Skip to main content

Showdown! Will Vaccine Mandates Prevail?

As American readers know, our Uniter-in-Chief announced a vaccine mandate for companies employing over 100 people. The rule has been drafted by OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and is now in review. It is expected to take effect in December--or to put it more plainly, millions of employees are supposed to be fired right before Christmas for the offense of being unvaccinated. Is this really going to happen? 

The day after the announcement, I talked to my boss, who's one of the owners where I work. He's a certified public accountant who advises businesses on compliance. He predicted lots of lawsuits and workarounds; I didn't get the sense there were any plans to fire unvaccinated employees. 

We've seen employers who've already issued mandates and claimed only 1% or so of their workforce left. But given the shortages, shutdowns, delays, rising prices, and rapidly rising wages for certain types of jobs, a 1% difference in the workforce beggars belief. Further, it doesn't take many employees leaving at once to create bottlenecks, especially when they work in similar positions and there aren't many applicants to replace them. Southwest Airlines finally realized this and is now defying a separate federal mandate, encouraging pilots to apply for exemptions. The mayor of Chicago, on the other hand, hasn't been as quick to catch on. 

As Mayor Lightfoot demands Chicago police get vaccinated, those officers have flooded police departments in northwest Indiana (just outside Chicago) with calls and emails seeking employment. Indiana Senator Mike Braun even invited them to contact his office so they can be put in touch with a police department that's hiring--the state police and the Indianapolis Metro Police Department among them. I imagine Senator Braun, who's a former employer himself, talked to the state attorney general about whether the upcoming OSHA mandate will be enforceable and got a response of "probably not." 





So there are indications, from people in a position to know, that federal mandates aren't going to fly and that employer mandates aren't necessarily workable. 

Not only do vaccine mandates make no sense in terms of public health--COVID vaccination rates aren't correlated with COVID rates and provide only small reduction in transmission that recedes or disappears after three months--but they're causing turmoil and simply shuffling people around. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

COVID Test Result is In

I don't have COVID.  On the one hand, it would have been a relief to have finally caught COVID and gotten natural antibodies, especially from having a mild case of it. On the other hand, I was concerned about my dog catching it from me (he's healthy, but nine years old) and it might have interfered with Thanksgiving plans.  Until I'm well, I'll stay home.

HHS Doctor on Hidden Camera: "The Vaccine is Full of Sh!t"

Jodi O'Malley, a registered nurse at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center (part of the Department of Health and Human Services), teamed up with Project Veritas to expose severe COVID vaccine reactions occurring but not being reported to VAERS, the vaccine adverse event reporting system, even though medical professionals are legally required to report such injuries. During the filming, a man in his thirties with congestive heart failure was being treated; the doctor believed the cause was his COVID vaccination. O'Malley says she's seen dozens of adverse reactions. "The vaccine is full of shit" and the government wants to "sweep it under the mat," the doctor says on hidden camera. We finally know what's in the vaccine. Screen grab from Project Veritas video . The video also shows a pharmacist stating that off-label medications such as ivermectin were forbidden to be prescribed on pain of termination.  Project Veritas is a nonprofit organization that does ...

Gym Influencer Doubles Down and Should Have Regretted It

Jennifer Picone isn't the most abusive gym influencer--far from it--but she may be the most annoying. In a video she posted that went viral, she was working out in a gym when another member appeared in the background by the free weights. The member was minding her own business, not looking in Picone's direction, when Picone got up and told her to move. After filming, Picone edited the video with a note about "Gym etiquette lesson #47" and accused the other gym member of "[doing] that 💩 on purpose."  Shaming other gym members has gotten to be such a big genre that Joey Swoll has a YouTube channel, with half a million subscribers, dedicated to calling out these content creators. Just for Picone, he took a break from his vacation to tell her to mind her own business. This may be the first time that Joey Swoll has taken one of his followers to task. The fact that she follows him and still doesn't know better than to treat the gym like her personal studio sh...

Stay in your car!

If there's ever a lunatic outside your vehicle, do not engage. Stay in your vehicle. Drive away or call the police. Drive over the curb, lawn or median if necessary; just avoid putting innocent bystanders at risk.*  Save yourself from lunatics like a boss. Screen grab from video by Fredrik Sørlie on Youtube . That advice might have saved a 69-year-old delivery driver from being attacked by former NFL player Mark Sanchez, who for unknown reasons was in an alley after midnight in downtown Indianapolis and decided to pick a fight over a parking space. I say might have because I haven't seen any video of the attack. But other incidents over the years bear out the safety of staying in your car. A neighbor was assaulted and robbed after she got out of her car after someone followed her home and blocked her driveway. And remember Reginald Denny from the LA riots? The victim maced and stabbed Sanchez, but suffered a bad cut to his face and tongue and looks like he was badly beaten. Bo...

The Under-the-Radar Ointment for Hard-to-Heal Wounds

Imagine looking in the mirror one morning and finding the side of your head black and your ear twice its normal size. That's what happened to Brad Burnam, who caught a deadly superbug at the hospital where he worked. Sometime after having emergency surgery--one of 21 surgeries over the next five years--he set out to cure himself.  The result he created was a fusion of PHMB, an antibiotic common in Europe but little known in the US, in a petroleum jelly base (like Vaseline), held together with a stabilizer/emulsifier. It sticks to wounds, keeps them moist, and provides a barrier. It cured his antibiotic resistant superbug. After getting FDA clearance, he formed Turn Therapeutics, and Hexagen is now available by prescription.  Screen shot from https://turntherapeutics.com/about/ Millions of Americans suffer from open wounds--chronic issues like diabetic foot ulcers. Readers probably have their blood sugar under control and avoid this condition, but might have parents, partners o...