“Concerned Alumni of Dartmouth” Hosts Anti-Vaccine Mandate Event

The COVID pandemic saw Dartmouth College completely change almost overnight. The campus closed down, and classes went remote for over a year. For most of the 2020-2021 academic year, students were shut inside their dorms, unable to socialize upon threat of disappearance by erstwhile Dean of the College Kathryn Lively. However, Dartmouth’s controversial policies extended beyond petty authoritarianism. Almost as soon as the various COVID-19 vaccines were introduced, the College instituted a mandate, requiring students and faculty to receive the vaccine. Following the lead of most schools across the country, the College further mandated vaccine boosters as soon as they were made available. Exemptions were granted, but only on the basis of health or religion. Thus, the College was able to ensure its students took the vaccine, and for most that was the end of the story. Yet, a year later, somewhat belatedly, some Dartmouth alumni and students have spoken out against College policies and mandates more broadly. 

While most students complied with the vaccine and booster mandates, a small but vocal minority rebuffed Dartmouth’s attempts to force the issue. The group began to form in the wake of a series of high-profile incidents of injuries and deaths caused by the COVID-19 vaccines—principally the m-RNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. Incidents of myocarditis and other side effects prompted many parents and their students to refuse to take the COVID vaccines. This movement grew rapidly after a group of doctors published the Great Barrington Declaration, a document advocating herd immunity rather than universal vaccination in response to COVID-19. The document was based on the fact that student-age populations have incredibly low hospitalization and death rates due to COVID, and the vaccines are arguably more dangerous to young people than the disease itself. Thus, more and more, parents turned against mandates. At Dartmouth, they formed the Concerned Alumni of Dartmouth College, which hosted a panel on April 26 at the Hanover Inn with several doctors and other notable figures. They spoke about the vaccines, the mandates, and how colleges should respond to future pandemics. 

The weeks leading up to the event saw a series of reorganizations as the leaders of the Concerned Alumni secured new speakers. Shortly before the event was to take place, it was announced that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., current Democratic Presidential candidate, would speak. This decision caused quite a bit of consternation in student circles previously supportive of the event due to RFK’s controversial positions on vaccines. The noted environmental lawyer and son of Bobby Kennedy has for decades espoused the supposed dangers of mercury in vaccines and the posited connections between vaccines and various neurological conditions, notably autism. 

The event, hosted in the ballroom of the Hanover Inn, began with an hour-long panel discussion featuring notable doctors and one woman who was a whistleblower against a vaccine’s clinical trial. Yet, before they spoke, we were graced by the virtual presence of one Aseem Malthatra, a long-time vaccine skeptic and advocate for alternative treatments. He argued that, while initially he supported the COVID vaccines, the uptick in side effects, including a vascular complication that Aseem claims killed his father, turned him against the mRNA vaccines. He looked at re-analyzed Pfizer data and found that the rate of adverse effects was greater than the rate of complications from COVID. His conclusion attacked supposed neoliberal economic policies that lead to corporate dominance and a system that works for a privileged few. Truly, the horseshoe theory is alive and well. 

The panelists each covered different parts of the anti-mandate argument, but their central points were the same. Essentially, they reasoned that since COVID-19 almost always results in few to no symptoms in the 18-34 age group, to say nothing of hospitalizations let alone deaths, it is immoral to mandate that people in that age range take a dangerous vaccine for the virus. They argued that the rate of vaccine injury—negative health consequences of the vaccine—is an order of magnitude greater than the rate of serious complications due to COVID, and, thus, it does not make medical sense for young people to take the vaccine. 

For their evidence, they cited a range of studies, some of which were put out by the CDC. The whistleblower in particular talked about Pfizer’s own vaccine data, which she says she saw when she worked at the company. According to her, the trials Pfizer conducted showed greater rates of side effects for young people than could be justified in the interest of COVID prevention, yet the company ignored those results. Doctor Markus Kustdorrff, one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, argued a somewhat more moderate position, saying that it makes sense for old people to get the vaccine but young people should refuse it and, further, that mandates for young people lead to shortages in poorer countries, preventing them from vaccinating their senior citizens. One crux of the panelists’ anti-mandate argument is that the vaccines don’t prevent transmission, only some symptoms, and so the public-health argument for mandates does not apply.  

All of the panelists talked about censorship, blaming corporations and the government for suppressing their opinions in order to keep the public uninformed. Podcasts were taken down, exemption letters were refused, and doctors were kicked from committees. Kustdorff was notably fired from a panel on vaccine safety for advocating against a pause on the J&J vaccine for people under fifty. The panel was measured, logical, and entirely reasoned. Aside from a few asides about the anti-American and possibly communist nature of mandates, the speakers did not even delve into their personal political opinions. While many would disagree with the panelists’ conclusions and perhaps even contest their underlying evidence, it would be difficult to argue that the panelists were uninformed or that their positions were entirely without merit. 

The second part of the event was the much-anticipated RFK Jr. speech. The level of applause before the speech exceeded anything I have seen at Dartmouth. RFK opened with an attack on the vaccine-injuries reporting system, saying the VARS system, the main repository for reports of vaccine injury, is overburdened and often ignored by doctors. He told of his shift from unquestioning support for vaccines, a position shaken by his conversations with mothers who blamed vaccinations for their children’s autism. Apparently, he knew that he should listen to mothers because his wife knew what was wrong with their child instantly. Whether this logic holds up is questionable. According to his own research, he concluded that one in thirty-seven vaccines administered results in a serious injury, and that the administration of a large number of vaccines to children means that most will suffer major side effects. He paid special attention to the issue of mercury in fish, first stating that there is only one kind of mercury and that it is bad, and then explaining the difference between two types of mercury, ethyl and methyl. Apparently, methyl mercury is actually worse than ethyl mercury, the poisonous version that is in fish. The CDC says the form is safer because it quickly leaves the body, but, according to RFK, studies have shown that it in fact accumulates in the brain and persists there forever. 

RFK then spoke of his attempts to get answers from pro-vaccine scientists and doctors, notably asking Anthony Fauci to provide him with studies that would prove vaccines do more harm than good. Upon not receiving an answer, RFK decided to take the less friendly approach of suing the CDC, forcing it to reveal that no study had ever comprehensively shown that vaccines did not do more harm than good. He concluded with a consideration of the general increase in autoimmune disorders and neurological conditions among children in general, blaming it on a host of chemicals and plastics in the environment, and not-so-subtly suggesting that vaccines also play a role in this troubling trend.

RFK’s arguments were far from the stereotypical anti-vax ravings, founded as they were in data and seemingly reasonable concerns. However, they depend entirely on a distrust of the medical establishment and the government at large. If one has faith in the institutions of the federal government, RFK’s arguments will not seem reasonable, as the CDC and the FDA have their own studies and their own arguments that directly address and contradict his reasoning. For instance, they cite that mercury was removed from almost all vaccines before RFK even started talking about it and further argue that the connection between vaccines and autism has been disproven many times. Essentially, if you hate the government, you would have found a lot to like in the speech. If you don’t, it would have seemed like the cherry-picked conspiracies of your least-favorite Kennedy. 

After the speech, the event shifted to a reception followed by a dinner. At the reception, this reporter was able to talk with RFK for several minutes. The candidate spoke about his overall focus: the collusion between corporate America and the federal government. In his view, the vaccine cover-up is just one instance of this collusion, which in his mind has resulted in crony capitalism and a corruption of the free market. This idea, while somewhat vague and conspiratorial, should appeal to both the left and elements of the right, which recently has been caught up in anti-big-tech fervor and attacks on corporate censorship. At the dinner, yet another speaker related his version of the anti-mandate argument and the Hanover Inn served drinks to the increasingly inebriated panelists, now forgotten in the general pro-RFK fervor. 

Overall, the event was well-organized, despite the last-minute reshuffles, and interesting, if somewhat repetitive in its speakers. The panel provided a compelling case against vaccine mandates and raised several questions as to why they were instituted. RFK made a coherent and logical argument against the current consensus on vaccines, although it was by no means irrefutable and his side is certainly in the minority among doctors and scientists. Unfortunately for the organizers, Dartmouth officially lifted its mandate the day before the event, making the entire affair appear irrelevant to much of the student body. While the fear of COVID-19 mandates and others akin to them is prominent in the minds of the anti-mandate crowd, most of the general population has already forgotten what happened. Whether or not the event and the anti-mandate crusade, in general, will have tangible results—or whether they will simply fade into the background in this era of ever-accelerating news cycles—remains to be seen.