Covid-19

New studies deliver harsh verdicts on mask mandates, vaccine mandates

Published

2 years ago

March 6, 2023

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Two new studies on the effectiveness of mask mandates and city-level COVID-19 vaccine mandates concluded the policies failed to achieve their promised objectives.

The study on vaccine mandates found the mandates caused economic harm.

Researchers found city-level vaccine mandates to have, at most, a negligible effect on vaccination rates, while conversely having a negative effect on cities’ economies.

Commenting on the study, California attorney Rita Barnett told The Defender:

“Shutting people out of society or denying them employment for refusing to take a medical treatment they do not want, need or trust violates all fundamental ethical principles — and local businesses and leaders who went along with these measures may suffer the consequences for many years to come.”

In the case of mask mandates, researchers who conducted a meta-analysis found they had no significant impact on curtailing the spread of COVID-19 — regardless of the type of mask studied.

Sujata Gibson, a lawyer and lead counsel on multiple lawsuits brought by New York City workers impacted by COVID-19 mandates said the study “shows conclusively that municipal COVID-19 vaccine mandates were a bust.”

Gibson, who said the findings should “come as no surprise,” added:

“They did absolutely nothing to reduce death or disease and failed to even meaningfully increase vaccine uptake. The reality is that back in the fall of 2021, when these mandates were imposed, the science already clearly showed that they were irrational.

“We have to ask — since it wasn’t science, what was really driving the municipal mandates? And we have to hold decision-makers and governments accountable for destroying untold thousands of lives for no rational reason.”

In their working paper, “Indoor Vaccine Mandates in US Cities, Vaccination Behavior, and COVID-19 Outcomes,” three researchers examined city-level vaccine mandates whose stated goal was to increase “the number of people being vaccinated, thereby limiting the spread of COVID-19.”

According to WTOP News, the paper made “no judgments on whether someone should or should not get a vaccine, raises no questions about a vaccine’s effectiveness, and doesn’t try to argue whether someone should get one or not.”

Vitor Melo, a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Clemson University and one of the paper’s authors, told WTOP News, “Their [the mandates] intended outcomes were to raise vaccination rates, for people to get more vaccines; and consequently, the expectation was that COVID cases and deaths would go down.”

But according to the paper, “Indoor vaccine mandates had no significant impact on COVID-19 vaccine uptake, cases, or deaths across all nine cities that implemented the policy.”

Compared with cities that did not enact vaccine mandates, “There’s not much to show for it” on the part of the cities that did enforce mandates, Melo added. “COVID cases were not affected, COVID deaths were not affected, and really, there’s no evidence that people got more vaccinated because of these mandates.”

The researchers said their “results overwhelmingly support the conclusion that the city-level indoor vaccine mandates in the United States had a statistically negligible effect on vaccine uptake, cases, and deaths, and they were likely less effective when compared to country-level and province-level mandates.”

For instance, the researchers noted that New York City fired 1,430 municipal workers for not complying with its vaccine mandate. They also referenced a study finding that 90% of the city’s restaurants reported experiencing “customer-related challenges” and 75% reported having “staff-related challenges.”

Charlene Bollinger, co-founder of The Truth About Vaccines and The Truth About Cancer, remarked:

“I am not surprised by the results of this study. We said from the beginning that masking, social distancing and getting the COVID shots would not stop COVID, nor would any of the mandates prevent the deaths that we are now seeing in much larger numbers in the fully COVID-vaccinated population. We continue to be proven right as the ‘experts’ study the real effects of these COVID mandates.

“Many people who questioned the mandates and refused the unproven COVID shots suffered the loss of their jobs, their businesses, their friends, and worse, their homes and more. The unvaccinated have been hunted down like animals. This is something we never thought we would ever see in America. We must work together to ensure this never happens again.”