COVID-19
Employer Vaccination Mandates Under Scrutiny Post COVID-19
From Heartland Daily News
From presidential candidate Donald Trump’s promise to reinstate military members who were fired for not getting COVID-19 shots to a federal court decision favoring employee vaccination preferences, vaccine mandates at work appear to be coming to an end.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Illinois ruled employees at Wisconsin health care system Aspirus, Inc. can go forward with their claim that they were unlawfully denied a religious exemption from having to accept a COVID-19 shot. Aspirus claimed the employees’ real reason for not wanting the shots was secular, not religious.
Public Employees Protected
In 2023, Texas updated Section 81B.003 of the state’s health and safety code prohibiting vaccination mandates for state and local government employees. Before the change, employees had to prove a health risk or religious convictions to be granted an exemption.
Texas has taken the lead in prohibiting government agencies from issuing mandates for people to get vaccinated. Similar laws have passed in Florida and 11 other states: Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah.
Private Employees’ Rights Unclear
Private employers are a different matter says Javier Perez, a board-certified labor and employment law attorney with Crain Brogdon LLP in Dallas
“Despite the new protective laws for [government] employees, unless there is a specific law prohibiting employer vaccine mandates, employers can still, generally speaking, impose workplace vaccine mandates so long as they do not discriminate,” said Perez, a board-certified labor and employment law attorney with Crain Brogdon LLP in Dallas. “The employer has wide discretion to decide what the rules of the road are in their workplace.”
The dynamics in the workplace have changed, says Perez.
“My sense of the job market is that employers can replace people who won’t comply,” said Perez. “But with a lot of jobs pivoting to remote work—more than we thought possible—it’s kind of an easy way, on a temporary basis, to work around those risks.”
Mandates ‘Have Backfired’
Despite the lack of clarity in employer-employee relations, the tide is turning against vaccine mandates and other COVID-related work rules, in particular failures to accommodate religious exemptions, says Douglas P. Seaton, J.D, Ph.D., president of Upper Midwest Law Center.
“These mandates, based on shoddy or no science, have backfired because they have resulted in serious levels of suspicion of the bona fides of all new government regulation, especially when ‘science’ is claimed to be the rationale,” said Seaton.
‘Simply Shut Up’
In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Massachusetts could not pass a vaccination mandate to protect the individual but could do so “to protect the public from a dangerous communicable disease.”
Historically, the public health bureaucracy had been relatively circumspect in exercising that enormous power to control individual behavior, says Linda Gorman, director of the Independence Institute’s Health Care Policy Center. Things began to change in the 1990s when public health researchers and government health bureaucracies were captured by the notion that the British, Canadian, and European health care systems were better than the U.S. system because they were government-controlled.
“They apparently believed that health would improve, and costs would fall, if patients, doctors, and suppliers would simply shut up and do as they were told,” said Gorman.
‘Power Is Attractive’
The COVID-19 pandemic tested that power. Instead of systematically providing the best available information to individuals about the new COVID vaccine and allowing informed consent, the bureaucrats resorted to brute force to make people do as they were told, says Gorman.
“Power is attractive, and I see no sign that the health bureaucracy will give up its vast powers without a fight,” said Gorman. “The tragedy is the backfire has made people suspicious about all vaccine recommendations, and unknown numbers of people will die and suffer severe health consequences as a result.”
The COVID overreach made credentialed experts’ ethical failings evident, says Gorman.
“It is now obvious that government health bureaucracies see no harm in lying about efficacy, disease risk, and data quality in order to achieve their own end,” said Gorman.
“The first question is, ‘What do we do about it?’” said Gorman. “The second is, “Who should people trust for the accurate information they need to make informed decisions about their medical care?”
Kenneth Artz ([email protected]) writes from Tyler, Texas.
COVID-19
Canadian doctor ordered to pay back $600k she earned through mass COVID vaccination
From LifeSiteNews
In a November 26 ruling, the Ontario Health Services Board ordered Kingston-based Dr. Elaine Ma to pay back over $600,000 which she had claimed after having undergraduate medical student volunteers mass vaccinate Ontario residents in 2021.
The province of Ontario paid doctors for every experimental COVID shot they administered, with one physician now being told to repay the $600,000 she earned by using medical students to mass vaccinate residents.
In a November 26 ruling, the Ontario Health Services Board ordered Kingston-based Dr. Elaine Ma to pay back over $600,000 which she had claimed after having undergraduate medical student volunteers mass vaccinate Ontario residents in 2021.
“The Appeal Board orders the Respondent to reimburse OHIP the amount of $600,962.16,” the board wrote in their decision.
Beginning in January 2021, Ma had organized drive-in vaccination clinics in several parking lots in the Kingston region to vaccinate thousands of Canadians. She recruited undergraduate medical student volunteers to administer the shots.
Under Ma’s program, which lasted until January 2022, 27,250 doses of the experimental COVID shot were administered, earning her a total of $606,657.60, according to the General Manager of the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP).
According to OHIP, Ontario doctors were paid $13 for administrating COVID vaccines, and an additional $5.60 if the patient’s sole reason for their appointment was receiving the shot.
However, OHIP argued that Ma’s claims did not meet their requirements as she used volunteers to administer the vaccines, explaining, “the persons who administered vaccines at the clinics organized by Dr. Ma during the Review Period were not her employees.”
As a result, she was ordered to repay the money. However, Ma is arguing that she was acting in Ontario’s best interest, considering the alleged danger of the COVID “pandemic.”
“It’s really still just disbelief that we’ve completely forgotten about COVID,” she told CTV News Ottawa. “We’ve completely forgotten what we were asked to do. We’ve completely forgotten the fact that we were asked to do it in new and different ways, and quickly, and as fast as possible.”
Indeed, many mainstream media outlets are defending Ma, arguing she was doing her best to vaccinate as many Ontarians as possible. The outlets, and Ma herself, conveniently fail to mention the dangerous side effects of the shots, which were pushed on Canadians.
While Ontario previously paid doctors to administer the shots, Canada’s program to compensate those injured by the so-called “safe and effective” COVID vaccines has now spent $14 million, but the vast majority of claims remain unpaid.
However, while Ma collected taxpayer dollars to administer the experimental vaccines, many courageous doctors have risked their livelihoods to warn Canadians about the dangers of the COVID shots.
For example, Ontario pro-freedom Dr. Mark Trozzi has lost his medical license for speaking out against the mainstream narrative, despite overwhelming evidence as to the negative effects of the vaccines.
In 2023, Trozzi exposed the dark money, political pressure, establishment corruption, and fake news that made the COVID-19 propaganda campaign a terror operation that brought the world to its knees.
In an interview with LifeSiteNews, he revealed that many of his colleagues were spellbound by the government’s COVID-19 fear campaign. However, he notes that others discovered that following the establishment’s mandates for COVID-19 treatment – such as only conducting PCR tests or nasal swab – paid as much as 20 percent more than regular work at their normal practice.
The campaign to foist the so-called COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ upon the global population also carried with it a monetary payoff.
“As I understand it, those injections paid very well everywhere,” said Trozzi. “One case in point is one of my colleagues has a contact who’s an ear, nose, and throat surgeon in Germany, and he stopped doing surgery. He said, ‘I only do the minimum amount of V.A. specialty work to keep my license because I’m making way more money just giving shots during that peak.’”
COVID-19
New York City workers fired for refusing COVID jab ask Trump, Vance, RFK Jr. to reinstate them
From LifeSiteNews
Their letter ‘brings attention to the fact that Mayor Eric Adams is the number one obstacle preventing unvaccinated workers from being brought back to their jobs and getting compensated.’
A group of former New York City workers representing thousands who were fired or displaced from their jobs for declining the city’s unconstitutionally mandated COVID-19 vaccine based on religious or medical grounds sent a letter to President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, and Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., asking for help with being reinstated to their jobs.
“The letter (included below) draws attention to the plight they have been fighting for more than three years in the courts, in the streets, and in City Hall trying to get back to doing what they do best — working for the City of New York,” explained Michael Kane, writing at the Teachers for Choice Substack.
“Firefighters, cops, teachers, sanitation workers, medical professionals and more have asked the incoming presidential administration for help getting back to their employment,” Kane wrote. “The letter brings attention to the fact that Mayor Eric Adams is the number one obstacle preventing unvaccinated workers from being brought back to their jobs and getting compensated.”
****
Dear President-Elect Trump and Vice President-Elect Vance,
In the Fall of 2021, thousands of well-performing New York City employees, including but not limited to firefighters, police officers, teachers, social workers, sanitation workers, medical doctors, nurses, plumbers and doormen were unlawfully placed on leave without pay and subsequently terminated by the duplicitous leaders of New York City for non-compliance with the unconstitutional COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Many City workers had to choose under duress to take the shot in order to keep making a living. Others were coerced into early retirement, waiving their labor rights or resigning. This mass reduction in the City’s workforce has caused a critical staff shortage. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio, his then Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi, Mayoral Expert Advisor Jay Varma, Mayor Eric Adams and his then Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan are only some of the political leaders and health bureaucrats who violated our constitutional and labor rights. The two former NYC Department of Education (DOE) Chancellors, Meisha Porter and David Banks, embraced the vaccine mandate and cooperated in removing DOE employees, as did the UFT President Michael Mulgrew and AFT President Randi Weingarten. Much has changed in the past three years, and there are many revelations now that we were lied to about almost every aspect of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Thousands of unvaccinated workers nationwide have gone through hell due to the COVID-19 vaccine mandates. For the past three years, New York City workers had our wages illegally seized, which has led to the loss of income, loss of property, loss of medical insurance, poverty, humiliation, emotional distress and family discord. Many of us have gone from having a good income with a plan for retirement to meet our basic needs and secure our family well-being, to living hand to mouth, losing our homes and other assets, having to move in with family, and even move to other states and countries. Some of us were foreclosed upon. Some ended up in the shelter and welfare systems. At least one committed suicide.
The morale and mental health of all City workers, both public and private sectors, have been dealt a severe blow by the vaccine mandate firings. Many City workers have taken legal actions against the City of New York and other parties involved in the hope of correcting the irreparable harm. Some courts and juries have rendered decisions in favor of the unvaccinated workers, but relief has not been awarded because the City of New York and Mayor Eric Adams keep appealing the decisions at the taxpayers’ expense, which is a reckless use of public funds.
According to available records, in 2023, Mayor Adams hired 30 additional attorneys at a taxpayer cost of $5,000,000.00 a year, just to keep up with the lawsuits filed by the fired employees who tirelessly worked during the COVID-19 pandemic, without vaccines and PPE. His actions are beyond outrageous and disheartening.
Based on Court decisions rendered in Michigan, California, Illinois and Colorado, New York seems to be the only state that has not awarded relief to the unlawfully terminated workers. Despite all the cruelty and financial hardship unvaccinated workers are faced with, we are standing firm in our pursuit of justice. We know that you are committed to uphold the Constitution as it pertains to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for We The People.
Therefore, we respectfully ask that you please help City workers, members of the military and all other citizens who were unlawfully forced out and fired as a result of the vaccine mandate.
Sincerely,
****
The 250+ signatories of the letter, who have thousands of years of service to the city between them, have come together under the umbrella of “NY Workers for Choice,” representing Bravest for Choice, Teachers for Choice, Finest Unfiltered, Court Workers for Choice, Cops 4 Freedom, Educators for Freedom, Strongest for Freedom and Medical Professionals for Informed Consent.
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