Commentary By Donna Westfall – January 4, 2022

Every few days I check out the Del Norte County Health Department website to find out how our community is doing regarding COVID. Here’s the latest:

In an exchange between Dr. Stutz, one of Del Norte County’s Health Officer’s that makes $15,000 a month, and local country resident Branden Bieber:

Dr. Stutz: “It is currently within the power of employers and the state to require employees to receive a vaccine, if this is the “drug” that you’re referring to.”

Branden Bieber: “What employer right?  This harassment must stop.  Employee’s need employers, and employers need employees.  You are creating a hostile work environment!  Your health ordinance is crippling local commerce, and negatively influencing mental and physical health.  This state of emergency legislation seems focused on implementing ZOOM into government and benefiting the Pelosi stockholders.  This embellished state of emergency does not give you or anyone else the righteousness to impose your health perspective with the unproven vaccine drugs, and disgusting chemically infused masks.”

Dr. Stutz: “Also, it is quite clear that healthcare employers have every right to require vaccination as a condition of employment, and this has always been the case even before COVID. We’ll see if upcoming court cases in the supreme court do anything to change these historical precedents.”

Branden Bieber: “Are you intentionally trying to disrupt the commerce of our community?  Stop the fear mongering.  Even as cases go up, deaths are going down.  Mortality rates are not dramatically different from pre-Covid era.  Before this strain of FLU, approx. 24,000 Californians died every month.  Over two years and this flu has caused 75,000 deaths in California.  This hysteria you are broadcasting has worse consequences than the effect of this viral flu.  Statistics indicate, the majority of deaths attributed to COVID were largely caused from pre-existing conditions.  Show me something that you consider your Health Ordinance has achieved through your ordinance.  I bet your job;   you can’t produce information that proves your recommendations have worked better than anywhere else in the world.  You can’t, and you don’t know.  Your ideas could have terrible consequences.  A large population in the United States does not agree with you. When and if the Supreme Court finds this mandate to be unconstitutional will you be held liable?  We’ll find out soon!”

Next – Credit to Ben Shapiro of The Daily Signal who said this: “We have vaccines that likely reduce the chances of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 (somewhere between 0.05% and 0.1%) to below the infection fatality rates of the flu (somewhere between 0.1% and 0.2%).”

“And yet, here we are, nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, with our expert class informing us that we must vaccinate and boost, no matter our age (in reality, only those who are older than 65 or immunocompromised truly require a booster); that we must continue to mask up, even if that means using cloth masks against omicron (even Leana Wen, CNN’s resident COVID-19 hawk, calls cloth masks “facial decorations”); that we must vaccinate and mask our small children and possibly shut down schools again (children are at near-zero statistical risk from COVID-19); that we must test the asymptomatic, sending the economy into soft lockdown (attempting to prevent transmission is a fool’s errand, given the transmissibility of omicron); that we must put in place vaccine passports (even though the vaccinated are getting and transmitting omicron); and that we must continue to spend money at record rates in order to prop up an economy that we are destroying for no good reason.”

“We have, in other words, lost our minds.”

Let’s compare this to smallpox. Credit to USA Today October 2, 2021 “Vaccine mandates are not new to American history. From smallpox to COVID, here’s what public health learned”

“Gen. George Washington was one of the first leaders to introduce mandates to the U.S. when he required his troops to get inoculated during the Revolutionary War, fearing the army would be decimated by smallpox, said Evan Hart, assistant professor of history at Missouri Western State University.

Although there was initial pushback, it set a precedent for inoculations to become the norm in the armed forces.

“The military has required vaccines of troops since we’ve had a military.” “If you’re going into the military, there’s kind of an expectation that there’s a lot of control that you’re giving up … when you’re in the military, you were going to get some shots.”

The general American public was more resistant in the early 1900s, when smallpox outbreaks began popping up, said Michael Willrich, a professor of history at Brandeis University and author of “Pox: An American History.”

“Cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston and New Orleans had pretty serious outbreaks of classic, very deadly smallpox that historically had killed 25 to 30% of people infected,” he said.”

In other headline news today’s date:

Judge Blocks Pentagon from Punishing Navy SEALs Who Refused COVID-19 Vaccine

Judge Reed O’Connor, the U.S. District Court Judge presiding over the case stated: “The Navy service members in this case seek to vindicate the very freedoms they have sacrificed so much to protect. The COVID-19 pandemic provides the government no license to abrogate those freedoms. There is no COVID-19 exemption to the First Amendment… and there is no military exclusion from our Constitution.”

Florida Governor DeSantis said, “If I had a dollar for every lockdown politician who decided to escape to Florida over the last two years, I’d be a pretty dog gone wealthy man, …”

Other things to look forward to:

Sen. Ted Cruz: “GOP May Impeach Biden if They Win House”.

Personally, I’d pefer to see Biden/Harris/Pelosi charged with treason.