CDC Director Rochelle Walensky appeared on “Fox News Sunday.” During the interview, host Chris Wallace mentioned that many essential workers, including police officers, nurses, and airline pilots, are refusing to get vaccinated. In some states, such as New York and Washington, the government is firing employees or placing them on unpaid leave if they reject the COVID-19 vaccine. Wallace then asked if Walensky was still pressing to get these employees vaccinated. Here is Walensky’s complete response:
We have seen that these mandates are getting more and more people vaccinated. Here’s what we know: The most disruptive thing that you can do to the workforce is to have a COVID outbreak in that workforce. That will most definitely not only send people home, but it will send people to the hospital and some may pass. What we know from the police workforce is that there have been more deaths from the coronavirus over the last year and a half than all other causes of death for that workforce combined. So we believe it is very important to get these people vaccinated. There is a plan should these people not want to be vaccinated towards education and counseling to get people the information they need so that they are feeling comfortable in getting vaccinated.
Let’s take this apart just a bit. First, Walensky is cheering coercion, which is terrifying. The mandates are threatening people’s livelihoods and she sees this as a positive thing. The experts could not persuade these individuals with compelling information about the benefits of vaccines, primarily due to the schizophrenic messaging from the Biden administration on vaccine efficacy, so she believes that threatening them if they don’t comply is the best option.
It’s difficult to sell people vaccines when you tell them they can still get sick from the virus and transmit it to others. When you go on national television and say to the nation that vaccinated people can carry viral loads similar to the unvaccinated, it puts question marks in people’s heads. The president giving a national address and saying the vaccinated are at risk from the unvaccinated only makes people wonder why they took it in the first place.
Telling Americans they should put on the masks they thought the vaccine would free them from makes people start to wonder what the point is. Add to that telling Americans they will need to continue to mask their children if vaccines become available for children aged 5-11, and some Americans are just going to throw up their hands. Members of the administration have said all of these things.
After 15 years in corporate America, I can assure you that the outbreak of an illness is not the most significant disruption in a workforce. The biggest disruption is uncertainty, such as groups of employees thinking their employment is at risk due to economic or other conditions. Layoffs, for example, cause significant periods of lower productivity. A test-to-work policy for COVID-19, like the one the United Kindom uses for schoolchildren, would limit the disruptions due to COVID-19. The CDC is reportedly considering using the policy for U.S. schools. Why not for the workplace, since the administration is flooding the market with home tests?
Walensky noted that law enforcement agencies have been some of the hardest hit during the early pandemic. It’s likely that many of these employees have recovered from COVID-19 and see no reason to get vaccinated right now. A new Yale study demonstrated 16 months of recovered immunity. An Emory University study asserts that recovered immunity will be durable and wide-ranging. Government officials like Walensky deny the accumulating evidence that patients who have recovered have adequate protection, which damages the health bureaucracy’s credibility even further.
Yet, Walensky says people refusing the vaccine will receive training and counseling about the COVID-19 vaccines to help them see the errors in their thinking, even though Americans have been inundated with education and promotion of the vaccines for nearly a year. The terrifying part of this is the reference to counseling.
Perhaps the COVID-19 vaccine-resistant population has not been driven crazy enough by COVID-19, so they will be brought in and “counseled.” Here’s how it may play out: An employee will provide his reasons for not receiving the vaccine based on research, evidence, and possibly his doctor’s advice. The “counselor” will ignore those reasons, just as the public health bureaucracy refuses to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence of naturally acquired immunity. After some back and forth, the employee will become increasingly frustrated. The “counselor” will then decide that the employee has anger issues and needs more counseling or some such rubbish. Maybe that will drive the employee crazy.
This administration will step on your neck by threatening your employment to get you vaccinated for a virus that does not pose a significant risk for large segments of the population. Effective outpatient treatment is available using monoclonal antibodies, and they have restricted it, even though the vaccinated may need it. Do you really believe there are any lengths to which they won’t go to “encourage” vaccine compliance?
Source: PJ Media
