☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Friday, August 27, 2021 ☙ Mandate-A-Palooza

Happy Friday, C&C’ers! Today, Coffee & Covid gets de-platformed by Patreon, I report on Florida’s first vaccine mandate lawsuit (which I filed yesterday), critical nurse shortages in California due to vaccine mandates, an associate professor at Harvard plays the pro-coercion card, the US Supreme Court stands up for the rule of law against a cynical ploy by the federal government to evade the constitution, Montana legislators and its governor show up for their citizens, and Florida’s Governor pushes his life-saving monoclonal antibody program out to individual homes. Heavy sarcasm warning.

🗞 *THE C&C ARMY* POST* 🗞

(* we just call it that. It’s not a “real” army, no need to get the vapors or anything.)

🪖 Without notice or explanation, Patreon pulled the plug yesterday on Coffee & Covid’s fund-raising platform. “This page has been removed,” is all the fund-raising page says now. Fortunately the last transfer was only a couple days ago, so many, if not most, initial donations were preserved. The rest of you should expect refunds (or else we’ll have another problem). I think I know what the problem is. The Patreon folks must be TEA DRINKERS (shudder). Don’t worry! We’ll find a more caffeine-friendly site and reboot. This coffee discrimination must stop!

☎️ We need a special session now more than ever. At nearly 1,300+ C&C callers, we are making our voices heard. If you are new here and would like to help, text 5DAY to 43506 or enroll online at app.txtsignal.io/w/a5f1d78d. Leave this message at each number: “You MUST convene a special session NOW to pass an anti-vaccine discrimination law. Vaccine mandates are threatening to collapse entire cities! We’re out of time. It MUST be now.” It should only take about 5–10 minutes total for all five calls. It matters.

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY*

💉 Yesterday, yours truly filed the first vaccine-mandate lawsuit in Florida, to my knowledge. Over 200 employees joined a lawsuit against the City of Gainesville’s vaccine mandate. We filed the lawsuit late yesterday afternoon, and will hold a press conference in front of the courthouse today at noon to discuss it. Feel free to come on out if you are so inclined or want to show your support.

The City’s vaccine mandate requires employees to be fully-vaccinated by October 1, or they will begin a disciplinary process that ends with being fired. The lawsuit alleges that policy is illegal for two reasons. First, it violates the State’s vaccine-passport ban, which forbids government agencies from conditioning access to government buildings based on vaccine status. Second, it violates the employees’ constitutional rights to their own bodily integrity under both the Florida constitution as well as the U.S. Constitution.

On the one hand, there is no pressing need for the City to rush mandatory vaccination. Florida’s summer wave has already peaked and cases are falling. On the other hand, the City is playing chicken with the possibility of CATASTROPHIC failure of its infrastructure. I am not making that up. In an internal memo to City officials received by my office yesterday, Gainesville Regional Utilities’ general manager Ed Bielarkski clinically — with massive understatement — observed that, because of the vaccine mandate, “We also face the potential loss of key employees in critical areas of the organization and a loss of a quantity of employees that may denigrate GRU’s ability to provide safe and reliable services.”

Let me walk you through it. Lots of utility workers, cops, and firefighters are going to quit, take early retirement, or wait to be terminated rather than take the coerced jab. LOTS. Then, we run the risk of widespread loss of power that can’t be quickly and efficiently fixed, which could lead to civil unrest and riots. Without sufficient cops, the riots can’t be quelled. Without sufficient firefighters, the fires can’t be quickly and efficiently put out, and injured people can’t be taken to the hospital quickly or efficiently.

The City’s poorly-thought-out plan creates a meaningful risk of total collapse of the City’s ability to function, widespread property damage, casualty, loss of life, and civil chaos.

Who does that? What game do the City officials think they are playing?

They say Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Calling the City’s mandate and rushed implementation “reckless” is a wild understatement. I’m not even joking when I say the State of Florida should immediately take over management of the City. Like, today. Lots of these employees are eligible for early retirement and it makes sense for them to go ahead and take it, instead of waiting to see what fruit the lawsuit might bear. The City could hit critical understaffing levels even before we get in front of a judge.

Public officials — many of whom aren’t qualified to manage a small rural Burger Hut — shouldn’t be playing lunatic games like this. What can I tell you? At long last, I am at a loss for words.

🧑‍⚕️ CalMatters reported yesterday, “*Nurse shortages in California reaching crisis point.*” The Twitter headline advertising the story reads, “*Nurses are quitting because of COVID-19 burnout, causing a mass shortage: ‘I yell at God, I yell at myself, I yell at COVID and cry’*.”

After all the obligatory stuff about nurses being overworked and overstressed because of the pandemic, that’s where it starts to get interesting. The article admits:

[B]urnout isn’t the only thing compounding California’s nursing shortage: The state’s new vaccine mandate for health care workers is already causing headaches for understaffed hospitals before it is even implemented. Some traveling nurses — who are in high demand nationwide — are turning down California assignments because they don’t want to get vaccinated.

How about that. NURSES don’t want to get vaccinated. And California can’t get contractors to replace them. And it’s threatening to collapse California hospitals.

Now — try to follow me here — I’m old enough to remember how, back in the good old days, the MOST IMPORTANT THING was protecting hospital capacity. There was something about, oh, what was it, some kind of curve. Bending it or something.

But now, I guess that preserving hospital capacity ISN’T the top most important thing anymore. So, what is? What exactly are we shooting for here that is more important than keeping the hospitals functioning? I seem to have missed that memo.

This is going to sound crazy but, should we — maybe — think about backing off the mandates a little? I mean, just consider it? For two seconds?

💉 Some lackwit associate professor at Harvard wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday headlined, “*It’s time to admit it: The vaccination campaign has hit its limit. Mandates are the only way forward.*” Uh-huh. Okay, professor. I mean, associate professor.

Anyway, after blaming the entire pandemic on “Republicans,” and admitting that almost all public health scientists like himself are dems, because they, like he, are so sympathetic and empathetic or something, the professor cited some interesting facts:

— “only 45 percent of aides in long-term care health-care facilities are vaccinated. For doctors, its only 75 percent.” (Um, that’s “it’s”, professor, not “its.” Add an apostrophe. Short for, “it IS.”)

— “vaccination rates [are only] around the 40 to 50 percent range for unionized workers such as New York City’s police, firefighters and corrections officers, as well as 60 percent for the city’s Education Department workers.”

Oh. Sounds like it’s NOT just Republicans, huh? Sounds like a lot of the regular Dem-constituency folks don’t want the jab either.

Then the professor perfectly illustrated the deplorable condition of modern liberalism when he wrote, “instead of mandating, make the burden of being unvaccinated so high that people comply.” Sheesh. It’s always about compliance with these people. (See professor? That’s how you properly use the apostrophe.)

As Eric Cartman famously said in a viral South Park episode, “Respect my Authoritay! Maybe this will teach you!” Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rHuinnfVJo [Adult language warning].

Oh, how I long for classic liberals, with all their “free speech!,” “question authority!,” and “my body, my choice!” What happened? Where have all the classic liberals gone? What slimy log did all these Brownshirts squirm out from under? How did they manage to infest the public health establishment and hollow it out from the inside?

👨‍⚖️ Yesterday, the US Supreme Court struck down — for the second time — Biden’s new executive order banning landlords from evicting tenants who aren’t paying the rent. On the first go-around, the Supremes knocked down the CDC’s so-called “eviction moratorium.” This time, they said “If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it.”

Why was the CDC even involved in it in the first place? Well, let me explain it to you. You see, landlord-tenant law is a key public health matter that the flailing experts at the CDC obviously know ALL about. See, if they are good at health science — which is questionable, but work with me — that means they must know all about economics, too. Right? Or something.

It’s not just me making that point. The Supreme Court wrote, “The CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination. It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts.”

Indeed. My credulity sure is strained. It’s been strained for a while now. I’ve even started putting ice packs on it.

Joe Biden admitted that when the CDC passed the moratorium in early August they knew it was unconstitutional. But who cares? “The bulk of the constitutional scholars say it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster,” Biden said on August 3rd. “But at a minimum, by the time it gets litigated, it will probably give some additional time while we’re getting that $45 billion out to people who are in fact behind in the rent and don’t have the money.”

Oh, so that’s how it works now. It’s okay for the government to do unconstitutional things as long as all the litigation that citizens have to file to undo its illegal acts buys the government time to do the stuff they want to do anyways. Got it. Makes sense.

🦸 The State of Florida expanded its wildly successful monoclonal antibody program yesterday, giving Fire Departments and EMTs the ability to give people the free, safe and effective treatment — right in their homes. They don’t even have to go down to the treatment center. The treatments are working well. For example, I received a text message from a friend late yesterday. It said “We did the monoclonal treatment yesterday and already feel so much better.” In less than a day. Just a few hours.

It is SO WEIRD that the State has to provide this treatment since so few hospitals will. It’s like they make more money putting people on ventilators or something. But I’m sure that’s not the reason. Because it would be evil.

Note to everybody: the monoclonal treatments apparently work for vaccinated people, too, when they get reinfected. Experts say don’t wait for symptoms to get worse.

Note to Pastors: you might consider making SURE your flocks know all about this free, safe, and effective option for treating Covid infections. Maybe the church would be a good place to set up a monoclonal treatment center. A lot of you did the vaccines. Just saying.

🦸‍♂️ This week, Montana became the first state to ban private employers from coercing their employees to get Covid-19 vaccines under threat of termination. Under a new law passed by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature earlier this year, requiring vaccines as a condition for employment is deemed “discrimination” and a violation of the state’s human rights laws. The new law allows health care facilities to require unvaccinated workers and those who refuse to disclose their vaccination status to wear masks and take other precautions.

“While the governor continues to encourage Montanans to receive safe and effective vaccines, doing so is voluntary and no individual should face discrimination based on vaccination status,” the governor’s spokesperson said.

See, Florida legislators? This is how you do it. Come back to special session and do what Montana did. Before it’s too late.

Have a fantastic Friday and I’ll see you back here tomorrow.

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