Mr. Biden: Vaccine Mandates Will Not Stop Virus

During the COVID-19 scourge last year, the nation's leaders cheered first responders, nurses, doctors and healthcare workers.  Politicians saluted their courage for risking exposure to the deadly virus to treat the infected. Some died after tending patients. A grateful country celebrated them as heroes.

Today vaccine mandates, dictated by the Biden Administration, are turning these heroes into villains. Many city mayors are vilifying firemen, police, emergency responders and healthcare workers who refuse to be vaccinated.  Hundreds are resigning and scores are being fired for refusing to get the jab.

In most cases, cities deny religious and medical exemptions. The intent is clear: Capitulate to the vaccine mandate or leave your job. This authoritarian approach is being justified because of the continuing Coronavirus toll.  Regardless, America has turned its back on those who saved lives.

Mr. Biden also wheedled the Defense Department to mandate vaccinations for military service members, effecting 1.5 million troops. Four senators introduced a bill prohibiting the military from dishonorably discharging troops who refuse the shot. The president says he "strongly opposes" the bill.

Dwight Stirling, CEO of the Center for Law and Military Policy, says service members' refusal to take the shot will likely result in "adverse administrative action" that may include a written reprimand, a derogatory performance review, demotion or in extreme cases, an involuntary discharge.

Since COVID began, 52 service members have died of the virus. In the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 6,817 military troops were killed. More than 52,000 were wounded. Wars are more dangerous to military members' health than the virus.  No more wars would save more lives than a vaccine shot.  

The president's expansive mandate includes all business employers with more than 100 workers, who are required to be vaccinated or test weekly for the virus.  At a time when firms are having trouble hiring workers, this will exacerbate the problem. There are currently 10.5 million job openings. 

Airlines, an industry hit hard by job vacancies, are facing a December 8 deadline for workers to be vaccinated.  Unions have balked and protests by Southwest Airlines employees signal trouble ahead. Airlines are struggling to maintain schedules with reduced crews. They can't afford employee losses.   

This president, whose poll numbers on handling the virus are underwater, is no doubt concerned about reversing what has been an alarming rise in deaths this year after he promised to tame the pandemic and return to normalcy.

Since January 1, there have been 353,000 Coronavirus deaths, eclipsing the total fatalities during 2020 when 352,000 Americans died.  Unlike today, last year Americans had no access to vaccines until December 11. This month COVID deaths surged past 700,000, another grim milestone.

A study released last month by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) tracked more than 600,000 Coronavirus cases in 13 states from April through July, and concluded the unvaccinated are 11 times more likely to die from the virus if they are infected then those who received the vaccine.  

Those numbers underscore the need for vaccinations. Selling the message of protecting your health should be straight forward. Americans want to be educated and armed with information so they can make their own health decisions.  The majority of informed Americans  are opting to take the jab.

After many communication missteps by the administration, Mr. Biden in frustration decided to coerce Americans into getting vaccinated. This is a reversal from his stance on December 4, when the president-elect said Americans would not be forced to take the vaccine. Another broken Biden promise.   

As a result of Mr. Biden's plan of vaccination intimidation,  your personal health is now the government's prerogative.  You do not have a choice.  If you want to keep your livelihood, you must surrender your freedom to make your health decisions.

Will it work?  There are reports more Americans lining up to get the shot. The CDC estimates an average of 785,133 vaccine doses are being dispensed every day.  But at what cost to freedom?  And is the Unity President further dividing America into two camps: the vaccinated and unvaccinated?         

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the administration's resident COVID sage, recently told National Public Radio (NPR) that researchers "have estimated that around 70% to 85% of the country needs to be immune to the Coronavirus for COVID-19 to stop spreading through communities and peter out."

Latest figures from the CDC show 57.7% of Americans have been fully vaccinated, meaning they have received two doses of the vaccine.  By any measure, the progress toward Dr. Fauci's goal of vaccinating 70% to 85% of the population is proceeding at a snail's pace.

Months from now it will be revealing to learn if the Biden dictate significantly moved the needle on vaccinations. Even if it works, the president's actions will be studied by politicians invested in government control.  Meanwhile, there are privacy and religious freedoms that have been trampled.

New lawsuits are sprouting against the mandate, although none have prevailed so far.  In the latest, 24 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the government, asking a temporary restraining order.  The lawsuit claims religious and medical exemptions have been ignored.  

Many medical elitists who lobby for the mandate believe some Americans are just too dumb to decide for themselves to get the vaccine. Some Americans have to be forced against their will for the good of the country.  But that logic is a slippery slope that may lead to loss of personal health decisions.  

For those who agree with the mandate, consider this: Cancer and heart disease are the leading causes of deaths in the U.S., killing 1.289 million last year, far more than COVID.  The cost of hospitalization and treatment burden hospitals, run up billions of dollars in bills and create untold human suffering.    

Under the Biden health doctrine, a future president in consultation with health experts may decide the way to save lives is through elimination of health risks, such as obesity and smoking, major contributing factors in cancer and heart disease. 

An executive order would follow mandating businesses and municipal, federal and state agencies, test workers for obesity and smoking. Unless those employees lose weight and quit smoking, they would be removed from their jobs. The medical community would be first to jump on board.  

Don't shake your head and guffaw that it could never happen.  Many made the same assumption about a vaccine mandate for Americans. Did anyone really believe the U.S. government could force people to give up their jobs for failure to comply with a vaccination requirement?    

The Singapore experience with Coronavirus serves as a cautionary tale for the administration pursuing an autocratic strategy to arrest COVID. 

When the Singapore government rolled out its vaccines, it undertook an extensive propaganda campaign, targeting the most vulnerable in the population.  It worked. About 84% of Singapore's population of 5.6 million have been vaccinated.  The virus should be over, right? Wrong.

The number of new cases recently reached 3,900 this month, one of the worst daily totals since the start of the pandemic in the island-state.  Currently, infections are running an average of 3,217 a day. Daily deaths have also spiked, reports the Singapore government. There is a lesson for America. 

The goal of zero cases and zero deaths is unachievable.  The virus will continue to mutate. Mandates will not change that. Vaccines work but until a population achieves immunity the virus will linger.  No government can protect every citizen from a virus.  If it could, influenza would be no threat today. 

Americans' healthcare decisions are not the providence of government.  As abortion proponents remind: Our bodies, our choice. The vaccine mandate is the first step toward total government control of our health.  That is a freedom no American should be forced to forfeit.    

Governor Cuomo: America's Scummiest Leader

Unfortunately it required revelations of toxic sexual misconduct from eight women to finally expose New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as a noxious, political charlatan. The charges expunged the fasctitoiusly nurtured veneer maintained by America's most pompous, narcissistic state leader. 

The cheeky governor brushed aside the allegations with repugnant claims his casual flirtations were misinterpreted by the women.  This is the same lout who once clamored that every woman's assertion of sexual misconduct deserved to be believed.  Cuomo has evolved from #MeToo to #MisogynistInChief.

As a chorus of women echoed allegations, Cuomo issued a baneful statement saying he "teased people about their personal lives, their relationships, about getting married or not married," but didn't mean to offend anyone.  He is a member of the Party of Woke.  This is cloddish Neanderthal behavior.

Sources told The New York Times that Cuomo had the hutzpah to author a letter for his inner circle to distribute to former staffers aimed at tarnishing the credibility of one of his chief accusers.  The maneuver speaks to the character of a ruthless, bullying politician.   

The governor counted on a coddling media to allow him to escape unscathed.  Instead the news cheerleaders were forced by the allegations to chisel the governor's facade.  Many insiders, including the duplicitous media, had known for years about Cuomo's peccadilloes. 

Media coverage of the sexual allegations dwarfed previous press reporting on the extent of his deadly nursing home scandal.  The fawning media was determined to downplay the nursing home disaster to aid the governor's attempt to dodge responsibility, but the misconduct charges opened Pandora's box.  

Cuomo should have been ousted months ago after his disastrous directive to ship COVID patients into the state's nursing homes, a decision that led to deaths of 14,500 elderly residents. As a result of the imbecilic decision, 37% of all Coronavirus fatalities in New York state occurred in  nursing homes.

During the darkest days of the scourge, Cuomo spent most of his time puffing up his image for managing the health crisis. He authored a media-acclaimed book, "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons During the COVID-19 Pandemic." He presented himself as New York's savior in the best-seller.

In November, that bastion of progressive sycophancy, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, awarded Cuomo an Emmy "in recognition of his leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and his masterful use of TV to inform and calm people around the world."

What a charade.  Cuomo's media performances were orchestrated to burnish his reputation while promoting his presidential ambitions. He yammered about how President Trump had failed the nation, while he, Cuomo, was a model of following science to implement life-saving, effective solutions. 

After the nursing home fiasco, how could any leader claim he was following science as Cuomo often bragged?  If Cuomo understood science, he would have made protecting the elderly, the most vulnerable to the virus, his top priority.  Instead he left them defenseless against an insidious virus.

Cuomo's state Health Department last March issued a pernicious advisory requiring nursing homes to accept "the expedited receipt of residents returning from packed hospitals "if the patients were deemed medically stable." The document blessed by Cuomo also directed the following:

"No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the (nursing home) solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. (Nursing homes) are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or re-admission."

To make it clear, the governor not only forced nursing homes to accept COVID patients, but his health department's order forbade the facilities to even test other incoming patients for the virus.  This did not apply to hospitals, only to nursing homes.  It is an unconscionable act of a detached political emperor.    

His lethal mistake was unmasked when the New York State Attorney General Letitia James rocked Cuomo's political dynasty with a report faulting his administration for undercounting the Coronavirus deaths in nursing homes, suggesting a politically-motivated cover-up. 

Cuomo's top aide Melissa DeRosa admitted the state withheld nursing home data from the state legislature because the governor was worried about a possible federal Department of Justice investigation into how Team Cuomo dealt with the crisis. 

The New York Times, normally a reliable guardian of Cuomo's image, reported Cuomo and his team rewrote a report, removing the fact that more than 9,000 nursing home residents had died by June.  The Times found the state health department's data was approximately 50% higher than public figures 

While infected patients were whisked to nursing homes, the administration surely knew the facilities were ill-equipped to deal with protecting their own patients in the early stages of the outbreak. The attorney general's report tried to cover for Cuomo by blaming nursing homes for their unpreparedness. 

This heartless decision set the stage for an epidemiological disaster of epic proportions. 

As news of the catastrophe broke, Governor Cuomo created limited immunity provisions for health care professionals shielding them from the potential liability for their actions or omissions.  The immunity covers nursing home owners.  This is Cuomo at his sleaziest best.  

According to campaign finance records, Cuomo accepted at least $126,000 from the Greater New York Hospital Association, other industry groups and their lobbyists in the months prior to his decision to grant legal protections from lawsuits and criminal prosecutions.

The legal shelter was stuffed at the eleventh hour in the annual state budget bill.  Democrat Assemblyman Ron Kim made his feelings clear. "You can't put a toxic bill (amendment) like that in the budget without having full access to the governor's office," Kim pointed out.

At the time, New York media yawned.  Nothing to see here.

Throughout the COVID emergency, Cuomo bellyached about the need for aid, citing the overcrowding at New York hospitals.  President Trump dispatched the Mercy, a 1,000 bed floating Navy hospital, to New York Harbor.  The federal government also erected 1,000 beds in the Javits Convention Center.

After his badgering, the conceited Cuomo thumbed his nose at the assistance, while the bodies of dead COVID victims were piled into refrigerated trucks.  As far as can be determined, less than 100 patients ever set foot in either the Navy ship or the makeshift hospital at the convention center.  

Classic Cuomo.  Blame someone else for your mismanagement.  Then stick them with the bill.

Lockdown Andrew's measures to staunch the spread of the virus were among the most extreme of any state.  He virtually shutdown the state and shamed New Yorkers if they refused his regal dictates.  So how did that all turn out for New York?  Was the state safer under Cuomo's lockdown regime?

The data clearly illustrates Cuomo reigned over a stupendous failure. New York led all states in the number of fatalities per 100,000 population with 248.  By comparison, Texas fatalities were 156 per 100,000; Florida, 148; and California, 137.  Those three states are all larger than New York. 

New York also suffered the worst economic toll.  Pew Research Center estimates 126,00 New York residents fled the state between February of last year until December.  The state lost 1,058,000 jobs during the crisis, second only to California.  Texas and Florida lost half that many jobs.

A University of New Hampshire report on Gross Domestic Product, a measurement of economic activity, revealed that New York performance was far behind other states of similar size.  From the fourth quarter of 2019 to the third quarter of 2020, here are the GDP figures for four states:

• New York -6.1%
• California -3.7%
• Texas  -3.6%
• Florida -2.9%

In spite of his sorry performance, insolent Governor Cuomo almost broke both hands patting himself on the back in public without a hint of shame.  If you are wondering how Cuomo survived such ignominious failure, look no further than an ingratiating media not interested in facts.

Thanks to eight courageous women, and counting, the impudent governor's true character can no longer be hidden.  The fact the governor continues to swat away the allegations as just delusions by the accusers is testament to his pomposity.  If he were a Republican, he would be gone from office.

Faced with mounting pressure from fellow Democrats, Cuomo finally acquiesced and agreed to appoint an "independent" probe.  He named fellow Democrat state Attorney General James to head the investigation. She is hardly an independent public officer. Expect Cuomo to receive a wrist slap.

There is also open discussion of impeachment but Cuomo is a Democrat governor in a heavily partisan Democrat state.  He is likely to ride out that storm, too.  In New York, the Cuomo name is a golden calf to be worshiped by the political class.  Few dare to challenge the vengeful governor. 

That's a shame because Governor Andrew Cuomo should have been forced to resign months ago for the trail of bodies left in the wake of his political boosterism. Now the sexual harassment charges are an overriding reason to throw the bum out of office. Just do it, New York Democrats.