A Heartfelt Urgent Appeal to Reconsider Health & Safety Reopening Strategies for my College District

August 16, 2021 (updated September 14)

Dear Board of Trustees, administrators, and colleagues,

I hope you and your loved ones are well during this challenging time. I am writing to our Board members, to our college administrators and to all of us with an urgent and heartfelt appeal. Despite our best intentions for our students, complying with the current mandate requiring the investigational vaccine puts the very lives of some of our students in danger. I urge you to review the current reopening mandate and to consider that other options for ensuring our students’ health and safety are readily available. I am concerned the mandate, as currently stated, could have devastating unintended impacts on our students, faculty, and staff, even though I am sure it was created with our health and safety in mind. I applaud the District’s intentions of allowing our students to return to much-needed face-to-face instruction and campus life.

To my colleagues (staff and faculty), I am writing to extend an invitation for open dialog. I am not sure what the best format for this dialog would be. I welcome your suggestions. I was heartbroken and shocked when I learned about this mandate last week, and I had to collect myself for a few days, though I was aware of mandates at other colleges being implemented. I am curious what’s stirring for you at this time. I realize this is a very controversial subject that has led to much polarization. I urge you to consider my concerns below, for the sake of our students and student workers. I honor whatever health choices you are making for yourself, based on your own risk/benefit considerations, and please know that my concerns below are meant to protect our students and are not intended as a judgment for anyone having made a different health choice. I hope I am wrong on some of this, but it appears there is a growing scientific evidence worldwide, urging caution.

I come from generations of physicians and have been following the medical literature with great concern. I have listened to hundreds of notable physicians and health scientists this past year. As an instructor of ethics, critical thinking, and systems thinking, I have also studied the role of the media during this current crisis, the role of vested interests and abuses of power, and how this situation has exacerbated structures of inequality affecting our most disadvantaged and marginalized populations disproportionately. History has taught us again and again how power interests can take advantage of crises to consolidate power and profits even further.

An Urgent Call for a Pause

I urgently ask you to consider that there is no medical consensus by health scientists on the issue of mass vaccinations, as the uniform mainstream media narrative tends to portray, and that thousands of health scientists and physicians across the world are calling for an IMMEDIATE HALT OF THE VACCINATION PROGRAM (https://doctors4covidethics.org/; https://aapsonline.org/not-everyone-should-get-covid-vaccine-states-aaps/). I urgently appeal to you to consider the risks this mandate may be incurring for our students, and that the risk/benefit ratio may not be favorable for our student population, given this evidence.

Effective Treatments and Prevention Are Available

FIRST, please consider that there are effective treatments and prevention strategies available that reduce hospitalization and death by 85%, and nearly by 100% for those under 50, and that there are physician networks in the US and globally who are readily prescribing these. There are now multiple sequenced multi-drug protocols available to the general public, utilizing medications with a 50–70 year documented safety record (⁠https://covid19criticalcare.com; https://c19protocols.com; ⁠https://aapsonline.org/covidpatientguide; https://earlycovidcare.org; https://www.exstnc.com— Directory of doctors prescribing Covid-19 therapy⁠). The successes are remarkable, the treatments work for all Covid variants including Delta, and countries who have implemented these more consistently have seen drastic improvements. There have also been remarkable successes treating long covid symptoms. The reason you may not have heard this more broadly reported in the media is because of historically unprecedented medical censorship and one-sided media coverage, including on social media.

Concerning VAERS Adverse Reaction Data

Please take a look at the number of deaths and adverse reactions reported the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS; ) (https://www.openvaers.com/covid-data; https://vaers.hhs.gov/; https://vaxpain.us/). As of last week, there were 14,506 deaths reported. While correlation doesn’t equal causation, temporal correlation is an important consideration. There have been more than double the number of deaths reported in VAERS following the Covid investigational vaccine alone than the total number of deaths from all vaccines combined over the past 30 years. Analyzing these results, numerous researchers of evidence-based medicine have issued dire warnings and a call for an immediate halt of mass vaccination programs. Just yesterday, I was in a group meeting where a colleague was grieving a loved ones’ vaccine-related death. VAERS is a voluntary reporting system and has historically only captured 1–10% of adverse reactions. There is additional whistleblower testimony that the vaccine may have caused the death of over 45,000 people, giving rise to major lawsuits in California and Hawaii. Other estimates arrive at over 150,000 deaths caused by the experimental Covid vaccines in the US thus far. Adverse reactions reported in VAERS are unprecedented at 675,591: Last week’s VAERS data show that 18,439 people have been permanently disabled and 27,336 had severe allergic reactions. You can do your own search by age, same-day, and same-week death, and various adverse event reactions here (https://www.openvaers.com/covid-data; https://vaers.hhs.gov/; https://vaxpain.us/) I am concerned that this mandate could be literally destroying some of our students’ dreams and ending their precious lives, traumatizing entire families.

Liability

Please know that each of the members of the Board of Trustees, as well as district and campus administrators involved in creating this policy and carrying out on-campus vaccination clinics, can be held personally liable for any injury or death incurred as a result of being coerced to this treatment, while the vaccine companies are indemnified from liability. Below I am including three sample notices of liability that have been served to other entities. Multiple lawsuits are already underway, including at UC/CSU. I know in my heart of hearts that nobody is intending to hurt anyone here. And yet, I am concerned we are setting ourselves up for unintentionally and inadvertently harming our very own students.

Notice of Liability 1

Notice of Liability 2

Notice of Liability 3

Delta Variant

Please consider that these investigational vaccines have shown to not work well for the Delta variant, that both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals are getting infected with this virus, that Delta is less virulent than the original strains, and that this mutant responds well to early treatment. As pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole stated: “We are trying to force people into a shot for last year’s virus. This shot would not be authorized for Delta statistically right now, because it’s not working well for Delta.”

Transmissibility

Please consider that vaccinated individuals can still become infected and transmit the virus. This is a “leaky” vaccine that doesn’t confer sterile immunity. In fact, we are seeing a growing number of “breakthrough” cases of vaccinated individuals becoming infected.

Heart Issues and Concerns for Athletes

Please consider our young athletes who depend on athletic scholarships to realize their dreams. Last week’s VAERS update shows 5,371 reported cases of myocarditis/pericarditis (inflammation of the heart), and 6,422 heart attacks. Many of these young people are now permanently impaired. VAERS data indicate a 200% increase in young men in an inflammation of the heart. New research shows that heart inflammation after the vaccines is more common than reported in VAERS, however.

Fertility Concerns

Please consider our students of child-bearing age dreaming to have biological children one day. Recent research reveals that the spike protein itself acts as a toxin and that it has shown to distribute itself around the whole body and to accumulate, among other areas, in the ovaries. It doesn’t just stay in the muscle. In addition, recent clinical data confirm that the spike protein, which is similar to a protein of the placenta (synctin-1), can trigger an autoimmune reaction on the placenta. As former Chief Scientist and Vice-President of Pfizer Respiratory & Allergy Research Dr. Mike Yeadon mentioned in a recent interview: “I’m here to warn you that if you are of child-bearing potential or younger, so not at menopause, I would strongly recommend you do not accept these vaccines”. The long-term effects on fertility are simply unknown.

Pregnancy and Nursing

Please consider our students who are nursing moms or who may not know they are pregnant. The reported miscarriage rates are alarming (1,757 as of last week). VAERS also includes an account of a newly vaccinated nursing mom losing her previously healthy baby.

Students with Underlying Health Conditions

Please consider our students with underlying health conditions, for whom, according to pathologist Dr. Cole, there is a clear contraindication because of very high increase for adverse reactions.

Covid-Recovered

Please consider our Covid-recovered students who have a 2–4 times higher risk of adverse reactions. Several lawsuits are currently underway challenging the rationale to mandate vaccines for Covid-recovered students.

Long-term Effects

Please consider how our students may be impacted one year, three years, and ten years from now. Long-term effects were never studied, but experience with previous failed coronavirus vaccines attempts, as well as emerging data signals are showing concerning trends for autoimmune reactions (such as antibody-dependent immune enhancement), cancer, fertility, blood disorders, and more.

Risk/Benefit Analysis

Please consider the infection fatality rate and risk stratification of this disease. What kind of risk/benefit analysis has Peralta conducted?

Informed Consent

Please consider that this is an experimental therapy under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) that is still in the clinical trial phase, and that administrating this therapy requires informed consent, including for on-campus vaccination clinics. Here are the conditions needed for informed consent:

· It must be given voluntarily — without coercion or deceit.

· It must be given by an individual who has mental capacity, and

· BEFORE giving consent, a person needs to have been fully informed about the issue. That includes being informed about what the risks and benefits of the treatment or vaccination are, as well as the risks and benefits of going without the treatment or vaccination, and what alternate options might be available.

Please note that the recent FDA approval was not for any of the currently available vaccines. Thus, the informed consent considerations haven’t changed. What preparations have been made for an appropriate informed consent process during any on-campus vaccination clinics planned?

Please consider that all of us being asked to participate in an experimental procedure have the right to ask some basic product safety and quality questions, not unlike buying a new device or a toy for our children. Here are three information request forms I invite you to review if you are considering participating in this investigational treatment:

· Form 1

· Form 2

· Form 3

I ask the administration and Board of Trustees to what degree these questions have been considered prior to issuing this mandate at our college district?

Vested Interests, Censorship, and Monolithic Media Narrative

Please consider that the NIH, CDC, FDA, and the WHO are not free from vested interests and are, in part, captured agencies. I appreciate how the Chancellor, in her warm welcome message last week, named that the loudest voices with social capital and power may not serve the long-term strategic interest of students. There are multiple new billionaires among vaccine manufacturers. We have experienced a massive transfer of wealth to the high-tech and pharma industry this past year. Corruption is running rampant in the medical and pharmaceutical industry right now. This corruption is infiltrating medical study design, medical journals, universities, and governments across the globe. Abuse of power and structural inequality is nothing new, and Peralta knows this well, working so hard to break structures of inequality, systemic racism, and systemic injustice, in order to uplift our own students so that they can feel empowered to reach for the stars.

Please consider that the CDC’s recommendations may not always be based in sound scientific inquiry. I invite you to listen to Dr. Dan Stock’s six-minute testimony before an Indiana School Board showing why many of the CDC’s recommendations were scientifically unsound, and to review the peer-reviewed studies he cited.

Please consider that the media are not free from corruption and vested interests. We all know this and teach this as part of our critical thinking courses, but we are seeing perhaps unprecedented levels of media corruption right now, including an ugly shaming and smearing campaign of medical health professionals and others speaking out, and the biggest level of medical censorship we may have ever experienced. If we look at history, book burning and censorship has never promoted democratic processes and pluralistic discernment, quite the opposite. Fortunately, we still have some independent journalism committed to medical ethics, such as TrialSite News or Covexit News and Policy Analysis, or some medical journals that offer a plurality of views, such as the British Medical Journal. Fortunately, we still have some independent filmmakers creating documentaries on medical censorship and the investigational vaccines. We have also seen massive levels of censorship in the social media space, with hundreds of thousands of videos from health scientists and physicians being deleted. I am concerned how this climate of cancelling out important voices has made it more difficult to hear a plurality of perspectives.

Behavioral Psychology and Manipulation

Please consider that our capacity to practice informed consent has been influenced by behavioral psychology tools that have been used extensively during this public health crisis, including to increase vaccine uptake. The same tools that are designed to nudge us into buying the latest iPhone are currently being used in public health messaging. We all have seen the advertising everywhere; it is hard to escape. Behavioral psychology tools include neuro-linguistic programming, nudge theory, cash incentives, and the deliberate use of fear narratives. These have been carefully studied by government behavioral psychologists for various target groups (This links to a behavioral psychology table for vaccine uptake prepared for the NHS). This research has been conducted by universities, such as Yale testing which vaccine uptake messages would work best: shaming, embarrassment, peer pressure, “trust in science,” bravery, economic freedom, etc.. UCLA research tested how well cash incentives would work. I consider these behavioral psychology strategies manipulative and unethical, and I am concerned how these tactics support the continued rollout of a medical intervention that would have long ago been discontinued because of its poor safety profile and performance, as happened with the swine flu in the 70s. I presented on this concern at the recent International Society for the Systems Sciences conference and would be happy to share my presentation.

Please also know that physicians and health professionals have been put under enormous pressure globally, and many are afraid to speak up for fear of losing their job or have already lost their job.

The Emotional Impact of Coercion

Please consider that as we are preparing for the semester, there may be multiple students feeling coerced and traumatized by these mandates, as I have witnessed speaking with parents at other campuses. While I have no doubt that the mandate was created with our students’ best interest at heart, supporting the return of much-needed face-to-face contact, I invite you to consider that for the students who have chosen not to get vaccinated, feeling coerced, pressured, or feeling a fear of reprisal can trigger big trauma reactions, making it more difficult to focus on learning. Nationally, 70 - 75% of African Americans are not fully vaccinated. Here at Laney, I am aware that this mandate has already kept unvaccinated students from coming to campus to seek counseling advice, compromising their path to student success. I am concerned that this mandate may further reduce enrollment as students gravitate toward other campuses where they can feel emotionally and mentally safe from coercion. Research shows that coercion can trigger inflammatory responses and further weaken the immune system.

I ask you to consider that staying unvaccinated and choosing other prevention, protection, and treatment options is a deliberate choice for many, as it has been a deliberate choice for me, having studied the medical literature. For many communities of color, this choice is also informed by the trauma of medical experimentation in the past.

A Call for Emotional and Mental Safety

I ask that in addition to physical safety, we must consider emotional and mental safety for our students, as well. For me, being coerced into a decision that is not in alignment with my values and integrity, and that reinforces a much larger systemic structure of power abuse, has felt like a boundary violation. As an abuse survivor, it has triggered a big PTSD response in the last few days.

I have so appreciated our professional development programs on micro-aggressions last year, Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade’s presentation on the impact of PTSD on our student population and the importance of creating caring environments, and the many valuable professional development opportunities that have supported us in serving our precious students. I sense that this year we are called on drawing on these lessons more than ever.

Equally, I ask to consider the emotional safety for those who have chosen this medical treatment, and who may have felt judged for their decision, experience regrets, or experience delayed adverse effects. Perhaps we have one of the most difficult years ahead of us on campus now navigating this complex terrain, and so I deeply welcome the Chancellor’s call for Ubuntu.

Systemic Causes

Please consider that this investigational vaccine does not address the systemic causes of this public health crisis, which we are still learning about in this dynamically unfolding situation. I invite us to put our best thinking together to consider the social determinants of health and the environmental causes contributing to this complex public health situation. We have learned a lot about the risk factors, which include: toxic contributors (glyphosate toxicity to gut and vascular systems, cyanide poisoning, pm 2.5 air pollution); comorbidities (including hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, coronary artery disease); microbiome stress (including gut health); loss of biodiversity (soil, food, water, air); high prevalence of drug treatment with ACE-1 and statin drugs (many blood pressure/diabetes medications); vitamin D deficiency; influenza vaccinations; smoking, stress, and isolation. In fact, data signals indicate that the investigational vaccines weaken the immune system.

An Urgent Call to Pause and Regroup

As my colleague Julie Ponesse, Professor of Ethics, stated: “Even if the side effects are rare, the benefits a COVID vaccine may offer to young people is so vanishingly small, it is not worth even a minor risk of vaccine injury. And this imposes on us a weighty ethical obligation to respond very carefully and very proportionally…By mandating COVID vaccination for young people, we are asking them to bear the burden of controlling a disease which poses to them a vanishingly small risk and asking them to incur potential harms that will affect them more than anyone else. And when you compound this with the fact that there are significant barriers to minors being able to give free, informed consent (something which is complicated enough for adults in this situation), and the fact that vaccine mandates threaten their right to education, the mandates are, at best, ethically unsupported and, at worst, gravely irresponsible and medically, psychologically, and ethically devastating. Perhaps the main reason for attending university is to spread one’s wings, to explore opportunities and expand horizons in a setting that respects freedom of choice and the development of one’s own ideas. Now the price of admission to many is the forfeiture of bodily autonomy and critical thinking; a coerced medical choice is standing between students and the education they work so hard to access.” (pp. 1–2)

Pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole, who is observing both the short-term impacts as well as tracking lab signals for potential long-term impacts, puts it bluntly:

“Any university that is mandating this for their students: it is criminal. We have treatments, and we are ruining the health of a generation and killing them, as well. This is unethical, it is a violation of all morality, let alone medical ethics. Step back and look at the data. This is immoral to be doing this to young individuals in our society.”

I know that nobody intends to be criminal here. But please consider the gravity of this statement, coming from a veteran practicing physician who is also directing a research lab.

I imagine that the District has been put under enormous pressure. But I implore you, please, let’s take a step back and have another look. The Delta variant can be treated effectively with other means and has already subsided in India (in part, because of the introduction of early outpatient treatment when the recent crisis hit), in the UK, and other places. From what I have learned, that’s the nature of more contagious but less virulent virus mutations, that they run their course faster, contributing to herd immunity and endemicity.

I sincerely hope that I am wrong with some of what I am pointing out here. But having seen thousands of physicians and health scientists raise alarm and looking at the data myself, I am truly concerned. This is not the first time in history that our most vulnerable and marginalized community members are impacted by an overreach of power via vested economic and political interests. And this is also not the first time in history where behavioral psychology tactics have been used to pit people against each other.

Let’s not put our own students at risk and inadvertently compromise the very dreams that they came to Peralta to realize. Let’s not rush this. Let’s look at viable alternatives.

A Vision between Question and Answer and Question

I feel called to close with a poem I often use in my classes:

Sometimes you hear a voice through the door

Calling you, as fish out of water hear the waves, or a hunting falcon hears the drum’s

Come back. Come back.

This turning toward what you deeply love saves you.

Read the book of your life which has been given to you.

As voice comes to your soul saying, lift your foot. Cross over.

Move into emptiness of question and answer and question

(Rumi)

I invite us all to drop into what we most deeply love right now. The heart’s electromagnetic waves extend far beyond the brain’s. I look forward to learning what’s stirring in your heart. And I invite you to stay in that place between question and answer and question for a while and to hold these questions as our companions. What questions are bubbling up for you?

Here are some questions that are bubbling up for me:

· How could our district become a garden for true participatory community health, based on values of transparency, mutual accountability, solidarity, compassion, choice, sovereignty, and mutual respect?

· How could we bring in a plurality of scientific and public health perspectives to inform our district’s reopening plan? What medical evidence and research data are the proposed mandates based on? How well have these guidelines worked out elsewhere? What have we learned from successes and failures so far? What can we learn from best practices elsewhere?

· How can we work together to address the systemic causes of our community’s public health challenges and social determinants of poor health?

· How can we support each other this year to foster a collaborative and amicable climate between students, faculty, and staff who have exercised different health choices? How can we stay away from the larger tendencies toward micro-aggression, polarization, and scapegoating based on health choice and create a nurturing learning environment for everyone? How can we work together to make sure that new mandates don’t give rise to discrimination of the most vulnerable?

From the depth of my heart, I appreciate your considering my concerns.

Barbara

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Here are some public health experts (local and national) I have come to appreciate, who may be able to offer some additional perspectives:

Prof. Dr. Joe Ladapo, UCLA, Policy Research and Hospital Medicine (see, for example, his most recent WSJ article)

Prof. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Stanford University, Epidemiology and Public Health

Prof. Dr. Jon Ioannidis, Stanford University, Epidemiology and Hygiene

Prof. Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, UC Irvine, Medical Ethics, Psychiatry (see, for example, this recent WSJ article on university mandates and his pending lawsuit challenging UC’s vaccine mandate)

Prof. Dr. Peter McCullough, Cardiologist with one of the highest number of publications on Covid treatment research: Baylor Institute Medical Center, Texas

Prof. Dr. Harvey Risch, Yale School of Public Health

Prof. Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Harvard University, Epidemiology

Prof. Dr. Byram Bridle, Viral Immunology and Vaccinology, Univ. of Guelph: https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/

Prof. Dr. Julie Ponesse, Health Ethics, Western University, Ontario, Canada

Dr. Tess Lawry, Evidence-based Medicine Consultancy Group, UK

Dr. Robert Malone, Inventor of mRNA technology

Dr. Caxton Opere, Emergency Medicine Specialist in Northern Texas, treating Covid patients, author of Covid-19 Remedies: A Frontline Doctor’s Views

Dr. George Fareed and Dr. Bryan Tyson, Imperial Valley (providing outpatient and hospital Covid care)

Dr. Richard Cheng (providing prophylaxis and outpatient treatment)

Dr. Mark McDonald, psychiatrist, Los Angeles

Dr. Ryan Cole, pathologist, Cole Diagnostics

Dr. Zach Bush: https://zachbushmd.com/; https://zachbushmd.com/what-happened-last-year/

Children’s Health Defense California

California Health Coalition Advocacy

Kevin Jenkins, Urban Global Health Alliance

Members of local community acupuncture clinics

Below a few medical resources I have come to appreciate on my learning journey:

· British Medical Journal: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/

· Covexit: Covid 19 News and Policy Analysis: https://covexit.com

· Early Covid Care Experts: https://earlycovidcare.org

· HART (Health Advisory and Recovery Team) group: HART — Health Advisory & Recovery Team (hartgroup.org)

· Trialsite News: https://trialsitenews.com/

· Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS): https://aapsonline.org/

· Pandata: Pandemics Data Analytics: https://www.pandata.org

· Doctors for Covid Ethics: https://doctors4covidethics.org

· Canadian Covid Care Alliance: Canadian Covid Care Alliance

· Frontline Critical Care Alliance: Home | FLCCC | Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (covid19criticalcare.com)

· Platform Respekt: Plattform RESPEKT — Für Grundrechte und Meinungsvielfalt (Austria)

· Stiftung Corona Ausschuss (Stiftung Corona Ausschuss (corona-ausschuss.de)

· http://www.collateralglobal.net: research repository on the effects of the Mandated Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (MNPIs) taken by governments worldwide in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

· Doctors for Open Debate: https://docs4opendebate.be/en/doctors-initiatives/

· Doctor Talks Series (whatsupcanada.org)

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