Profiles in courage: Prof Retsef Levi
As part of a series, Frontline News is profiling those medical scientists and doctors who previously supported COVID vaccination, then after reexamining the evidence, had the courage to change their minds. This series examines who they are, and what evidence persuaded them.
In January 2023, Retsef Levi, MIT professor of operations management, and a researcher with extensive experience analyzing data-driven models for decision-making in healthcare management, joined the growing number of medical and science professionals who are calling for a halt in the use of the mRNA vaccines.
Prof. Levi criticized much of the response to COVID-19, but his attitude towards the vaccines themselves is best illustrated by his statement in November 2021, “I’m an avid believer in modern medicine. Me and my six children are fully vaccinated with all the traditional vaccines, including flu vaccines, and I am personally vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine.”[fn]https://rumble.com/vokrf7-sen.-johnson-expert-panel-on-federal-vaccine-mandates.html 2:20:07[/fn] In addition, “I think that vaccines have a role in the pandemic of protecting the high risk populations against severe illness and deaths”.
Focused protection
“This is a war, and in order to win a war you need coordination and intelligence.”
-Prof. Retsef Levi, concerning COVID-19, reported by The Washington Post in April 2020.
He should know; he spent 12 years serving in Israeli military intelligence before embarking on his academic career.
In March 2020 he and colleagues at the MIT Sloan School of Management formed the COVID-19 Policy Alliance, to advise U.S. officials on strategies to deal with the unfolding health crisis. Their recommendations generally focused on using testing and isolation in areas of greatest risk.
They advocated focused efforts on a local, not a national, level. Efforts should be focused in areas that were at greatest risk, according to already recognized risk factors, such as age and obesity. To assist in such analysis, The COVID-19 Policy Alliance created a risk analytics map of the high-risk sites across the United States.
In a paper published in September 2020, Levi argued for the effectiveness of this model. He wrote,
The model was deployed in such an operational fashion in a large US state, where it was used to proactively place hospital resources (mobile surge capacity) in areas where we anticipated large peaks in infections. Many of these predictions were proven accurate and timely in hindsight. . . . While not every state was able to make such data driven decisions in resource deployment, we believe that in the event of a second outbreak, the approach we develop here can serve this need broadly.
He spoke out publicly in both the U.S. and in Israel, his home country, against lockdown policies which shut down the economy and closed schools. The U.S. and Israeli governments rejected his recommendations.
In January 2021 he joined the Public Emergency Council for the Covid19 Crisis (PECC) in an open letter to the Knesset (Israeli parliament) Constitution, Law and Justice Committee arguing against the granting of “green passports” to those who were vaccinated. The PECC is an independent organization of leading Israeli physicians, researchers and social welfare professionals who coalesced in December 2020 in protest over the mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis. They argued against the “green passport” on the grounds that “[e]xisting knowledge indicates that the Green Passport is unnecessary, poses an epidemiological risk, and constitutes a 'slippery slope' for aspects relating to medical ethics and social perspectives.”
He also spoke out, in the latter half of 2021, against vaccinating young children. The campaign to vaccinate Israeli children between the ages of 5 and 12 ignited a debate in some circles of Israeli society. A forum of orthodox Jewish religious leaders invited world experts to give their advice. Prof. Levi was among these experts. He pointed out that the COVID vaccines were rushed to market without the usual caution. They had only emergency use approval (EUA), and when it comes to children “there is no emergency threat”.
Still, he emphasized that he is essentially very “pro-vaccine” and felt there was a role for COVID vaccines when it came to the elderly and those with comorbidities, who were at risk for serious outcomes and death from COVID-19.
Following the science
Israel was the first country to begin vaccinating, with the Pfizer mRNA vaccine near the end of December 2020. Around mid-2021 concerns about a possible connection between myocarditis and the vaccines arose. Since myocarditis symptoms are often mild and go undiagnosed, yet can lead to sudden cardiac arrest, Levi teamed up with a representative of Magen David Adom (Israel’s national ambulance service) to see if there was any evidence of this connection in Israeli EMS records.
The paper they published acknowledges that both COVID-19 infections and the vaccines are known to cause adverse cardiovascular events. The study aimed to "evaluate the association between the volume of cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome EMS calls in the 16–39-year-old population with potential factors including COVID-19 infection and vaccination rates."
They found that “[a]n increase of over 25% was detected in both call types during January–May 2021, compared with the years 2019–2020”, and that “the weekly emergency call counts were significantly associated with the rates of 1st and 2nd vaccine doses administered to this age group but were not with COVID-19 infection rates.”
Prof. Levi did not call for a vaccine recall based on his research. He recommended caution and further study. Despite this, the paper’s publication was rejected many times before it was finally published in April 2022; the reason repeatedly given by various publications was that it was “not a priority”.[fn]https://rumble.com/vokrf7-sen.-johnson-expert-panel-on-federal-vaccine-mandates.html 2:23:31[/fn]
He was concerned enough by the results of his analysis to bring it to the attention of Israeli authorities in October 2021, before publication. This is not unprecedented; Dr. Joseph Fraiman did similarly in the US, and the FDA seriously considered his study. Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, head of the Israel Health Ministry Public Health Services department, however, publicly discredited the study for not being peer-reviewed and claimed that any connection between the vaccines and heart attacks was “totally fake”.
Rules for thee but not for me
Compare that to Dr. Alroy-Preis’ position when she appeared one month earlier, in September 2021, before the FDA committee debating the use of a Pfizer vaccine booster shot in the U.S. Dr. Alroy-Preis and Dr. Roni Milo, presented results of an Israeli study on the efficacy and safety of booster doses, using material they admitted was not yet published.
Prof. Levi appeared before the same committee, warning them not to look to Israel for evidence of vaccine efficacy or safety, as “the vaccine campaign in Israel was anything but a carefully designed study" and “the adverse event surveillance system in Israel is truly dysfunctional, particularly around the booster deployment”.
A year later, Prof. Levi’s warning was vindicated by a video leaked in August 2022. This was a recording of a discussion in June 2021 between Israel Health Ministry officials and the group it hired to examine adverse events data. These researchers were very concerned about what they found. A significant number of adverse events were neither mild nor short-term. The lead investigator warned the Health Ministry that they could face legal consequences for promoting a medical procedure as safe when there was such a strong signal of harm.
In an interview on EpochTV, Prof. Levi discussed the leaked video and explained that throughout 2021, the whole first year of the vaccination campaign in Israel, there was no effective system in place to track adverse events.[fn]https://www.theepochtimes.com/retsef-levi-leaked-videos-show-how-israeli-authorities-are-actively-hiding-critical-information-about-side-effects-of-the-vaccines_4864651.html 39.09[/fn] At the end of 2021 the Health Ministry finally set up a system and hired a group of outside researchers to investigate adverse events. Even after the ministry received this report, however, they manipulated the data such that they could continue to tell the public that adverse reactions were not a serious issue.
Against the wind
Throughout 2021 and 2022, as he pointed out the hazards of lockdown policies, the threat to personal autonomy, and the destruction of trust in the medical community, and even as he spoke out on the injuries probably being caused by the vaccines, Levi kept his tone measured. He saw himself as a voice of reason, a voice calling for an honest risk-benefit analysis, a voice that “would [have been] considered the mainstream, up to two-and-a-half years ago.”
We noted above that it took many months to find a publisher for his paper about Israeli EMS cardiac calls, and it was attacked immediately on social media. The paper still bears the following banner:
05 May 2022
Editor’s Note: Readers are alerted that the conclusions of this article are subject to criticisms that are being considered by the Editors. A further editorial response will follow once all parties have been given an opportunity to respond in full.
Prof.Levi, a father of six, explained why he continued to speak out despite all the resistance.[fn]https://www.theepochtimes.com/retsef-levi-leaked-videos-show-how-israeli-authorities-are-actively-hiding-critical-information-about-side-effects-of-the-vaccines_4864651.html 1:13:09[/fn]
I’m a great believer in medicine and science, that’s my life—[but] if we are going to also compromise fundamental values like human rights and the ability of someone to decide for themselves, if we are not going to put young people and children at the top of our value system, then if I didn’t do anything that I could do to make it right, I’m not a good father.
This must stop
It is hard to determine exactly when his attitude changed, but on January 30, 2023, Prof. Levi posted a video on Twitter in which he stated that it is his “strong conviction that at this point in time [the] COVID mRNA vaccination program should stop immediately.”
He finds the mounting evidence from scientists around the world pointing to the connection between the mRNA vaccines and myocarditis, convincing. Autopsies of people dying in temporal proximity to vaccination have uncovered evidence of myocarditis that in many cases likely led to their deaths. Myocarditis is frequently undiagnosed, as the symptoms may be mild, but it is a known cause of sudden cardiac arrest in young people. There is also plausible evidence that the vaccines may be causing harms other than myocarditis. All that, plus, the well-known fact that the vaccines are not nearly as effective as advertised, lead him to conclude,
[T]here is no other ethical or scientific choice but to pull out of the market these medical products and stop all the mRNA vaccination programs. This is clearly the most failing medical product in the history of medical products in terms of efficacy and safety. . .
Prof. Levi has expressed on several occasions that there is no ethical responsibility to prove that the vaccines do harm; the ethical responsibility is to prove that they are safe. Doctors and patients should have access to honest and complete information and the autonomy to make independent, informed choices.
Contrary to his previous attitude, he is now willing to publicly state, “I was vaccinated and I regret it every day."[fn]https://ie2020.net/news/%D7%90%D7%99%D7%9A-%D7%94%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%AA%D7%A7%D7%A0%D7%95-%D7%91%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%94-%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%93%D7%A8-%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%95%D7%97%D7%93/ 24:01[/fn]
[translated from an interview in Hebrew on January 19, 2023]
For more profiles in courage of medical scientists and doctors who previously supported COVID vaccination, then after reexamining the evidence had the courage to change their minds, see:
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