Thursday, FNC host Tucker Carlson opened his program questioning forced vaccines by institutions and the threats the COVID-19 vaccine could pose to younger people.

Carlson warned that depending on how courts rule on mandatory vaccines, it could call into question the boundaries of civil liberties in America.

Transcript as follows:

CARLSON: In January, Israel became one of the first countries in the world to give the new coronavirus vaccine to young people. At the time, Israel’s Education Ministry said the vaccine was necessary so that students could sit for in-person exams. So, schools mandated the shot, kids got it. What happened next?

This week we found out. Israeli health officials released a report showing that vaccinated young people, particularly young men, were developing a potentially fatal complication, a heart inflammation called myocarditis, and they were developing it at extremely high rates.

Researchers determined that the incidence of myocarditis in vaccinated young men was fully 25 times the usual rate, some of them died.

In Canada, at least one public health official observed the same thing. Dr. Peter Lu is the Chief Scientific Officer at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. He’s an expert in myocarditis. Lu began to notice heart inflammation in patients who had received the vaccine. “It is more than coincidental,” he said.

In Germany, authorities concluded the same thing. The German government just announced that healthy young people should avoid the vaccine. It’s too dangerous. This is a serious development for us in the United States. If statistical trends observed in Israel hold here, as many as 150,000 young Americans will develop a potentially fatal heart disorder because of the COVID vaccines.

That’s not alarmism. It’s not some kind of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theory. It’s real.

Just this afternoon, the CDC confirmed what appear to be dangerous side effects. The country’s two biggest vaccine monitoring systems, the Biden administration’s Vaccine Adverse Reporting System known as VAERS and the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink both show strikingly high rates of myocarditis in young people who have been vaccinated.

“We clearly have an imbalance there,” a CDC official announced today. Imbalance is one way to put it, potential emergency is another way.

Given these numbers, it is possible that healthy young people in this country will be much more likely to be harmed by the vaccine than by COVID itself. That would be a disaster, in fact, it would be the definition of a preventable disaster.

How are institutions responding to these new numbers? Well, mostly by ignoring them completely. In fact, in just the last week, many American colleges and universities have announced they will require proof of vaccination, an official vaccination card, before they allow students to return to campus. At some schools, the mandate applies only to students.

For reasons no one has explained or could possibly defend, it does not apply to faculty and staff. They are not required to be vaccinated.

As for the huge number of young people who have already recovered from COVID, and therefore, likely have robust immunity, at least as robust as they could get from any vaccine, they will be required to get the shot, too.

These are big numbers. They’re close to 20 million college students in this country. And in the end, most will have no choice, but to take a drug that other governments have concluded is dangerous for them to take.

Yesterday, Virginia State University system announced that vaccine exemptions will be nearly impossible for students to get. An exemption, quote, ” … will not be granted based on a philosophical, moral or conscientious objection.” In other words, your conscience is irrelevant. Personal autonomy means nothing. It is no longer your body, it is no longer your choice.

When it comes to this vaccine, there is no escape.

You wonder watching this how it could happen in a free country, it’s hard to believe it is happening. As a medical decision, it is reckless. What are the long-term effects of forcing these drugs on millions of young people, many of whom don’t need it? Well, we don’t know the answer. We don’t know what the long-term effects are. Anyone who claims he does know is lying. At this point, there’s literally no way to tell.

Just today, the FDA’s advisory panel met to discuss the rise in cardiac emergencies in healthy young people who have received the vaccine. So far, the rate of myocarditis is more than twice what authorities anticipated. As one Tufts Medical School Professor who sits on the panel put it, quote, “Before we start vaccinating millions of adolescents and children, it is so important to find out what the consequences are.” Well, you think it would be important to find out, but Joe Biden doesn’t want to wait. Biden promised universal vaccination whether we need it or not and he plans to get it done. Here he is last week telling you to shut up and take the shot.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You know some people have questions about how quickly vaccines were developed. They say, they’ve been developed so quickly, they can’t be that good.

The bottom line is this. I promise you, they are safe. They are safe. And even more importantly, they are extremely effective.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: “I promise you, they are safe. They are safe.” If the numbers out of Israel turn out to be real and applicable to this country, our population, the clip you just saw will live forever as one of the most destructive things a sitting President has ever said from the podium.

Maybe the worst part is the administration should have known this could be coming. Pfizer’s own clinical trials of the vaccine showed disturbing effects on young people, you’re seeing some of the results on the screen right now.

Pfizer gave the vaccines to one group of children between the ages of 12 and 15. The rest got a placebo, as is common. Among children who received just the first dose of the vaccine, rates of serious symptoms were higher across the board, including symptoms consistent with myocarditis.

Just few weeks ago, though, the FDA approved the vaccine for 12 to 15-year-olds anyway. And now the age threshold for vaccination may be dropping. The New York Times is reporting that drug makers, including Pfizer and Moderna are gearing up to vaccinate children as young as six months old this fall.

As a scientific question, none of this is necessary. Studies in medical journals around the world, The Lancet, for example, as well as The Journal of the American Medical Association, have shown that COVID is not a grave threat to children and that young people do not play a significant role in spreading COVID.

But that has not stopped the Biden administration. Here’s Joe Biden’s personal COVID adviser demanding that all college students in addition to millions of other people get the shot.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ZEKE EMANUEL, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: There are clearly places where you’re congregating people that we should have mandates. Students in universities, my university, for example, faculty and staff; healthcare facilities, every healthcare worker ought to be vaccinated. I shouldn’t have to worry, has my doctor been vaccinated? Has that nurse been vaccinated?

And I think employers ought to take this very seriously and consider mandating and requiring their workers to get vaccinated, especially if they’re going to come back to the office.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: You must get vaccinated. OK, what’s the risk? It tells you something that no one in authority ever seems to assess that or even mention the potential downside of vaccination. Every drug has potential side effects, every drug from Advil to chemotherapy. That doesn’t mean we don’t take them. It does mean, however, that we have a right to know exactly what those drugs could potentially do to us.

Transparency is the essence of medical ethics.

So, what is the harm rate from the COVID vaccines? What’s the harm rate? You’re not allowed to ask? Have you noticed that? They’ll shout at you if you ask.

Several weeks ago, we quoted numbers from the administration’s own reporting system, VAERS, that showed a massive increase in deaths from this vaccine. Now, even if you believe the VAERS system is profoundly flawed, and it seems to be flawed, it’s hard to explain the jump in fatalities in relative terms — same system, different results.

Between July 1, 1997 and the end of 2013, that’s five and a half years, there were 2,149 deaths reported in the U.S. for all vaccines combined on the VAERS system. Yet, in just six months, the last six months, there have been more than 5,160 deaths associated with the COVID vaccines as reported to VAERS. That’s more than double the number of deaths in less than one-tenth of the time.

What does that mean? How do you explain that? Oh, but those numbers are wrong, said the usual liars with maximum hysteria. Okay, let’s say they are wrong. What are the real numbers? How many people have been killed or injured by the COVID vaccines? Does anyone know the answer?

More to the point, is anyone in authority making a good faith effort to find the answer? To figure out who is being hurt and how? Would they tell us if they knew?

Honestly, it is outrageous. If you’re going to force people to take a drug, you have a moral obligation, an absolute moral obligation to understand exactly what the effects of that drug might be, and then be honest about what they are. But they’re not doing that. We can say that conclusively.

The people closest to these decisions have a pretty good sense of what’s going on. They know transparency when they see it. They also know lying when they see it.

You may have noticed the other day that the heads of NIH and the CDC admitted that up to half of their employees have not been vaccinated. Why is that exactly? You would think that people who work at NIH, or the CDC would be first in line. Why aren’t they? It’s not because they’re ignorant. Maybe it’s the opposite.

In Texas, one group of healthcare workers, these are some of the most informed patients in America are revolting in public at the thought of being forced to take this vaccine. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Houston Methodist Hospital requiring all staff members to get vaccinated for COVID-19 or be fired.

JENNIFER BRIDGES, HEALTHCARE PROVIDER. HOUSTON METHODIST, BAYTOWN: Right off the bat, I pretty much decided like I was not going to do it. Everybody in America should have the right to decide what they put into their body.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Jennifer Bridges has worked at Houston Methodist in Baytown more than six years.

BRIDGES: I planned on staying with Methodist for the rest of my life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): She spent the last year and a half treating coronavirus patients and even got sick herself.

BRIDGES: I just had an antibody test like a week ago, I still have antibodies in my system. But it doesn’t count for them. It doesn’t work.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): More than a hundred coworkers have joined Jennifer with this lawsuit against the hospital. It claims Methodist is forcing its employees to be human guinea pigs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: The most basic questions of civil liberties are in the balance here, and at some point, they will be resolved. At some point, the courts will decide whether it is legal under American law to force adults to take medicine they don’t want to take.

But for millions of college students, time is running out. They don’t have the luxury of waiting for a court decision because in just weeks, they will have to show their vaccine passports or they will be barred from school. What should they do? How should their parents respond?

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor