BMJ Medical Journal Editor Questions Vaccine Mandates

Peter Doshi, PhD., editor of the BMJ and a professor of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, spoke out against vaccine mandates during a five-minute testimony he gave on Capitol Hill last week, during a panel held by Senator Ron Johnson (R-WIS.), chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
 
Dr. Doshi called into question two important claims that Public Health Officials have been repeating, in order to justify vaccine mandates:
 
CLAIM 1: This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
 
“If hospitalizations and deaths were almost exclusively occurring in the unvaccinated, why would booster shots be necessary? Or why would the statistics be so different In the UK, where most COVID hospitalizations and deaths are among the fully vaccinated? …There's a disconnect there. There's something to be curious about. There's something not adding up.
 
CLAIM 2: The available COVID vaccines save lives, as evidenced by the clinical trials.
 
“When that statement by prominent public health officials was penned, there had been just one death across the 70,000 Pfizer and Moderna trial participants. Today we have more data. And you can see that there were similar numbers of deaths in the vaccine and placebo groups. The trials did NOT show a reduction in death, even for COVID deaths.
 
“My point is not that I know the truth about what the vaccine can and cannot do. My point is that those who claim the trials showed the vaccines were highly effective and saving lives were wrong. The trials did not demonstrate this.”
 
“I am one of the academics that argues that these mRNA products which everybody calls “vaccines” are qualitatively different than standard vaccines. And so I found it fascinating to learn that Merriam Webster changed its definition of vaccine early this year. mRNA products did not meet the definition of vaccine that has been in place for 15 years at Merriam Webster, but the definition was expanded such that mRNA products are now vaccines.”
 
“I highlight this, to ask a question— How would you feel about mandating COVID vaccines if we didn't call them vaccines? What if these injections were called drugs instead? So here's the scenario, we have this drug. And we have evidence that it doesn't prevent infection, nor does it stop viral transmission. But the drug is understood to reduce your risk of becoming very sick and dying of COVID. Would you take a dose of this drug every six months or so for possibly the rest of your life?”
 
“The point is, just because we call it a vaccine doesn't mean we should assume these new products are just like all other childhood vaccines which get mandated.