Members of the US armed forces who decline receipt of the influenza vaccine, including because of religious convictions, are facing punitive actions by the Department of Defense, reports J.M. Phelps in The Gateway Pundit.
An anonymous Marine officer and Air Force Major Brennan Schilperoort spoke to Phelps about their experiences of being separated from service despite having a “Constitutionally protected religious rights to substantiate their objection” and both having shown natural immunity.
Phelps also reached out to me for comment because of my own extensive research into flu shots, culminating in a four-part series of detailed articles published in 2018 and 2019 that I’ve collectively titled “The Flu Shot Fraud: Everything you ever wanted to know about the influenza vaccine but the CDC didn’t tell you.”
Dr. Joseph Mercola, founder of the leading natural health website Mercola.com, called my series “well worth reading”, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., now Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), described it a “must-read series on the corporate and government corruption behind the flu vaccine”.
I am quoted in the Gateway Pundit article saying,
The coerced vaccination of military service members is yet another unfortunate example of how the government systematically violates individuals’ right to informed consent. This policy exists despite scientific evidence indicating that getting an annual flu shot can actually increase the risk of influenza illness.
The most recent example of that I’m aware of, cited in the article, was a study by researchers from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio published in April at medRxiv, a server for preprint studies, which have not yet undergone peer review.
The study examined the effectiveness of flu shots during the 2024–2025 flu season among 53,402 clinic employees and found that, at first, the vaccinated group had a similar cumulative incidence of influenza as those who did not.
In other words, there was no evidence of protection.
Moreover, as time went on, “the cumulative incidence of influenza increased more rapidly among the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.”
While the authors don’t comment on why that might be, the most likely explanation is simply that natural immunity is an opportunity cost of vaccination.
By getting the flu shot, one foregoes the opportunity to develop the more robust and durable immunity conferred by infection.
There is also the immunological phenomenon of “original antigenic sin”, whereby the initial priming of the immune system by vaccination prejudices the immune response in subsequent exposures to mutated variants to be suboptimal relative to natural immunity.
After adjusting for age, sex, clinical nursing job, and employment location, the study found that the risk of influenza infection was significantly higher among the vaccinated, with a vaccine effectiveness of -26.9%.
That is, the flu shot had negative effectiveness, meaning that vaccinated people were significantly more likely to get an influenza infection.
There are also “non-specific effects” to consider, which is the term used in the literature to describe beneficial or detrimental effects of vaccination other than those intended.
As I told The Gateway Pundit,
Just because a vaccine is effective at reducing the risk of illness from the target pathogen does not mean that it reduces the overall risk of illness. Vaccinations can detrimentally affect the immune system in ways that make people more vulnerable to other diseases.
I cited the example of a study in Clinical Infectious Diseases in 2012 finding no significant benefit of influenza vaccines in children, while children who got the flu shot had an increased risk of non-influenza infections.
Numerous other studies showing how getting an annual influenza vaccine can actually increase your risk of infection and illness are cited in part three of my flu shot series.
In his article, Phelps also references a 2020 letter from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, in which Kennedy cited a 2010 systematic review and meta-analysis in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
I highlighted that review in part one of my series in response to a New York Times article that cited it to support the claim that influenza vaccines confer “a big payoff in public health.”
In fact, the review found that flu shots are highly ineffective and questioned the recommendation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for universal influenza vaccination among healthy adults.
The review found that, in a typical year, 100 people need to receive a flu shot for just one of them to avoid influenza symptoms. The shot had “no effect” on hospitalization, and there was “no evidence that vaccines prevent viral transmission or complications.”
As the authors noted, that means that the fundamental assumptions underlying the CDC’s policy are unsupported by scientific evidence.
In fact, far from supporting the claim for which it was cited by the New York Times, the review authors went so far in their criticism of the CDC as to accuse the agency of deliberately misrepresenting the science to support its policy.
“The CDC authors clearly do not weight interpretation by quality of the evidence,” they observed, “but quote anything that supports their theory.”
The review’s conclusion, far from being that flu shots confer a big public health benefit, was that the data “seem to discourage the utilization of vaccination against influenza in healthy adults as a routine public health measure.”
It would be bad enough if service members were being coerced into getting flu shots by the Department of Defense even if they were highly effective. The fact that this coercion persists despite the evidence showing not only that they are highly ineffective but that they can even increase your risk of influenza and influenza-like illnesses is absolutely criminal.
To learn more, here is further reading:
- “Defense Department Continues Ignoring Harms to Readiness by Pushing Flu Shots Contrary to Large Body of Evidence” by J.M. Phelps in The Gateway Pundit
- “Should You Get the Flu Shot Every Year? Don’t Ask the New York Times.” — part one of my major series on influenza vaccines, in which I expose how the mainstream media brazenly lie about the science
- “How the CDC Uses Fear and Deception to Sell More Flu Vaccines” — part two, in which I expose how the CDC serves the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry, not public health, including how its false claims about the flu shot’s effect on elderly mortality were thoroughly debunked
- “How You’re Being Lied to about the Risks of Getting a Flu Vaccine Annually” — part three, in which I expose why the claim that flu shots are “safe” is deceptive and review studies showing how they can increase the risk of illness
- “The CDC’s Criminal Recommendation for a Flu Shot During Pregnancy” — part four, in which I reveal why the recommendation for pregnant women to get the flu shot is criminally reckless, including how if the manufacturers themselves made the same claims about safety and effectiveness during pregnancy as the CDC, they could be sued for fraud
For many more articles debunking government and mainstream media misinformation about influenza vaccines, see my collection here.
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