By REP. BEN CARPENTER
The president of the United States, through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) arm of the federal government, has declared that employers must consider employees who get sick from Covid-19 as an occupational exposure and are therefore required to enforce vaccination or testing on their employees.
This is a nonsensical determination and I am glad that Governor Dunleavy has indicated he will challenge this Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) in court. This action is also a departure from the authority Americans have entrusted their federal government with and our societal norms. It is testing our resolve in where we place our trust.
It is impossible for employers to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 illness with any of the currently available vaccines authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for Emergency Use Authorization or other authorization.
All the available vaccines were created to lessen the symptoms of the Covid-19 disease. None is effective at preventing the spread of the virus. Breakthrough cases prove that vaccination is not a reliable means to prevent infection and is likely an indicator that future variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus will be unaffected by the current vaccines.
The more we vaccinate, the greater the risk that vaccinated people are creating a more deadly coronavirus than would have occurred naturally.
It is impracticable to prove that viral infection occurred at a place of work, under most circumstances, nor are most employers qualified to make such a determination. Employees leave their place of employment and are at risk of exposure from everyday activities unrelated to employment.
The ETS acknowledges this reality but places the burden on the employer to decide when and where an employee contracted a naturally occurring virus. This is a major departure from our societal norms and places a destructive and unnecessary wedge in the relationship between an employer and an employee.
The world is dealing with the consequences of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and the Covid-19 disease it causes. Our federal government has labeled the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a naturally occurring variant of the coronavirus family. That the virus exists at all is an act of God since it wasn’t created by man.
However, the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has mutated numerous times. Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer and Chief Epidemiologist expect it will continue to do so. Matter of fact, Dr. Anne Zink’s stated opinion is that the sooner we get everyone vaccinated, the less risk there is of natural virus mutation.
This qualified medical assessment exists with the full knowledge that fully vaccinated patients are experiencing breakthrough infections. These patients are biological incubators like unvaccinated Covid-19 patients, except that any mutations that occur may have been influenced by manmade vaccines.
Man didn’t have to intervene to cause SARS-CoV-2 mutations, but our continued intervention may cause more deadly mutations. When the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus mutates with immunity to available vaccines, is it still considered a naturally occurring virus? Or does the impact of man-made vaccines on the virus change who’s responsible for the new variant? This is more a legal question than a medical one. The patient may be indifferent; they’re sick either way. But if the patient’s vaccine doesn’t work and they die, who’s responsible? Is it still an act of God? Is the employer responsible? Is the government? Does the doctor who prescribed and administered the vaccination have any culpability?
We should all care about the efficacy of forcing questionable vaccinations on our species. Voters especially.
If a person subscribes to the theory that the SARS-Cov-2 is a manufactured virus, then liability for the consequences should lie with the creator, and we should be having a completely different conversation.
Regardless of how the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus came into existence and because it is both impracticable to prove that viral infection occurred at a place of employment and impossible for employers to prevent the spread of the virus by means of available vaccinations, OSHA and the Biden administration should have considered Covid-19 disease in the workplace as force majeure. Neither the federal government, nor employers, have liability for the outcome of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection in Americans.
This conclusion isn’t a free pass to do nothing; compassion still demands a response. Early treatment with safe, effective, and proven medications are the best response to the Covid-19 illness. This is only debatable in the United State of America. Other countries lacking our economic resources and political liabilities have addressed the act of God with the means they have available. This is where employers should be focusing. This is also where our federal government is failing to focus. Why?
Forcing Americans to inject something into their body against their will is not demonstrating compassion. Compelling Americans to do so or face becoming unemployable is also not compassionate. Forcing employers to choose between compelling their employees to inject something into their body against their will or firing those employees is downright sinister.
If a person subscribes to the theory that the federal government and employers have the right to force experimental vaccination on American employees, then it would reason that those employers accept the liability for the consequences of their actions. Since Americans are dying from the experimental vaccines, those employers should be held responsible for those deaths and likewise, OSHA should also consider those deaths to be occupationally related. Neither the President’s Executive Orders, nor the OSHA ETS, acknowledges that death is a potential outcome from the ETS. It provides no guidance for what to do when it happens. It’s as if they don’t want employers to know of this potential outcome.
Employers should seriously consider their moral obligations before choosing to comply with the ETS or deciding that it’s in their company’s best interest to force vaccination. Employers may have been given a right to vaccinate by the federal government, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. History will record how we individually and collectively responded to the fear facing all of us. God will know if our response was to choose the easy wrong instead of the hard right.
If the president of the United States, or his administrators, believe they can protect Americans from an act of God with mandatory vaccinations, or absolve employers or governments from liability of their actions, they have usurped the role of God Himself. If Americans conform, comply, or are otherwise complicit in furthering this nonsense, our national motto should be changed to “In Government We Trust”.
If our safety, security, and fortunes have become so important to us as to willingly invite a strong federal government to decide how we should act in the face of death, we don’t deserve the title of a God-fearing nation and we are no longer free men.
Rep. Ben Carpenter represents District 29, Nikiski and other communities on the Kenai Peninsula.
