CDC Reveals COVID Shot Mandates Backfired

New state-level data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has revealed that the Biden administration’s COVID-19 shot mandates for federal workers and employees of large corporations during 2021-2023 did not influence vaccine uptake and, in fact, reduced uptake of COVID shot boosters and influenza vaccines. The mandates, instituted in 2021, forced millions of Americans to get the COVID shots or risk losing their jobs until May 2023, when the White House announced an end to the mandates and cited great success in promoting public health and safety.¹

A series of multilevel models were tested by researchers from the University of Arizona at Tucson and Furman University in South Carolina to identify changes in vaccination rates in the months preceding and then following the implementation of the mandates. The analysis found that in the 19 states with mandates, vaccination rates weren’t statistically significantly different before and after mandate implementation. The research also discovered that the percentage of eligible residents who received a booster in states with mandates was lower than in states that banned mandates.^{1 2}

Vaccine Mandates Can Have “Unintended Negative Consequences”

“Results showed that COVID-19 vaccine adoption did not significantly change in the weeks before and after states implemented vaccine mandates, suggesting that mandates did not directly impact COVID-19 vaccination.” The study reads:

Compared to states that banned vaccine restrictions, however, states with mandates had lower levels of COVID-19 booster adoption as well as adult and child flu vaccination, especially when residents initially were less likely to vaccinate for COVID-19. This research supports the notion that governmental restrictions in the form of vaccination mandates can have unintended negative consequences.²

“This research supports the notion that governmental restrictions in the form of vaccination mandates can have unintended negative consequences, not necessarily by reducing uptake of the mandated vaccine, but by reducing adoption of other voluntary vaccines,” the study authors wrote. “More broadly, the results underscore the challenges of promoting public health through vaccination.”¹

Mask and Vaccine Mandates, Lockdowns Shown to Be Ineffective and Harmful

The latest research on the outcomes of vaccine mandates complements the growing body of evidence that the draconian COVID response public health policies implemented during the pandemic were ineffective and harmful.  In 2023, a “gold-standard” analysis of 78 studies including over one million people found masks made little to no difference in preventing off SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID deaths.³

The analysis of 78 global studies involving over one million people published Jan. 30, 2023 by the Cochrane Institute, considered a “gold standard” database archiving evidence-based medicine, discovered that masks only reduced the risk of infection and death by a mere five percent, causing researchers to assert that the benefits of mask-wearing and mask mandates did not outweigh the risks, such as impeding children’s academic and cognitive development in their early years.³

Francois Balloux, PhD, director of UCL Genetics Institute and professor of computational biology at University College London, tweeted in response to the mask findings:

Irrespective of the limitations of the study, its results indicate that the true impact of medical/surgical masks and N95/P2 respirators on the transmission of respiratory viruses is at best small.⁴

More recently, Anthony Fauci, MD, former director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), admitted during testimony before a US. congressional panel that the six-feet social distancing guidelines had no scientific basis and in fact, “just kind of appeared.”⁵

COVID Response Policies Harming Public Trust

One 2005 paper published in the medical literature discussed Jacobson v Massachusetts, a 1905 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving a man and his son who challenged a smallpox vaccine mandate. In that paper, bioethicists made the argument that tturn-of-the-20^th century Supreme Court justices tried to balance the constitutional authority of state legislatures to pass laws to protect the public health with the need to maintain public trust by upholding the U.S. constitutional right to personal liberty:

People are more likely to trust officials who protect their personal liberty. Without trust, public officials will not be able to persuade the public to take even the most reasonable precautions during an emergency, which will make a bad situation even worse. The public will support reasonable public health interventions if they trust public health officials to make sensible recommendations that are based on science and where the public is treated as part of the solution instead of the problem. Preserving the public’s health in the 21st century requires preserving respect for personal liberty.⁶

During the height of COVID mandates, unvaccinated individuals were disparaged and blamed for hindering economic growth, contributing to loss of jobs, and causing unnecessary strain on the healthcare system. Today, many U.S. public health officials and political leaders, who staunchly supported and enforced mandates, remain silent about the unknown numbers of individuals who personally suffered injury after complying with COVID shot mandates or are grieving the loss of a loved one who was injured by or died after a COVID shot.^{7 8}

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