Hundreds of residents of Rochester, New York fought back against growing vaccine mandates for healthcare workers on Monday by launching a massive protest at Strong Memorial Hospital.
“All we want is a choice. A choice to either have the vaccine or not have it. That’s fine with us. But we thought we should have the choice not to. But that’s really our bottom line,” registered nurse Mearle McDonald told News10.
City Councilman Jose Peo said that he is fighting vaccine mandates as well, warning that unvaccinated healthcare workers could be out of the job as soon as next week.
“We have freedoms to be able to choose what goes in or out of our body—here we are where we’re not allowing that,” said Peo. “It’s not right to have them go a year and half of fighting for us, but here we are now trying to fire them for not taking the vaccine themselves. They went 18 months without it.”
Dr. Michael Pichichero with Rochester Regional Health stood by the vaccine, seemingly bizarrely promoting the idea that it should be given to children as well.
“What if it’s your child who has the really bad infection, who ends up on a ventilator, who ends up in the hospital, or who dies?” he asked. “For me, that is too big of a risk.”
Dr. Jennifer Nayak with URMC agreed, saying, “No evidence in any of the studies for adults, teens, or younger kids of long-lasting negative effects from this vaccination.”
Those who are against vaccine mandates, however, point out that it’s too early to know either way what the long-lasting effects of this vaccine will be on both children and adults. McDonald lamented that if this mandate moves forward, 30% of fellow workers in area hospitals might be terminated by next week.
“They’re canceling surgeries because they’re not going to have the people to take care of [patients],” said McDonald.
The protesters who gathered yesterday have already said that they’ll be back at the hospital next week to protest the vaccine mandate once again.
A similar protest to the one in Rochester happened at St. Luke’s Hospital in New Hartford, New York on Sunday.
“We need to stand together now. We have to fight for our freedoms,” Tasha Soulia told WKTV. “There’s no other time like this in the history of America where we’ve seen a mandate forcing us to take a vaccine. This is unconstitutional and we need to stand together now.”
These vaccine mandates have gone way too far, and if we don’t fight back now, it will soon be too late. Nobody deserves to lose a job just because they are not vaccinated, and we as a society need as many healthcare workers as we can get at the moment. Here’s hoping that these protests work, and healthcare workers are allowed to keep their jobs regardless of their vaccination status.
This piece was written by James Samson on September 21, 2021. It originally appeared in RedVoiceMedia.com and is used by permission.
The opinions expressed by contributors and/or content partners are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of LifeZette.
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Good to see people standing up for the rights that the Bill of Rights gives us AND God as well. We are the owners of our bodies, not the government or our employer