Dear members of State Board of Health,

We are writing to express our sincerest objection and concern over the recent petition #352 made by Kristen Calleja (https://townhall.virginia.gov/L/ViewPetition.cfm?petitionid=352), which, if granted, would require all K-12 workers and vaccine-eligible students to receive COVID-19 vaccinations. The undersigned of this letter are homeschooling fathers, mothers, and co-op teachers in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, with a diverse background and convictions concerning vaccination. While many of us hold religious fundamental objections to COVID-19 vaccination, some of us do believe in the vaccination. Each of us takes or refuses vaccination according to our genuine conscience.

We strongly oppose the petition for a state-wide mandate on vaccination to K-12 school employees and students, in particular as expressed in this petition. The petitioner requested a sweeping mandate without respect to the religious exemption held by many students and parents. This represents an attack to and violation of the fundamental laws of the Nation and the Commonwealth, which highly honors personal freedom and responsibility. The request clearly is in violation of Code of Virginia, § 22.1-271.2, “Immunization requirements”, subpoint C. We ask that this petition be turned down, since the petitioner has not seen and considered all sides of COVID-19 and its vaccination to have a solid basis in asking for such a mandate.

A vaccination mandate also clearly violates the principle of medical informed consent. Instead of leaving the decision to vaccinate in the hands of patients and the care providers who know their specific health situations the best, this will force everyone to forgo the proper informed consent process in favor of complying with the government edict. Notwithstanding the recent approval of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S., given the shortness of the trial period, the vaccines are still effectively experimental in nature. As a result, forcing everyone to vaccinate for COVID-19 effectively constitutes a violation of the Nuremberg Code, i.e. performing an unethical experiment on humanity without their consent of being placed under such an experiment.

Some authorities interpret the current law to argue that the government has the power to mandate vaccination against people’s will and conscience in the case of “compelling interest” in preventing the spread of communicable diseases in the society. This argument actually carries with it a great and unsettling moral and ethical dilemma. In the COVID-19 case, which truly is an urgent problem to resolve, this moral and ethical dilemma has actually been observed as the side effects of vaccines suffered by a growing number of vaccine recipients. Under the “medical exemption” provision, it is possible for certain people to avoid vaccination if they would otherwise be adversely affected by the vaccines. However, no one will find out whether he or she would be adversely affected until he or she is vaccinated. 

COVID-19 VACCINES BEING VERY SAFE?

COVID-19 vaccines are still very new and not thoroughly tested. Already, people have gathered mounting evidence that the vaccines do cause, or at least are strongly associated with, a wide array of paralyzing symptoms experienced by the vaccine recipients. Please see hundreds of real-person accounts collected in https://www.c19vaxreactions.com/real-testimonials.html . The same website also records the statistics of the various experienced side effects: https://www.c19vaxreactions.com/analysis.html . Two letters have been written collectively by this victim group to CDC and FDA to call for their serious attention to the potential side effects of the vaccines; to our best knowledge, these letters have not been responded to by the authorities. After examining these accounts, how will anyone with reasonable conscience still have full faith in the safety of the COVID vaccines--any vaccines for that matter? It is very unfortunate that our government agencies, such as CDC and FDA are not telling the entire truth when they spread their message that vaccines are very safe. We are not contesting the scientific evidence that vaccines do produce antibodies necessary to protect people against COVID-19 illness; however one must decide on his own whether receiving vaccinations along with their risks is what they sign up for.

Legalities aside, we are very concerned with the well-being of our children in the future, should vaccination be mandated to everyone in the K-12 education without any non-medical exemption. The evidence so far is that children weather COVID-19 infections much better than adults. Further, having acquired natural immunity through illness is far superior to vaccine-induced immunity (a number of scientific papers have reported this). Adults, especially those older ones and those with co-morbidity have significant risks of developing complications and death when they are infected with COVID-19. Children, however, may experience subtle or not-so-subtle adverse long-term effects, which may appear until long periods of time have elapsed. This could mean years--we are barely two years into the entire pandemic, and less than a year since the vaccines made their way out to the general public. Given the records of debilitating effects of COVID-19 vaccines experienced by adults as shown in the website above (c19vaxreactions.com), how will the side effects impact the children? Nobody knows, and no government agencies in good conscience should mandate vaccines even “in the interest of saving lives”. What if our children, in 2, 5, or 10 or 20 years down the road, suffer from some debilitating side effects which would prevent them from participating and contributing as normal citizens of this Commonwealth--due to certain mandates influenced by the prevailing medico-political views of the present day? Nobody can really guarantee against this, which is why there are grounds against blanket mandates of COVID-19 vaccines for the youths and adolescents.

WHO’s own guideline on vaccination states: “Children and adolescents tend to have milder disease compared to adults, so unless they are part of a group at higher risk of severe COVID-19, it is less urgent to vaccinate them than older people, those with chronic health conditions and health workers.” (https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/covid-19-vaccines/advice) In light of this, is it not truly frivolous for health agencies to force the young to take the vaccines with the old, without substantial knowledge of what these vaccines’ side effects will be, and without a mitigation plan for those who will be injured by the vaccines? If the risk of COVID-19 to children is low, why mandate these to children?

COVID-19 VACCINES BEING THE ONLY EFFECTIVE METHOD?

It is unfortunate that vaccines are being officially promoted as “the only effective way” to control the prevalence of COVID-19 disease--and this, without being backed by unbiased, unquestionable observations. The view is so prevalent that people believe that, once a population is highly vaccinated, then the spread of COVID-19 can be stopped. Reliable reports such as the following papers suggests that COVID-19 vaccines alone cannot stop the pandemic:

* rit Pnina, Zuckerman Neta S, Mor Orna, Gottesman Bat-Sheva, Chowers Michal. “Nosocomial outbreak caused by the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant in a highly vaccinated population”, Israel, July 2021. Euro Surveill. 2021;26(39):pii=2100822. https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2021.26.39.2100822

>>> Summary of this paper says clearly: “Although reports of breakthrough infections are increasing [10-12], this communication emphasises several points. It challenges the assumption that high universal vaccination rates will lead to herd immunity and prevent COVID-19 outbreaks.… Another accepted view is that, when facing a possible mismatch between the SARS-CoV-2 variant and vaccine or waning immunity, the combination of vaccine and face mask should provide the necessary protection. Although some transmission between staff members could have occurred without masks, all transmissions between patients and staff occurred between masked and vaccinated individuals…. Data from Israel imply that the main reason for the increase in COVID-19 cases in summer is indeed waning immunity, and a third vaccine dose, 5 months after the second dose will possibly result in trend reversal”

* Subramanian, S.V., Kumar, A. “Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States.” Eur J Epidemiol (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7

>>> The summary carries a powerful message that every politician and person in authority needs to heed: “In summary, even as efforts should be made to encourage populations to get vaccinated it should be done so with humility and respect. Stigmatizing populations can do more harm than good. Importantly, other non-pharmacological prevention efforts (e.g., the importance of basic public health hygiene with regards to maintaining safe distance or handwashing, promoting better frequent and cheaper forms of testing) needs to be renewed in order to strike the balance of learning to live with COVID-19 in the same manner we continue to live a 100 years later with various seasonal alterations of the 1918 Influenza virus.”

We are sorry to say that this humility and respect has been absent in most if not all mandates issued in the latter part of this year by authorities on all levels.

The conclusion from these papers, along with many others, is that vaccines are NOT unequivocally found to be the best defense against COVID-19. At best, they provide supplementary defense. On the contrary, there is some encouraging evidence that naturally-based measures can provide just-as-effective defense against COVID-19 illness, such as the one shown in this paper:

* Shariq Qayyum, Taj Mohammad, Radomir M. Slominski, Md Imtaiyaz Hassan, Robert C. Tuckey, Chander Raman, and Andrzej T. Slominsk, “Vitamin D and lumisterol novel metabolites can inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication machinery enzymes”, Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 321: E246–E251, 2021. First published June 28, 2021; doi:10.1152/ajpendo.00174.2021

We can of course find many other papers on both sides of vaccinations and natural treatments--whether supporting or contradicting them. These few research papers are not the entire picture, but they are enough to show that the vaccination messages promoted by the government are not the entire truth. For a vaccination mandate to be solidly based on science and evidence, all sides must be considered with no bias and prejudice.

CONCLUSION

We strongly advise the State Health Board members that, before rushing to agree with this petition, please convene medical experts from all sides of the views and allow many honest, science-based, fact-based debates on whether vaccination is really the best way to move forward with respect to COVID-19 mitigation. Such debates have not been allowed to proceed freely in public today, unfortunately, due to certain political forces that favor vaccinations as the most effective solution to this pandemic.

We want to reiterate our most grave concern: We are very concerned that the universal vaccination of all K-12 students will expose ALL our children to the risks of vaccine side effects, which are unknown at this point in time. Such a mandate would pose a great risk to the well-being of our own Nation in the not-so-far future.

We acknowledge the petitioner’s concern about her daughter getting infected with COVID-19 from unvaccinated peers, or her school being disrupted by concerns of spreading infections. No, we do not want any more disruptions either. No, we do not want more lives lost due to COVID-19-induced illness, which is why some of us resort to natural means to stay healthy, and still some others would accept vaccines. But it is a fact that the situation surrounding COVID-19 illness is so complicated and not clear-cut, that everyone has to make a tough decision for themselves, between vaccines or natural immunity acquired through illness.

Yours respectfully,

Wirawan & Yuliana Purwanto, Norfolk

Jason & Carolyn Ferguson, Norfolk

Jeffrey & Meschelle Lee, Suffolk

Jason & Susan Lewis, Suffolk

Jim & Denise Parroco, Chesapeake

Adam and Jennifer Williams, Suffolk