OPINION:
A health care worker in North Carolina who’s worked in a hospital pharmacy for 21 or so years has been placed on unpaid leave for her refusal to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
And she’s now speaking out, warning about the untested nature of the shots in terms of long-term effects.
Fired for daring to think — it’s the new post-pandemic normal.
“Right now,” the Duke Health worker said, in an interview with CBS 17 where her face and name shielded from the public, “I think [the shot] should just be a personal choice if you want to get it or not.”
Imagine.
Personal choice; personal decision. That’s so 2019.
“I just feel like there should be more time with the vaccine to see how it’s really going to pan out,” she said. “I just felt like I had questions about the vaccine that I wasn’t getting answers to. I just feel uncomfortable putting that in my body knowing there are still unknowns.”
Ditto for millions of other Americans.
But the forced vaccines march on — and so, too, the forced layoffs, outright firings and unpaid administrative leaves.
From The New York Times, a couple of weeks ago: “Covid-19 News: Over 150 Texas Hospital Workers Are Fired or Resign Over Vaccine Mandate.”
From the Los Angeles Times, way back in June: “Houston hospital fires staff for refusing COVID-9 vaccine.”
From CNN, just this week: “New York’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers leads to suspension of hundreds of holdouts.”
One New York hospital has put a halt to delivering babies because of low staffing — due to vaccine mandates. Meanwhile, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has indicated she may call up the National Guard to fill the shoes of hospital staffers who were forced from their jobs due to the mandates. It’s a regulatory jungle out there.
Lawsuits are flying, fast and furious.
But the government’s not listening to the people.
“Poll: 65% Majority Say Americans Who Refuse Vaccine Should Not Lose Their Jobs,” wrote Convention of States Action, in partnership with The Trafalgar Group, in a recent release.
That’s a sizable number.
And it’s a number that includes independents and conservatives, along with a surprising number of self-identified Democrats. By the figures: 65% of votes don’t believe Americans should lose their jobs for refusing the vaccine; nearly 64% of independents don’t believe Americans should lose their jobs for refusing the vaccine; roughly 84% of Republicans think that way; and almost 48% of Democrats agree.
Almost half of Democrat voters don’t think workers should lose their jobs for refusing the vaccine — astonishing. This is the party of “Government Knows Best,” after all. This is the party of sheep. This is the party driven by emotion and fear and entitlement and insanity. And even half — almost half — think Joe Biden and his presidential push for private businesses to enforce vaccine mandates by firing resistors is a bit out of line, a bit out of step with reason.
You know you’ve crossed a regulatory line with even the key regulators think it’s too far.
“Our rights are not being protected right now,” said the Duke Health worker, about the shot. “If I let them fire me, I feel like I’m taking a stand for those who want to do the same, but they just can’t.”
Quite right.
Not all who would refuse the vaccine can take the same course of action as this brave health care worker. Bills still need to be paid. Food still needs to be put on the table.
The fact the government through private business can strip individual Americans of the God-given right to work and provide for self and family at the drop of a hat — at the snap of a vaccine mandate — is about the most unconstitutional, unconscionable, morally deplorable and utterly despicable civil rights scenario this country has suffered in a very, very long time.
It’s the liberty test of our day.
The only way to win is for more to resist.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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