Vancouver Coastal Health’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Patricia Daly slammed vaccine mandates and lockdowns as being ineffective and doing more harm than good in a newly released letter from February.
The letter addressed to the president of the University of British Columbia cited a study by the Social Science Research Network entitled The Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Vaccine Policy: Why Mandates, Passports, and Segregated Lockdowns May Cause more Harm than Good.
The pre-printer study – which means it was not yet peer-reviewed – was conducted by international public health and infectious disease experts who concluded that the measures employed by governments to combat COVID-19 impinged on human rights and adversely affected health.
“The authors conclude that such policies ‘may lead to detrimental long-term impacts on uptake of future public health measures, including COVID_19 vaccines themselves as well as routine immunizations. Restricting people’s access to work, education, public transport, and social life based on COVID-19 vaccination status impinges on human rights, promotes stigma and social polarization, and adversely affects health and wellbeing,” wrote Daly.
Daly also encouraged the university to drop its vaccine requirement for registering students and its rapid testing program citing the fact that “there is now evidence of the endemic nature of the virus.”
“Such measures may result in profound negative harms on (student’s) future health and wellbeing, by impacting future educational and career opportunities, and their mental health,” wrote Daly.
The university eventually complied with Daly’s advice and reversed its policies.
Daly’s letter was released one day before B.C.’s Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry announced that mask mandates would be lifted shortly after midnight at 12:01 AM PST on Friday.
Henry also stated that vaccine passports would no longer be required beginning on April 8, “assuming that our conditions continue to improve.”
Other studies have concluded that lockdowns have done little to reduce COVID-19 mortality rates, and have in fact hurt individuals and society severely. Last month, researchers at Johns Hopkins University arrived at similar conclusions.
“Overall, we conclude that lockdowns are not an effective way of reducing mortality rates during a pandemic, at least not during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic,” wrote researchers.
“In Edmonton, Canada, isolation and quarantine were instituted; public meetings were banned; schools, churches, colleges, theaters, and other public gathering places were closed; and business hours were restricted without obvious impact on the epidemic.”
