ICWA News & Views

Weekly Stories about What’s Happening in Washington State and Stories of Interest to Washingtonions

by Gerald Braude

THE BOH DECISION

After forty-two oral public comments and a presentation reviewing the decisions of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG), the Washington Board of Health voted unanimously on April 13, 2022  to not add COVID-19 shots to daycare and school entry requirements at this time. 

The hour-and-a-half of public comments during this Zoom meeting were all against adding this requirement. Concerned Washingtonians included a toxicologist, the president of the Washington Chapter of the Academy of Pediatrics, parents, retired school teachers, and nurses. The prevailing parental opinion was that if the BOH mandated the shots, they would pull their children from school and/or move their families out of the state.

Tao Sheng Kwan-Gett, WA State Chief Science Officer and co-chair of the TAG then presented arguments supporting their March decision, by a 7-6-1 vote, to not recommend adding the COVID-19 shots to school requirements. He gave a timeline of the group’s actions and the nine criteria for the basis of their decision. He added, “We recognize there are many unknowns. New data could lead to different conclusions in the future.” 

After their follow-up questions and comments, all seven Board of Health members present voted to follow the TAG’s recommendation. 

The motion came from WA Secretary of Health Umair Shah, a member of the BOH. His motion was for the Board of Health to “accept the Technical Advisory Group recommendation not to include COVID-19 shots in the WAC 246-105-030 and also not to initiate a rulemaking at this time.” Beforehand, Shah mentioned that he trusted the process, claimed the COVID-19 shots were safe and effective, and all three of his kids in school received the jabs. 

Patty Hayes seconded the motion before stating, “My heart hurts from those public comments that this requirement should not be part of this conversation. Slide number seven shows that we have been transparent and are maximizing the process.”  

Temple Lentz echoed Patty’s Hayes’s claim that this was the right process so that “we can raise questions in a methodical way.” In support of the motion, she mentioned the need to “remain open to more information, meaning we might have to take this up again.” She went on to state that the shots are safe and effective and are the best way for “moving us out of this pandemic.” 

Bob Lutz said the shots were safe and effective in what they were designed to do in all populations. At one point, he said, “The vaccine was not designed to prevent infection, and we’ve certainly seen this in the era of Omicron that it broke through.” A moment later, he said, “The vaccines have proved to be the most effective means by which we can prevent infection.”

Despite a deluge of data sent to the BOH by ICWA and the public on the superior ability of ivermectin to prevent infection, reduce severity of disease, and reduce hospitalization and deaths, the members were silent on this and other preventative and treatment options. Even studies on gargling and nasal flushes have shown excellent results for prevention and reduced severity.

BOH member Elisabeth Crawford said that she supported the motion to accept the TAG’s recommendation, saying it was a hard decision to make. She said:

“The perception of the public is just not there, and I think this highlights the problem we have in the trust of public health. I’m looking forward to how we can build the trust of public health in our state. It’s very evident that there’s been some disruption to it. It is a situation in which we need to be cautious so that we can rebuild that trust and be able to show the residents that we don’t have enough information, but we are willing to put this on pause until we get more information to make a more data driven, informed decision, and so we can have them buy into this decision.” She finished by saying, “In the future, we might have to reconsider this.”

Ms. Crawford’s words outside of the context of the meeting may not be entirely clear to readers who did not watch the meeting. By “so we can have them buy into this decision” she clearly meant a decision to mandate the shots for school, not the decision they just made to “pause.”

Fran Bessermin said, “I would like to keep my comments short. I agree with all members on the board, and I also support the motion.”

Steven Kutz said that this was a deliberate process and the Board of Health “thoroughly looked at some of these things.” Kutz then asked people to stop threatening the BOH and TAG members. During the question and comment process, Kutz said that this was a “time for us to pay attention to the schools about what’s happening so that they can better inform us in the future.” Kutz also stated:

Mr. Kutz said after the TAG presentation: “We will have a request to consider this again.”

Board Member Keith Grellner conducted and counted the vote. All seven board members who were present voted “yes.” He then thanked the board for the “solid transparent process.” 

Board of Health member Dr. Tom Pendergrass, who served as co-chair of the TAG, was not present at the meeting. At the end of the meeting, the board spent fifteen minutes paying tribute Dr. Pendergrass’s contributions to the board and announced he, and Fran Bessermin, were stepping down from the board.

At the end of the day’s proceedings, ICWA president Bernadette Pajer spoke with a group of ICWA members. When asked how long might the BOH “pause” on Covid shot mandates last, she replied, “We would all do well to stay vigilant since there are other avenues states can take to achieve mandates, depending on their laws and political will.”

In Louisiana, the House Committee on Health and Welfare in December 2021 voted 13-2 against adding COVID-19 shots to the state’s school immunization schedule. But Governor John Edwards rejected the decision and informed the panel he would allow the Louisiana Department of Health to add the COVID-19 shot to the schedule of immunizations for students who are eligible for the jab according to FDA recommendations. 

The scenario began on December 6, 2021 when the Louisiana House Health and Welfare Committee held a televised hearing in a room packed with Louisiana residents who opposed the mandate. With Dr. Malone at his side showing graphs and charts, Robert Kennedy Jr. gave his reasoning to the committee for not mandating the COVID-19 shots. After his presentation, the room roared with applause to which a committee member yelled, “Stop cheering. This is not a basketball game.”

After Governor Edwards overruled the committee’s vote, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and thousands of concerned parents on March 16, 2022 filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit seeking to stop the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) from adding COVID-19 vaccines to the state’s school immunization schedule. An amicus brief is a document submitted by an individual or organization that is not a party to a legal case, but is permitted by the court to offer expertise or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case. In its brief, CHD argued data did not support mandatory COVID vaccines, and it was scientifically unjustifiable to impose the requirement on children.

Furthermore, Louisiana Representative Larry Bagley  proposed HCR3, a concurrent resolution to suspend the governor’s action (according to Louisiana law, a concurrent resolution can suspend, amend, or repeal any rule or regulation adopted by a state department, agency, board, or commission). It was amended and been advanced, and the status is now “Pending House final passage.”

??

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance

??

Seattle Amazon Manager Dies After COVID-19 Shot

Victor Castillo Simoes, a senior manager at Amazon, received a first Pfizer shot on April 20, 2021 at a Safeway pharmacy in Seattle, Washington. His mother, Henrietta, told Megan Redshaw in an exclusive interview in the April 6, 2022 issue of The Defender that, on May 5, 2021, he complained of chest pains and soon collapsed. Victor  was intubated in the ambulance and taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Thirty minutes later he was declared dead,

Exclusive: 34-Year-Old Died After Pfizer Shot, Mother Shares ‘Ridiculous’ Letters From CDC • Children’s Health Defense (childrenshealthdefense.org)

ICWA News and Views did not include his death in an earlier article about adverse effects following COVID-19 shots in Washington, for despite federal law requiring them to do so, Harborview Medical Center in Seattle did not file the report. Victor’s mother, Henrietta, filed the report on September 10, 2021 in New York, and that state, instead of WA, was put in the “location” section of the report.

 pastedGraphic.png

The Defender stated that the cause of death was from an acute aortic dissection, an  uncommon medical emergency in which the inner layer of the large blood vessel branches off the heart’s aorta tears. The condition mostly affects men in their sixties and seventies.

Henrietta told The Defender, “The CDC says its rare to have severe adverse effects. What do you classify as rare? If it’s your child how, is it rare? The CDC has no proof there is no causal link. They’re not doing in-depth studies as to what has happened to this person. I really believe the vaccine is a trigger, and somebody needs to be looking at this.” 

Henrietta, a teacher with a law degree, first contacted the CDC in November 2021, requesting to speak with a CDC doctor about her son’s VAERS report. She received a form letter. “They told me to contact the health department, said they were sorry for my loss ,and referred me to the [Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP)] program,” Henrietta said. “How can the CDC properly investigate a reported death if it does not contact the family for information?”

Henrietta then sent an e-mail to the CDC on November 19, stating her concern that the United States Food and Drug Administration wanted to wait seventy-six years to release the data it considered in approving Pfizer’s COVID vaccine and that the pharmaceutical giant had excluded participants from its clinical trials.

In an e-mail response on November 23, 2021, a CDC staff member offered condolences and acknowledged the loss of her son but reiterated COVID vaccines “have undergone and will continue to undergo the most intensive safety monitoring in United States history,” and that a review of available “clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records has not established a causal link to Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination and deaths.”

ICWA president Bernadette Pajer said:

“I know I speak for my ICWA family when I say how deeply sorry we are for the loss of Victor Castillo Simoes to the shot, and our prayers are with his family. Our prayers are with all those injured and killed by the shots, those injured and killed for lack of early treatment and by improper treatment with harmful, incentivized protocols. We pledge each day to reverse the decades-old public health policy of hiding vaccine injuries and deaths in what the government considers to be “nobel lies” intended to preserve faith in vaccine policies. The lie has become a monster. We take consolation and hope from Dr. Robert Malone who quoted St. Augustine on January 23, 2022 at the Defeat the Mandates Rally, saying ‘The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.’ “

“The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.”