Mandates for Covid boosters for young people may cause 18 to 98 actual serious adverse events for each Covid infection-related hospitalization prevented, a new research report said.
In a 50-page study published on The Social Science Research Network in late August, a team of nine researchers from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and other top universities concluded that mandating vaccines for college students is “unethical.”
Students at universities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the study noted, are being told they must have a third dose of the vaccines against Covid or be disenrolled. Unvaccinated high school students who are just starting college are also being told the vaccines are “mandatory” for attendance.
Based on their analysis of public data provided to the CDC, the researchers estimated that between 22,000 and 30,000 previously uninfected young adults would need to be boosted with a mRNA vaccine to prevent just a single hospitalization.
This estimate, however, does not take into account the protection conferred by a previous infection. So, the authors insisted, “this should be considered a conservative and optimistic assessment of benefit.”
The researchers found that for every single Covid-19 hospitalization prevented in young adults who had not previously been infected, the data show that 18 to 98 “serious adverse events” will be caused by the vaccinations themselves.
These events include up to three times as many booster-associated cases of myocarditis in young men than hospitalizations prevented, and as many as 3,234 cases of other side effects so serious that they interfere with normal daily activities.
The authors of the new study give five specific reasons why they say college booster mandates are unethical:
1) Lack of policymaking transparency. The scientists pointed out that no formal and scientifically rigorous risk-benefit analysis of whether boosters are helpful in preventing severe infections and hospitalizations exists for young adults.
2) Expected harm. A look at the currently available data shows that mandates will result in what the authors call a “net expected harm” to young people. This expected harm will exceed the potential benefit from the boosters.
3) Lack of efficacy. The vaccines have not effectively prevented transmission of COVID-19. Given how poorly they work—the authors call this “modest and transient effectiveness”—the expected harms caused by the boosters likely outweigh any benefits to public health.
4) No recourse for vaccine-injured young adults. Forcing vaccination as a prerequisite to attend college is especially problematic because young people injured by these vaccines will likely not be able to receive compensation for these injuries.
5) Harm to society. Mandates, the authors insisted, ostracize unvaccinated young adults, excluding them from education and university employment opportunities. Coerced vaccination entails “major infringements to free choice of occupation and freedom of association,” the scientists wrote, especially when “mandates are not supported by compelling public health justification.”
The study is co-authored by Dr. Stefan Baral, an epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins University; surgeon Martin Adel Makary, M.D., a professor at Johns Hopkins known for his books exposing medical malfeasance, including “Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won’t Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Heath Care”; and Dr. Vinayak Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist, who is a professor in the UCSF Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, as well as the author of over 350 academic and peer-reviewed articles.
Perhaps the most notable of the researchers in the study, The Epoch Times noted in a Sept. 10 report, is Salmaan Keshavjee, M.D., Ph.D., current Director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Global Health Delivery, and professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Keshavjee has also worked extensively with Partners In Health, a Boston-based non-profit co-founded by the late Dr. Paul Farmer, on treating drug-resistant tuberculosis, according to his online biography.
The authors of the study concluded that policymakers must stop mandates for young adults immediately, be sure that those who have already been injured by these vaccines are compensated for the suffering caused by mandates, and openly conduct and share the results of risk-benefit analyses of the vaccines for various age groups.