I would like to tell my story of what happened to me during “mandate mania”. Too few people are aware of the unfortunate lengths to which this mania has gone. It is important that brave individuals like Dr. Stephen Skoly realize they are not alone in questioning the bad science, bad medicine, and bad policy that the mania has produced.

Last November (2021) I was informed that I was being discharged from the Board of Care New England (CNE) because I had for personal private medical reasons decided not to be vaccinated. I was disappointed by CNE’s action for many reasons: 1) I had been on the Board for half my adult life and served as its (immediate past) Chair for five years, 2) the CNE decision was based on bad science, bad medicine and bad policy, 3)since the Board had been meeting only virtually, for nearly two years I had had no personal contact with any of the Board, much less patients; in other words my social distancing was measured not in six-foot increments but rather in miles, 4) I was unaware of the science that had shown that it was possible to spread the Covid-19 virus over telephone lines or the internet, and 5) I had hoped my private medical decision would be honored, just as I honor the rights of those choosing to be vaccinated.

At the November meeting at which my discharge was announced, I was permitted to say a few parting words. I thanked the Board for the years of working with them and commended them for their efforts over the years to provide Rhode Island with outstanding health care. I then added that I wanted to speak up not for myself but for a group that they would hopefully treat more fairly. To paraphrase, I said:

“When Covid-19 first struck, first-line patient-care workers stood up to continue caring for the sick. There were then no recognized therapies or vaccines. They risked their lives. Many got sick. Some died.

“For this sacrifice, all over the Nation, these nurses, doctors and physicians assistants were rightly treated as the heroes they were. Who can forget the colored hearts that sprang up across American yards and bumper stickers thanking these courageous people?

“Now, however, Care New England and the State have turned their backs on the heroes of yesterday. I do not mean just depriving them of their livelihoods if they chose not to be vaccinated—in many cases because they had natural immunity, to which no credit was given under the 100-percent vaxx policy. There was a further sacrifice imposed upon them, which CNE could and should correct.

“They were told they had ‘voluntarily resigned’. They did no such thing. It was a dishonest betrayal to say so. They were fired. The result was that in addition to losing their careers, in some cases the only callings they had ever wanted or were trained for, these people were in effect being denied the unemployment, severance and other benefits to which they would otherwise be entitled.

“There is no science or medicine that could possibly justify such gratuitous vindictiveness. The beauty of this particular issue is that CNE could choose to rectify this final insult without violating one iota of its 100-percent vaxx policy. It could stand with those who were let go to make sure they received the benefits to which they should be entitled.”

As my parting plea, I urged the CNE Board at the very least to accommodate these heroes of yesterday by stating honestly that they had been discharged.

Subsequent events have demonstrated with increasing clarity the ways the bad science, medicine and policy implications of the all-vaxx policy hurt the State. It was not long before Rhode Island discovered a shortage of some 1,300 front-line health-care workers. One bad policy led to another, as the State then announced the policy that anyone vaccinated, even testing positive, was cleared to work in hospitals and nursing homes, while at the same time those not vaxxed, even if they tested negative, were not permitted to do so. Such was not only devoid of logic, it was the opposite of logic. In fact, it repeated the error of ex-Governor Cuomo of New York when he sent those infected into the nursing homes of that State. It represented the triumph of a fixation on vaxx mandate mania uber alles.

This is not the place to describe in more detail all of the mistakes that the mania caused those in charge of Rhode Island’s health-care to make. Suffice it to say that every day the scientific evidence mounts that vaccine mandates, however virtuous they made some feel, have not only failed to achieve the intended positive effects, but have produced, on net, more harm than good.