THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT!

Apparently, if you say you believe in a god that is opposed to vaccination, or at least opposed to a covid vaccination, then it is okay for you to infect your neighbor.  (The problem is sufficiently prevalent that it has come to the attention of the Pope, and he has instructed priests to refuse to give parishioners a letter or certificate they can use to avoid covid vaccination.)

 How did we get to this place? We got here because timorous business leaders and cowardly political leaders have established vaccination mandates that exclude those with religious excuses.

Is it unreasonable to ask what a person’s religious beliefs have to do with the likelihood of disease transmission, whether the victims, are believers or non-believers?

We now know that, i) 90% of covid hospital (or morgue) patients are not immunized, and ii) non-immunized persons are the cause of increased infection and death rates, and iii) immunized persons run the risk of “breakthrough” infections that, while unlikely to result in hospitalization or death, may result in milder forms of the disease, and even may result in ”Long Covid.” 

So the question is, absent proof that being a believer in an anti-vax religious movement makes it impossible to transmit disease, why is a person’s religious belief even relevant to the issue of vaccination? 

And unvaccinated people, god-fearing or not, will, for sure, transmit covid. There is a current report from the CDC of a Marin County, California unvaccinated teacher transmitting the disease to 12 students in her class of kids too young to be vaccinated. The kids, in turn, transmitted the disease to a dozen parents and friends, many of whom were vaccinated. 

What school principal allowed an unvaccinated teacher into a classroom? Did the school have a policy requiring teachers to be vaccinated? If the school did have such a policy, and the teacher had an exemption because of her religious beliefs, would the kids who were infected have avoided their illness?  Would they have avoided taking the virus home with them and enlarging the pool of victims? 

Is there a religious exemption for a drunk driver who argues he should not be held criminally responsible for vehicular homicide because his intoxication was caused by drinking sacramental wine at a religious service? 

If my questions seem foolish, consider this: there is now pending in the Eleventh Circuit, a case involving a group convicted and sentenced to prison for vandalizing a military base. They argue on appeal they should not be punished because they were acting in accordance with their “sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Or take the case of Dhokar Tsarnaev, the Chechen “freedom fighter,” who with his brother, planted pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people and injured 260 others at a Boston Marathon. While hiding from police, Tsarnaev wrote a note saying he would stop killing Americans when they “stopped killing us.” The Supreme Court has now has on its docket his argument, among others, that he should avoid the death penalty because his older brother had earlier killed three people and that fact put pressure on him to kill Americans. I suggest the “pressure” argument has a lot in common with the religious exemption argument. It basically says, I am not responsible for my conduct outside legal norms if I am influenced by some outside influence or pressure, be it religious, ethnic, fraternal, or whatever.

Is it any wonder that Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos fame, (infamy?) apparently will argue in her forthcoming trial that she defrauded investors, patients, and physicians because of pressure by an abusive business partner? Another defendant’s brief entitled, ‘’The Devil Made Me Do It?”

The FDA final approval of the Pfizer vaccine saw many institutions adopt vaccination requirements for their employees and some even for their customers. Doubtless there are more to come. To my observation, a large number of these mandates had a religious exemption hedge. Ridiculous and self-defeating. 

Between the religious exemption hedgers and the DiSantis morons, we could be fighting this disease for a decade.

A bientot!

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COVID, COVID, AND MORE COVID

As much as I try to avoid this subject, I find it impossible. Today's New York Times Sunday Review has a full page front page article on how to deal with the rage vaccinated people feel for unvaccinated people. The article’s conclusion?  “So when all else fails, if your anger at “the unvaccinated” feels unbearable, focus less on those whose actions are beyond your control" and think about your blessings.

Hogwash.

Recent reports make it clear that "breakthroughs" are growing in number, and while vaccinated people “theoretically” have the capacity to communicate the disease to other vaccinated people, science tells us that is “rare," and between 97 and 99% of the people being treated for covid in the hospital and who died there are unvaccinated. Bottom line:  breakthroughs are the result of vaccinated people coming in contact with unvaccinated people.

Apparently, the statistics show that for most of the unvaccinated, the issue is “freedom of choice.” Really? I'm willing to concede their freedom to risk suffering from covid and even to choose to take the risk of dying from it. But I certainly do not concede they have the "freedom" to infect me or my family. I do not concede they have the "freedom to choose " to incubate the next and possibly even more deadly variant. I do not concede that one has the “freedom to choose” drive drunk or to drive 90 miles an hour on a 45 mile an hour road occupied by other vehicles. 

But the shrinks have it right: being angry doesn't change anything, unless you use the anger to focus on a solution to the problem that is making you angry in the first place.

So here is my proposal:

1. No employment, anywhere, for unvaccinated people. The companies that have adopted a policy of employees choosing vaccination or regular testing are equivocating.  Employers that fear they will lose too many workers who refuse inoculation are simply going to have to suck it up. It will be temporary. If the right to be employed becomes universal, then vaccination will become universal. There is no reason to allow a potential disease carrier in your place of business, masked or unmasked. We isolated Typhoid Mary, and we should do the same with "Freedom of Choice" unvaccinated holdouts.

2. Same with high schools and colleges.  And if and when the vaccine is approved for five-year olds, same with grade school, public and private. No whining.

2. No religious exemptions. There are no religious principles that authorize adherents to infect and kill other people. Madness.

3. For those relatively few people who have medical issues that preclude vaccinations, companies ought try to accommodate them via remote work. Obviously only some occupations are susceptible to this solution. An employee who works on a loading dock is simply going to have to find another way of making a living. The ADA did not contemplate requiring changes in the workplace that threatened the lives and safety of co-workers. This is war.

How to accomplish this? It's up to businesses. Vaccination should be an absolute requirement. (Did you know that Walmart, the largest employer in the United States, with annual profits of hundreds of millions of dollars, has a policy requiring management to be inoculated but no such requirement for the 1.5 million workers who face the public daily?) The government can help, but only business can get this job done. They need to put on their big boy pants and do what’s right for the country that is the safest and wealthiest in the world. They owe us that much.

By the way, have you noticed that the “Freedom of Choice” states with the lowest vax rates (and highest disease rates) are universally ANTI Freedom of Choice when it comes to a woman’s reproductive Freedom of Choice?

A bientot.

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