Editor:
I decided to write a followup to the article (Oct. 27) that mentioned me going on a leave of absence from SHFAD. I wasn’t trying to make the news when I explained myself to the district board, but since I did I’ll elaborate a bit on why I made that decision.
The article included some quotes from the board meeting, but seemed more focused on using my situation as a springboard for rehearsing yet more dire sounding COVID stats as a rationale for the vaccination mandate.
The question isn’t whether or not the vaccines can be beneficial for many people. They can be. The degree of benefit depends on personal situations, and many well informed people have good reasons to decline these shots. The real question is whether or not it is ethically and morally correct to coerce or compel people to get a medical treatment they don’t want. It is not.
The vaccines available to us do not prevent infection or transmission. They reduce the severity of symptoms for many people, and thereby are hoped to “slow the spread” of COVID. They won’t eradicate it, and not even the manufacturers claim they will. States with mandates are not doing better than states without them. About 25% of new cases and hospitalizations in Oregon are people who are fully vaccinated, and that number will continue to rise. These are not like the MMR shots many of us got as kids.
The way this is being enforced is troubling as well. Using OSHA to intimidate employers, turning them into vaccine police, is very similar to tactics used in the Russian communist revolution. It’s about pitting people against one another while officials distance themselves from the damage done by their edicts.
Some enforcers (in this case, employers) go beyond what is mandated and exaggerate the requirements or consequences. Fear and anger were, and are, used to keep the crowds aligned against those the government identifies as threats and enemies.
This is a horrible precedent to accept. As pointed out by political prison survivor Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago,” this is the natural product of an elite class deciding they know what is best for everyone else. Dissenters can’t be tolerated, so edicts must be enforced.
No evidence was given to show that teachers or healthcare workers were a cause of significant COVID spread. But their ranks included dissenting voices, pointing people to actual facts and statistics that didn’t line up with the government/media narrative. People were starting to listen.
This mandate was nothing more than retribution. This is the kind of government our founding fathers warned us about.
It is tyranny. It can only exist when people go along with it. The only way to stop tyranny is to say “No!”
That is why I took a leave of absence instead of complying with the governor’s mandate. This is the real path to “getting back to normal.”
Wes Strubhar
Foster