Lake County Gazette

Highland Park has opted to require proof of vaccination for those aged 5 and above in public places.

The Lake County municipality is following Cook County’s lead.

“North Suburban Highland Park, IL, (Lake County) follows Chicago and Cook County and votes in favor of medical apartheid in restaurants, entertainment venues, bowling alleys, etc. Everyone age 5 and up has to show proof of vax to enter,” a COVID researcher using the name Emma Woodhouse on Twitter said.

The motion passed the city council 6-1. The sole opposing vote came from Councilman Andres Tapia who said he did not believe the measures would help stop the omicron variant of COVID.

The mandate will go into effect Jan. 7 as opposed to a similar Jan. 3 order in Cook County. Highland Park has decided that those establishments that do not mandate vaccines will be fined between $25 and $750.

“I think this will help restaurants," Highland Park Council Member Kim Stone said in the Lake and McHenry Scanner.

Stone’s comments came amid passionate pleas from local restaurant owners not to require them to ensure patrons are vaccinated.

“It’s a really unfortunate position you are putting us in. I believe this will put restaurants in jeopardy of going out of business,” Steve Geffen, who owns Once Upon a Bagel in Highland Park, told the city council members.

Restaurants have already fallen victim to the pandemic at a much higher degree than other businesses, Chicago City Wire said.

Highland Park’s move comes despite finding that Americans overall have rejected the idea of mandatory vaccination, according to Pew Research Center.  

Of respondents 88% reported, “There’s too much pressure on Americans to get a COVID-19 vaccine” and 81% were in accord with the statement, “We don’t really know yet if there are serious health risks from COVID-19 vaccines”. In addition, 81% agreed, “Public health officials are not telling us everything they know about COVID-19 vaccines.”

A full 20% of Americans said they never intend to become vaccinated, according to an Axios-Ipsos poll. 

Pharmaceutical companies are expected to make an estimated $52 billion on the sale of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, as well as boosters, in 2022 alone, according to analysts in The Wall Street Journal.

COVID vaccine efficacy has been called into question more increasingly.  

A February 2021 article in The New England Journal of Medicine said that of 596,618 Israelis, some of whom took the Pfizer vaccine, 39 COVID deaths occurred among the non-vaccinated and 20 among the vaccinated. This is a reduction in risk of coronavirus death of 0.0003%.

Many have questioned the effectiveness of mass vaccination given the breakthrough cases prevalent throughout the country.

A Michigan study between Jan. 1 and March 3, 2020 of COVID-vaccinated residents found that 246 "considered fully vaccinated were later diagnosed with the virus and three have died," The Detroit News said. Some of these were already infected prior to becoming fully vaccinated, the article said.

Vaccinating children in particular has some academic researchers questioning the ethics of such mandates.

Harvard Professor Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist and infectious-disease expert, wrote in March 2021 that “thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should. COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.”

In April 2021, Dr. Vinay Prasad, a University of California professor, San Francisco physician and epidemiologist, called it "ludicrous and unethical" to vaccinate children before vaccinating 70- and 80-year-olds around the world, MedPage Today said.