Are you one of the millions of American students (or their parents) facing the choice of taking the COVID shot or being barred from school?
The 800 reported cases of heart inflammation, now being investigated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), give a new urgency to the question. The most poignant case might be the 19-year-old girl, a journalism student at Northwestern University, who died two months after receiving her first dose of the Moderna product. Even a heart transplant could not save her.
One of the world’s most widely published cardiologists, Dr. Peter McCullough, fears that many of these formerly fit and healthy young people will wind up with heart failure.
Half the patients with a diagnosis of heart failure live less than 5 years. Even if heart damage is mild, the patient might not be able to participate in athletics or aspire to be a pilot, firefighter, or soldier, or to engage in any physically demanding occupation.
Another potential risk is infertility. This might not become apparent for years, as college students are generally postponing childbearing until they achieve educational or career goals. But an early warning signal is coming from fertility clinics, where eggs and sperm from previously successful donors are not producing viable embryos.
Having a significant fraction of our young people disabled or infertile is a truly existential risk.
Yet, despite objections from physicians, hundreds of colleges are still insisting that students get the jab, even those already immune, who gain no conceivable benefit.
Legal challenges may be undertaken, but courts have generally been unsympathetic to challenges to vaccine mandates. A Texas court just dismissed a challenge by some 116 employees of the Houston Methodist hospital system, who will be fired if they decline the shots.
Many will take the shots, even against their better judgment, because of peer pressure, continued trust in the CDC, the belief that these genetically engineered products are no different from other vaccines, or the high cost of disrupting their career plans. Since the purveyors of the products are protected from liability, all costs—even of death and disability—will be borne by students and their families.