Tag: mandatory vaccination

German state allows grocery stores to ban people without vaccine passport

The state of Hesse has joined a number of other states in Germany who are enforcing the co-called 2G rule as part of their COVID mandates, and is now allowing retailers, including those selling food, like supermarkets, to ban those without a vaccine passport from entering their premises.

This marks an escalation of pressure that is mounting on COVID vaccine skeptics to get the jab, or risk being deprived of their basic rights, such as that of having access to food. Even at the height of the pandemic, supermarkets have been excluded from measures such as lockdowns to make sure citizens could buy basic supplies.

But now groceries and supermarkets in Frankfurt and other cities in Hesse can decide to turn unvaccinated people back from their door. The 2G rule has already been in force in about half of Germany’s states, but this form of what critics call discrimination has so far been implemented in non-essential establishments such as restaurants, night clubs and cinemas.

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Newsom, Who Wants Kids Vaccinated, Fights Vaccine Mandates For Prison Guards, Whose Union Gave $1.75 Million To Fight Recall

California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom, who believes in vaccine mandates so much that he issued the first vaccine mandate in the United States targeting children in public and private schools, has a different view when it comes to the state’s prison guards, whose union donated a whopping $1.75 million to Newsom for September’s recall election. Newsom is appealing the ruling issued by U.S. District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar that stated prison guards must be vaccinated in order to protect incarcerated prisoners.

Tigar wrote in the ruling issued September 27, “… access by workers to CDCR institutions be limited to those workers who establish proof of full COVID-19 vaccination or have established a religious or medical exemption to vaccination and (2) incarcerated persons who desire to work outside of the institution or to have in-person visitation must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or establish a religious or medical exemption.”

“For months, the politically powerful union and the Newsom administration have resisted a COVID vaccine mandate for prison workers, despite the spread of the deadly virus behind prison walls,” Cal Matters reported.

On Tuesday, Newsom and the state appealed the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

SFGATE noted, “Newsom’s hostility towards the mandate for prison guards does not align with his previous statements on COVID mitigation efforts, including vaccine mandates.” Newsom had told CBS News less than 24 hours after the attempt to recall him had failed in September, “We need to stiffen our spines and lean into keeping people safe and healthy. We shouldn’t be timid in trying to protect people’s lives and mitigate the spread and transmission of the disease.”

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Washington Governor Announces Vaccine, Testing Mandate for Large Events, Including Outdoor Events With More Than 10,000 Attendees

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced Thursday that large events will soon be required to confirm that attendees have either been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or that they have tested negative for the illness within the prior 72 hours.

The requirement, which will go into effect Nov. 15, is applicable to attendees ages 12 and older, Inslee said.

Not only does it pertain to indoor events involving 1,000 or more people, it also pertains to outdoor events involving more than 10,000 individuals in attendance.

“For now this applies to ticketed or registered events that have defined entrances, like conventions, concerts, sporting events, fairs that have defined entrances, theme parks and more. This does not cover large venues like shopping malls, museums, or grocery stores that are open to the public as part of their operations,” Inslee said.

He noted that K-12 school-related events that take place on school grounds are exempt from the mandate, and that religious services are also exempt.

Inslee said that “we know that outdoor venues are safest, but they still have some transmission risk, and that’s why we’ve taken the steps that we have.”

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Working-Class Americans Are Standing Up for Themselves—and the Left Is Denouncing Them

Southwest Airlines canceled over 1,000 flights this weekend. Thousands of passengers were left stranded in airports across the country on Sunday, after a quarter of all flights never took off. Southwest blamed air traffic control issues for the cancelations, but to many, they seemed connected to Southwest’s new COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which its pilots asked a court to block. Were the canceled flights the result of a “sick out” on the part of pilots refusing to get vaccinated? The pilots’ union denied it, but when Amtrak started canceling trains Sunday afternoon due to “unforeseen crew issues,” the idea that a general strike is brewing started to circulate, a response to the mass firings of other working-class and middle class Americans—nurses and police officers—who have refused the vaccine.

You might have expected that the Left would be championing what looks like it might be a powerful form of collective action on the part of working-class Americans. There was a time some can still recall when the Left stood for labor and collective power. Instead, you saw prominent Left-wing voices denouncing Southwest employees as terrorists and demanding they be put on no-fly lists; many others defended the mass firing of nurses and cops. And it was Republicans and conservatives, infamous for their laissez-faire free market policies that favor the rich, who were cheering the striking workers and tweeting the hashtag #GeneralStrike.

This inversion of the politics that ruled the U.S. for much of the 20th century didn’t happen overnight. Most recently, it’s an extension of the COVID lockdown class divide that separated those who could work from the safety of their homes—accountants and bankers and lawyers and project managers and, yes, journalists—from those whose jobs required they brave the pandemic to support their families—grocery store workers, deliverymen and women, drivers, pilots, small business owners, and of course, healthcare workers. This was a class divide as much as an economic divide—the college educated vs. the working class. And you can see where each side of the political aisle sees its base by which position it took on this divide: Democrats favored lockdowns while Republicans took the side of those whose work was either outside the home or eliminated.

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The Deep Politics Of Vaccine Mandates

The debate over President Biden’s vaccine mandates has focused, understandably, on the tradeoff between individual rights to make medical choices and the potential harm the unvaccinated pose to others.

That tradeoff is unavoidable.

It is simply wrong for Biden to say, “It’s not about freedom.” It is.

It is equally wrong for some Republican governors to say it is all about freedom.

It’s also about the external effects of each person’s choice. To pretend that tradeoff doesn’t exist is demagoguery. But then, so is most American politics these days.

What’s missing or underappreciated in this debate?

The most important thing is that the Biden administration’s “mandate approach” is standard-issue progressivism. The pushback is equally standard. The mandates exemplify a dispute that has been at the heart of American politics for over a century, ever since Woodrow Wilson formulated it as a professor and then president. That agenda emphasizes deference to

  • Experts, not elected politicians,
  • Rational bureaucratic procedures,
  • Centralized power in the nation’s capital, not in the federal states, and
  • A modern, “living constitution,” which replaces the “old” Constitution of 1787 and severs the restraints it imposed on government power.

Implemented over several decades, this progressive agenda has gradually become a fait accompli, without ever formally amending the Constitution. The bureaucracies began their massive growth after World War II and especially after Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society initiatives of the mid-1960s (continued, with equal vigor, by Richard Nixon).

The judicial shackles were broken earlier, when Franklin Roosevelt threatened to pack the Supreme Court in 1937. Although FDR never followed through, his threat did the trick. The justices yielded to his pressure and began rubber-stamping New Deal programs that, until then, they had rejected as unconstitutional. Gradually, the older judges retired and Roosevelt picked friendly replacements. These judicial issues have reemerged now that progressives no longer dominate the Supreme Court. They are again threatening to pack the court and demanding that today’s justices stick with precedents set by their progressive predecessors (“stare decisis”).

The pushback against vaccine mandates is partly a debate about these progressive issues concerning the president’s authority and constitutional strictures.

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AG Merrick Garland Instructs FBI to Mobilize Against Parents Who Oppose Critical Race Theory, Covid Mandates in Public Schools

The Biden Regime is targeting political opponents and using the might of the federal government to abolish the First Amendment by classifying dissent as “domestic terrorism.”

US Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Covid mandates, citing ‘threats.’

Merrick Garland’s letter to the FBI follows the National School Board Association’s request to classify protests as “domestic terrorism.”

“Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values,” wrote Attorney General Garland. “Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.”

Curiously, Garland’s letter didn’t actually specify any credible threats.

“Citing an increase in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school board members, teachers and workers in our nation’s public schools, today Attorney General Merrick B. Garland directed the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to meet in the next 30 days with federal, state, Tribal, territorial and local law enforcement leaders to discuss strategies for addressing this disturbing trend. These sessions will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment and response by law enforcement.” the DOJ’s press release read.

The DOJ will be creating a task force “consisting of representatives from the department’s Criminal Division, National Security Division, Civil Rights Division, the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, the FBI, the Community Relations Service and the Office of Justice Programs, to determine how federal enforcement tools can be used to prosecute these crimes…”

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Fauci on Vax Mandates: “There Comes a Time When You Have to Give Up What You Consider Your Individual Right of Making Your Own Decision”

The mask is totally off.

Dr. Fauci on Friday delivered a virtual lecture to Canadians at McGill University titled “Covid-19: Lessons Learned and Remaining Challenges.”

Fauci, an unelected bureaucrat, had a message to Canadians who oppose authoritarian vaxx mandates: You have no right to make your own decision about what goes into your body.

“I think what people have to appreciate is that indeed you do have personal liberties for yourself, and you should be in control of them,” Fauci said before telling people they have to take the jab for the greater good of society.

“But,” Fauci said, “you are a member of society and as a member of society, reaping all the benefits of being a member of society, you have a responsibility to society, and I think each of us, particularly in the context of a pandemic that’s killing millions of people, you have got to look at it and say there comes a time when you do have to give up what you consider your individual right of making your own decision for the greater good of society.”

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Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein Introduces Bill to Require Proof of Covid Vax or Negative Test For Domestic Flights

Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA) on Thursday introduced a bill to require proof of vaccination or negative Covid test for domestic flights.

The 88-year-old senator, who has been spotted in airports without a face mask throughout the pandemic, introduced the “US Air Travel Public Safety Act” which would force Americans to show their papers in order to move about the country.

“The U.S. Air Travel Public Safety Act would require the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Aviation Administration to develop standards for airlines to verify that a person has either been vaccinated, tested negative for COVID-19 or has fully recovered from a coronavirus infection to be able to fly.” The Hill reported.

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