The Center Square
By Bethany Blankley
November 10, 2021
(The Center Square) – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has released a slate of bills he’d like to see passed during the special legislative session that begins Monday. The bills are related to vaccine mandates as a coalition of groups from across the state will be holding a rally next week in support of banning such mandates.
DeSantis, who has been an outspoken critic of President Joe Biden and against vaccine mandates, said on Monday the proposed bills are “probably the strongest protections for both private and public sector employees anywhere in the country.”
He has argued for laws to hold businesses liable for any medical harm resulting from a vaccine mandate as a well as other stipulations.
“Nobody should be losing their jobs because of these jabs,” he said. “We’ve got to stand up for people and protect their jobs and protect their livelihoods.”
Democrats in the legislature largely oppose the proposals.
But the bills don’t actually ban the vaccine mandates in Florida, The Tampa Bay Times reports.
“Far from a ban, one of the bills lawmakers will consider requires employers to offer more alternatives to opt out of mandatory vaccines,” the Times reports. “Companies that don’t comply could face thousands of dollars in fines.”
In May, DeSantis signed a bill into law prohibiting government agencies or businesses from requiring vaccine passports as a condition of service. The law, which went into effect in July, didn’t address private employers and employees, and is being challenged in court.
Biden’s private sector vaccine mandate, which would requires businesses with 100 employees or more to make sure their workers are vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to weekly testing, is slated to go into effect Jan. 4 but also is being challenged in court. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Saturday temporarily halted the Biden administration’s private sector vaccine mandate, citing “grave” constitutional issues.
Meanwhile, a rally for medical freedom organized by a coalition of activist groups will convene on Nov. 16th in the Capitol courtyard in opposition to vaccine mandates.
Rebekah Ricks, director for Polk County Moms for America, who is organizing the rally, said, “We are calling on citizens all across Florida to join us in opposing government overreach in forcing Floridians to be vaccinated against their will. We strongly support an individual’s right to weigh all potential medical, moral and legal implications to make a personal decision as to what is in their best interest, as well as the best interest of their children. No person should be coerced into unwanted medical treatments, including vaccinations, in order to participate in society and provide for one’s family.”
One of the sponsors of the event, Florida Citizens Alliance, asked DeSantis to call a special session in August to ban vaccine mandates and passports. Now that he has, they argue he “is leading the nation in defending and preserving the rights of the people.”
The coalition is urging the legislature to use Florida’s Civil Rights Act FS 760.01 to declare Floridians’ health and immunization status as a “protected class,” similar to the protected classes of age, sex, race and other categories.
The special session will last no longer than a week, ending on or before Nov. 19.
A look at any College football game blows the super spreader theory off base. It also raises question as to a need for mandates. Two oral medications are being released soon which also negates the need,
Never any talk of loosing weight, eat healthy and maintain a high vitamin D3 level along with zinc and C.
78% of the dead had D3 deficiency. Cold and flu season is vitamin D deficiency season. the lack of dialogue is boggling.
Except I would stay away from Molnupiravir. Per Trial Site News, “Molnupiravir’s efficacy is marginal, but its mutagenicity and carcinogenicity are real. The tidbits of information published by the UK’s MHRA include bone marrow toxicity discovered in some early trials, something suggested earlier in an article2 on this site. Thus, Molnupiravir is likely to cause leukemia”.
While there is roughly 40 years of data re: the safety of Ivermectin, it is demonized as dangerous when the evidence says otherwise. Reports in the media about Ivermectin poisoning were grossly exaggerated and false.
I have not seen this type of data reported for Pfizer’s pill, but I would go with a drug that has been tried and tested over a 40 year period with over 4 billion doses adminstered vs. something new and untested.
While he’s at it, why doesn’t DeSantis go all the way – give parents complete freedom over theirs and their children’s lives – and watch the hospitals fill up to overflowing
Ban all vaccines for children so they can be free to experience all the joys of childhood: polio, measles, tetanus, etc.
Ban seat belt laws – let the carnage begin
Ban compulsory education – let children grow up free, ignorant, and unemployable
Ban all gun legislation – playground arguments could be settled Wild West style
Once you start down the ‘personal choice’ path, the possibilities are endless for a swing into anarchy.
False equivalence.
Just wow. While you’re at it don’t forget free speech and thought. You could just regulate everything. Such a false native and obviously partisan. Thank you Governor for protecting the citizens of this great state.
Nancy, you totally missed the point. DeSantis doesn’t want to ban any laws, he is only protecting our freedoms against mandates.
Biden can’t stand up and declare his mandates without trampling on our freedoms and liberties.
You can get as many shots as you like and give them to your children as well, but that doesn’t allow you or anyone else to mandate my actions. It really is as simple as that.
Everyone should have the freedom to work or go to school in as healthy an environment as possible. Vaccines protect other people – something you seem opposed to.
Others ‘mandate’ your actions all the time – laws against speeding, shouting fire in a crowded theater, pouring poison in a reservoir – all restrictions ‘mandated’ by government in the interests of protecting everyone’s health and safety.
Actually, the Covid vaccines do not. Vaccinated people can still be infected and the vaccine does not reduce viral load. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) recently published an analysis of clusters of infections driven by the delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They found that a large portion of those infected in these clusters had been fully vaccinated. Furthermore, the viral loads were similar between those vaccinated and unvaccinated, suggesting that vaccinated individuals who develop breakthrough infections are very capable of transmitting the infection to others”.
Why do the protected need protection from the unprotected by forcing the unprotected to take the protection that didn’t protect the protected in the first place? When will the people that got 4 shots be complaining only about the people that only got 3 shots?
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/the-latest-on-the-coronavirus/
The fact that a public health issue has become so divisive and politicized is a symptom of how our compassion and concern for the “greater good” has been supplanted by self-interest. If you wish to remain unvaccinated, fine. Just don’t put others at risk. Maintain social distance, wear a mask indoors and don’t lie about your unvaccinated status. Just as smokers are free to poison themselves, they can’t smoke indoors and expose others to a serious health hazard. It’s very sad that the community good is so unimportant to our governor and he’s imposing dangerous mandates from the “other side”.
Question – who gets to decide what the “greater good” is? There is a growing body of evidence that the vaccines are neither safe or effective. Countries with a large percent of the population vaccinated are seeing new surges – Germany, Israel (now on to their 4th shot/second booster), Iceland, and Ireland are examples. Not only that, but if you took the jab and get infected anyway, your viral load is just as high, if not higher than the unvaccinated.
As to masks, read any study about mask efficacy written prior to covid and all say the same thing – masks do not stop the spread of viruses because the aerosols that carry the virus are far smaller than the pore sizes of even the best masks. Wearing a mask to prevent the spread of covid is like putting up a chain link fence to keep out mosquitoes.
Had our health agencies embraced the repurposing of therapeutics like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine early, this pandemic would have been obliterated by mid-year 2020. Instead, our health agencies participated in a smear campaign against both and that is where the real politicization occurred. When Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in India with a population exceeding 200 million with 5% vaccinated carried out an aggressive campaign to distribute Ivermectin in April, their daily case counts dropped from over 35,000 in late April to under 300 by mid-June – and they have seen no new surges since, unlike other countries and states in the US with high vaccination rates. As of November 9, UP had 85 total active cases with 8 new. UP is not alone, similar results were achieved in Delhi, Goa, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Mexico City, Chiapas, Mexico, and pockets around the world. The success of Ivermectin has been buried by the media. Instead, the media has participated in a smear campaign against it spreading the propaganda that it is dangerous despite any medical literature you find about it prior to Covid shows that it is one of the safest drugs in history – frankly, far safer than the vaccines.
I’ve posted this before, which apparently angers many who have totally bought into the “vaccines are safe, IVM is dangerous” narrative, but here it is again. This is the data that is taken from the only official databases available.
VAERS data show the number of adverse effects after receiving the vaccines at 856,919 from December 2020 through October 29, 2021. Of those, there were 20,110 life threatening events, 88,910 hospitalizations, 18,078 deaths, 28,112 permanent disabilities, 95,898 emergency room visits and 610 birth defects after vaccinations. One very troubling data point is the number of deaths following covid vaccine vs. number of deaths following all other vaccines COMBINED since 1990 – that number is 9,215, roughly half the number for Covid since 12/20. To the extent our media has covered VAERS, they attempt to simply dismiss these numbers. That is incredulous.
VigiAcess is the WHO database that collects adverse effects of medications used around the world. For Ivermectin, VigiAccess reports 5,674 adverse drug reactions since 1992 with what is now over 4 billion doses administered. Those reactions have been mild and transient with no reported deaths. The largest reported categories for ivermectin include skin issues, headaches, dizziness, and gastrointestinal disturbances such as diarrhea and nausea. The NIH confirms that ivermectin’s primary adverse side effects “include dizziness, pruritis [itchy skin], nausea, or diarrhea. And a recent review of ivermectin similarly describes the common side effects as “itching, rash, swollen lymph nodes, joint pain[], fever, and headache.
Ivermectin has been credited with eliminating river blindness, is an FDA approved drug, is on the WHO list of essential medications, and whose developers were awarded the Nobel prize for medicine in 2015. Yet, if you read the media, all you get is that it is horse medicine and the FDA participated in that smear. The repurposing of drugs for off-label use is not uncommon, especially when treating novel diseases where no other treatments exist. Doctors who elected to actually treat patients instead of just providing “supportive care” found the both IVM and HcQ were effective in treating patients as early as April 2020. Yet their letters to our health agencies went unanswered and were ignored. That is disgraceful and in my mind, criminal.
My sources for this information include the Johns Hopkins Covid tracker, Trial Site News, The Desert Review, The Times of India, the Nebraska AG opinion on Ivermectin among others.
Credentials and credibility are important to recommendations. Those with financial promotional motivations are lower on the scale. I trust our health agencies, properly staffed and ethically monitored to make good recommendations. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act is an important piece of post Civil War legislation to keep a cadre of relatively unbiased professionals involved in making responsible decisions on behalf of our body politic.
I no longer trust those agencies. Where were those protections with the Merck VIOXX scandal and Purdue Pharma’s role in the opiod crisis? I trust doctors who actually treat patients and have have zero financial interest in proposing the use of an off-patent, inexpensive medication like IVM and HcQ. Fauci has not treated a patient since 1968 when he completed his residency and went to work for the NIH. He paved the way for Remdesivir approval despite many financial ties of people on the NIH panel who approved it. Per the Washington Times: “On May 1, the NIH’s COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines panel members granted emergency use of remdesivir and stated HCQ could only be used in hospitals or in studies. Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson found 11 members of that panel had financial ties to Gilead. Two were on Gilead’s advisory board, others were paid consultants or received research support and honoraria. None of the members, however, had ties to HCQ, which is made by numerous generic manufacturers, and “is so cheap, analysts say even a spike in sales would not be a financial driver for the companies,” Ms. Attkisson reported. A 5 day treatment using Remdesivir costs on the order of $3500. A 5 day treatment using either IVM or HcQ costs well under $100, so you tell me where the financial interest lies.
Just so you have the info, here is the safety profile of Remdesivir:
Per the WHO database VigiAccess, which collects adverse effects data on medications used around the world, there have been 7,491 adverse drug reactions for Remdesivir since the drug was introduced in 2020, more than ivermectin has registered over the last 30 years. What’s more, serious adverse reactions from remdesivir are reported in high numbers. For example, in less than two years, those who have used remdesivir have reported over 560 deaths, 550 serious cardiac disorders (such as bradycardia and cardiac arrest), and 475 acute kidney injuries.
Compare that to the safety profile per VigiAccess for Ivermectin since 1992.
Time to wake up. Our agencies have been thoroughly corrupted and it has cost literally millions of lives around the world because our health agencies are viewed as the “gold standard”. That image has been thoroughly tarnished by this scandal. Take some time to read through the FLCCC website, listen to the testimonials, read the CV’s of the doctors of both the FLCCC an the BIRD group and ask yourself why they are characterized as “fringe” doctors.
It’s your subjective judgement on whom you personally trust. Sounds like a pharmaceutical sales pitch, or competitor’s attempt to disparage an alternative product. Bid protests are always like this. Woulda/coulda/shoulda. Referee’s exist for a reason, and no one is perfect, but some are more unbiased than others. The arena of public health is much broader than private practice and involves many disciplines. I trust competency, credentials, and professional responsibility – exercised officially in the public interest.
So, promoting the use of an inexpensive therapeutic with a a 40 year safety profile that shows it to be one of the safest drugs in history over the use of an expensive new drug with a short history that reveals serious safety concerns sounds like a pharmaceutical sales pitch to you? In case you are unaware, Ivermectin has been off patent since 1996 and can be manufactured by any pharmaceutical company. Gilead owns the patent for Remdesivir so they are the only ones who can manufacture it unless they authorize another company to manufacture it, for which they would receive some royalty. You think the 11 individuals with financial ties to Gilead are unbiased? There is no would/could/shoulda – but there is clear corruption.
You sound like a pharmaceutical company that is protesting because it lost a bid, Barnes.
One more thing, Remdesivir was approved after a single study of just over 1000 patients that was not at the time peer reviewed. For Ivermectin there have been a total of 127 studies with 6 or 7 meta analysis. IVMMETA is a meta analysis of 65 studies involving 49,151 patients by 628 authors around the world. The results show 86% improvement as a prophylaxis, 67% improvement with early treatment, and 37% improvement with late treatment. It also actually reduces viral load, something we now know the vaccines do not do.
Incredible hubris and ignorance and lack of compassion on display here. Fact: 60 thousand dead Floridians. One if the highest death rates of any state. Prevention was quite effective for the COMMUNITIES who practiced it. It does not help for individuals to practice prevention of communicable diseases, it takes a COMMUNITY. Who would send a child to school with measles? With the Flu? With meningitis? Dead Floridians cry out for us to acknowledge our failure to respond appropriately to this public health emergency. I personally know a dozen who SHOULD NOT HAVE DIED!