Twenty years ago, I retired from the U.S. Navy. In those final years of serving on active duty, there was also an experimental vaccine program being forced upon military and civilian members: the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program (AVIP). There are many parallels between AVIP and COVID-19 vaccine rollouts.
The military has a tradition of lining up new recruits in a shot line at boot camp and having them run the gauntlet of vaccinations. One receives 17 FDA-approved infectious disease vaccines depending upon occupation, location of deployment and mission requirements.
In 1997 President Clinton ordered all Department of Defense, National Guard and reserve unit members to also receive a regiment of six shots of the experimental anthrax vaccine. If you didn’t want to be dishonorably discharged, you had to take all six shots. In 1998, this order was extended to Department of Defense civilians as well. However, it is illegal under U.S. law to require an experimental drug for someone without their consent. That also applies to military members.
Further exacerbating the situation, many service members suffered severe side effects from the vaccination. Despite the Department of Defense and the vaccine manufacturer claiming that the vaccine had minimal side effects, a Congressional General Accounting Office investigation determined adverse reactions in 85 percent of the troops. Word quickly spread that the military was lying about the severity of reactions.
The Congressional General Accounting Office discovered that between September 1998 and September 2000, 16 percent of pilots and aircrew members of the National Guard and Air Force Reserve avoided the anthrax shot by transferring to nonflying positions in other units, moving to inactive status or quitting entirely. Another 18 percent planned on doing the same the following year.
GAO reported that 77 percent of the military would not have taken the vaccine if given the choice. Many chose a court martial and dishonorable discharge over the vaccine, notably Marine Corps Sgt. James Muhammad. A devout Muslim, he was forced to choose between an unlawful Department of Defense order or a Muslim edict against the vaccine.
In December 2003, a federal district judge granted an injunction against AVIP, stating that U.S. soldiers should not be used as “guinea pigs for experimental drugs,” so AVIP was finally canceled. Since then, AVIP has been linked to dozens of adverse reactions and long-term side effects for which Gulf War veterans are eligible for United States Department of Veterans Affairs compensation.
Fast forward to today. About 100,000 military members are refusing to take the experimental COVID-19 vaccine, including several hundred Navy SEALs.
Their reasons for saying the newly FDA-approved vaccine is still experimental are simple. First, mRNA vaccines have never been on the market anywhere in the world before now. Second, mRNA trials did not include pregnant women. Third, there are no longitudinal studies of the long-term effects. Developing a vaccine historically takes 20 years to be considered safe. Fourth, Israeli studies demonstrate that natural immunity is 13 times more effective and longer lasting than the vaccines. Why not accept superior natural immunity?
Fifth, they suspect yet another systemic cover-up in reporting adverse vaccine effects. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System database received four times as many adverse COVID-19 vaccine side-effect reports (228,000) in the first six months of 2021 than all other 2019 vaccines combined. When asked about false claims, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, Tom Shimabukuro, says, “We don’t have evidence that there is widespread fraud or gaming of the system.” Yet columnist Douglas Call tells Daily News readers to trust the pharmaceutical companies when they say the 228,000 VAERS reports are wrong.
German newspaper “Berliner Zeitung“ published an article titled “Puzzling Heart Diseases in Football,” listing 24 soccer players who have had heart problems or collapsed on the field after receiving the vaccine, in some cases leading to death. The legacy media responded ex cathedra that it’s clearly not due to the vaccine. Regardless, no one has any recourse since the government granted Pfizer and Moderna blanket immunity from all liability.
The novel mRNA vaccines may indeed be miracle drugs. Or not. Only time will tell. Whether or not we’ve developed a miracle drug, one thing is for certain: with Pfizer being the seventh largest advertiser on ABC/CBS/NBC, a “60 Minutes” investigative journalism piece similar to their “1976 Swine Flu Fraud” could never air in today’s legacy media.
Courtney served 20 years in nuclear engineering aboard submarines and 15 years as a graduate school instructor. He now spends his spare time chasing his grandchildren around the Palouse.
