Response to Editorial

This anonomously-written editorial appeared in the Ozaukee News Graphic on August 23, 2021. “Is There a Doctor in the House” is the response.

Vaccine Linked to Absurd Political Behavior

The new politicalization of vaccination has surged to a new high on the absurdity meter.
It has soared to the head-scratching, mind-boggling, breath-taking point where some Republican legislators are turning against Wisconsin businesses and their owners.
The legislators want to change the unemployment compensation law to allow some employees who quit their jobs or are fired for violating an employer rule to collect benefits.
The employees getting these benefits would be those who are discharged for violating a company rule requiring a Covid-19 vaccination and those who say they voluntarily quit because they didn’t want to comply with a vaccination requirement.
Sponsors of this anti-business legislation include three legislators who represent parts of Ozaukee County: State Sen. Duey Stroebel and State Reps. Rob Brooks and Dan Knodl.
These are the politicians who take every opportunity to portray themselves as champions of business and defenders of private enterprise, particularly small-business owners. So it follows that their attempt to upend long-established unemployment compensation rules is cloaked in the liberty-for-all rationale of anti-vaccination orthodoxy and resistance to those old devils “government bureaucrats.”
In a memo seeking the support of other legislators, the sponsors wrote: “The decision to get the Covid-19 vaccine is a decision to be made by individuals, not government bureaucrats or employers.”
Government bureaucrats have nothing to do with employer vaccination rules. The proposed legislation penalizes capitalists, not bureaucrats.
The bill is so potentially harmful to business that you have to wonder whether its authors fully understand its consequences. Presumably they know that 100% of unemployment compensation benefits (not including any federal Covid relief additions to UC payments) are paid for by employers, but that is only one item on the negative-impact list.
Employers do not adopt vaccination rules because they are vaccination zealots trying to prove a point; they do it because they are trying to protect their businesses by keeping their workforce as healthy as possible during a pandemic.
An outbreak of Covid infections can have a devastating effect on businesses of any size. Large employers sustain losses. Smaller businesses can be forced to shut down operations and lay off healthy employees. As was seen in the pre-vaccination days of the pandemic, Covid outbreaks can put small employers out of business.
Even now, economists see the fast-spreading Delta variant of Covid-19 as the principal threat to economic recovery.
A side defect of the proposed legislation is that it opens the door for unscrupulous workers to quit for any reason and still qualify for unemployment benefits by claiming they left their jobs because of their employer’s vaccination policy.
Under all applicable federal and state employment regulations, employers have the right to require their employees to be vaccinated and to discharge those who refuse. Under Wisconsin unemployment compensation regulations, workers who leave their jobs voluntarily or are fired for violating employer rules do not qualify for benefits.
Liberty is at issue in this attempt to rewrite the UC law—but it is the liberty of employers to apply and enforce work rules that is threatened.
The legislation is wrong on pure business grounds. The pros and cons of Covid vaccination are irrelevant. Stroebel, nonetheless, could not resist weighing in with a comment that employer’s vaccination policies ignore “the science demonstrating the role prior infection plays in conferring immunity and protection.”
For the record, the science, based on studies by the CDC and other health agencies, has concluded that immunity derived from infection is limited at best and offers markedly less protection than vaccination.
If the legislation that bends unemployment benefit rules to make a political statement at the expense of employers advances, it will be an embarrassment to the Legislatures’s Republican majority. Its leaders should see that this absurd bill is deposited in the nearest Capitol wastebasket or, better, is shredded and burned.

Is There a Doctor in the House

Listen to this: “The politicization of vaccination has surged to a new high on the absurdity meter.”
Now hear this:
“…if the doctors tell us that we should take it [the vaccine], I’ll be the first in line to take it, absolutely. But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I’m not taking it.” -Kamala Harris. October 8, 2020[1]
July 2020 Delaware Campaign Event “At a campaign event in summer 2020, Biden questioned whether a vaccine produced by the Trump administration would even be ‘real.’”[2]
Set aside the usual tactic used by those who feel threatened by opposition to their smug, self-ascribed superior thought and intellect and resort to denigration, belittling, and insult, it’s quite clear that the whole issue of “to vaccinate or not to vaccinate” had been politicized by our vaunted president and vice president just about a year ago. Indeed, the whole coronavirus outbreak was politicized by democrats - who never let a crisis go to waste – when they criticized Trump for closing the border - calling him a xenophobe - then criticizing him for not closing the border (Washington Post, October 1, 2020).
There’s one thing those with a more liberal progressive outlook fear more than the Covid and that’s the facts. Moreover, let’s be honest, can anyone name 3 things in today’s political environment that hasn’t been politicized?
Let’s try to help the editorial writer’s “head-scratching, mind-boggling, breath-taking” disorder by explaining simply that if “my body, my choice” is good for the goose, it’s good for the gander.
Kamala Harris said, “…if the doctors tell us that we should take it [the vaccine], I’ll be the first in line…”.
We’re certainly going to trust our own health professional over some pointy-headed academic whose real-life experience is spent in an air-conditioned laboratory as far removed from reality as any common individual with liberal progressive views. And we’re definitely not going to trust a Ken or a Karen, managers of a local Big Box store. It’s between me and my doctor.
Moreover, no one has explained why anyone with a vaccine should fear anyone without a vaccine. Either it works or it doesn’t. When the medical science community rids us of all flu strains – of which Covid happens to be one, albeit more severe – via vaccinations, then, like
Kamala Harris, “I’ll be the first in line to take it.”
Employers are a kind and caring lot. We’re certain they all love their employees as they do their own family. But they have nothing but the greatest respect, admiration, and fear for the trial lawyers they’ll be avoiding by requiring masks and vaccines for their nefarious employees just waiting for the opportunity to quit work and collect the gobs of state unemployment compensation for a whole 18 weeks so that they can sit on a beach in the Bahamas sipping Mai Tais. Yeah. That’s the ticket.
Or maybe they can wait for the additional unemployment checks the federal government hands out like Halloween candy to supplement the state checks which by all appearances kept people from returning to work in the first place. No. If the employers were at all concerned about the health of their employees, they would have been requiring flu vaccinations since the Bird Flu virus of 2014 and beyond.
So much concern for the small businesses and their viability seems like so much sanctimony after shuttering businesses for month after month; imposing restriction after restriction.
As far as listening to the CDC or other public health experts and organizations for guidance, we will all be going to the doctor for whiplash trying to keep up with their pronouncements and backtracking. Seriously.
January 26, 2020 The Hill – Government health agency official: Coronavirus isn’t something the American public need to worry about. [3] [Wait. What!?]
June 06, 2021 Fauci Said ‘Masks Not Really Effective in Keeping Out Virus’ email reveals (February 5, 2020) [4]
On March 8, 2020, Fauci said
’there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”
He told NBC News on January 25 [2021] that wearing two masks was '“common sense.”
June 30, 2021[5] Fauci says it doesn’t seem the CDC will change mask recommendations despite growing concern about delta variant.
Fauci says new mask guidelines for vaccinated Americans under “Active Consideration”
July 29, 2020 [6] Dr Fauci: Wear goggles or eye shields to prevent spread of Covid-19 [abc News]
February 25, 2021 [7] Double masking for Covid-19: CDC recommends wearing two masks at once. [C|Net]
May 25, 2020 [8] Dr. Fauci Again Dismisses Wuhan lab as source of coronavirus.
May 24, 2021 [9] Fauci Bombshell: ‘Not convinced’ covid-19 developed naturally outside Wuhan lab.
September 18, 2020 [10] CDC drops controversial testing advice that caused backlash. [AP News]
CDC reverses course on testing for asymptomatic people who had Covid-19 contact. [11] [Politico]
September 20, 2020 [12] Updated CDC guidance acknowledges coronavirus can be spread through the air. [CNN Health]
September 21, 2020 [13] CDC reverses itself and says guidelines it posted on coronavirus airborne transmission were wrong.
February 3, 2021 [14] CDC Director says it’s not necessary for teachers to be vaccinated in order to reopen schools.
July 9, 2021 [15] Educators’ unions support the new federal recommendations for reopening. schools.
We should all be circumspect about passing any laws. But that’s not in the nature of a politician. Look at the table of contents for the Wisconsin State Statutes or the Federal Register. Tinkering with or passing laws doesn’t appear to cause too many people indigestion. We wonder if our opinion writer experiences as great of consternation over Biden reversing all the Executive Orders of Trump. Yes, we know, Executive Orders are not laws but still, when they are made, they have the effect of law.
His or her heartfelt but overwrought concern for the “embarrassment to the Legislature’s Republican majority” is hardly serious. We can remind the writer that elected officials represent those who elect them. If they’re on a suicide mission, as the saying goes, when your opponent is destroying himself, get out of the way.
Finally, going back to our poor opinion writer experiencing shortness of breath, a boggled mind, and head itching, maybe he should see a doctor-there might be a vaccine for that.