Dr. Clayton Baker Urges Santa Clara University to Drop Their COVID Vaccine Mandates

Dr. Clayton Baker has spent countless hours of his free time over the last three years advocating for a return to normalcy for school aged children whose learning was severely disrupted during the COVID pandemic and who lost so much. When he reached out to me several months ago to ask if he could help us advocate to get the remaining colleges to drop COVID vaccine mandates, I jumped at the opportunity.

Below are two letters that Dr. Baker wrote to the leadership of Santa Clara University. He is in the process of customizing these letters for each of 101 colleges still mandating COVID vaccines.

You are welcome to copy and paste this Substack post into an email and send it to your college of interest as the more pressure we can put upon them, the greater our chances are of ending all college COVID vaccines mandates once and for all.

To date, Dr. Baker has not received a response from either the administration of SCU or the Board of Trustees.

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July 13, 2023

To: president@scu.edu provost@scu.edu losofsky@scu.edu cowellcenter@scu.edu

To: Dr. Lewis Osofsky, MD
Julie Sullivan, President
Kate Morris, Acting Provost
Ed Ryan, Acting Provost         
Heather Dumas-Dyer, Interim Director, Cowell Student Health Center

Dear Dr. Osofsky, President Sullivan, and Santa Clara University Administrators:

I am writing to you about a grave concern regarding Santa Clara University.

I am an actively practicing, board-certified, Harvard-trained internal medicine physician with more than 25 years of clinical experience. I practiced actively throughout the pandemic. I am also a confirmed Catholic with a lasting interest and concern for Catholic education in America.

I was alarmed and deeply concerned to find out that Santa Clara University is still requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for its students, including its incoming freshmen.

SCU an extreme outlier in this issue. According to the US Department of Education, there are just under 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States. At last reckoning, only 120 still require COVID-19 vaccines for their students to enter this fall. This puts SCU in the final 3% of colleges that are holding out on this requirement.

There is good reason why the overwhelming majority of colleges have dropped COVID vaccine mandates. That is because there is zero legitimate clinical indication for college students to get the COVID-19 vaccine, especially at this late date.

It is now beyond reasonable dispute that:

·      Healthy, young persons have an absolutely miniscule risk of serious injury and death due to COVID

·      The majority of Americans have already had COVID and/or the vaccines, and thus already possess some level of immunity

·      Federal health agencies have conceded that the COVID vaccines do not effectively prevent either contraction or transmission of the virus.

Furthermore, there is a growing body of evidence that COVID vaccines can be highly toxic and even deadly to subsets of the population, by a variety of mechanisms. One particularly susceptible demographic is young adult males – thousands of whom, of course, would be put at risk via your mandates.

I ask that you, Dr. Osofsky, and members of the SCU administration allow me to speak with you to discuss this issue. It is indeed that important. I would ask that you allow me to present my concerns in more detail.

In return, I would be grateful to learn, directly from you, your reasons for insisting on COVID vaccine mandates for your students, in contradiction to about 97% of your peers. I pray that those reasons are not connected to politics, nor to personal or institutional financial gain.

Better yet, I ask you to drop the mandates. It is the right thing to do.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely yours,

Clayton J. Baker, MD

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July 24, 2023

To: Larry Sonsini, Chairman of the Board, Santa Clara University lsonsini@wsgr.com
Kristi Bowers, kristi@kingsmountainvineyards.com 

Dear Mr. Sonsini, Ms. Bowers, and other Santa Clara University Board Members:

I am writing to you about a grave concern I have regarding Santa Clara University.

I am an actively practicing, board-certified, Harvard-trained internal medicine physician with more than 25 years of clinical experience. I practiced actively throughout the pandemic. I am also a confirmed, practicing Catholic with a lasting interest in and concern for Catholic education in America.

I was alarmed and deeply concerned to find out that Santa Clara University is still requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for its students, including its incoming freshmen. There are 3 points about this policy that I want you to take away from this letter.

First, SCU an extreme outlier in this issue. According to the US Department of Education, there are just under 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States. At last reckoning, less than 120 still require COVID-19 vaccines for their students to enter this fall. This puts SCU in the final 3% of colleges that are holding out on this requirement. In your immediate vicinity, both Stanford and UC Berkeley (indeed, all the UC schools) have dropped such mandates.

The overwhelming majority of colleges have dropped COVID vaccine mandates because, despite what Santa Clara’s medical advisors may be telling you, there is zero legitimate clinical indication for college students to get the COVID-19 vaccine, especially at this late date.

It is now beyond reasonable dispute that:

·      Healthy, young persons have an absolutely miniscule risk of serious injury and death due to COVID

·      The majority of Americans have already had COVID and/or the vaccines, and thus already possess some level of immunity

·      Federal health agencies have conceded that the COVID vaccines do not effectively prevent either contraction or transmission of the virus.

There is a growing body of evidence that COVID vaccines can be highly toxic and even deadly to subsets of the population, by a variety of mechanisms. One particularly susceptible demographic is young adult males – thousands of whom, of course, would be put at risk via your mandates. I would be pleased to discuss these risks with you if you are unaware of them.

Which brings me to my second point: continuation of this harmful mandate exposes your students to significant and completely unnecessary health risks, including death. This is more than reason enough to stop it.

Thirdly, continuation of the mandate will expose Santa Clara to potentially massive liability risk. The manufacturers of the vaccines may be protected from product liability, but that protection does not extend to inappropriate use of their products. The case law will evolve in the coming years. I cannot imagine you want Santa Clara to be swept up in it.

In my medical opinion, Santa Clara is currently making a grave error in continuing to mandate these vaccines. I urge you to demand that your medical advisors address the above issues and explain this policy. I assure you they will not be able to give a sound medical justification.

Better yet, I ask you to drop the mandates. It is the right thing to do.

Please contact me if you would like to speak further.

Sincerely yours,

Clayton J. Baker, MD

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Clayton J. Baker, M.D. is an internal medicine physician with a quarter century in clinical practice. He is also a writer, father, and husband. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 era, he has been publicly advocating for medical freedom, preservation of civil rights, and the protection of children. He has held numerous academic medical appointments, and his work has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. From 2012 to 2018, he was Clinical Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester. He contributes regularly to brownstone.org. Please follow him on Twitter @cjbakermd.

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