OPINION:
New York is trashing its coronavirus saviors, the health care professionals who stood in the breach to defend the lives of their fellow citizens against the deadly pandemic. Government authoritarians are summarily firing those in the ranks who dare dissent against mandatory vaccination orders. New York is, after all, “the Empire State.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a vaccine order with a Sept. 27 deadline for compliance, or else. It is Her Honor’s most momentous — and least sensible — decision. Some 72,000 of the state’s 450,000 health care workers remain less than fully vaccinated despite the threat of termination, and the purge is underway. Following suit, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio has placed 7,000 city teachers and 17,000 school staffers on the chopping block unless they’re vaxxed by 5 p.m. Friday.
To fill the void created by the loss of as many as 16 percent of hospital, nursing home, and health clinic staff, Ms. Hochul prepared to call out the National Guard. Armed troops are proficient in repelling the enemy, but the virus, not so much. Perhaps the governor intends to jab vaccine refuseniks with a pointy bayonet.
New York is a deep blue state. The citizenship — including medical and education professionals — are mostly Democrats and presumably down with the liberal majority’s agenda. Still, tens of thousands who have witnessed the ravages of COVID-19 up-close are concluding the vax poses a greater risk to their lives than staying unvaxxed does to their livelihood. Why?
These health care providers may be spooked from reading data posted on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which shows 42 percent of ill effects recorded from all varieties of vaccines since the system was created in 1990 have resulted from the trio of COVID-19 vaccines administered since 2020.
Alternatively, they may be appalled by rare but disturbing adverse vaccine reactions suffered by patients they have personally treated. The Mayo Clinic reports that they include myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart that mainly occurs in male adolescents, and Guillain-Barre syndrome, an auto-immune reaction that can lead to varying stages of paralysis.
They also could have caught COVID-19 during their long months on the front line of the pandemic battle and are following the science, eschewing the shot because they have natural immunity, a proven defense against reinfection.
Or New York’s heroes might simply be practicing their time-honored privilege as Americans to maintain autonomy over their own person, as in “my body, my choice.”
None of these reasons are worthy of an exemption, say the self-empowered Uber-lords. Employees of faith are free, though, to seek a pass on the grounds that they are following the religion.
There is good reason to fear the pandemic, but it’s time for Americans to get a grip when their heroes are suddenly condemned as zeroes.
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