COVID Mandates Demand Proactive Laws that Balance Public & Private Interests
It Is Time the Ohio Legislature Steps Up to the Plate
It is past time for all Ohioans to have a productive, rational discussion about how best to protect and preserve liberty when it comes to the current COVID crisis. No longer can we be like the reactionary Left, making up laws that serve only our own near-term interests while ignoring the next crisis. It is time to be proactive and to have well-reasoned, broad-based policy discussions to address the problems at hand while also doing our best to address future challenges.
America is the land of capitalism and it is capitalism that makes this country great. This means that businesses and business owners’ rights cannot be ignored any more than the rights of the individual citizen, employee, or patron. In formulating policies surrounding COVID-19 and any future pandemic-level virus, we must seek to uphold our fundamental rights without impugning any current rights.
As we see it there are four issues at hand that must be addressed at the State level:
Public and private vaccination mandates
Public and private mask mandates
A need for expanded right-to-try
A lack of government transparency
The Biden administration and government bodies across the world continue to implement potentially dangerous, and many times, unconstitutional vaccine mandates that weaken state sovereignty and make a mockery of natural law (God-given, fundamental rights of the individual).
The citizens of Ohio have no protections in place that prohibit private or public entities from requiring proof of COVID vaccination. This is a tremendous drain on the economy and a hindrance to doing business in this state, let alone the division that it breeds between Ohioans. All for what? As vaccination rates have increased we see no corresponding drop in case-load, England and Israel are proof positive that the vaccine is not an answer to ending the pandemic. At the same time - mask mandates do not correlate to any mitigation of the disease. The only proof of protocols that can be substantiated to mitigate COVID-19 is social distancing and handwashing.
Approximately 28 states have passed laws banning vaccine passports/COVID mandates or have an executive order (EO) prohibiting the same within their state borders. And it’s not just Florida leading the way. Alabama, Arizona, Montana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and more are just a few of the "red" states that have passed bills to provide basic protections for their citizens.
Given that the executive branch of Ohio is fully, publicly “in bed with Biden” on this and many other of the most significant issues of our time, it is up to the General Assembly (GA) to step in and protect Ohio citizens and businesses.
First Things First: Who gets to decide what is and isn’t to my medical benefit?
Every day, college coaches, athletes, Hollywood stars, and political elites are telling us that the current COVID vaccines are perfectly safe. And so, in the name of the “greater good,” many erudite warriors intent on saving the public from themselves are mandating COVID vaccines in order to work, to be granted probation, or to receive a public education.
But who gets to determine what medical treatments are in my best interests? Does my Doctor have the final say? Or do I as the patient? Or does the government? Or does my employer?
Typically, board-certified doctors and their patients have the ultimate authority to make these decisions.
Of course, at times, the courts and state legislatures have played a role in deciding who can and cannot have a say in our medical choices. For example, Jacobson v. Massachusetts is the oft-cited 1905 case that the Supreme Court that legitimized a State government’s use of police powers under certain situations “for the public good” during a defined “public health emergency.”
While it is true that courts have frequently found in favor of a state’s emergency power to ignore the Constitutional rights of citizens during a pandemic, they have only done so under strict scrutiny. A study of these cases reveals that the courts have very specific standards that must be met to deprive anyone of their basic rights. At the very least, it has to be an extenuating circumstance.
Perspective and Context
Smallpox took the lives of 3 out of 10 people in the twentieth century. The Spanish flu took out one-tenth of the world’s population (50 million) with about 675,000 deaths occurring in the U.S. And there are plenty more extenuating circumstances in our past. Is COVID comparable? If we take the death rate for the Spanish flu and adjust for the population growth of over 200 million people, we would see at least 2 million COVID deaths today in the U.S. (not case numbers).
So far, by the grace of God, COVID has not mirrored true pandemics of our past. Fundamentally, this is likely because we benefit from cleaner living spaces, advancements in medical care, and multiple successful therapeutics that were not available in centuries past.
Will there or won’t there be any long-term harm?
Whether any long-term harm will result from today’s COVID vaccines is a billion-dollar question. We can’t just be content with experts claiming something is safe—because experts can be wrong.
Look at what happened with the drug Thalidomide. A drug once lauded as perfectly safe by experts caused many stillborn deaths and severe birth abnormalities. Though this drug was not mandated, the experts were wrong about its supposed safety. Thalidomide brought death and billions of dollars worth of harm to families in this country and around the world.
Another example is Hormone Replacement Therapy for postmenopausal women. This therapy looked like a perfect cure for women—on paper. As a result, the product was rushed to the public. Unfortunately for tens of millions of women, the treatment was soon found to increase strokes, cardiac events, and even lead to some aggressive forms of breast cancer.
So too, today, the FDA, pharmaceutical giants, medical lobbyists, political leaders, and everyday citizens claim that the COVID vaccines are safe. But do we really know without the virtue of long-term testing?
In reality, all of the current on-market COVID vaccines lack long-term studies to back any claim of complete safety. Most of these same “experts” know that the development, testing, and approval of past non-mRNA vaccines have typically taken a minimum of ten years before being offered to the public. With a different and untested technology at use for the mechanism of protection in this vaccine - one would reasonably assume that its testing would be in excess of ten years. The long-term effects of the new vaccine and the new mRNA technology have the potential for great risk.
As we have experienced time and time again in the past, the experts can be wrong. Very, very wrong. And when they are wrong, human beings pay with pain, suffering, and profound loss of life.
Who will shoulder the responsibility for mandate-related injuries and deaths?
Ohioans need to know who will shoulder the burden of mandate-related injuries and deaths? Will school administrators? Business managers? The state?
Should private businesses and public entities or schools in Ohio mandate a particular medical treatment outside of a protected Dr.-to-patient medical setting, there is an obvious exposure to risk. So, who will carry that risk? Who has the “duty of care” in these situations?
One would assume that those that mandate the treatment, or in this case the experimental vaccine, will certainly shoulder the liability.
We need to have a serious discussion about the role of the free market when it comes to determining who will shoulder this burden.
The free market, vaccine mandates, and the burden of risk
Ohio’s Free Market Republicans surely know that someone will have to bear the cost of the risks associated with vaccine mandates.
If public or private entities mandate a particular medical product, drug, treatment, procedure, or vaccine upon employers and contractors, then they should have to pay for long-term liability insurance for each participant.
This protects the State from exposure to the employer’s liability risk. It also protects Ohio’s taxpayers from a potential future disaster. This is common practice and smart governance. If we build property in a flood zone we are required to have flood insurance. If a business sells a product that has the potential to harm, it is required to purchase product liability insurance. Churches have to carry Pastoral Professional Liability insurance. Insurance agents have to carry Errors and Omissions insurance.
Liability insurance helps to hold entities accountable for their risky actions. If there is little risk, then the free market will place a small burden on public or private entities who mandate. If there is a big risk, then there will be a greater burden for those who choose to mandate.
Placing a cost on mandating health decisions will help to ensure that no one compromises an individual’s health foolishly or in the heat of the political moment.
What if Ohio businesses mandate a vaccine and it is later found to be harmful?
Certainly, if Ohio’s businesses mandate the COVID vaccine and people endure injury or even death, these businesses will suffer. Many may just declare bankruptcy—but the State and possibly even the Federal government will be left to deal with the aftermath.
And that aftermath will be paid for with taxpayer dollars. What are we doing now to protect against this very likely future financial disaster?
Proposal: Impose $2 million default benefit
We are calling on the Ohio General Assembly to develop legislation that imposes regulations on public and private entities, as well as school districts, that wish to mandate any particular medical product, drug, treatment, procedure, vaccine, or health requirement not naturally present in one’s own person.
In short, we are calling on the GA to require that mandating entities provide every complying employee, staffer, contractor, etc. with a $2 million limited-liability catastrophic healthcare benefit covering the individual for 10 years.
Such legislation limits the State’s exposure to risk and places the financial burden on mandating schools and businesses.
This allows the free market to quantify the unknown risks - not the government or the healthcare lobbies.
Expected Outcomes of such a Provision:
A balanced approach to maximizing both personal freedom and public health and safety
A market-based check on businesses choosing to deprive an individual of ultimate authority in determining his/her personal medical care
Higher costs are borne by those businesses and schools that choose to require experimental vaccines
A broad-based policy effort that covers all potential future medical requirements that could be imposed
Such responsible legislation:
Upholds Ohio’s at-will employment laws
Enables business owners to decide how best to provide a safe working environment for patrons and employees
Protects taxpayers from the liability costs associated with public and private health mandates
“No business association or legislator can claim to be pro-business and a free-market advocate while at the same time supporting efforts to saddle the taxpayer with the future consequences of medical mandates for particular vaccines, drugs or other treatments that have no long-term studies. ... is simply asking legislators to hold businesses and schools accountable for their risky decisions.”
Ohioans Deserve More Transparency
Our government and its purported “experts” continue to amplify disingenuous political messaging connected to the pandemic. Politics, not science, is driving the discussion. But experts practicing activism are lined up on both sides of the issue.
Any novice studying charts that show the rate at which the virus progresses, and the timing of various public health orders, can see that the results do not line up with the narrative. In fact, COVID-19 case rates are up 300% over last year, despite that over half of the U.S. population is vaccinated. This should logically lead everyone to question the effectiveness of the vaccines.
And what about all of the therapeutics? Treatments that have been found successful in other nations like India, Monoclonal Antibody Therapies in Florida, and other treatments have been hugely successful in treating COVID and its variants. Not to mention the unmentionable generic drugs that were recently outlawed and then allowed by Ohio’s own Governor. Why aren’t Americans hearing more about these?
Ohioans need more transparency and less spin. The messages coming from the state executive branch and its health experts attempt only to reinforce a political narrative rather than to lead Ohioans to the truth.
It is time for a more rigorous, policy discussion that addresses near-term challenges without kicking the can down the road to creating new, more destructive problems for Ohioans and our nation at large.
Below is an example of the opaqueness of the Federal Government and its attempt to skew the numbers. We need guarantees this is not happening in Ohio!
