Millions of hardworking Americans are being pushed into the shadows of society by corporations that have aligned with the Biden administration’s proposed vaccine mandates. Workers are being forced to choose between their employment or sacrificing their religious convictions, free will, or well-being. Employers should not be so autocratic and hardline in their policies because, besides being inhumane and medically unnecessary, they could also end up being on the wrong side of history.
History is replete with times government and medical authorities got serious health issues wrong, reversing course on things it once considered safe. Lead paint and pipes, asbestos, heroin, and cigarettes — these are just a few notable examples.
In another example, the U.S. government was once the world’s biggest buyer of cigarettes. The U.S. Army’s chief medical officer, William Gorgas, pushed it to soldiers to sustain morale and discipline, calm nerves, boost alertness, foster camaraderie, and suppress hunger. Today, with the benefits of long-term studies, we know that cigarettes are a Group 1 carcinogenic, and the Centers for Disease Control states, “Tobacco smoke has at least 70 chemicals that cause cancer.”
Likewise, the government once deemed asbestos safe, and the U.S. Patent Office even issued a patent for its use as an “Improved Compound for Roofing and Other Purposes.” Again, with the benefit of time, we know that asbestos causes mesothelioma, and those symptoms can take up to 40 years to appear. Today, the once-safe material that was promoted as “completely harmless … so safe, so effective, it actually is used to help filter the air in hospital operating rooms” is responsible for more than 255,000 deaths annually, 114 billion dollars in direct costs, and is the longest-running mass tort litigation in history.
Drugs and vaccines are also imperfect. The CDC reports there have been numerous vaccine safety concerns and recalls, dating back to the Cutter Incident in 1955 when the polio vaccine caused 40,000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with paralysis and killing ten.
Moreover, a Yale School of Medicine study found that nearly one-third of drugs approved between 2001 and 2010 had major safety issues years after they were made widely available to patients. It took a median of 4.2 years after approval for these safety concerns to surface, and issues were more common among drugs that were granted “accelerated approval” and those approved near the regulatory deadline.
History shows that sometimes we get it wrong. Can you understand why a healthy 20-year-old woman looking to have a child, who has no comorbidities or naturally acquired immunity, may hesitate to get a COVID shot? What she sees is an mRNA therapy that is the first of its kind, rushed to market in record time and beating all previous vaccine development by years.
Many Americans have a healthy distrust of Big Pharma and government — especially when vaccine makers are scoring record profits and duplicitous political leaders opined their own skepticism regarding the vaccine before holding office.
Under the administration’s possibly illegal new requirements affecting employers with more than 100 employees, either vaccinations or regular testing are required. However, some employers are going even further.
United Airlines is leading the pack in bullying its employees into getting the vaccine. In August, United told U.S. employees they will need to be fully vaccinated by October 25, and those who don’t bow to CEO Scott Kirby’s edict will be “terminated.” Even those few who receive exemptions, such as religious or medical exemptions, as required by law, will be put on unpaid leave.
These one-size-fits-all company policies are logically inconsistent and medically unnecessary. For example, someone who received the COVID vaccine in December 2020 could still report to work at United, despite the vaccine’s waning effectiveness. Yet an unvaccinated person who had recently recovered from the disease and acquired natural immunity would be fired.
This is despite the National Institutes of Health finding that more than 95 percent of people who recovered from COVID-19 had durable immune memories of the virus up to eight months after infection. A more recent study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer-lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease, and hospitalization than vaccine-induced immunity.
Employers are eager to reach the end of COVID restrictions, like we all are, and they have a duty to provide a safe work environment. However, policies should be accommodating and respect the right of an individual to make his own health-care decisions — especially given the complicated and still-evolving nature of what we know about the virus and the vaccine.
Those who choose not to get vaccinated must be free from corporate punishment, coercion, and harassment. If companies choose otherwise, all Americans — vaccinated and unvaccinated — should stand up to their corporate tyranny.
The COVID-19 pandemic has facilitated the largest American government and corporate power-grab of all time. The corporate vaccine mandates are simply the most recent manifestation of this destruction of liberty.
