Harken back, if you will, to the spring of 2020. We were told to “stay home to save lives,” and that we needed to “flatten the curve” so hospitals wouldn’t be overwhelmed.
In March and into April, that was the openly stated public health justification: we have to “slow the spread” so people aren’t dying in emergency waiting rooms and on sidewalks. We had to make sure everyone could get the care they needed, so much so that the U.S.S. Comfort went to New York City to provide extra hospital capacity during the nation’s most severe regional Covid surge.
We had to restrict people’s freedoms for this end, we were told, until we had a vaccine or effective treatment.
We’ve had COVID vaccines for almost a year now. At the end of 2021, what is the public health response to widespread hospital staffing shortages, especially given recent waves of Covid hospitalizations have been higher this year than last year in many places, like Oregon and Michigan? Keep restricting people’s freedoms. Clamp down harder on the jab mandates, even though it will strain the hospitals.
As Dan O’Donnell wrote recently in The Federalist, Children’s Wisconsin Milwaukee Hospital is struggling to care for 18 victims of the Waukesha parade massacre after firing staff who refused the vaccination (they boasted 90 percent compliance before the cutoff date, so it stands to reason around 10 percent were fired; possibly more quit before getting fired over the issue).
The hospital lists 239 open positions, O’Donnell notes. Children’s president was working the Emergency Room Floor until “at least 2 a.m.” because “we needed all the help we could get,” one source said. In October, Children’s closed its Delafield clinic “until the end of the year because of severe staffing shortages.”
“This is because of the mandate,” one source told O’Donnell. “People either quit because their exemptions were denied or didn’t even bother to apply. They just started looking for other jobs.”
A New York hospital recently had to suspend baby deliveries due to resignations over the vaccine mandate. Another closed a freestanding emergency room in Long Beach due to staffing shortages.
So, in sum:
2020: Restrict people’s freedoms so we don’t overwhelm hospitals.
2021: Restrict people’s freedoms even though it will overwhelm hospitals.
The vaccines were supposed to help end the pandemic, and now the pandemic is constantly framed in a way that serves more vaccines and invasive government power, no matter what the data says. New variant? More vaccines. No new variant? The vaccines are working! Seasonal Covid surge coming on? More vaccines! COVID at a seasonal low point? It must be the vaccines—get one! And if you don’t, you can’t participate equally in society in places like New York that have implemented vaccine passports, and all across the country your ability to work or go to school is threatened.
It bears repeating because a shocking number of people believe otherwise: the COVID jabs are not sterilizing, meaning they do not prevent or even, as the results of a U.K. study concur with real-world examples of outbreaks among highly vaccinated populations, substantially mitigate the spread of SARS-COV-2. While COVID vaccines appear to lower death rates, the relentless bullying to get vaccines in the name of “protecting others” is clearly baseless.
See Vermont as one of many examples of higher case and hospitalization rates despite high levels of vaccination. Cornell University had five times as many cases this September than last September, despite a 95 percent vaccination rate.
U.K. data shows vaccinated people and unvaccinated people get infected at similar rates, or even higher rates for vaccinated people among some age groups. This reality negates the government’s seizure of people’s natural right to make their own medical decisions as exhibited through lockdowns of the unvaccinated, vaccine passports, and mandates.
But logic is irrelevant to COVID fundamentalists. Vaccines have joined masks as sacred objects of unquestionable devotion. So their answer is always more vaccines and expanded government intervention in everyday life. Even when the evidence shows their prescriptions not only don’t work but also cause their own damage to human lives.
The jab mandate that’s supposed to protect patients is causing staffing shortages that put patients at risk? The answer is, of course, more boosters. In the case of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, blame the alleged impending surge of Omicron for the staffing shortages vaccine mandates have created (or exacerbated).
Omicron may evade vaccine-produced antibodies? Anthony Fauci prescribes the usual: more shots. Moderna even suggests a double-dose might be in order.
Omicron is alleged to be more transmissible? Vice President Kamala Harris says get vaccinated and boosted!
Kindergartners are in less danger from COVID than from the seasonal flu? Mandate the shot for school attendance.
We must ask ourselves: is there any event that won’t be answered by stuffing more taxpayer money in Pfizer and Moderna’s pockets? I’m hard-pressed to think of one, given the track record. That’s one way you know public health management by the Covidian fundamentalists isn’t about science. In science, assumptions and claims change when strong data contradicts them.
This is not about science, as Fauci insists. It is a toxic amalgamation of power-lust, avarice, fear, and religious devotion. Billions of dollars are at play, and the power to surveil Americans and suppress the freedom of political dissidents with vaccine passports is intoxicating to elected officials and bureaucrats.
The pretense that we owe allegiance to the COVID vaccines is just another bit of nonsense used toward those ends, and those of us who know it must never stop saying so.
