(LifeSiteNews) – The Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) is offering businesses and churches money in exchange for promoting COVID-19 vaccination despite persistent doubts about the need and safety of the shots.

On Monday, MSDH announced via social media that businesses and faith organizations can receive $1,000 for participating in the state’s Communities Conquering COVID vaccination education program.

“The program will train representatives from barbershops, salons, churches and faith-based organizations as community health advocates to provide vaccination education and materials to their members and clients,” the announcement says. In addition to training, the post says participants will distribute COVID test kits and vaccination material, and help with local vaccination events.

If you’re a local business or faith organization, here’s an important way you can contribute to your community. Get in touch with us at 601-206-1720 to find out how you can get started. #HealthyCommunities #HealthyMS #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/6v5pLO7Zjd

— MS Dept of Health (@msdh) August 21, 2023

Mississippi has a Republican governor and legislature, but before July, when a federal judge intervened, it was one of just two GOP-led states that did not offer religious exemptions to vaccine mandates. Even after the ruling, MSDH still requires parents to sit through an involved exemption process that involves watching a “vaccine education” video and a discussion with a state health department nurse before exempting their children from school mandates.

Many Americans persist in objecting to the COVID-19 vaccines, which were developed and released under former President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative in a fraction of the time vaccines usually take.

The federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting system (VAERS) reports 35,911 deaths, 208,190 hospitalizations, 20,623 heart attacks, and 27,414 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of August 11, among other ailments. An April 2022 study out of Israel indicates that COVID infection itself cannot fully account for the myocarditis numbers, despite common insistence to the contrary.

Jab defenders are quick to stress that reports submitted to VAERS are unconfirmed, as anyone can submit one, but U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.

Further, VAERS is not the only data source containing red flags. Data from the Pentagon’s Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) shows that 2021 saw drastic spikes in a variety of diagnoses for serious medical issues over the previous five-year average, including hypertension (2,181%), neurological disorders (1,048%), multiple sclerosis (680%), Guillain-Barre syndrome (551%), breast cancer, (487%), female infertility (472%), pulmonary embolism (468%), migraines (452%), ovarian dysfunction (437%), testicular cancer (369%), and tachycardia (302%).

Last September, the Japanese Society for Vaccinology published a peer-reviewed study conducted by researchers from Stanford, UCLA, and the University of Maryland, which found that the “Pfizer trial exhibited a 36% higher risk of serious adverse events in the vaccine group” while the “Moderna trial exhibited a 6% higher risk of serious adverse events in the vaccine group,” for a combined “16% higher risk of serious adverse events in mRNA vaccine recipients.”

In December 2022, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin hosted a roundtable discussion during which civil rights attorney Aaron Siri detailed data from the CDC’s V-Safe reporting system revealing that 800,000 of the system’s 10 million participants, or approximately 7.7%, reported needing medical care after COVID injection. “25 percent of those people needed emergency care or were hospitalized, and another 48 percent sought urgent care,” Siri added. “Also, another 25 percent on top of the 7.7 percent reported being unable to work or go to school.”

Another study by a team of American, British, and Canadian researchers, published last December in the Journal of Medical Ethics, found that COVID booster mandates for university students – a relatively healthy group at relatively low risk from the virus – do far more harm than good: “per COVID-19 hospitalisation prevented, we anticipate at least 18.5 serious adverse events from mRNA vaccines, including 1.5–4.6 booster-associated myopericarditis cases in males (typically requiring hospitalisation).”