Testimony: Prohibit State COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates
Testimony in Support of LD 1547: “An Act to Temporarily Prohibit the State from Mandating COVID-19 Vaccinations”
Senator Baldacci, Representative Meyer, and the distinguished members of the Committee on Health and Human Services, my name is Nick Murray and I serve as director of policy for Maine Policy Institute. We are a free market think tank, a nonpartisan, non-profit organization that advocates for individual liberty and economic freedom in Maine. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on LD 1547.
The wave of COVID-19 vaccine mandate policies which swept the United States in 2021, whether on the federal, state, or local level, were each grave injustices. Politicians and so-called public health experts who coerced Americans to take brand new medical products, one without long-term data on safety, or even efficacy against viral transmission, betrayed the public trust. These decisions will go down in history as some of the most ignorant and destructive domestic policies in decades.
LD 1547 would impose a five-year moratorium on any COVID-19 vaccine mandate in Maine. It is an emergency bill because the situation precipitated by the governor’s mandates is dire after thousands of nurses, aides, and other administrative, non-patient-facing workers were either coerced to a product they previously refused, or fired, in fall 2021.
Other mandates that flowed from it, like those on students of Maine’s university and community college systems, forced 20-year-olds to receive a vaccine for a disease which posed virtually no threat to their health. In fact, for young men and boys, receiving this vaccine may well be more dangerous than the virus itself.
A presentation to VRBPAC by Dr. Hong Yang, Senior Advisor for Risk-Benefit Assessment at the FDA’s Office of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, during the October 26 meeting showed considerable risks to young boys, even from the smaller-dose childhood injection.
Shown in the graph above, Dr. Yang’s model predicted that vaccinating males aged 5 to 11 would prevent 67 ICU stays and 203 hospitalizations for COVID-19 per one million boys, but would also result in 57 ICU visits and 156 hospital stays for vaccine-induced myocarditis. This risk-benefit analysis only considered myocarditis and heart-related risks post-vaccination.
The low COVID-transmission scenario clearly showed no benefit in terms of hospitalizations. Shouldn’t the benefits of vaccination clearly outweigh the risks in every scenario?
The governor is unwilling to admit the truth: that her mandate did nothing to affect COVID-19 transmission. It only weakened the state’s healthcare system in a time of crisis. This bill should be a critical priority for this Legislature.
Please deem LD 1547 “Ought To Pass.” It is the least that this Legislature or the state government can do to ensure that some of the injustices of the last few years never happen again. Thank you for your time and consideration.