Sat Mar 23, 2024 11:33 pm by globalturbo
07/28/23
‘Because I Said So’: Witnesses Describe Hardships Caused by COVID Vaccine Mandates
A U.S. House of Representatives hearing of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic held Thursday explored the negative impacts of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates on Americans’ health, livelihood and trust in public health and government officials.
By
Monica Dutcher
Miss a day, miss a lot. Subscribe to The Defender's Top News of the Day. It's free.
A U.S. House of Representatives hearing of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Thursday heard testimony from four witnesses on the science and impact of the COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
In his opening statement, Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), a retired physician, criticized the Biden administration’s mandates for damaging trust in public health officials, causing job loss among many people — including healthcare workers who refused the vaccine — and negatively impacting military recruitment and retention.
Wenstrup said:
“Americans don’t do well when we simply say, ‘Because I said so.’ Americans want to be educated, not indoctrinated. … Many people had very reasonable concerns about whether the vaccine made the most sense for them.
“… but instead the Biden administration inserted itself into and defiled the sacred relationship that we as Americans have always treasured between the doctor and the patient … The vaccine did not prevent the spread of the virus, a fact already evident by the time the mandates were imposed.”
Witnesses detail employer retaliations against those seeking vaccine exemptions
Danielle Runyan, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, and Allison Williams, a reporter for Fox Sports, testified about retaliation against employees and military service members who refused the vaccine on religious or medical grounds.
A nationwide legal organization dedicated to defending religious liberty, First Liberty Institute represents thousands of service members across military branches who faced discrimination after filing religious exemptions.
In her testimony, Runyan mentioned a memo from the vice chief of naval operations threatening religious objectors with the loss of their careers and with clawback of income.
The memo stated the Navy “may seek recoupment of applicable bonuses, special and incentive pays, and the cost of training and education for service members refusing the vaccine.”
For special operations personnel such as SEALs, this amount could have exceeded $1 million each.
According to Runyan, plaintiffs in 40 lawsuits filed against the U.S. Department of Defense and their respective armed services and secretaries are now one to three years behind their peers in career advancement as a result of being suspended from their duties. Many will not qualify for promotion and face losing their jobs.
Williams detailed how she was forcibly separated from her role at ESPN for not taking the vaccine. Despite providing medical and religious reasons, human resources ultimately determined she “could not continue to be employed without creating an undue burden upon the company.”
Williams testified:
“Anyone who didn’t obediently follow orders to get in line and roll up their sleeves was portrayed as the enemy, a threat. No regard was given to natural immunity, personal convictions, religious beliefs or individual health and medical history — all valid reasons for declining this injection.
“If you were unvaccinated, you were part of the problem. If we are truly the land of the free, the only thing that should be mandated is that we will never trample the civil liberties and bodily autonomy of our citizens again.”
Professor appalled by ‘worrying groupthink in the liberal class’
Kevin Bardosh, Ph.D., affiliate assistant professor at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health, submitted two papers as part of his testimony: one published in BMJ Global Health and the other in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
In the first paper, Bardosh and scholars from Johns Hopkins, Oxford, Harvard and elsewhere outlined why the coercive approach to the COVID-19 vaccination policy in the U.S. and globally would ultimately be counterproductive and damaging to public health and society.
The authors cited nearly 150 papers primarily focused on ethical health policy to support their conclusions.
Quoting directly from the abstract, Bardosh said:
“Our analysis strongly suggests that mandatory COVID-19 vaccine policies have had damaging effects on public trust, vaccine confidence, political polarization, human rights, inequities and social wellbeing.
“We question the effectiveness and consequences of coercive vaccination policy in pandemic response and urge the public health community and policymakers to return to non-discriminatory, trust-based public health approaches.”
Later in the hearing, he added:
“What we’ve done with mandates [has] sacrificed long-term trust for a short-term gain, and I just think that was a bad decision.”
Bardosh’s second paper, which focused on booster mandates at American universities, concluded the mandates were unethical because they could result in greater health risks than benefits to healthy young adults (e.g., COVID-19 booster-associated myocarditis cases especially in males) and loss of educational opportunities for those who did not comply.
Bardosh said:
“We have seen the stifling of debate in our institutions of higher education, a lack of transparency and a worrying groupthink in the liberal class. This has been alarming to witness first hand.”
Later in the hearing, Bardosh revealed that he was a Bernie Sanders supporter prior to the pandemic. Being “ostracized” from the progressive wing, he said “has been illuminating.” Equity and inclusion are “plastered” across universities, he continued, “yet during COVID, certain types of people were considered more equal than others.”
“How many people have lost their jobs? There’s no study telling us that,” Bardosh said. “We don’t know how many people the mandates harmed.
Pro-mandate witness: ‘Public needed better explanations’
John Lynch, M.D., MPH, professor of medicine in the Division of Allergy & Infectious Diseases and associate medical director of the Harborview Medical Center at the University of Washington, was the only witness to support the vaccine and related mandates.
Lynch said:
“COVID-19 vaccines provide significant protection against severe disease, hospitalization and death. The bivalent booster increases protection. … When COVID-19 vaccines were first made available, there were extremely compelling reasons to boost vaccination rates quickly, which caused many healthcare professional societies to support vaccination requirements, particularly for health care workers.”
He acknowledged that public health professionals and the government must “improve communications to include more of the ‘why,’ more of … what stands behind the recommendations and requirements.”
‘Infringement on personal medical and religious freedoms and right to work’
During the hearing’s question-and-answer session, several subcommittee members, including Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), and Dr. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), stated that although they received the vaccine, they viewed the mandates as an infringement on personal medical and religious freedoms and right to work.
Malliotakis said:
“I had a problem with the government dictating to people that they need to do this [get the vaccine] or else lose their livelihoods. … Over 1,500 [New York] city employees were fired as a result of the mandates.
“Thousands who applied for medical or religious exemptions — they were left in bureaucratic limbo waiting to find out if their waivers were accepted or denied.”
Malliotakis noted that a New York state judge ruled the mandate for municipal workers was enacted illegally and that fired employees be reinstated with back pay. “This has not happened yet,” she stated. “Apparently the mayor doesn’t want to adhere to what the judge said.”
Rep. Deborah Ross (D-N.C.), along with several of her Democratic colleagues on the subcommittee, emphasized the “long and storied history” of vaccine requirements in this country, dating back to 1777, when George Washington’s continental troops had to be inoculated against smallpox.
“None of this is new,” Ross said. “Before COVID the military already required a long list of immunizations. The list of legal precedents supporting vaccine requirements is long as well.”
Ross cited Jacobson v. Massachusetts, where the state’s power to protect the public health of residents prevailed over an individual’s right to refuse vaccination.
Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii) also argued for vaccine requirements to ensure military readiness. She cited COVID-19 outbreaks on the USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS Kidd and the ensuing abandonment of their respective missions so that service members could receive treatment.
“Failure to complete a mission is not readiness,” she said.
Other issues raised during the hearing included rising vaccine hesitancy, COVID-19 “misinformation” as a cause for declining military recruitment and retention rate and the increase in myocarditis among the vaccinated.
Watch the entire hearing here:
THANKS TO: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/us-house-hearing-freedoms-wenstrup/?utm_source=luminate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=defender&utm_id=20230728
‘Because I Said So’: Witnesses Describe Hardships Caused by COVID Vaccine Mandates
A U.S. House of Representatives hearing of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic held Thursday explored the negative impacts of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates on Americans’ health, livelihood and trust in public health and government officials.
By
Monica Dutcher
Miss a day, miss a lot. Subscribe to The Defender's Top News of the Day. It's free.
A U.S. House of Representatives hearing of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Thursday heard testimony from four witnesses on the science and impact of the COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
In his opening statement, Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), a retired physician, criticized the Biden administration’s mandates for damaging trust in public health officials, causing job loss among many people — including healthcare workers who refused the vaccine — and negatively impacting military recruitment and retention.
Wenstrup said:
“Americans don’t do well when we simply say, ‘Because I said so.’ Americans want to be educated, not indoctrinated. … Many people had very reasonable concerns about whether the vaccine made the most sense for them.
“… but instead the Biden administration inserted itself into and defiled the sacred relationship that we as Americans have always treasured between the doctor and the patient … The vaccine did not prevent the spread of the virus, a fact already evident by the time the mandates were imposed.”
Witnesses detail employer retaliations against those seeking vaccine exemptions
Danielle Runyan, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, and Allison Williams, a reporter for Fox Sports, testified about retaliation against employees and military service members who refused the vaccine on religious or medical grounds.
A nationwide legal organization dedicated to defending religious liberty, First Liberty Institute represents thousands of service members across military branches who faced discrimination after filing religious exemptions.
In her testimony, Runyan mentioned a memo from the vice chief of naval operations threatening religious objectors with the loss of their careers and with clawback of income.
The memo stated the Navy “may seek recoupment of applicable bonuses, special and incentive pays, and the cost of training and education for service members refusing the vaccine.”
For special operations personnel such as SEALs, this amount could have exceeded $1 million each.
According to Runyan, plaintiffs in 40 lawsuits filed against the U.S. Department of Defense and their respective armed services and secretaries are now one to three years behind their peers in career advancement as a result of being suspended from their duties. Many will not qualify for promotion and face losing their jobs.
Williams detailed how she was forcibly separated from her role at ESPN for not taking the vaccine. Despite providing medical and religious reasons, human resources ultimately determined she “could not continue to be employed without creating an undue burden upon the company.”
Williams testified:
“Anyone who didn’t obediently follow orders to get in line and roll up their sleeves was portrayed as the enemy, a threat. No regard was given to natural immunity, personal convictions, religious beliefs or individual health and medical history — all valid reasons for declining this injection.
“If you were unvaccinated, you were part of the problem. If we are truly the land of the free, the only thing that should be mandated is that we will never trample the civil liberties and bodily autonomy of our citizens again.”
Professor appalled by ‘worrying groupthink in the liberal class’
Kevin Bardosh, Ph.D., affiliate assistant professor at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health, submitted two papers as part of his testimony: one published in BMJ Global Health and the other in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
In the first paper, Bardosh and scholars from Johns Hopkins, Oxford, Harvard and elsewhere outlined why the coercive approach to the COVID-19 vaccination policy in the U.S. and globally would ultimately be counterproductive and damaging to public health and society.
The authors cited nearly 150 papers primarily focused on ethical health policy to support their conclusions.
Quoting directly from the abstract, Bardosh said:
“Our analysis strongly suggests that mandatory COVID-19 vaccine policies have had damaging effects on public trust, vaccine confidence, political polarization, human rights, inequities and social wellbeing.
“We question the effectiveness and consequences of coercive vaccination policy in pandemic response and urge the public health community and policymakers to return to non-discriminatory, trust-based public health approaches.”
Later in the hearing, he added:
“What we’ve done with mandates [has] sacrificed long-term trust for a short-term gain, and I just think that was a bad decision.”
Bardosh’s second paper, which focused on booster mandates at American universities, concluded the mandates were unethical because they could result in greater health risks than benefits to healthy young adults (e.g., COVID-19 booster-associated myocarditis cases especially in males) and loss of educational opportunities for those who did not comply.
Bardosh said:
“We have seen the stifling of debate in our institutions of higher education, a lack of transparency and a worrying groupthink in the liberal class. This has been alarming to witness first hand.”
Later in the hearing, Bardosh revealed that he was a Bernie Sanders supporter prior to the pandemic. Being “ostracized” from the progressive wing, he said “has been illuminating.” Equity and inclusion are “plastered” across universities, he continued, “yet during COVID, certain types of people were considered more equal than others.”
“How many people have lost their jobs? There’s no study telling us that,” Bardosh said. “We don’t know how many people the mandates harmed.
Pro-mandate witness: ‘Public needed better explanations’
John Lynch, M.D., MPH, professor of medicine in the Division of Allergy & Infectious Diseases and associate medical director of the Harborview Medical Center at the University of Washington, was the only witness to support the vaccine and related mandates.
Lynch said:
“COVID-19 vaccines provide significant protection against severe disease, hospitalization and death. The bivalent booster increases protection. … When COVID-19 vaccines were first made available, there were extremely compelling reasons to boost vaccination rates quickly, which caused many healthcare professional societies to support vaccination requirements, particularly for health care workers.”
He acknowledged that public health professionals and the government must “improve communications to include more of the ‘why,’ more of … what stands behind the recommendations and requirements.”
‘Infringement on personal medical and religious freedoms and right to work’
During the hearing’s question-and-answer session, several subcommittee members, including Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), and Dr. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), stated that although they received the vaccine, they viewed the mandates as an infringement on personal medical and religious freedoms and right to work.
Malliotakis said:
“I had a problem with the government dictating to people that they need to do this [get the vaccine] or else lose their livelihoods. … Over 1,500 [New York] city employees were fired as a result of the mandates.
“Thousands who applied for medical or religious exemptions — they were left in bureaucratic limbo waiting to find out if their waivers were accepted or denied.”
Malliotakis noted that a New York state judge ruled the mandate for municipal workers was enacted illegally and that fired employees be reinstated with back pay. “This has not happened yet,” she stated. “Apparently the mayor doesn’t want to adhere to what the judge said.”
Rep. Deborah Ross (D-N.C.), along with several of her Democratic colleagues on the subcommittee, emphasized the “long and storied history” of vaccine requirements in this country, dating back to 1777, when George Washington’s continental troops had to be inoculated against smallpox.
“None of this is new,” Ross said. “Before COVID the military already required a long list of immunizations. The list of legal precedents supporting vaccine requirements is long as well.”
Ross cited Jacobson v. Massachusetts, where the state’s power to protect the public health of residents prevailed over an individual’s right to refuse vaccination.
Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii) also argued for vaccine requirements to ensure military readiness. She cited COVID-19 outbreaks on the USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS Kidd and the ensuing abandonment of their respective missions so that service members could receive treatment.
“Failure to complete a mission is not readiness,” she said.
Other issues raised during the hearing included rising vaccine hesitancy, COVID-19 “misinformation” as a cause for declining military recruitment and retention rate and the increase in myocarditis among the vaccinated.
Watch the entire hearing here:
THANKS TO: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/us-house-hearing-freedoms-wenstrup/?utm_source=luminate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=defender&utm_id=20230728
