COVID-19 Vaccine Policies Impact US Military Readiness: Special Forces Flight Surgeon

Dr. Peter Chambers, a Green Beret flight surgeon who worked on the COVID-19 task force in Texas, in an interview for EpochTV’s “Crossroads” on Aug. 1, 2022. EpochTV

COVID-19 vaccine policies impair the readiness of the U.S. military because of a drastic increase in disorders and side effects attributed to vaccine adverse reactions and insufficient recruitment, according to a former COVID-19 task force doctor.

In an interview for EpochTV’s “Crossroads,” Dr. Peter Chambers, a Green Beret flight surgeon who served in Operation Lone Star in Texas, said he told his superiors that 78 percent of the people who were testing positive for COVID-19 or showing symptoms of the disease were fully vaccinated and that COVID-19 prevention could be achieved through less intrusive measures.

But Chambers was rebuffed, and he said his superior told him that vaccinating the soldiers was “policy, not science.”

Operation Lone Star was launched by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and used the National Guard to address the smuggling of people and drugs across the southern border with Mexico.

Chambers said his unit did its job on the border in horrendous conditions, with some soldiers standing in the heat for 12 hours wearing body armor, and they were all just fine.

“Nobody went to the hospital from symptoms of COVID. Not one. We didn’t lose a single soldier,“ he said. ”They went to the hospital after they were [vaccinated].”

Prevention

When Chambers became a member of the Texas COVID-19 Task Force in 2020, he said his first thought was to give the troops ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure.

He had seen areas in Africa and India with very low case numbers, and he had also been on a few missions in Africa, where hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are routinely used to treat malaria. Chambers said in his own deployments, troops were often given hydroxychloroquine as a protective measure against disease.

“When I said the word ’hydroxychloroquine,’ I was told never to say that again. Don’t bring it up,” Chambers said.

He said he asked why and that the other task force members said it was because President Donald Trump had suggested using hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19.

“I said, 'It doesn’t matter what Trump said. I’m a doctor. I have used it. It’s very safe,'” Chambers said.

COVID-19 Prevention

When Operation Lone Star was launched in Texas, Chambers’s job was to take care of the health of thousands of troops deployed at the southern border in Texas, with only 28 percent of them having been vaccinated against COVID-19.

He emphasized the need to practice good prevention to keep troops safe, which he said he did when on a mission as a flight surgeon “in foreign countries and the worst places in the world.”

One of these measures is using a nasal swab with Betadine and saline, Chambers said, noting that he discussed this treatment with Dr. Peter McCullough, an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, and leading expert on COVID-19 treatment, and with other doctors as well.

Chambers started using this method after seeing a study in April 2021, and he found it effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19 among troops under his care who stayed in tight quarters of up to 15 people in a small trailer.

Soldiers serving at the border face about 900 illegal border crossers daily, as many as 20,000 per week, and none of them are tested, according to Chambers.

“I’m more worried about [tuberculosis] coming across the border,” he said.

Chambers tried to alert command about the significant increase in certain diseases among service members during 2021 in comparison with prior years.

For example, the number of demyelination injuries and neurological disorders among soldiers rose in 2021 by about 1,100 percent, he said.

Military readiness during the COVID-19 pandemic could have been achieved even with a low level of vaccination through less intrusive measures, such as preventative medicine, and the vaccine policies impacted military recruitment, which is currently at 40 percent of where it should be, according to Chambers.

This, in turn, has weakened national security, he said.

“We will not be capable to fight a war on two fronts, which we used to be able to do, much less one front.”

Adverse Reactions

A slide on reports of myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination is shown during the Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting on June 10, 2021. FDA/Screenshot via The Epoch Times

Chambers’s concerns started growing when COVID-19 vaccines were launched and Pfizer admitted hundreds of adverse reactions in its initial studies (pdf), he said.

He has also started seeing these diseases in his unit, and in some cases, patients needed to be treated in the intensive care unit at the hospital, he said.

For instance, Chambers saw a 27-year-old soldier admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with pericarditis and some other heart disorder.

“The amount of blood pumping out of his heart [was] equivalent to a 78-year-old with congestive heart failure,“ he said. ”He was treated, and then we had to let him go, off the mission.”

Chambers said he also had patients with stroke-like symptoms and demyelination.

Demyelination is a disease that causes damage to the protective myelin sheath that covers nerves, and it’s also a COVID-19 vaccine adverse reaction (pdf).

There are also concerns of secondary side effects, which can be the result of the weakening of the immune system because of COVID-19 vaccination, the surgeon said. For example, vaccine-induced autoimmune deficiency syndrome (VAIDS) looks like HIV, which attacks the immune system and can lead to AIDS.

In June, the policy that prevented HIV-positive service members from being deployed was changed, Chambers noted.

“It’s OK now to deploy if you’re HIV-positive, but it’s not OK to deploy if you haven’t taken the [COVID-19] vaccines,” he said.

The immunity impairment caused by COVID-19 vaccines may also lead to the sudden popping up of lesions that “look a lot like monkeypox,” according to Chambers.

Informed Consent

A soldier watches another soldier receive his COVID-19 vaccination from Army Preventive Medical Services in Fort Knox, Ky., on Sept. 9, 2021. Jon Cherry/Getty Images

According to Army regulations, informed consent is required before military members take vaccines authorized for emergency use, Chambers said, so he provided troops under his care with information necessary to make an informed decision about the COVID-19 vaccine.

At that time, he cared for 3,000 soldiers in the National Guard who were deployed at the southern border. He said he was providing informed consent to groups of 500 soldiers at a time and telling them that since most of them were young, they didn’t need the vaccine and that if they needed treatment for a COVID-19 infection, they could be transported to a hospital to receive hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin.

But then Chambers’s superiors asked him to explain why there was such a low rate of COVID-19 vaccination among his soldiers. When they found out that he was giving informed consent, they told him that the vaccination requirement was policy, not science.

Chambers said he had to continue to give informed consent under U.S. Army regulations.

“Subsequently, there was a fight. They tried to fire me. I had whistleblower protection, so they just took me off the border early,” he said. “I went from Special Forces golden child doctor to ‘we don’t want you here anymore.’”

Texas Military Department officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Chambers himself took a COVID-19 vaccine and weeks later developed vertigo. He was admitted to a military treatment facility, where he was diagnosed with vertigo caused by demyelination.

He testified in a lawsuit against the Department of Defense over the military vaccine mandate. In his testimony, he said he had planned to retire in 2023 when he reached 40 years of service, but developing vertigo forced him to retire early in 2022 and forfeit the extra benefits he would have received if he had reached 40 years.

When asked in the court why he took the vaccine, he answered: “Because I trusted my government.”

Chambers became a whistleblower and shared his concerns with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who’s facilitating the sharing of information from early investigations of COVID-19 products with Congress.

Chambers said he encourages people to do their own research on the health products they take.

“Don’t just jump down and get in line for a shot until you’re convinced that it’s not emergency use and that it’s safe and effective,“ he said. ”Be convinced.”