J.H. Furman, an active-duty commander in the U.S. Navy, spoke out against the military’s universal COVID-19 vaccine mandate in a Wednesday interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Carlson said he invited Furman on after the commander wrote a letter expressing his concerns about having the entire military vaccinated against COVID-19 without more long-term studies of the potential side-effects of the currently available vaccines.
“The forced vaccination of all military personnel with the present COVID-19 vaccines may compromise U.S. national security due to the unknown extent of serious vaccine complications,” Furman wrote in his letter. “Further study is needed before committing the Total Force to one irreversible experimental group. Initial reports leave more concern for the COVID-19 vaccinations than the virus itself for the (at present) exceptionally healthy military population.”
On Wednesday, Furman told Carlson he wrote the letter because he had “genuine concerns about the strategic impact of the COVID-19 vaccination mandatory policy.”
“Since writing that, it turns out I have a lot of people that agree with me,” Furman added. “They’ve contacted me, in every way possible, expressing the same concern and the same confusion over the necessity of this vaccine in what is probably the most healthy population in the entire United States.”
In August, after the FDA granted full approval for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin moved to require COVID-19 vaccines for the entire military. Following their orders, the Department of the Navy announced at the end of August that active-duty sailors and Marines would have 90 days to receive the vaccination and reserve components would have 120 days, or else they could face disciplinary actions.
During his Wednesday interview, Furman went on to say COVID-19 has had a mortality rate of 0.001 percent among members of the military.
According to the Department of Defense’s COVID-19 records as of Wednesday, 241,389 COVID-19 cases have been reported among members of the military, of which there have been 52 deaths – a fatality rate of .02 percent.
“Compare that with the [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System – VAERS] harm rate where COVID vaccination harm over the last 20 months has taken almost half of the total harm’s totals in the VAERS database, the 20-years long VAERS database,” Furman continued. “Combine that with the unknown long-term impacts of the vaccine from this aborted fetal cell line, either derived or manufactured gene therapy vaccine. We can’t know what the impacts are going to be. The strategic concerns are enormous either through the sailors, half of which the entire force do not want the vaccine, that’s across the reserves and the active-duty force.”
“Can you imagine force vaccinating everyone and throwing everyone in the same experimental group and we don’t know what the vaccine’s going to do in the end?” Furman said.
Furman said he does not expect to be relieved for his comments on Carlson’s television show.
“All I’m doing is asking an open strategic question,” Furman said.
