The Tyrants Explain Your Worth
There are other columns to write on other days, about topics silly and serious involving whatever remnants of authentic medicine there are. But today is for something far darker, and far more sinister. The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that if you are a private citizen, working for a private company, it is unconstitutional for you to have a medical treatment forced upon you. These same disgusting, feckless tyrants also ruled that if you are a health care worker, you do not have that same protection.
The cancer of Medicare/Medicaid that our profession allowed to metastasize throughout virtually all of health care has now inevitably, correctly begun to actively consume us. For over 18 months it has been apparent to some of us that the COVID panic/reaction was about population control, not keeping people healthy, and that the public health apparatus views patient and physician autonomy as dispensable as the truth. Now the D.C. tyrants have seen fit to demand obedience from those they called with fashionable deceit “heroes” during lockdown months, feted with stupid military flyovers and moronic TikTok videos. Now with the flip of a demented Biden pen, we are overnight deemed to be a danger unless we accept a vaccine that does not prevent infection or transmission, in order to protect those that are already presumably vaccinated or recovered from a variant mild enough to be now considered an angry flu at worst.
I had COVID early on, and despite having it coughed in my face daily for the subsequent two years, only just got (and got over) what I’ll presume is the Omicron. Big whoop. I did not get a vaccine, and don’t intend to. We do not have significant long-term safety data, and there are some legitimate concerns regarding the possibility of pathogenic priming, antibody-dependent enhancement, and as yet undefined auto-immune responses. At least half of the runny-nose, achy, stuffy-head whiners that I’ve seen every damn day for the past two weeks that are COVID positive have had the vaccine, so clearly it did not prevent infection. Did it prevent worse symptoms? Maybe, but there was no clinical difference between those that I’ve treated who were vaxxed and those who were not, and none of them needed hospital admission. So why does the anti-freedom SCOTUS want to force me to take this shot? It is certainly not a scientific statement to tell you that two of the physicians in our ER group got significant myocarditis after getting the COVID vax, but why should I be obliged to discount that? Why does the thoroughly corrupt CDC – the health care equivalent of the FBI – support CMS in forcing treatments on physicians and nurses?
Mythical cliches surround this collapsing profession, and it is to our own great harm that we have not undone them in years past. “He has to treat that person, he took an oath!” Hogwash, burped up from someone who has never taken said Oath and almost certainly doesn’t know what it says. And another that I have come to hate: “First do no harm.” A fine credo for the honest physician bedside, but another weapon in the hands of dishonest cowards like Justice Kavanaugh or his senior mannequin John Roberts. Damn them entirely for this totalitarian mindset: “In the healthcare facilities case, the court’s differently comprised majority concluded that the regulation ‘fits neatly’ within the power Congress conferred on the government to impose conditions on Medicaid and Medicare funds, which includes policies that protect health and safety.
‘After all, ensuring that providers take steps to avoid transmitting a dangerous virus to their patients is consistent with the fundamental principle of the medical profession: first, do no harm,” the court said.’” The five despicable black robed tyrants have said that CMS can make any determination that it likes regarding those who provided what is now almost entirely nationalized health care. Whether they are lying or just that damn stupid, the result is the same, a terrible imposition on health care workers who are now discovering that they are not valued and not free. Forcing a vaccine on health care workers does NOT “avoid transmitting a dangerous virus,” which is a flat out lie. And if the vaccine is so effective, then what danger could an unvaccinated worker possibly pose to a vaccinated patient? These judicial thugs merely sought to preserve the power of a huge bureaucracy, doubtless cheered by the crony corporatists on both sides who have profited immensely from mass vaccinations without end.
“But wait,” I can hear apologists say, they are merely upholding established federal administrative authority for the good of the larger society. Okay, fine. Then does CMS have the authority to check my fasting lipid levels to make sure that I won’t keel over in mid-MI on a patient? “Nooo, dummy,” I hear you say, “because lipids aren’t infectious, and how dare you make light of a disease that has killed millions?” But the decision is based on FALSE info, which makes it a bullshit decision. Which means that the decision was not actually about hyper blown notions of “saving lives,” but rather using the bodies of subject workers to offer to a stupid, fearful public as trophies in the War on COVID, without end, amen. The Fauci, Dr. Hot Mess Wallensky of the CDC, and the approved herd media TV docs all claim that the vaccine reduces transmission – where is that data, and why, oh why should we believe any claims from the factory that has produced an unbroken string of failure and lies from the start? Even if – IF – this non-vaccine vaccine reduces viral shedding, it does not eliminate it and there is no proof that the unvaccinated are responsible for the vast swaths of newly-infected among the vaccinated. Which means that the entire apparatus now blessed by the SCOTUS scumbags are pushing something that will have real consequences on real people based on whims and feelings dressed up as “science” and completely phony.
What is horrifyingly real is the 1984 state of health care. Throughout my career I have been scanned, evaluated, drug-tested, fingerprinted, repeatedly, and yet the only laws I have ever broken have been for minor traffic violations (as I have to re-attest every damn year). All of this is to purportedly “protect patients” based on bureaucrats and their captive politicians’ desires to placate the public by showing they are …doing…something.
And here is the something they did: they have firmly reinforced in the mind of the public that health care workers are a potential threat, and are not worthy of the same freedoms enjoyed by those who demand free, timely, and perfect care. Physicians and nurses are by definition not deserving of the same range of civil liberties enjoyed by those who empower their politicians to assault us. We are the servant class, and not to be trusted or respected, and our value lies only in our obedience.
Interesting precedent which may lead to the infamous slippery slope. If accepting government money allows government mandates into your present and future health, will they be able to mandate such things as contraception in multiparous poor women dependent on State assistance?
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT BUSINESS, et al, vs DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, et al. – January 7, 2022 – US Supreme Court.
“We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators. We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in — in serious condition and many on ventilators.”
That was from The Wise Latina.
More like about 4,500 hospitalized total, with or without a ventilator.
Clarence Thomas was always criticized for not saying much in court. What’s that saying, about keeping your mouth shut and people think you’re a fool, or open your mouth and remove all doubt.
First, regurgitate no drivel. The scabetic dead-horse sentence cited, often invoked solemnly by ignoranti is used without reference. It has no reference. It is made up. Those Harvard Law alums on the SuperCourt might want to read what, um, the Harvard Medical School has written about the useless phrase “primum non nocere”, which would make as little sense to Hippocrates as the lyrics to Crazy Train by Black Sabbath, as Hippocrates spoke no Latin. Nor did he say it in Greek. Read the Harvard discussion on the matter, linked above. We are fed a regurgitant stream of succus by the media on how physicians should behave. If Harvard, and the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy cannot encapsulate harm into a little pill, why do we have to put up with this solemn superstitious baloney? Stamping out nonsense is what the scientific method’s all about.
Postmodern civilization has apparently re-discovered an ominous idea, that we can create a coherent body of centralized authority that can more effectively control human behavior, thought and action better than humans do on their own. One could point to Dr. Google and Doctor Watson as examples, but the problem’s way older than the internet. Older than Marx’s insightful but failed idea that if the smart people ran the economy, it would work better than just letting it run on its own.
Go back to Genesis 11:1-9 and the Tower of Babel. People got good at building stuff, and hypothesized that they could build a thing that could justly control people. That’s pretty arrogant. But fast-forward to the Supreme Court’s decision that a thing – a really brilliant thing (like a Supreme Court) – was better at running people’s lives than people themselves. It’s a universal principle called hubris which Hippocrates COULD understand – it’s Greek for arrogance.
The Bible said that God mused, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” I call bull_ on that, I expect it was really some prideful ziggurat engineer in front of the mirror with his God robe on. I just can’t see God taking a pile of mud bricks that seriously.
Fast-forward to Marxism or Medicare or team-based homeschooled clinical intervention pathways, or other such nonsense du jour, that we construct to take the care of people away from people, and we see that hubris never falls out of style. And they quote the nonexistent Hypocrites to justify their egos.
“I’ve listened to preachers, I’ve listened to fools. I’ve watched all the dropouts who make their own rules. One person conditioned to rule and control; the media sells it and you live the role.” John Michael Osbourne, Crazy Train Hey, that works a lot better for me.
Add to this there was a mandate to treat HIV patients regardless of status, AND WE WERE BANNED FROM testing, perhaps because it was a politically protected group. No one cared if health care workers acquired HIV from a patient, and there still is no vaccine.
The hospital mandates to provide ER coverage FREE, because we took an “oath”, while they increase outside referrals to make more money. And dont provide adequate OR time to treat such patients, but can charge 12k for a 2 hour ER visit.
The mandate to treat people that have no intention of ever paying, sometimes even when they have money.
And most of all a Doctor who tries to treat a patient, but has a bad outcome, and no ill intent, faces a malpractice trial which is worse than criminals now get in NY and California unless they commit murder.
So, now give us your take on why most providers are required by their employers to get an annual flu vaccination or risk termination.
They should not. If patients are worried about the flu, they are free to get an annual vaccination.
Interesting question. The presumption you offer that employees are required to behave in a certain way by employers or risk termination. What about reframing the question to consider is – isn’t it expected that educated professionals will follow their conscience to minimize the risk of transmission of infection? I am vaccinated against COVID because my expert opinion favors the risk/benefit in doing so, for my own self-care and that of my patients. “It is a trite yet urgently true observation that if America is to remain a first-class nation, it cannot have second-class citizens.” That means second-class citizens of any sort, for any purpose, seeking any goal, no matter what practical excuse is invoked. Otherwise, why shouldn’t we extend such obligations as “employees of the state” in some way or another, to behave in a certain way by our “employers,” or risk termination? I’d say that this is the gravamen of the case the Supreme Court wrestled with.
Great article! Enough is enough. I wish more doctors and those in the medical field took your stance in a more public forum.