Well, that virtual temper tantrum sure went a long way to convincing me that I was wrong to view your position as petulant, childish and anti-social.
I have said nothing about Christian duty. I have spoken of civic duties. The kind we all have to preform, whether we want to or not, as citizens of this country. Vaccine mandates are not new. You have offered no argument of any kind about why vaccination should not be expected of us as citizens. Or employees. You just stomp your feet and fling insults.
You are free to do so. And I am free to ignore you. Which I intend to do from now on. Take care.
Couching well-founded criticisms as "virtual temper tantrums" is likewise dishonest. I responded to your words. The ones where you called people like my friend petulant, childish and anti-social to begin with. Given that vaccine mandates are not typical, and in fact in the history of our country are somewhat rare, I'd think the burden is on you to show why they should be imposed in this case. Instead, you assume that because they've been done before, rarely, they should in this case, and you give no reasons other than YOU think it is the civic responsibility of citizens in a free country to obey you and those who carry your water.
You probably should ignore me, and I hope you do. As I said above, your sneering elitism and immoral moralizing is not going to be well met by me. Perhaps you'll fare better with those whose patience with such prattle has not worn thin.
Against my better judgement…
Somewhat rare? Are you kidding? Ever registered a kid for daycare? School? Summer camp?
My daughter's pediatricians office gets so many requests for vaccination records it is literally "press 4" on the main menu of their phone tree. You press it, record your kid's name, and they mail it to you within 2 business days.
I have had to prove I was vaccinated at every stage of my life… school, high school, college, graduate school, seminary. For jobs. For volunteer positions. My mother just got a reminder from the local high school that my all juniors have to provide proof of meningitis vaccination, so she will have to prove my niece (who she is raising) got that vaccine.
And none of this has really ever been that controversial. It's just THIS vaccine that sets people off. Why?
1) You suck at ignoring people; and
2) You persist in pretending others lack experience when in fact they merely disagree with you. I've spoken on this very forum about registering my daughter for college, and though we did not have to request exemptions because she had every vaccine they required (and she also had the COVID-19 vaccine, which they do not), the exemptions were really easy to get.
Which job have you ever held that required you to show proof of vaccination? Because I've literally never had that happen, and I've worked at a wide variety of places. Was it a private job? Did you work from home exclusively? Could you demonstrate immunity to the disease (when my daughter registered for college, she had to show proof of a chicken pox vaccine OR proof of the disease)?
Etc. People other than you have thought this through. You aren't the only one who has considered these matters. You aren't the smartest guy in the room. So perhaps your better judgment would best be used to stop speaking to other people as if you were.
To answer your last question directly, this is a brand new vaccine, and the variants of it have only recently been FDA approved. It was fast-tracked in record time. I'm glad it was and I'm glad they're available. I got 2 jabs of Moderna and I'm still deciding whether I want a booster or not. But I don't pretend, for example, African Americans are petulant and childish because they remember Tuskegee and don't trust the government and people like you who call them names. I'd wager they couldn't care less about your opinion on the matter. And I bet you wouldn't tell them they're petulant and childish to their face, either. That has its own side effect. It tends to make a man's nose hurt.
So which is it, mandates are rare or ubiquitous?
I spoke on the thread above that I was required to prove vaccination status for CPE, as one example. Others include two previous university positions (where exemptions were decidedly not easy to get, and in one impossible as it involved foreign travel). I wouldn't say my current position requires that I prove I am vaccinated (except to serve as a chaperone on mission trips), but covid vaccination is an expectation for all church employees and lay pastoral care ministers… we just take people's word that they got it. However, is someone did decline to get it, it would be extremely difficult to continue serving in any ministerial capacity.
And of course others have thought this through. That is the reason why OSHA adopted the mandates to begin with. Along with countless private and public employers. And religious institutions.
And I am not the smartest guy in the room… obviously you are. And the most ethical. Compassionate. And least condescending.
If only I could be so virtuous.
Mandates from employers are rare. Mandates without exceptions are rare. OSHA mandates are unheard of. That's why OSHA's mandates have been struck down in the Fifth Circuit, and in my estimation are likely to remain stricken. The reasoning is pretty much in line with what I've said and not at all in line with what you would have us believe:
"(I)n its fifty-year history, OSHA has issued just ten ETSs. Six were challenged in court; only one survived. The reason for the rarity of this form of emergency action is
simple: courts and the Agency have agreed for generations that '[e]xtraordinary power is delivered to [OSHA] under the emergency provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act,' so '[t]hat power should be delicately exercised, and only in those emergency situations which require it.'”
Discussing standing, the Fifth Circuit said "(m)any of the petitioners are covered private employers within the geographical boundaries of this circuit. Their standing to sue is obvious— the Mandate imposes a financial burden upon them by deputizing their participation in OSHA’s regulatory scheme, exposes them to severe financial risk if they refuse or fail to comply, and threatens to decimate their workforces (and business prospects) by forcing unwilling employees to take their shots, take their tests, or hit the road."
Turning to the merits, the Court then said "(w)e begin by stating the obvious. The Occupational Safety and Health Act, which created OSHA, was enacted by Congress to assure Americans 'safe and healthful working conditions and to preserve our human resources.' See 29 U.S.C. § 651 (statement of findings and declaration of purpose and policy). It was not—and likely could not be, under the Commerce Clause and nondelegation doctrine—intended to authorize a workplace safety administration in the deep recesses of the federal bureaucracy to make sweeping pronouncements on matters of public health affecting every member of society in the profoundest of ways." It went on to say "the Mandate’s strained prescriptions combine to make it the rare government pronouncement that is both overinclusive (applying to employers and employees in virtually all industries and workplaces in America, with little attempt to account for the obvious differences between the risks facing, say, a security guard on a lonely night shift, and a meatpacker working shoulder to shoulder in a cramped warehouse) and underinclusive (purporting to save employees with 99 or more coworkers from a 'grave danger' in the workplace, while making no attempt to shield employees with 98 or fewer coworkers from the very same threat). The Mandate’s stated impetus—a purported 'emergency' that the entire globe has now endured for nearly two years, and which OSHA itself spent nearly two months responding to—is unavailing as well. And its promulgation grossly exceeds OSHA’s statutory authority." The Court said "rather than a delicately handled scalpel, the Mandate is a one-size- fits-all sledgehammer that makes hardly any attempt to account for differences in workplaces (and workers) that have more than a little bearing on workers’ varying degrees of susceptibility to the supposedly 'grave danger' the Mandate purports to address."
You should read the whole decision. You can find it here:
https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-60845-CV0.pdfIt basically lays to waste the very ideas you are espousing -- that the government has the extra-legislative power to order such a mandate by bureaucratic fiat, that the dangers presented by COVID warrant such a mandate, or that it is any sort of "civic duty" to submit to one. It states expressly that Congress has no authority to legislate police power, as this is a power reserved to the several states. Which means that unless and until the state of Georgia imposes a vaccine mandate that is upheld by the courts, I don't really have to worry much from you and yours.
Now, obviously, this is not the final word on the matter. There may be an
en banc review, and there certainly will be multidistrict litigation and the Supreme Court will ultimately weigh in. But acting as if people are deluded for not agreeing with you, and pretending we must have never heard of school systems requiring certain vaccinations for attendance, etc., is hardly a good tack to take. Delta Airlines is already backing off its own internal mandate. You can probably guess why -- enough people refused that they did not think it a fight worth having. Another friend of mine is one of those who refused. I disagreed with his decision and his reasoning and told him so, but I also walked him through the process of applying for a religious-based exemption, which was ultimately granted before Delta decided actually forcing people to get vaccines is a lot harder than saying you're going to force them to do so. Other employers will follow suit as they realize their employees are not their possessions, but rather something they need in order for their business to survive. A number of them are among the plaintiffs in the Fifth Circuit case I cited above.
If you want to convince people to have vaccines, it would be much wiser to actually attempt to convince them instead of calling them names and pretending to wield power that neither you nor the government you would have do your dirty work actually possess. Nobody has to listen to you. Nobody has to care what you think. And when the government oversteps, the courts are there to restrain it. Thanks be to God.
