Prompted by concerns about Jefferson PUD moving last week toward firing uninjected workers, I made the following public comment to the Jefferson Board of County Commissioners at their October 11 meeting:
News roundup:
The Seattle Times reports “a chronic crew shortage at Washington State Ferries suddenly became a transportation debacle [forcing reduced] service on seven of its 10 routes.[Rep. Barkis said] ‘ferry cancellations are the bow wave of crises to come in government services as … workers recoil against mandates. … The governor has created a state of emergency, within a state of emergency.'”
This is personal to me.A friend working for the ferries successfully filed for and received a religiousexemption, then was summarily fired with no benefits because his services were no longer required.His family is now selling their home and moving to another state.
In Seattle, while “already facing a staffing crisis, the Seattle Police Department is bracing … for mass firing of officers as hundreds have yet to show proof of vaccination.”
In New York, its deranged new governor stood up in church and proclaimed God wants her to fire doctors and nurses – previously named heroes for risking their lives during the initial Covid crisis – because in their considered medical judgment the experimental injections are too dangerous to risk taking.She then awarded herself new emergency powers – justified by the medical staffing emergency she herself created – to replace these healthcare workers with unvaccinated National Guard.Incredible!
In Los Angeles, one in four firefighters are filing a lawsuit against the city for their vaccine mandate. Of the 871 city firefighters asking for $2 million each in damages, some say they already had Covid and have immunity, others do not want the risk of adverse reactions from the shot.A loss of these personnel will mean the “entire firefighting system would collapse; there just wouldn’t be enough to protect the City of L.A.”
Last Monday two-thirds of our own county PUD commissioners voted to risk infrastructure disruption and electrical outages by firing employees who won’t risk these Emergency Use Authorization injections.
Your choice to participate in this push can only lead to chaos, loss of essential services, human rights violations, wrongful terminations, and (I’m afraid) wrongful deaths – all of which you may find yourself in court defending, as L.A. now faces from 1 in 4 firefighters suing for $2 million each.Kiss your federal Covid relief windfall goodbye!
These emergencies being created are self-inflicted.Please take charge, cease taking bad advice, and back off from the cliff of these illegalEAU injection mandates before it is too late for you and our county.
Annette Huenke likewise commented:
On the ferry system: HR Department is struggling to count all the people who got fired before October 1. … Lawsuits are dropping around the country regarding this EUA situation. Comirnaty is not available; it is the only product that’s been approved, and the EUA still applies to everything you are considering requiring in this community.
Commissioner Kate Dean responded:
As I said last week, I’m getting tired of falling into the usual debate about vaccination and mandates.We know that the vaccinations are really effective.We know that they’re not perfect, as anticipated.
The crew shortages that we are experiencingon the ferries are worse right now certainly, but they were really bad before because a lot of ferry crew members were getting Covid and getting quarantined. We can’t have folks who could potentially be carriers working with the public, and I do see this as a fitness-for-duty issue. The tricky part of this virus is that it spreads largely before it becomes symptomatic.
And so, while we are not considering a mandate for our employees at this time, awaiting word whether the federal mandate will apply to us or not, I do feel that for many working with the public – and especially those who work in public safety and first responders – that it is a fitness-for-duty issue.
Just like knowing that you are not going to catch TB and hepatitis, there are other conditions for employment related to fitness for duty when it comes to health and safety.
Regarding the federal Covid relief windfall I mentioned, Beth O’Neal asked:
Kate Dean said last time how the Feds have been pouring money into the economy due to Covid, and also into the direct coffers of the county.I’d love to know how much that is, and does it come with any strings attached to having certain kinds of mandates?
In response, Administrator Mark McCauley detailed that the county received $3,129,000 in CARES funds in May and will receive another $3,129,000 next May. Additionally $1.5 billion has been appropriated for revenue sharing in counties, from which McCauley anticipates our county will receive $2 million by September 30, 2022 and another $2 million the following year. He concluded:
So total ARPA anticipated will be $10 million, maybe more. … the $6 million does have conditions. The revenue sharing money has no conditions except you can’t use that money for lobbying.
This may sound like a chunk of change, but it pales compared to the costs of emergencies that state and county officials may be creating by their new wave of mandates. Loss of essential services, loss of tourism as ferries become undependable, expensive wrongful termination lawsuits… the list goes on.
Have PUD and county commissioners calculated the financial risk to the county that they as public officials are creating? Do they expect to win all the lawsuits that will inevitably come?
“To be told the DOT requires us to be
vaccinated was a huge, confusing shock.
By what authority does DOT dictate our medical policy?” – Randy Calkins, PUD Water Distribution Manager, Sewer Manager
A letter to Jefferson Public Utility District employees from General Manager (GM) Kevin Streett has sparked controversy within the utility and among the public it serves. On September 24 Streett held a meeting with PUD staff, followed by an email stating:
“In accordance with the [governor’s] proclamation… the PUD will
be instating a Covid-19 vaccination requirement… The policy will
apply to all employees regardless of their work setting.”
I was among PUD customer-owners who wrote to our three commissioners in reference to the item “Vaccine Requirement – For Discussion Only” on their October 4 agenda. My letter expressed two concerns:
1) Given the well-documented viral spread by those fully vaccinated for Covid, why are the unvaxxed being singled out as potential health threats? On its face, these mandates are simply a way to stigmatize those who are refusing experimental shots. There is a growing body of evidence that the mandates are political, not valid health measures.
2) Our PUD cannot afford to lose more staff. Attracting qualified employees has been a challenge for Jefferson PUD without this added restriction. Loss of staff if a mandate were to be enacted could potentially cripple our utility’s ability to function.
The October 4th meeting
Click above for archived recording of October 4, 2021 PUD meeting. Agenda item Vaccine Requirement takes place from 1:56:08 to 2:54:50
It appears from the “Vaccine Requirement” discussion at the October 4 BOC meeting that my letter to the commissioners might have been misdirected. It turned out that a larger question loomed:
Who is making this decision — the Board of Commissioners who are our elected representatives? Or PUD General Manager Kevin Streett?
District 3 Commissioner Dan Toepper opened the discussion with that inquiry.
Toepper: “Question, can the GM make a policy like this?”
Streett: “When we talked to the unions, they wanted everyone painted with the same brush, both unions wanted, ‘okay, if you’re going to do it for one you have to do it for all.’ So we took that as part of our process-making. And then we also said, ‘okay, if we’re going to do it for two thirds of our employees, the last one third is the management side.’ And I struggled with this. It’s do we need to make a separate rule, a standalone rule that says, ‘okay, because you’re not going to go out there, you don’t have to be in consideration for vaccination.’ If we believe that we paint everyone with the same brush, then in this case I applied it to the management team… There is a lot of questions whether I can make a policy like this or not. I think I can, but it’s up for discussion tonight… I can take direction from the board and If the board says no, there will be some relief by a few, but they’ll also be some anxiety by some who really support the mandate… I struggled with this policy… but I think it’s the thing we should do at this time.”
Toepper: “I think this lies with the board as electeds… I am not in support of a vaccine mandate as a condition of employment at this utility.”
Ken Collins, District 2 Commissioner: “The position I take is to support the General Manager, and to follow the legal advice of our counsel, and to do what we think is going to keep our employees safe.”
Jeff Randall, District 1 Commissioner: “I do believe the GM has the authority… my personal view is that we are in a public health emergency… my personal view is that the sooner we all get vaccinated, the sooner we can get back to life as normal.”
Toepper: “We are being coerced, extorted, boxed in by the state to do something that ordinarily we would not be doing…. If a neighboring utility takes a different stance on this and they do not use this as a condition for employment, we could have people… working for us right now that could cross a county line and go to work somewhere else, and what did we solve with that?… All we did is shoot ourself in the foot… I believe this is the board’s decision, and WE own it at the end of the day, not the manager, or any of the people above us who are trying to push it down on us.”
When discussion opened for public comments, eight people of the three dozen on the zoom call asked to speak. All were in opposition to a vaccine mandate for employees. They included Craig Durgan, a PUD Citizen Advisory Board (CAB) member:
“One of the things you need to consider is it puts the liability onto the PUD… Drug manufacturers do not have any liability, but if you force people to take a vaccine that they do not want, and you use coercion of taking their job away… it opens the PUD up for liability for a wrongful death.”
Another CAB member, Sebastian Eggert, reinforced Durgan’s concern:
“Are you willing to accept the responsibility for a policy that may result in the loss of employees or god forbid a serious adverse reaction to the shot? If you lose employees to another utility, how many employees can you comfortably lose and still have a functional PUD?… We don’t have a full contingent of employees as it is.”
PUD employee of eight years Randy Calkins noted that this directive went far beyond Governor Inslee’s mandate which allows for weekly testing. He also observed that the Washington PUD Association had issued a notice (page 127 of agenda packet) that unless an employee has to work in close proximity to state employees or state contractors, the vaccine policy does not apply. “To be told the DOT [Department of Transportation] requires us to be vaccinated was a huge, confusing shock. By what authority does DOT dictate our medical policy?”
Calkins asked the commissioners to “please… put the representation in the hands of the PUD employees.”
Several customer-owners urged taking a pause, to avoid a rushed policy decision on something this important. Annette Huenke commented: “It was just reported by local health authorities that there’s a 46% vaccine failure [rate]… they’re blaming that on many more vaccinations…. The safety issues are immense… all of the heart conditions—myocarditis, pericarditis, heart attacks, strokes—they are real. If you get a man up in a bucket and he has a heart attack and he falls on a line and he dies and his family sues you, who is responsible for that?… Are the ratepayers going to pay that?”
Following public comments, none of these concerns were addressed. After Streett said there was pressure of an October 18th state deadline, Commissioner Collins immediately moved to end the discussion by putting the decision for a vaccine mandate back into the manager’s hands:
“I think we’re facing a deadline. I’m concerned about being out of compliance. I will make a motion that the Board of Commissioners support the General Manager in his decision about the best way to handle the safety issues raised by the Covid-19 virus.”
Randall seconded the motion.
Toepper objected. “This was a discussion-only item on the agenda,” not intended to generate that kind of action, he said. He asked for clarification of whether the motion was intended to remove the Board of Commissioners from this decision.
Collins: “The motion is intended to signify that the manager has, according to the Board of Commissioners, the authority to make a decision on how to handle this situation. So it is an endorsement of the manager’s authority.”
Collins then abruptly called for the vote. The motion passed 2 to 1, with Collins and Randall in favor, Toepper opposing.
Who should be responsible for an unprecedented policy of this magnitude?
Our public utility is owned by Jefferson County ratepayers, referred to as customer-owners. We elect commissioners to make policy. Our PUD commissioners need to have confidence in the General Manager, however all significant policy decisions are their responsibility. The manager may have legal authority to make a decision of this magnitude, but should he? In a two-to-one vote, our PUD commissioners have sidestepped a major policy decision that could have serious ramifications for our utility.
As a small community-owned entity, we value our county-centric, independent choices. It’s why we voted to take on over $100 million in debt by purchasing the electric utility from Puget Sound Energy—to have local control of our power. These mandates are not directed by any community need; pressure is being applied top-down. The unions are dictating Jefferson PUD policy while our commissioners abrogate responsibility for the consequences?
Who is NOT being mandated?
It’s curious to consider which segments of society are being threatened with loss of livelihood, coerced to comply with vaccine mandates, versus those being exempted. If achieving vaccine compliance is critical for the US to “get back to life as normal,” why are the following groups excluded from these mandates?
If every person on the planet must be vaccinated in order to deal with Covid, how do the above exemptions further public health objectives? Why are Congressional elites, White House bureaucrats and staff, federal court employees, all of our homeless and millions of undocumented immigrants, not dangerous virus spreaders? How is it that they are not threatening our safety, but the unvaxxed electrical lineman in the bucket—who may already have natural immunity and risks blood clots, heart attacks, strokes, or even death from these shots—is a danger to society?
According to Streett, some portion of PUD employees are vaccinated, but “we don’t know the exact percentages.” Surely anyone who has not taken the shots by now does not think they are safe or effective. Or they are among the hundred million Americans who already had Covid and have far more robust and durable immunity than someone who has been vaccinated. If this mandate is enforced, how many will choose to leave our PUD rather than submit to this experimental medical procedure? Streett has acknowledged that staff loss is likely.
Like some of the commenters above, I attended PUD meetings for years, observing the formidable challenges our commissioners had to manage in order to keep the lights on and utility rates in check. A consistent challenge was staffing. Key positions sometimes went unfilled for years because qualified staff could not be found. Jefferson PUD hired five different Finance Directors, a position that requires expertise specific to utilities, in about as many years. When none of them worked out and a professional head-hunter was unable to attract a suitable replacement, financial services were contracted out with a high-priced firm for more than a year. Our previous General Manager ended up being an expensive mistake when it became clear within the first year of his contract that he did not fit our PUD. Top utility personnel are in high demand and have their pick of employers.
As customer-owner Jennefer Wood commented: “You provide basic services that could be disrupted depending on the response of your employees.” How many more losses can our utility sustain?
The Jefferson County Board of Health on September 16 unanimously adopted a resolution “declaring health misinformation a public health crisis.” They urge all “to use reliable sources of data that follows the preponderance of evidence” because “there are some people in our community who are discouraging vaccinations and are therefore causing more cases and more deaths by spreading virus and pandemic misinformation that is not supported by the valid scientific data provided by reliable professional experts.”
Board of Health 9/16/21 Zoom meeting screen capture (minutes not yet available)
As indicated by its preamble, this local resolution is part of a coordinated campaign spearheaded by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who is “urging all Americans to help slow the spread of health misinformation, … a serious threat to public health. … Limiting the spread of health misinformation is a moral and civic imperative that will require a whole-of-society effort.” Hence similar such resolutions are sprouting up at health boards around the country, but face varying degrees of opposition and “failed to find more than two votes of support” at the Jefferson Hospital Commission.
On their face, these resolutions are just bully-pulpit exhortations with no force of law, but seem designed to have multiple effects. Rhetoric such as “slow the spread of health misinformation … causing more cases and more deaths” creates a false equivalency between free speech and contagious pathogens, casting disagreement as a dangerous disease vector that must be eradicated. Such fearmongering could be used to sidestep Constitutional prohibitions against “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” by pretending opposing viewpoints are like “falsely shouting fire in a theatre.”
Webster’s dictionary defines “misinformation” as “incorrect or misleading information,” which these resolutions redefine by dispensing with the concept of truth, replacing it with “data provided by reliable professional experts.”In other words, truth is what the health bureaucrats say it is, based on whatever experts and data they say are reliable, disregarding other data regardless of its validity.
This is Newspeak right out of George Orwell’s prophetic novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, except the existing word “misinformation” is distorted instead of defining new jargon like “crimethink”.Health authorities have likewise recently redefined longstanding medical terms like “cases” (no longer requiring symptoms, just a positive test), “pandemic” (removing severity and high mortality criteria), “herd immunity” (excluding naturally-acquired immunity), and “vaccination” (only needing to produce some protection, not prevention nor immunity).
The “preponderance of evidence …provided by reliable professional experts” called for in these “misinformation” redefinitions is skewed by discounting dissenting experts threatened by legal intimidation, social media deplatforming, and outright censorship.YouTube announced “we’ve removed over 1M videos related to dangerous coronavirus information”, following the lead of a White House that brags of “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation” and promoting universal bans from all online platforms “for providing misinformation out there”… not caring that such actions violate the Constitution’s First Amendment and their own oaths of office.
Publicly and privately, our county health board has itself campaigned this past year against so-called misinformation, one member imploring the Leader to suppress letters containing “misinformation spread by deniers of good science”.
But who is actually spreading misinformation… outside skeptics, or the board’s own Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry?Her responses to public comment the past two months have been revealing.
Public Comment #1 – 8/19/21
On August 19, at Berry’s first Jefferson Board of Health meeting, I delivered the following public comment, verbally and by email:
Dr. Berry, welcome to Jefferson County.
Your new masking order states: “Masks along with vaccination remain the most effective methods we have to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Both are safe and highly effective at preventing transmission.”
But if the COVID vax is so safe, why is it linked with more deaths than all other vaccines combined throughout VAERS’ 30 year history?
If the vax is so highly effective, why are masks needed?Why does new CDC data show “vaccinated individuals infected with delta may be able to transmit the virus as easily as those who are unvaccinated”?
If the unvaxxed are to blame, then why are 90% vaxxed Iceland and Israel having the same problems?
Why is Israel’s Prime Minister tweeting “Non-immunization for a third time leaves senior citizens in mortal danger. Get vaccinated now”?
How would it feel to be told that those jabbed twice are no longer even considered to be vaccinated?
How can you promote and mandate a barely-tested highly-dangerous leaky gene therapy that depends on boosters twice a year because it loses half effectiveness over 10 weeks and all effectiveness over 6 months?
Now the Leader reports you saying “More than 85% … of cases are unvaccinated people”, but that’s counting cases dating back to February 1 when few were vaxxed, counting the vaccinated as unvaccinated prior to 2 weeks after their second shot, and counting vaxxed cases using a much lower PCR Cycle Threshold than unvaxxed cases. By contrast, Britain and Israel report 60% of their current cases are vaccinated.
The Leader paraphrased you saying “Masks are vital because there are only a few tools available to stem the spread of COVID-19: vaccines, masking, and lockdowns.”But the sad experience of the past year had proven this trifecta to be pitifully ineffective and horribly damaging to our nation’s well-being, yet you are still pushing these failed nostrums as the only game in town.
Really… useless masks, phony vaccines, and deadly lockdowns… is that all you’ve got?!?What a feeble bag of tricks you are peddling.Why not promote things that might actually help, such as:
(2) Early treatment of symptomatic COVID cases with Ivermectin, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, zinc, etc., which many frontline doctors has found to be extremely effective;
(3) Focusing on protecting the vulnerable instead of harmfully quarantining, testing, and contact-tracing the healthy;
(4) Campaigning to reduce obesity, which is the major COVID risk factor among the young;
(5) And especially, improving general natural good health, since basically only those with multiplecomorbidities have much to fear from COVID.
You must know in your hearts that natural immunity is the only way forward, not this failed so-called vaccine.Please reconsider participating in the evil push to force this experimental treatment on infants, pregnant and nursing mothers, schoolchildren, the naturally immune, and all those who know it will do them more harm than good.Thank you.
In her off-the-cuff response, Berry dismissed both Annette Huenke’s and my public comments as “just a slurry of outright falsehoods, which is dangerous”:
Unfortunately I think both of these commentators really demonstrate the danger of vaccine misinformation.That was just a slurry of outright falsehoods, which is dangerous. So I think it is important for us to touch base on the sheer volume of data that is available about the safety of this vaccine, about the safety and effectiveness of masks. If you are looking on how to access that data, you don’t have to actually email me to get it, it is publicly available on the Washington State Department of Health website and publicly available on the CDC’s website.
These are some of the most tested vaccines we have ever seen.Hundreds of millions of people have received them over the past year, and we have been monitoring their safety throughout that time.You can look at that entire amount of data if you like.I encourage you to look at it if you have questions.There is a lot of it available; you can look at it yourself, and it’s freely available on the CDC and Washington Department of Health websites.
There’s also a massive amount of data that wearing a mask reduces transmission by 80%.Getting vaccinated dramatically reduces your risk of both contracting and transmitting the virus.Nothing is 100%, and that’s why the masks come in.The masks aren’t 100%, but they reduce your risk by 80%.The vaccines are not 100% when they are faced with Delta variant; we’re looking at reduced risk of about 85%.So those two things together are the best tools you have to protect yourself and keep yourself safe.
I think it’s just also important to touch base on the massive amount of data we have on the safety of these vaccines in pregnancy and breastfeeding parents.That’s probably the most key things I want you to know.
Public Comment #2 – 9/16/21
Given Berry’s unsupported allegation that my previous comment was a “slurry of outright falsehoods,” I took the time to provide the Board of Health detailed sources for every one of my previous statements, then delivered the following public comment at their September 16 meeting:
At last month’s Board of Health meeting, Health Officer Berry carelessly waved away public comments, calling them “just a slurry of outright falsehoods, which is dangerous.”
To the contrary, I’ve provided detailed sources below for every single one of my statements in last month’s public comment, so Berry can criticize them individually if she chooses.I ask Berry to withdraw her wild, baseless, and provocative slander directed at me and other commentators.
Berry then made a serious of dubious statements herself.She claimed there’s a “massive amount of data we have on the safety of these vaccines in pregnancy and breastfeeding parents”.But the reality according to the CDC is that “Pregnant women were not specifically included in pre-authorization clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines” and that 1,524 premature fetal deaths have been reported in connection with these so-called vaccines.
Berry also claimed “wearing a mask reduces transmission by 80%”.I’m not sure where she got this number, but I was able to find a popular article titled “Face masks may reduce COVID-19 spread by 85%, WHO-backed study suggests”, which was sourced to a complicated Lancet meta-analysis that made no such claim, but was summarized by WHO as follows:
“A systematic review of observational studies … suggested that N95 or similar respirators might be associated with greater reduction in risk than medical or 12– 16-layer cotton masks. However, these studies had important limitations (recall bias, limited information about the situations when respirators were used and limited ability to measure exposures), and very few studies included in the review evaluated the transmission risk of COVID-19.”
By contrast to this weak evidence, WHO spotlighted “a large randomized community-based trial in which 4862 healthy participants were divided into a group wearing medical/surgical masks and a control group found no difference in infection with SARS-CoV-2.”
Here are excerpts from Berry’s rambling response to my second public comment:
Just to be clear, the vaccines are safe, they are effective, and masks work!And that’s based on a massive preponderance of evidence, and that’s why we use phrases like that, because it’s not one study that makes those kinds of decisions.We would never make that big of a decision based on one study; that would be irresponsible.
This data is widely available.No one’s hiding it.You can access it directly from CDC’s website, you can access it from our website.You can access it from the NIH, they’re all publicly available.The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, have all made their Covid-19 research free and open and in public.The University of Washington has done a fantastic job of what’s called literature reports, where they actually summarize all of the evidence that has come out that week, and they’ve been doing it since the beginning of the pandemic. I have read them all.So if you want to catch up on a year-and-a-half of Covid-19 research, that’s a really good place to find it.That is how we make our decisions.
But if you want to do research, you need to really do research, you need to read all of that.And then once you have seen all of that, then you can make a meaningful decision on public policy. Pulling out an individual study that your friend links to you because it said something that seems different than what all the experts are saying is not doing research.You need to really read all of the data, because that is what we do. And if you don’t want to read all of that data, that is okay.That’s why people like me exist.I do that research and make recommendations based on all that data. And I’m not the only one, of course!I have colleagues across the state who do this same job, who have come to the same conclusion.I have colleagues across the country, I know the folks at the CDC, we are all working on the same thing, and we have all come to the same conclusion.
The challenge is I think, where it really starts to be truly misinformation and disinformation as opposed to just confusion, is mostly in the misuse of the VAERS database.The VAERS database is a publicly accessible database where anyone, any person, you don’t have to be a doctor, you can be any citizen, can submit a possible vaccine related event.
You don’t have to prove it, and you don’t have to be a doctor to do it.Unfortunately VAERS has been misused.Some people are putting in things that they just don’t know, and it’s never been vetted, but there are groups that have started putting in false information into VAERS, and then going back around and saying, “I found it in a public database. See, you’re hiding it!’And that’s a real thing that’s happening unfortunately by some members of the anti-vaccine contingent. And that is usually where that “data”, quote-unquote, is coming from.
But there is no evidence of fetal deaths, of premature births, or of any pediatric complications related to pregnant moms receiving the vaccines.I think it is really important to clarify that.
We know that this vaccine is safe in pregnancy, and we know that Covid-19 is very much not.There are ICUs throughout the south that are filling up with pregnant women.We are seeing a dramatic rises of stillbirths and premature births related to women who got Covid-19.That’s not happening because of vaccines.We are seeing stillbirths and premature births due to Covid-19.And so, spreading misinformation which scares pregnant women is dangerous and hurts women and their children.
Berry’s second response is a fertile field for rebuttal.Her mischaracterization of the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporing System is absurd, spreading unsubstantiated disinformation that Pharma-friendly CDC blithely allows a widespread conspiracy to file a felonious flood of false VAERS reports.That’s contradicted by a careful University of London study that found 72% of VAERS reports came from health service employees and refuted those like Berry who “imputed that VAERS was a breeding-ground for anti-vaccine misinformation”.
Public Comment #3 – 9/20/21
Given Berry’s claims that experts “have all come to the same conclusion” as her and there’s “no evidence … of any pediatric complications related to pregnant moms receiving the vaccines,” I felt the need to specifically refute her misinformation on these points in my September 20 public comment to the Jefferson Board of County Commissioners, who also sit on our county health board:
You’re probably sick of hearing from cherry-picking non-experts like me, so here’s two minutes from Nobel-prize-candidate mRNA vaccine inventor Dr. Robert Malone:
Q:Have you heard about the women who are having excessive periods [after mRNA vaccination]?What do think about that?
Malone:Yes, I think it can be explained by the effects of spike.
Q:Spike creates blood clotting, coagulation…
Malone:And micro-coagulation, and contraction of micro-vasculature, and it damages vascular endothelium [the interface between the blood stream and vessel wall], which is going to compromise oxygenation of blood flow in placental tissues.
Q:Great, so is that going to be good for pregnancy?
Malone:No, it’s not going to be good for pregnancy, and it could explain the dysmenorrhea [menstrual pain] in part, some of the heavy flow dysmenorrhea is often a sign of premature abortion.In theory, there’s a large study going, but at this stage, even I have lost faith in the government’s ability to execute a well-controlled clinical trial.
Q:But they’ve just said, all pregnant women should go ahead and get it.
Malone:I know… I don’t understand it.I object to it.I object to this crazy push to vaccinate all the kids.For me, I kind of like to pick my battles.And I’m putting my whole career on the line here.If you read that Atlantic piece, my buddy Stan Gromkowski reprimanding me with an F-bomb in print that I’m blowing my chance for the Nobel Prize.As far as I’m concerned, this is a hill worth fighting for.And the position that I care about, that I hope I can bend the arc of history just a little bit with, is the children and the reproductive integrity…
Note that this courageous, thoughtful world-class expert contradicts Dr. Berry’s assertions at the last two health board meetings about “no evidence of fetal deaths, of premature births, or of any pediatric complications related to pregnant moms receiving the vaccines. …we know that this vaccine is safe in pregnancy.”
The video you just saw belies Berry’s claim that “all the experts are saying” and “have all come to the same conclusion” as her.These are just some of the many easily-disproven sweeping false statements I’ve heard Berry tell you, hand-waving sources, basically saying: Trust me, I’m the expert, I’ll do your thinking for you.
Don’t take her word for it… trust but verify.Fact check the fact-checkers.
I’ve provided sources and quotes for every statement made to you, and welcome correction for any specific mistakes, but Berry and you have no basis for just lazily labeling my and others’ input “misinformation”.
Just this one example of Berry pretending there’s zero risk “to pregnant moms receiving the vaccines” spotlights the danger in blindly trusting Jefferson County’s new self-proclaimed health expert. Not only do actual world-renowned experts like Dr. Robert Malone refute Berry’s claims, the CDC’s own data shows these shots associated with a high level of spontaneous abortions and stillbirths.
Increased miscarriage rates post-vaccination are being noted worldwide. Since Berry claims to “have read them all,” she should know about New England Journal of Medicinedata showing pregnant women suffering an 82% spontaneous abortion rate when given Covid vaccinations during their first and second trimesters, losing 104 out of 127 babies.
Yet in the face of clear evidence, Berry authoritatively promotes the transparent falsehood that there is literally “NO evidence … of ANY pediatric complications related to pregnant moms receiving the vaccines.” This is not how science works, but this is how the cult of scientism works.
Jefferson County’s new resolution labels these inconvenient truths as health misinformation because we are now in a time where any information potentially “discouraging vaccinations” is verboten. Every pronouncement Berry happens to make is the only message allowed regardless of evidence to the contrary. So declares the Jefferson County Board of Health by official resolution.
[This piece was submitted to the Leader and rejected by them. Writer Brett Nunn explains, “I first offered it to the Leader hoping to reach a certain audience and start a civil conversation. The editor wrote back “it’s not experimental and it’s FDA approved.”]
_________________________
Yes, I gathered with a crowd of my fellow Jefferson County citizens at the traffic light in front of Safeway on Sims Way in Port Townsend on Saturday, August 20th. We were a mix of health care providers at risk of losing their licenses, grass roots activists, and just regular people. We were there to oppose the governor’s vaccine mandates for health care workers and teachers; something all of us agreed was an egregious overreach of his powers.
We had plenty of people giving us the thumbs up, and plenty of people flipping us the bird, or yelling obscenities out their car windows.
I have mentioned before that when I moved to this town a couple decades ago to raise a family it was a tolerant place filled with interesting, creative and intelligent people from all backgrounds with many varied beliefs. Somehow it all worked. We didn’t always get along, but I would like to think we respected each enough to practice a live-and-let-live philosophy that really made life here dynamic, invigorating and relaxed.
Not so much anymore.
So in the spirit of the peaceful past I extend an olive branch along with a request for my fellow citizens, whom I know to be kind, well educated, and supposedly tolerant, yet drive by in their Tesla’s and Prius’s flashing rude hand signs while saying, “&*$% you, you’re an idiot.”
I need more.
You say I am an idiot. It’s hard for me not to feel the same towards you.
Where does that leave us?
Give me more.
Am I an idiot because I want health care workers in Jefferson County to have the freedom to choose what medical treatments they want, rather than have Governor Inslee order them to take a shot or lose their license?
Am I an idiot for taking an afternoon away from my family to stand on a corner with a sign because I want you and your children to have the same freedom to choose or refuse whatever medical treatment might be required by government in the future?
Or am I an idiot because denigrating someone who has a belief different than yours is far easier than striving to understand?
I understand the fear of the last year and a half.
I understand the peer pressure.
I understand it is just easier to “go along to get along” because we were told if we got the shot everything would go back to normal.
I understand all this.
What I don’t understand is why I should “&%$@ off” when our politicians and media are pushing experimental medical treatments for the whole population that we all should know by now were not approved by the FDA, the makers of which have no liability for short term side effects that are real (seizures, heart damage, paralysis) or long term side effects (which remain mostly unknown), that doesn’t keep you from being re-infected or passing it on to others, for which it seems a third booster is needed after only six months, all for a disease that has a 99%+ survival rate for the majority of the population?
That is what I know.
Please tell me what you know, that makes what I know, something I should “%$#@ off” about?
In the mean time I urge everyone to de-escalate. Wherever you are, strive to be an island of calm, no matter what the media is saying.
If the last eighteen months has taught us anything, we can’t rely on government, either state or federal, to be of much help here in Jefferson County. Each of us, as individuals, have to do our part to knit this community back together, keep it strong, sustainable, and self reliant into the future. We can’t do this while we yell “idiot” at each other.
Now tell me what you know.
_________________________
Have you been censored?
Has a letter you’ve written been censored by the Leader, Peninsula Daily News, or other local media? The Port Townsend Free Press will publish all censored letters to the editor that meet our guidelines for civil discourse*.
For nearly a year, the Leader, the Peninsula Daily News and other local media outlets have been censoring all voices challenging the official Covid narrative (see my February article “Of Covid Testing, ‘Misinformation’ and Censorship”).
Then, on August 24, 2021 the Leader went a step further. Our local newspaper not only shut out civil, open discussion, it promoted demonization of and outright discrimination against the county residents it has been censoring:
“These dolts should be considered pariahs because of ignorance and intransigence. They should not work in offices or schools, should not be allowed in public places without proof of vaccination… Why is it taking so long to completely shut these knuckle-draggers out of civilized society?”
“Thanks, Spreadnecks, for our COVID miseries”—an admitted “rant” from columnist Bill Mann—was riddled with name-calling and inflammatory hate speech. With no science to support what is now a political narrative to demonize the healthy unvaccinated (see Stephen Schumacher’s letter below), Mann declared the “anti-vaxxers” in our community the enemy, a scourge responsible for the “miseries” that have befallen the good and righteous vaccinated.
In response, at least six people sent letters to the editor (LTEs) that we are aware of. They are printed below. None of their letters appeared in the September 1st edition of the Leader. However a concerned letter from Stacey McCarthy was published.
“This kind of talk is what incites violence…
You have an opportunity to create a space for meaningful
dialogue at a time when it is desperately needed.
Instead you choose name calling…”
Rather than embrace that opportunity for meaningful dialogue, the name-calling continued. The following week the Leader again chose to withhold all six letters below. Instead five letters were published on September 8th cheerleading Mann’s vile diatribe and calling for everyone to get the shots.
A health professional whose letter was not printed called the paper to inquire about being censored. Publisher Donna Etchey assured him that the Leader prints all the LTEs they receive, a patent lie. His and the other letters continued to be withheld from publication in the weeks that followed. In their place, the paper ran more “just get the vax” letters.
“Bill Mann is to be commended” began one of the opening salvos, calling those who refuse the injection “a real threat to society,” like “say,mass shooters.” Another writer provoked, “The time has come to make some hard decisions about what to do with these people.”
Is the newspaper’s management proud to be egging on this vigilante mentality?
The Leader couldn’t be a more blatant propaganda rag for pharma’s narrative that we must have never-ending shots in every arm on the planet or we’ll never be safe. Get your injection is the message in every opinion piece, every cartoon, every news story, every letter about Covid it publishes. The unvaxxed are “endangering the lives of others” say these misinformed writers. No matter that even the CDC says the vaccinated spread Covid as much or more than the unvaxxed. Or that the estimated 80-100 million Covid-recovered Americans who are unvaccinated have far more robust and durable protection against future infection than the vaxxed.
When history is written, it will likely be these Covid-recovered unvaxxed who are the true heroes in this saga. In the face of this leaky vaccine, those who developed natural immunity after contracting the virus may be our only hope for ever achieving herd immunity. But forget balanced journalism; the Leader will not allow these truths to see print, bent only on pressuring, cajoling and coercing more people to get injected with a dangerous, failed experimental product wreaking havoc around the world.
Freedom of speech is a thing of the past in Jefferson County. In a month of newspapers since Mann’s incendiary diatribe was printed, except for the initial token letter calling for meaningful dialogue in our community, not a single letter has been published that represents the 50% of Americans who see through this divisive fear narrative based on lies.
Who are these despicable “spreadnecks” – the “boneheads” that Mann and others would like to see purged from (im)polite society? According to researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, the highest proportion of “vaccine hesitant”—23.9%—hold PhDs. Nearly 74% of those refusing have at least some college education.
Other surveys have found that among top refuseniks are our medical personnel and first responders witnessing vaccine injuries and deaths first-hand which are being denied and covered up. They include:
Frontline nurses across the US and Canada, watching high numbers of fully vaccinated patients being treated for Covid and vax injuries, while their hospitals falsify that data. (7 minutes)
A UK funeral director who has seen far more deaths from vaccination than from the virus, with deaths from other causes falsely labeled Covid deaths, and deaths following vaccination attributed to anything but the shots. (38 minutes)
A New York Hospitalist Physician’s Assistant leaving her long-time career after filing more than 120 VAERS reports for Covid vaccine injuries and deaths, then ordered by her superiors to back off from making those reports… and now forced to choose between jab or job. (65 minutes)
Deborah Conrad, PA-C, MSHS, BSMT – Hospitalist Physician’s Assistant, Member of Medical Committee Advanced Practice Provider Director
Asked “Are you going to get this vaccine?”
“Absolutely not. I’m terrified. I am more afraid of this vaccine than I am of Covid. I love my job, I want my job. But I’m scared, scared because of what I’ve seen… I’ll give up my career, and many will—I’ve got many on my side who are walking away from careers that they love because they’re so scared.”
These are perspectives you will not hear from the tightly-controlled medical-industrial complex and complicit media. These health care workers are the “dolts” Mann and his ilk would have you treat as pariahs. As are the police, firefighters, and other first responders throughout North America making a stand to say no to vaccine mandates:
State troopers, correctional officers, city firefighters and other public employees in Washington state who have filed a lawsuit to overturn Inslee’s directive;
Police and firefighters in Los Angeles who have formed a resistance group against Covid vaccine mandates, with Fire Department Captain Cristian Granucci, a 31 year veteran, ready to lose his job rather than comply: “I’m done being silent.” (12 minutes)
A firefighters union almost 500 strong, both vaxxed and unvaxxed, taking the city of Newark, NJ to court over vaccine mandates, joined by police and other trade unions in challenging that city (first 16 minutes);
Toronto, Ontario police, firefighters and paramedics in this silent, powerful protest against mandatory vaccinations (1 minute).
In the face of rising resistance, the powers-that-be grow ever-more desperate to push the shots. What better way than to falsely portray those resisting as a threat, dangerous to society? As history has shown, a population gripped by fear is easily convinced to target a disenfranchised subgroup as the enemy. It diverts the focus away from power-hungry controllers pulling levers and turning dials behind the curtain.
Like most of the national media, local newspapers are simply bully pulpits for official propaganda. The Leader joins an agenda to vilify a segment of our population and instigate a segregated, two-tiered society—tearing apart community and country. To that end, it runs hit pieces that make a mockery of civil journalistic standards, while barring thoughtful opposing discourse from the public square.
Here are six of the letters the Leader would not print. You may not agree with their perspectives. Do you agree that it serves our community to censor their voices?
Editor, the Leader:
Considering history, there are many examples of atrocities, both long ago and recent, in other countries and our own, where a minority group in the community was demonized, called unclean, dangerous and disease-spreading. We look back on those moments in history with horror.
I don’t know if you can SEE it, but right now, we are demonizing a minority group in our community, calling them dirty, disease-spreading, “spreadnecks,” instituting segregation, firing them from their jobs, closing their businesses, destroying their lives. Can we see where this is heading? Do we continue on this path towards mob violence and segregation, or is this a community that believes in diversity, inclusion, tolerance and peace?
May we help turn the tide towards a more beautiful world!
Barclay Calvert, L.Ac.
Port Townsend
————————
In response to Mann Overboard.
Surely this unbalanced and hateful perspective can only be shared by very few folks in this town. I pray that this is the case. But moreso, I am simply amazed that the Leader would choose such a vile and immature piece to showcase. The only intent that I can think of to exhibit this column from Mann is to foment division and hatred. This does not in any way suggest journalistic integrity, but instead continues with a nefarious agenda that is promulgated through lies and deception and character assassination of anybody with a dissenting opinion. Anybody telling the truth.
In agreeing with this type of juvenile rhetoric you are choosing to continue with a false reality of fake PCR tests and censorship of treatments in order to coerce an experimental, toxic, gene altering concoction on the masses. Jabs that are aptly named “clot shots”.
If you are vaccinated then why should you be fearful of those who have done their research and have reached a different conclusion than you? Do you not see? This is straight out of the Nazi playbook, but instead now, we unvaxxed are the “unwashed” Jews. What will it be next? The 3 jab folks disparaging the 2 jabbers?
The people that I know who Mr. Mann has termed the “knuckle draggers” are the thought leaders of our time. They are the true investigative journalists who are working on the side of humanity, not for some diabolical agenda. It should never be an “us versus them” mentality. You may even find that these “clueless” ones, the folks in this town that have their guiding star exquisitely aligned, will be here to offer advice in the upcoming days, months, should you need it. We have the facts…..
Addy Thornton Port Townsend
————————
Editor, the Leader:
Science has always been a continuing course of inquiry. A hypothesis is formed, tested, debated, reviewed and argued over until a consensus is reached. Then additional information is discovered and the debate continues. Science is never “settled”, or we might still be sailing ships off the edge of the world. The discussion is ended when differing opinions are no longer allowed by the majority. Censorship is a sure sign of a weak argument.
We are now in a dangerous period when persuasion is displaced by propaganda. Hate speech is universally condemned, but here we have one of our Leader staff contributors spewing the same stuff we would expect to hear from a recently displaced President. Get ahold of yourself, Mann; you seem to have forgotten your role as a journalist. The Fourth Estate was always a check on power. Look under the rock that hides the information that may expose an uncomfortable truth. Whether your opinion is right or wrong, stifling debate is the antithesis of a robust community discussion in which people have the right and responsibility to explore ideas together. Please join the discussion.
Sebastian Eggert
Port Townsend
———————
On August 25th, 2021, the Leader reached an historic low with the publication of an ignorant, abusive screed disguised as a column by Bill Mann. His personal choice to play roulette with this experimental gene-based therapy is his business. Insisting everyone join him is not okay. I could go on at length about this man’s obvious lack of personal investigation into the current public policy-driven crisis that is disastrously transforming life as we know it.
But I’d rather take on the real culprits here — the so-called ‘newspaper’— its publisher and editor. The ’newspaper’ which censors the voices of highly educated, well-informed community members who have spent many hundreds of hours researching data, documents and diverging expert opinion around the most important event in human history, yet chooses to give voluminous ink to a malicious, uninformed diatribe from a bitter guy who apparently believes what he hears on CNN.
In the words of an elder British wisdom keeper: “In silencing the free speech of others, you’re silencing your own in this sense — if there is censorship of some free speech, then what is left is not free speech. It’s the freedom to conform to what is believed to be—by authority—acceptable opinion, belief and view.”
This has become the modus operandi for the Leader. It is an unabashed gatekeeper for totalitarian electeds and their appointed bureaucrats. This is not a community service, and it does not serve the Leader itself. The much-deserved downward spiral of its reputation, revenue and ultimately, its existence, will be the subject of its epitaph.
Annette Huenke
Port Townsend
————————
“Mann Overboard”, for sure.
Quite the unsurprising shock reading Mann’s excremental hit piece, which sadly & typically a mainstream paper would see fit to lend ink.
Dehumanizing “the other” is a time-honored political & media technique for sowing fear & division. “Fear is the foundation of most governments.” – John Adams
There’s eternally an enemy at the gates. If not, governments simply create them. The list is long: the godless heathens, barbarians, indians, commies, terrorists, both “left” & “right”, and now even an invisible one. As ever, the emperor has no clothes, as the subjects bow low to the new madness & nakedness with their own.
The Leader has sunk to a new high of lows — which is saying something after 18 months of unilateral insinuations & censorship.
Increasing numbers of physicians, nurses, orderlies, etc, have declined the jabs, and/or resigned; while a growing portion of regular folks, worldwide, are also refuseniks. And now so simple to turn the screws on “the new enemy” — as the PTB continue to lose control of their narratives.
Well, here we go again. To whit:
Hannah Arendt — “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
Joseph Goebbels, the ace Nazi propagandist sums with three quotes:
“Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.”
“If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes accepted as truth.”
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
A reread of the Nuremberg Trials & Codes is overdue, but for now a central, simple question — if you & we have no idea what’s in these “vaccines”, then what the hell is “informed consent”?’
Alby Baker
Port Townsend
————————
The Leader should be ashamed for running Bill Mann’s column “Thanks, Spreadnecks, for our COVID miseries.” Its form is the same as WWII propaganda that similarly demonized out-groups and advocated segregating them into camps. What else can one make of “They should not work in offices or schools, should not be allowed in public places” and “Why is it taking so long to completely shut these knuckle-draggers out of civilized society?”
One factor delaying America’s descent into pure bio-fascism is its Bill of Rights. Since “the COVID virus doesn’t care about rights,” Mann pushes to “fire these Typhoid Marys and Harrys,” falsely fearing that the asymptomatic healthy are a threat to others just by existing and breathing… not caring that sick-until-proven-healthy is as tyrannical as guilty-until-proven-innocent.
Beyond the evil form of his rant are the dubious claims Mann makes to justify his agenda. He equates polio vaccines with today’s barely-tested experimental mRNA shots that are already linked with 13,068 adverse-events deaths… more in half a year than all other vaccines combined during VAERS’ 31-year history. [As of 9/17/21, 15,386 Covid vaccine deaths have been reported to VAERS.]
Mann complains “we have to wear masks again because of the boneheads,” but the real reason has nothing to do with the unvaxxed. Instead it is CDC data “showing that vaccinated individuals infected with delta may be able to transmit the virus as easily as those who are unvaccinated” and have “measurable viral loads similar to those who are unvaccinated,” which is the pretext for masks again being pushed.
Mann blames the unvaxxed for “making innocent people sick, especially children,” despite pitiful vaccine ineffectiveness with antibody levels waning in 2-3 months used to justify the current push for twice-yearly booster re-vaccination. By contrast, natural immunity following CV infection is broad and enduring against all variants. Children are at minimal (not “especial”) risk, the CDC reporting only 385 deaths under age 18 in two years, with John Hopkins finding “a mortality rate of zero among children without a pre-existing medical condition such as leukemia.”
Mann continually insults the intelligence of “these dolts”, baldly saying “Not being vaxxed is … an IQ test. Over 99 percent of current COVID cases are unvaxxed.” Mann fails his own test by misquoting the Surgeon General’s debunked claim that “99.5% of Covid deaths [not cases] are among the unvaccinated,” a made-up number counting old deaths before the vax was widely available, counting the vaxxed as unvaxxed prior to 2 weeks after their second shot, and counting vaxxed deaths using a much lower PCR Cycle Threshold than unvaxxed deaths. By contrast, England and Israel report 60% of their current deaths are vaccinated.
The overall message is to scapegoat the vaccine hesitant as subhumans who “devastated … the population at large” so deserve discrimination and loss of livelihood. Shame on the Leader for promoting such blatant inflammatory hate speech while censoring all reasoned opposing viewpoints over the past year.
Has a letter you’ve written been censored by the Leader, Peninsula Daily News, or other local media? The Port Townsend Free Press will publish all censored letters to the editor that meet our guidelines for civil discourse*.
Like you, we want
Port Townsend Free Press
to continue!
The Port Townsend Free Press has been a precious window into the unreported corners of our fair (and sometimes not so fair) City of Dreams, as well as an outlet for voices not well served by local media and powers-that-be. As the only uncensored media source in our county, we aim to continue founder and departing editor Jim Scarantino’s legacy.
The three of us bring different backgrounds and experiences to this endeavor. What we share is a commitment to free speech and speaking truth to power. We are nonpartisan, fact-driven, and are not beholden to any advertisers or other commercial interests.
If you are not on our mailing list, please take a moment to sign up — just click here to JOIN OUR MAILING LIST TODAY! You’ll receive email notification whenever a new article is posted. In the spirit of a free press, we welcome your comments, and pledge to provide a civil community forum for conversations that are being censored by other media.
We will do our utmost to rise to the high standards Jim has set!
