Ivy League epidemiologist takes on Twitter for censorship, university for hiding vaccine injury

An Ivy League epidemiologist may be taking over Alex Berenson's legal fight after Twitter reinstated the contrarian journalist and belatedly acknowledged his tweets questioning the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines didn't violate its "misinformation" policies.

Andrew Bostom, a veteran professor in Brown University's medical school until last year, told Just the News he has retained Berenson's lawyer for potential litigation against the social media company for permanently suspending his account after he shared peer-reviewed research on the vaccines' effect on male fertility.

Bostom is also taking on Brown for allegedly hiding a 20-year-old male student's hospitalization for heart inflammation in March 2021, a month before Brown announced a COVID vaccine mandate for students. As a hospital volunteer, the student received the first dose of the mRNA vaccine a month earlier.

No College Mandates, which has sent legal warning letters to dozens of college presidents, told Just the News it plans to notify the top leadership at other Ivy League schools about the myopericarditis case identified by Bostom.

The incident happened a year before Ashish Jha took leave as Brown's dean of public health to serve as the White House COVID coordinator. Jha recently claimed "there have not been any serious side effects of these vaccines." 

Public officials and Big Tech have been eager to stamp out any questioning of COVID vaccines, even while acknowledging their effectiveness plummets within months and certain demographics face higher risks of side effects, particularly young men.

Twitter throttled a tweet by a group of U.K. National Health Service staff about a mother of three who died 22 days after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is commonly administered in the U.K. The 47-year-old developed blood clots to the brain, the Leicester Mercury reported.

The June 25 tweet remains labeled "misleading" or "stay informed," meaning it can't be retweeted, liked or commented on, nearly three weeks later. Twitter lets users quote-tweet the post but first points them to a page of pro-vaccine tweets from the CDC, World Health Organization and others.

It does not appear to be throttling other tweets sharing the Mercury article, however. Twitter media relations did not respond to Just the News queries about the inconsistent throttling and Bostom's legal threat.

The Citizens for Legitimate Government email newsletter, founded by retired New York University professor Michael Rectenwald, told subscribers Saturday that its web host refused to help it address throttling by Yahoo email subdomains suspected to be ideologically motivated.

A screenshot shows MayFirst characterized as "misinformation" a report in the newsletter about an Uruguay judge ordering Pfizer to disclose the composition of its COVID vaccine. The host also refused to help CLG deliver newsletters that include "information hosted on pro-trump web sites." 

Quebec's Laval University suspended biochemist Patrick Provost last month without pay for eight weeks for his risk-benefit calculation of COVID vaccination for children at a conference last year, according to local newspaper The Suburban. The faculty union filed a grievance on his behalf.

A French-language report translated into English says Provost is an mRNA research pioneer. The university allegedly justified the suspension by saying he showed "voluntary confirmation bias" and "presented a large number of biased interpretations" at the conference. An unidentified spokesperson declined to comment on "the personal [sic] situations of its employees."

On his personal website, Bostom said he learned about the Brown student's myopericarditis case from a "Rhode Island caregiver" who had witnessed a handful of "probable" cases of vaccine-induced myocarditis at the Miriam Hospital, part of Rhode Island's Lifespan healthcare system. 

The student was "hospitalized my last night on call" with high troponin levels, the caregiver said in a minute-long recording Bostom shared with Just the News. "I remember his parents were extremely concerned. I had [hospital] administrators calling me from down south where his parents lived." 

Bostom said he verified the incident through the CDC's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. A May 25, 2021 report, ID number 1347752-1, documents a 20-year-old Rhode Island male who developed chest pain March 20, 2021, two days after his second Pfizer dose. He was hospitalized for three days starting March 22.

Last month, Brown President Christina Paxson ignored questions from an alumna and mother of a current Brown student about the myopericarditis case, according to correspondence Bostom shared. The mother, whose name is redacted in the email chain, confirmed to Just the News it was authentic.

She urged Paxson to abandon Brown's continuation of vaccine and booster mandates in light of its refusal to make public its data on "hospitalizations from COVID pneumonia among students over the course of the pandemic." 

The mother asked if Brown knew of any other "severe vaccine related illnesses" among students, given a new peer-reviewed study by Brown University researchers that documented 14 local men under age 30 who were hospitalized with "mRNA vaccine-induced myocarditis" from January-September 2021. (Bostom's essay mentions the same study.)

Paxson responded that its mandates remain "essential to maintaining in-person academic and administrative activities on campus. We continue to follow CDC recommendations and consult with health experts to inform Brown's response to COVID-19."

Bostom posted his unanswered letters to administrator Russell Carey, cochair of Brown's vaccine working group, raising similar concerns. He asked Carey to confirm the student's hospitalization and whether Brown told other students about the incident, along with the number of students hospitalized from COVID.

University spokesperson Brian Clark was not available Monday to respond to Bostom's allegations and whether Jha knew about the student's hospitalization. The media contact for Jha's School of Public Health, Corrie Pikul, quibbled with how Bostom described himself in an earlier essay on his Twitter suspension.

"While he may represent himself as working for an affiliated research center [the Brown University Center For Primary Care and Prevention], I can confirm that he does not have a current appointment with Brown," she wrote in an email.