinated and/or who are “on the fence” about getting the vaccine may feel compelled to do so to meet the June 30 deadline — unaware the deadline may soon change.

He said by going public with this information now, service members who have not yet been vaccinated but who are feeling increasing pressure to get the COVID-19 vaccine may reconsider.

Real numbers of unvaccinated Army members ‘higher than anybody thought’

As far back as December 2021, an article on the U.S. Army website stated 96% of the Army’s 461,209 members were fully vaccinated.

In March 2022, as the Army began to announce the initiation of separation procedures for unvaccinated soldiers, officials again claimed 96% of its service members were fully vaccinated.

Later that month, an article on the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) website claimed “the entire force may be vaccinated for COVID-19 by early summer.”

According to the whistleblower though, the “real numbers of unvaccinated service members are way higher than anybody thought,” adding that while “everyone thought” the number of unvaccinated in the Army was approximately 8,000-10,000 members, it is actually around 120,000.

To confirm that number, the official confidentially shared an internal U.S. Army document, dated June 2022.

According to the document, in the Army National Guard (ARNG), there are 280,678 members who are fully vaccinated (84.6%), and 7,735 who are partially vaccinated (1 dose) (2.3%) — leaving 43,269, or 13%, who have not yet received a single dose.

In some states, such as Oklahoma, the document shows the vaccination rate for members of the ARNG is as low as 74.11%. Of those, the document lists 15,698 members as “refusals” and 6,749 (2.0%) as going through an exemption process — with 6,257 (1.9%) requesting a religious exemption and 492 (0.1%) requesting a medical exemption.

The document also notes that 80% of unvaccinated soldiers in the ARNG are age 32 or younger, with an average age of 26.2 and median age of 24.

The document adds that “unvaccinated soldiers in their first 1-3 years of service and 4-7 years of service represent the greatest risk to readiness” for the ARNG, and that “Infantry, Maintenance, Engineer and Transportation career fields represent the greatest areas [of] concern for the ARNG.”

The document also states “projected losses could drive [the ARNG] below 70% available strength.”

According to the document, “Current forecasts project unprogrammed, vaccination mandate-related losses to range from … 3-6% of assigned strength,” which would require an anticipated “seven-year effort at 1,500-2,000 ramp per year to restore [the] End Strength necessary to meet required Force Structure.”

The same document also provides figures for the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR), stating that 157,390 members are fully vaccinated (87.9%), with an additional 1,411 members partially vaccinated with one dose (0.8%), leaving 19,872 members (11.3%) fully unvaccinated.

Among the unvaccinated, 7,623 members (4.3%) are listed as “refusals” and 4,100 (2.3%) are listed as undergoing an exemption process, with 3,982 members (2.2%) having requested a religious accommodation, and 118 (0.1%) having requested a medical exemption.

In some states, such as Wyoming, the vaccination rate in the USAR is as low as 80.9%, according to the document.

The document also notes 65% of unvaccinated soldiers in the USAR are age 30 or younger, with an average age of 28 and a median age of 26.

“Supply and Services, Mechanical Maintenance, Engineer and Transportation career fields represent the greatest areas [of] concern for the USAR,” the document states.

The document recommends commanders counsel “every unvaccinated Soldier,” “explore [the] impact of Bars to Reenlistment” and “publicize [the] Novavax option as [U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)] approves” as it “may appeal to some seeking religious exemptions.”

The number of unvaccinated service members in the ARNG and USAR is confirmed in a second document — an internal “information” document — that the whistleblower shared with The Defender.

According to the whistleblower, this leaves approximately 56,000 unvaccinated service members in the U.S. Army itself.

These figures refer only to the Army, the whistleblower said. He does not know the figures for other branches of the armed forces, such as the Navy, Marines and Air Force.

The reason most members of the Army thought the number of unvaccinated was much smaller, aside from the information provided via the Army’s official channels, is that the Army has been “very tight-lipped” about these figures, “not leaking [them] to anybody, even internally,” according to the whistleblower.

“Those who are not vaccinated are segregated, so it is hard to find out who isn’t vaccinated,” he said. “The Army has done a very good job of not letting that information be leaked across the service.”

As a result, according to the whistleblower, “sometimes you feel you’re the only one, that there’s only a few people left” who have not received the COVID-19 vaccine.

However, those who are unvaccinated and who are privy to the real figures are, as the whistleblower described it, “re-energized and encouraged” by these numbers.

Army will be ‘combat-ineffective’ unless it moves June 30 deadline

The whistleblower told The Defender the DOD still plans to separate the unvaccinated soldiers, but instead of enforcing the June 30 deadline, “what they are going to do is hold off on separating soldiers on July 1,” and “will most likely push that into 2023 at the earliest.”

The June 2022 Army document confirms this, as it proposes that a “phased approach to involuntary separation” for unvaccinated service members would begin on October 1, 2022, with a “mandatory bar to reenlistment,” while “mandatory involuntary separations for COVID vaccine refusal” would begin January 1, 2023, and “last up to approximately 2 years.”

The document also recommends “separations for Soldiers start in FY23 [fiscal year 2023] with a phased approach.”

The whistleblower said the later date and “phased approach” are necessary because the Army is having a difficult time recruiting new troops, as “recruiting numbers have tanked over the past six months.”

The June 2022 document confirms this, describing an “extremely challenging recruiting environment.”

Moreover, the whistleblower claims that “the Army knows they cannot separate 120,000 soldiers,” as the Army would become “combat-ineffective,” which the whistleblower states is another reason why the real figures have been tightly guarded.

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Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/whistleblower-military-covid-19-vaccine-mandate/