Biden's COVID Mandates: An Attack On Liberty, The Economy, And Common Sense.
I believe Biden’s vaccine mandate is most likely unconstitutional and most certainly stupid.1 His plan is to have OSHA issue an emergency order requiring people employed by companies with over 100 employees to get vaccinated, or be tested once a week, or…be fired. Biden has not explained who has to bear the cost of the COVID tests, which are between $75 and $150 per test. Depending on the type of test OSHA will require, that comes to $3,750 to $7,500 per year.2 An expense many workers cannot afford and many companies either cannot afford or will not pay. So I suspect the result in many cases will come down to get the jab or find a new job.
One argument I keep hearing in support of Biden’s mandate is that the unvaccinated must get vaccinated to protect the vaccinated. This makes no sense, none, nada, zero, zip.3 If the vaccine is effective, and the available data says it is, then the vaccine protects those who received it - regardless of how many are not vaccinated. If you know people who use this argument, tell them to stop being the umbrella lady:
Another argument I hear is that COVID is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. So what? If people for whatever reason decline the vaccine and become ill, that’s on them. Having said that, do not tell me that we should withhold medical care from the unvaccinated if they become ill. The basis for this compassion free argument rests on (1) the public should not be liable for the cost of medical care required due to their poor choices; and (2) people who become ill because they made the poor choice not to get vaccinated should not be allowed to use valuable and scarce healthcare resources. This argument is stunningly stupid.
Using that same reasoning leads to the conclusion that society should deny medical care to all who make poor choices. Should we deny medical care to those who overdose on drugs? How about those injured while driving drunk, or without fastening their seatbelt, or riding a bike without a helmet? What about smokers with cancer, alcoholics with liver disease, or obese people with heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, etc.? All of these people made poor choices resulting in illness or injury and all of them deserve medical care. To argue otherwise is Orwellian.
Even if the arguments for Biden’s mandate were sound, which they are not, it is fatally flawed for several reasons. Central to the success of the mandate is the assumption that the unvaccinated will change their minds when faced with the decision to either take the ‘jab’ or become unemployable and a societal outcast. No doubt many will get vaccinated given these choices. However, there are many who will walk. How many? No one knows, but early indications is more than a few.
A number of people resigned when faced with local vaccine mandates. Lewis County General Hospital is halting maternity services because 30 employees resigned instead of getting vaccinated. Houston’s Methodist Hospital saw 153 staff - including nurses - leave instead of taking the vaccinations. There are numerous other reports from around the country of healthcare workers quieting instead of getting vaccinated, none with the affect of the two cited…but not all hospitals require employee vaccinations and Biden’s nationwide mandate has yet to take affect.
What’s more disturbing is the take a jab or get fired strategy is coming in the middle of a nationwide shortage of hospital staff. Over 1,000 hospitals nationwide are reporting that they are understaffed and that number is expected to rise in the next few weeks. Henry Ford Health Systems in Detroit eliminated 120 beds due to a staff shortage and, as already mentioned, Lewis County General Hospital is halting maternity services. Right now no one knows if Biden’s mandate will exacerbate the shortage of healthcare workers. But I doubt it will help.
The default position of many has been to blame hospital staff shortages on the increase in COVID patients. They need a new default position. The Atlantic reports that a study conducted by Harvard Medical School, Tufts Medical Center, and the V.A. Healthcare System found “that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on [the CDC] COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.” This study is consistent with two previous studies finding that 40% to 45% of children listed as being admitted due to COVID were actually admitted for reasons unrelated to COVID. In other words, the hospital staffing shortage is not due to COVID, it’s due to a shortage of healthcare workers.
The exoduses of people from the work force is not limited to healthcare workers. A few examples of first responders:
KNX 1070 radio reports that LA county’s vaccine mandate requires all employees be fully vaccinated by Oct. 19. As of Sep. 14 fewer than half have complied.
Police officers and their unions across the country are opposing vaccine mandates. Biden’s mandate coupled with the resistance among cops to being vaccinated can only further the national shortage. Since April 2020 Chicago has lost 18% of its officers, their manning is so critical that they’re transferring detectives back to uniformed beat cops. Philadelphia is short 268 cops; Baltimore has less than 700 cops, 300-400 less than they need; NYC, Rochester, Seattle, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Louisville, Portland and many other cities also have critical staffing shortages in their police departments.
In Honolulu, HI about 10% if the fire department and police departments have declined the vaccination in spite of the city’s take the jab or get fired mandate.
Contra Costa, CA’s vaccine mandate requires all city employees to be fully vaccinated by Sep. 17 (today). On Sep 16, 40 firefighters from one battalion informed the city they will not get vaccinated.
In the private sector a survey of 96 CFOs of large companies said the labor shortage is one of the major impediments to an economic recovery. So lets impose a mandate requiring people to take the jab or take a walk. Of course a lack of workers mean less products produced which means higher prices - I think the technical term is ‘inflation.’ Can the economy absorb even more inflation than we already have?
Then there is the southern boarder fiasco. As of of Aug. 1.1 million illegal immigrants were apprehended by ICE before being released. Those individuals are given the choice to get vaccinated or not before being released. 30% decline the vaccination, which means an estimated 330,000 unvaccinated illegal immigrants have been allowed into the country. If you include the estimated 240,000 to 400,000 who evaded apprehension, then the number of unvaccinated people who have illegally entered the U.S. in the first 8 months of 2021 increases to an estimated 570,000 to 730,000.
This policy raises a couple of questions. First, why are illegal immigrants given the choice to accept or decline the vaccination but American workers are not? Second, how can the government expect anyone to believe it’s serious about getting COVID under control when hundreds of thousands of unvaccinated people are allowed to cross our borders?
Another fallacy of Biden’s mandate is it relies on an OSHA regulation that is applicable only to employers with over 100 employees. The total population of the U.S. in 2019 was 328,240,000.4 of this 161,537,000 are in the labor force. Businesses that employ less than 100 employees account for 33.4% of the labor force. Doing a little math (Josey where are you when I need you?) we come up with a total of 107,584,000 or 32.8% of the population that is subject to the mandate. Spoiler alert, how is this mandate going to get the nation’s vaccination rate significantly higher when it covers less then one third of the population?
The rhetoric of the Biden Administration and the media is creating a large group of societal outcasts - those who are unemployable, vilified, and excluded from society all because of a misguided belief that the vaccinated need to be protected from the unvaccinated. Or is it the unvaccinated must be protected from the vaccinated, or perhaps as an Orange County, Florida official recently said - to protect people from themselves.5
There already is a movement to marginalize and destroy the lives and livelihoods of those opposed to Biden’s vaccine and mask mandates. Biden is relentlessly attacking Gov. DeSantis of Florida and Abbott of Texas. Joe Rogan was attacked by the media and Twitter trolls for using a combination of drugs prescribed by his doctor to combat COVID. Rogan’s sins (1) he was unvaccinated; and (2) one of the drugs prescribed to him was ivermectin - a medication that the WHO listed as an essential medication in 2019 - but the media insists on referring to as “horse dewormer.” Niki Minaj - one of the most recognized names in music has been verbally attacked by the media, politicians, and Dr. Fauci for tweeting:
The public shaming is not reserved for just the well known, but has spread across the country. A few examples:
An Op-ed in the Washington Post claims “The choice to remain unvaccinated is equivalent to driving while intoxicated.”
CNN's Don Lemon wants the unvaccinated banned from society.
A family was denied service at a NYC restaurant due to De Blasio’s vaccine mandate.
And my favorite is this pinhead who takes stupid to an art form.6
Oh. the irony of this guy claiming the woman is a “bad American” as he literally points his finger at her while following her around a store trying to shame her. When confronted by other shoppers about his less than stellar behavior, he lectures them that “it’s all of our job as a community to come together and make sure people are shamed…” Behold - the Picasso of stupid.
The most damaging part of this COVID madness maybe the rise of a Stasi7 like vigilante group whose goal is to “switch-off” those they deem less than fully supportive of the government’s COVID regulations and policies - no matter how nonsensical or unconstitutional those regulations and policies are. These vigilantes believe that destroying reputations, public shaming, delegitimizing, deplatforming, censorship, and making people unemployable and social outcasts are all acceptable means to force Americans to comply with policies they believe are necessary for the ‘greater good.’ I believe we should vote these Stasi vigilantes off the island.
It is hard to see how Biden’s mandate is going to accomplish anything other than create distrust in our institution, resentment of our political leaders, damage our economy, adversely affect our healthcare system, and create a group of people who are unemployable and social outcasts. None of which I find acceptable.
I’m not an anti-vaxer. I’m anti-vaccine mandate. I grew up when smallpox and polio were threats and remember families almost running to get vaccinated. During my military career I deployed more than a few times, and each time received multiple vaccinations. So yea, I believe vaccines good, disease bad. After a lot of thought I made the decision to get the COVID vaccine, and think it’s a good idea for others to do so too - unless they have natural immunity, medically should not, or religiously cannot. But that decision belongs to each individual, not me and certainly not the government. And no person should be shamed or worse over their decision.
Based on 50 work weeks.
For those Russian conspiracy theorist still out there (looking at you CNN and MSNBC), не имеет смысла, нет, нада, ноль.
Latest Census Bureau data.
Maybe I’m slow, but I can’t find the “peoples privacy rights are subordinate to the state’s right to protect people from themselves” clause in the Constitution. But “privacy right” in regard to one’s body are a constitutional right. Don’t believe me, read Griswald v, Conn 381 U.S. 479 (1965) and Roe v. Wade 410 US 113 (1973). Yep, I know - ironic.
Pro-tip. Some random person wondering around trying to publicly shame people by claiming his wife is a doctor…is probably telling an untruth.
I am very careful in comparing people to totalitarian groups or individuals. In the rare instances that I do, I make sure the actions of those I am criticizing are extremely similar to those I compare them with. The Stasi were the secret police of the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) who engaged in “Zersetzung” - slang for to “switch off” individuals and groups they viewed as a threat to the regime. To accomplish this they had a vast network of informants and would make people they viewed as a threat to the government unemployable and social outcasts by destroying reputations and relationships, and delegitimize and censoring critics of the government. Sound familiar?