America's Talking - Researchers: City-Wide Vaccine Mandates Did Nothing to Stop the Spread of COVID-19

Episode Date: February 25, 2023

A slew of city-wide vaccine mandates announced in 2021 across parts of the U.S. made virtually no difference in stopping the spread of COVID-19, newly released research found. “These mandates imposed severe restrictions on the lives of many citizens and business owners,” the study, conducted through George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, says. “Yet, we find no evidence that the mandates were effective in their intended goals of reducing COVID-19 cases and deaths.” Join The Center Square's Dan McCaleb and Casey Harper on this episode of America in Focus. --- Listen to Other ATN Productions: America's Talking: An interview podcast hosted by Austin Berg. Guests include professors, journalists, artists, business and nonprofit leaders, authors, and more. Everyday Economics: Join economist Dr. Orphe Divounguy and Chris Krug as they discuss global markets, inflation, and everything else that will help you understand the economic world around you. Future of Freedom: Future of Freedom is a bi-weekly podcast highlighting the work of the non-profits which are shaping the future of the freedom movement. Listeners will hear civil, intellectual conversations about why the organizations exist, what their mission is, and how they work to achieve it. Hosted by Scot Bertram. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is Casey Harper, the Center Square's DC Bureau Chief. You wrote a couple of interesting stories this week about studies into vaccine mandates, mass mandates, etc. during COVID-19. And depending on who you are and where you get your news, the studies are either surprising or they're confirming what you knew all along. Tell us about it. Yeah, that's a good way. way to put it. So George Mason University's Mercatus Center did this report and actually talked to one of the main researchers behind it. And what they did is they asked the question that that's a good question and probably a question people have been wondering for a while now. And they said,

hey, these citywide vaccine mandates that shut down countless businesses that led to people being fired if they refused the vaccine, did those actually help? Did those actually make a difference? Did they slow the spread of COVID-19 in the heart of the pandemic? They were all announced. in 2021, just for context. And so they looked at these nine cities where this was done. And they found that there was virtually no positive impact from the vaccine mandates, that they didn't slow down deaths or transmissions in any meaningful way or slow the spread in any meaningful way.

And so this is a, as you said, some people say, well, of course, I already knew that. And others will be like, surprised to hear it. But what's interesting here is it's not just speculation. It's not just political bantering. This is actual research where they looked at the numbers. They had enough time go by where they could actually analyze the data. And they said, hey, these citywide mandates didn't make a difference. Now, we can talk about maybe some of the reasons for that.

I'll tell you that the cities, and if you live in these cities, in your listening, you'll already know this. But the nine cities they looked at were Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. So, Dan, our cities of D.C. and Chicago, we're in there. You know, we're familiar somewhat with these mandates. But let me ask you, you know, do you know people, and I won't ask you about your own vaccination? I actually don't know. Probably not important. But do you know people who skirted city mandates by just going outside of city limits to do all the things they wanted to do. So it didn't really make an impact on them. I'm like Governor Newsome. Yes, yeah, exactly. Governor Pritzker out of Illinois who sent his wife and child down to Florida. Yes.

So to answer your question in one word, yes, I do know because we reported on some of these things where elected officials who put these mandates in place were hypocritical to a certain extent about it. What's interesting from this study, as you mentioned the nine cities, I'll repeat them, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco. Chicago, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. And what researchers found is that it was consistent from one city to the next. The data was 100 percent because it's consistent. There were not variations.

The mandates didn't work. The city of New York, from your reporting, they fired more than almost 1,400 workers, 1,430 city workers lost their job for not complying with the city's. vaccine mandate. And now we find out these vaccine mandates did nothing to slow the spread, did nothing to reduce deaths. And in New York City alone, 1,130 people lost their jobs. What are the mayors telling you, Casey, about these mandates? Yeah, and that is the question. And so what I've done is I reached out to the mayor's offices for all nine of these cities this week. And I'll just quickly summarize everything I heard back for

them right now. Yeah, so that's about it. Crickets, nothing. I have not heard. They're not eager to talk about these policies. I just asked them, you know, did you make a mistake? You know, or kind of like, are their lessons learned? But they're not eager to talk about it. Nobody's gotten back to me. You may not find that too surprising. But I think it's telling, and we have to learn something from this. Because if something like this happens again, I mean, it was a real economic cost. So people, as you said, people's lives, people have pensions in the, city, you know, they were lost. They have careers. I mean, there's been plenty of reporting on individual anecdotal stories of people whose livelihoods were taken from this, from them because of

refusing the vaccine mandate. Of course, now we're finding, and we don't have to go into this too much, but we found from our recent reporting that Dr. Anthony Fauci is now admitted publicly that the vaccine actually isn't really as effective as was promised, and they kind of knew that all along. We see from, you know, recent research that the vaccine doesn't really prevent transmission in the way that was promised. Initially, we were told that you'll be the dead end. That was the word, the dead end of the virus. The virus will stop with you if you're vaccinated. Now we know that's totally not true. So one thing that's going to. And we also know, too, that the being infected with COVID, if you had COVID, that provides at least as much protection against it going forward as the vaccines.

Right. And that's saying that in the heart of the pandemic could have got you, you know, in trouble on Twitter or something, but now it's the research. Band on Twitter. Right, right. And that's why I wanted to write about this, because we're actually having real research now, back it up. It's not just pundits on Twitter or people speculating or posting kind of questionably sourced links from weird websites. I mean, this is, these are reputable organizations doing real research on this topic and finding that a lot of the COVID narrative that was forced on Americans in the beginning just isn't really true. It isn't true.

And another, you know, we talked about skirting. So the vaccine doesn't work as well as was promised. That's one reason these mandates didn't work. Another is people just went around it. I mean, we're kind of joking about the governors. But if you live, it's not that hard. You know, let's say you can't go out to a restaurant or bar in your city somewhere. You just go out to the suburbs.

They're open. They're open to the suburbs. And so people can go out there, get infected or not if they're going to. And so I think a lot of these city leaders, most cities are run, you know, by Democrats. I think they're trying to show that they're really tough on this issue. They're trying to virtue signal a little bit. I know what it did is it destroyed their economies and it didn't actually make a COVID difference. I think it's something we need to remember going forward.

Even though COVID's generally, mostly in our past, there's still plenty to report on right about how the policies, how elected officials manage their policies and whether or not they were effective or not. And these studies are showing that they weren't effective. Listeners, you can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McAulip. please subscribe and thank you for listening.