Editor:
“COVID is the No. 1 killer of law enforcement officers in 2020 and 2021,” according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, http://www.odmp.org.
Yet police unions across the country are pushing cops to defy the Covid vaccine mandate. We pay them to serve and protect us … yet they refuse to get vaccinated to protect us, not to mention themselves and their families!
Self-preservation is hard-wired in all species. Doubly so, you’d think, in law enforcement, fire, EMT, healthcare.
Yet here we are with John Catanzara, president of Lodge 7 of the Fraternal Order of Police in Chicago arrogantly and with stunning hypocrisy pronouncing, “We don’t want to be forced to do anything. Period!”
REALLY? Are cops above the law? Why yes, they are in a lot of ways … it’s called Qualified Immunity and it protects cops even when courts determine officers have violated our civil rights.
Cops claim they need QI’s freedom of collateral damage to fully function. Maybe the cops have come to view all civilians as inferior beings and feel they don’t have to answer to these lesser beings … hence the Blue Wall.
Their threats to quit rather than submit to a vaccine also comes across as a power play about their indispensableness – the “thin blue line” – threatening us with, “We will see how good you-all do without us,” which is probably being directed to the crazy “defund the police” folks.
I mean, who in his right mind would want to defund law enforcement! Makes zero sense to me and I don’t see it ever happening. But you know, one threat compels another.
Are you really willing to sacrifice your careers (time served, PERS), retire early with lower retirement dollars over a vaccine mandate? Really? What do your wife and kids think of that? Where are you gonna go? Blackwater?
Catanzara also went on to compare COVID vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany’s SS men, who directed the assembly line killing of at least 1.1 million Jewish men, women and children in gas chambers while telling them the chambers were for disinfection and bathing.
The Nazis’ goal was to kill 11 million Jews; they killed 6 million in all manner of horrific ways.
Is that, seriously, how the cops view life-saving COVID vaccines and mandates? Really?
According to the CDC, vaccination was highest among physicians and advanced practice providers (75.1%) and lowest among nurses (56.7%) and aides (45.6%).” What does that tell ya? Education, education and STEM education is needed.
The vaccines work, and they keep the infection rates down, and if you do happen to get a breakthrough case, you are very less likely to end up in a hospital. The only people who are still at greater risk of contracting and dying of Covid after being fully vaccinated are those who are immunocompromised, such as retired four star general, former secretary of state and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Colin Powell, who had multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells that suppresses the body’s immune response, as well as Parkinson’s Disease.
I personally think it’s also politics.
Most cops and firemen are republicans/libertarians and white.
All these people who refuse to get vaccinated to prove some sorta political or religious point are letting the virus win. Letting America down. I’m sure China, Russia and all our enemies are cheering them on.
Personally, not being a people person, I don’t care if you get vaccinated or wear a mask. I will protect myself against you by getting vaccinated and wearing a mask … forever, if need be.
Diane Daiute
Sweet Home