Rachel Maurice was one of three anti-vaccine medical employees to appear at a Sorrento, British Columbia, event that urged the public to “educate before you vaccinate” on Monday. The other two speakers at the event were doctors, but were either under investigation or locked in a court battle with the province’s medical authorities. The three promoted debunked claims that the vaccines were “lethal” to recipients or caused them to become magnetized, according to Castanet.Net.
Maurice told the crowd that she initially thought she would “gather information” on the vaccines but would “manage” without getting inoculated herself because she is healthy, despite most medical experts urging healthy people to get vaccinated because they are not invulnerable to sickness or death caused by COVID-19 and can spread the virus to others. She said that her “line in the sand” moment came when it was announced that children over the age of 12 would be able to get the shots without parental consent, prompting her to desperately lobby her children to not get vaccinated.
“My kids knew where I stood on everything … but teenagers have their own minds,” Maurice said during the event, which was streamed on Facebook. “I started educating my kids and I went to the schools, talking to the teachers, the principal, vice principal—they didn’t really seem to be too concerned … I told them that it would be over my dead body that they would be getting this shot.”
“I woke up one morning and I thought, ‘I’ve got it, I know what I’m going to do, I’m going to bribe my daughter,’” she continued. “I said, ‘I’m going to offer you $5,000 to not take the shot.’ She looked at me and she said, ‘I can’t take your money, Mom.’ I said, ‘I don’t care about money, what I care about is your life.’”
The crowd of anti-vaccine enthusiasts clapped and cheered while Maurice recounted the purported offer but let out moans of disappointment moments later when she said that “in the end, both of my kids actually went and got the shots with their dad.”
Maurice said she was separated from their father, who encouraged vaccinations, adding that when she realized her 14- and 16-year-olds would get the vaccine despite her pleas, she debated taking them herself or letting their father do it. Maurice opted for the latter out of fear that she would “strangle the people in the clinic.”
She later said that she “spent a week in bed, to be honest, thinking I had killed my kids” by allowing them to get both doses of the vaccine. While she admitted that her kids “seem to be OK” after getting the shots, she said she is “still talking to them about everything” and had offered them unspecified “supplements and everything” to “help mitigate problems.”
Maurice is a former anesthesiologist who practiced at a hospital in British Columbia for 16 years before leaving and becoming an independent breath-work specialist. Her registration with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia, the organization that regulates the practice of medicine in the province, is currently listed as “temporarily inactive.” Newsweek reached out to the organization for comment.
The vast majority of medical professionals agree that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, while a tiny minority support anti-vaccine conspiracy theories that claim they are more dangerous than the diseases they protect against, despite no credible evidence backing up the claims. Although temporary side effects from the vaccines are common, severe adverse reactions are exceedingly rare.