According to Thorp, from December 2020, when the vaccines came on the market, through July 21, 2021, ACOG held a neutral position on vaccination during pregnancy, recommending that pregnant women “be free to make their own decision regarding COVID-19 vaccination.”

But that recommendation “abruptly changed on July 30, 2021,” Thorp said, to recommend vaccination for pregnant women.

Today, ACOG “recommends that all eligible persons aged 6 months and older, including pregnant and lactating individuals, receive a COVID-19 vaccine or vaccine series,” and a booster.

The money for the grants comes from COVID-19-related federal funding opportunities, such as the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act and the CARES Act, according to the grant documents.

Grant recipients, and any “flow-down” organizations they may award money from these grants to, must comply with “existing and future directives and guidance” from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the CDC’s parent organization, regarding the control and spread of COVID-19.

That also includes sharing any data collected in grant-funded activities, including COVID-19 testing data, with the CDC.

‘Vast, covert government operation unleashed … at the height of our fear and isolation’

This CDC-ACOG collaboration forms part of the CDC’s and HHS’ strategic approach to COVID-19 vaccination encapsulated in its “We Can Do This” public education campaign.

Through the campaign, HHS and CDC sought in their own words to “motivate behavior change,” through strategic messaging, often developed by public relations firms, using “market research, key messages, partnerships and outreach, paid and earned media, and sample creative,” across all areas of people’s lives.

With $3 billion in federal funding from the Biden White House for states to distribute to local agencies and nonprofits and hundreds of millions of dollars in direct grants to medical associations and nonprofits, the HHS and CDC sought to train and fund “trusted messengers” such as teachers, religious leaders, social media influencers, community leaders and members and others, who would deliver the CDC’s message, but without the CDC’s brand.  READ MORE AT THE DEFENDER HERE.

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Here's a Mother's Day Hat Trick of Skyhorse Publishing books from Helena Hjalmarsson.

Already Whole: Discovering the Sacred Within

Many of us have made our lives so noisy, overwhelming, sensory craving and data driven that we have somehow missed the most fundamental part about ourselves and our lives. Learning how to work with every process, every situation, every relationship intuitively; learning to love what is, to let go, to have faith and find stillness; to foster one’s intuition and become creative in our own lives is something we can all achieve. To illustrate these concepts, Hajlmarsson calls on her decades of experience and work as a psychotherapist. But most significantly, her life as an autism parent, accounted for in her previous books, Finding Lina 2013 and Beyond Autism 2019, which has taught her where to find that elusive freedom and harmony: inside herself. Hjalmarsson believes that the solution to life's chaos, this freedom and harmony—this love—is accessible to all.

Finding Lina: A Mother's Journey from Autism to Hope

Lina was a precocious toddler—charming, chatty, joyful. At the age of three, in the aftermath of her second MMR vaccine, first came a seizure, and then, to her parents’ horror, the loss of Lina’s ability to play, use language, and control her impulses. Over the next few years they continued to lose Lina. She communicated her acute discomfort by biting, screaming, hitting, laughing maniacally, and throwing violent tantrums. As a single mother, with the help of her ex-husband, Helena Hjalmarsson tirelessly pursued every possible avenue to find a diagnosis, and more importantly a treatment, for her daughter, and the search continues to this day.

Beyond Autism: My Life with Lina

A Passionate Memoir about Life with a Teenage Daughter with Severe Autism, Following the Progress of Acclaimed Book, Finding Lina. Like her passionate first book, Finding Lina, about her daughter with severe autism, Helena Hjalmarsson brings an intensity of purpose and love to her second memoir about Lina, Beyond Autism. Lina’s world is one of excruciating challenges. Helena’s world is the same, but with her own insights, indominable spirit, and amazing clarity she sheds light and hope for other parents, siblings and caretakers of children with autism, as well as the children with autism themselves.