My first encounter with vaxxport tyranny took place last week at a Los Angeles gym, where I have been a member for two years.  Abiding by an edict from the governor of California, the reception staff asked to see my vaccination card or a QR code before allowing me access to the facilities.  I told the newly anointed gatekeepers that whether or not to partake of the vaccine was a personal medical decision, as in "my body, my choice."  I made clear my resentment of  the tyrannical invasion of my privacy — especially for the COVID "virus" that has demonstrated a 99.5% survival rate for healthy, fit people under 70.

To be able to exercise that day, I later succumbed to the pressure, but not before snidely remarking that no one asks for the results of my TB test or hepatitis titer.  After all, those diseases are more infectious and lethal than COVID.

My gym story does not end there.  It took a pleasant twist, and yet drove home a cautionary tale tinged with irony.  But I'll save that for the end.  The bigger concern is that, across the world, countries are imposing severe restrictions on the unvaxxed.  The unjabbed are denied access to places they should be rightfully free to use.  In some places, such as Australia and Austria, interstate travel is proscribed, and they are mistreated and shamed for refusing vaccines cleared under dubious standards of emergency use approval (EUA).  Their reasonable suspicion that Big Pharma is orchestrating a con game is scorned and derided.  Any fear of vaccine despotism is ridiculed, and protests are ruthlessly put down, minimized, or ignored.

In America, such interdictions — ridiculous as they are — come from the very top.  Recently, President Joe Biden addressed the American people with a paternalistic admonishment: "We have been patient, but our patience is wearing thin.  And your refusal has cost us all.  So please do the right thing."  Noam Chomsky, the controversial professor emeritus at MIT, provided the most outlandish example of left-leaning academia's deep, hate-driven need to punish those who differ with their viewpoint.  He proposed that the unvaccinated be segregated and told to arrange for their own food supply without coming into contact with others.

Mandating vaccination raises some significant questions.  Doesn't a person have a choice in submitting to a treatment or a protection against a disease?  Can a democratic government impose vaccination on those who are not convinced of its safety and efficacy?  And the most  important one: did we — and our founding fathers — choose to create a society where we have to reveal personal health information to go about our activities?  Heaven knows where these vaccine edicts could lead, but Americans certainly don't want the equivalent of the Chinese Communist Party's social scoring system, which this is beginning to resemble.

Recently, I interviewed anesthesiologist Christopher Rake, M.D., following his perp walk by security personnel out of UCLA Medical Center for failing to meet the deadline for the hospital's COVID-19 vaccine requirement for medical staff.  A devout Catholic, he could have invoked a religious exemption, but he chose to oppose the tyranny, saying "no" to the dictatorial terms of the state of California.  Currently on leave without pay, he says he's "willing to lose everything — job, career, paycheck, even my life" to fight for freedom.

Dr. Rake shared a disturbing anecdote about the vaccine groupthink that has taken effect.  For almost two years, doctors and nurses dedicated themselves to treating COVID patients.  For much of that time, there was no anti-COVID vaccine.  But he was shocked recently when a colleague rancorously proclaimed she wouldn't treat the unvaccinated.  Hostile to the idea that anyone would refuse an inoculation of questioned safety and efficacy, she was unmoved when Dr. Rake reminded her of their Hippocratic Oath.

More appalling to Dr. Rake is the prevailing view that the unvaccinated are somehow less than human — that they are irresponsible vectors spreading a disease and the main obstacle to our getting "back to normal."  A staunch advocate for patient autonomy, he believes that mandating a treatment is a violation of ethics and constitutional rights.  He abhors the co-opting of the medical profession to impose a nefarious plan to control the populace.  And he wryly notes that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly changed the definition of vaccine from a "product that produces immunity to a specific disease" to "a preparation that is used to stimulate an immune response" — perhaps to cover itself for endorsing a product of dubious efficacy.

Dr. Rake first became concerned about the political ramifications of the pandemic during the lockdown in March 2020 — an unprecedented action for a virus with a mortality rate approaching a severe flu.  He was disturbed that COVID patients were typically sent home without treatment until they became extremely ill and required more aggressive intervention or supportive care.  He viewed the edicts for masking and social distancing, and later vaccinating, as abuse of power — the use of medicine to gain power, take control of the population, and profit greatly.

Dr. Rake recounted how he and his colleagues received threatening emails from their superiors about being fired or denied access to the workplace if they remained unvaccinated.  Many gave in, or agreed to test several times a week, if they had opted for religious exemption.  Objecting to a vaccine he doesn't view as safe, he points out that most vaccines take 15–20 years to enter the marketplace.  There are safety and efficacy tests on animals and humans, with special testing on pregnant women, children, and the immuno-suppressed.  But COVID vaccines were cleared in haste.

All the red flags raised by Dr. Rake — the taking away of people's right to choose treatment, the abuse of the medical profession as a means of power and control, the campaign of misinformation about the vaccine, and the dangerous shortcut to massive profits that Big Pharma has taken — bring to mind a dystopia where citizens' rights have evaporated from public and individual consciousness.  It isn't a world true Americans want to inhabit.

Fortunately, dissent is building.  Biden's federal vaccine mandate, which permits the option of weekly testing for now, is facing numerous legal challenges and a stay from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.  If enacted, the mandate will deny unemployment benefits to those declining the vaccination.  The White House has asked the court to lift the stay.  But even before a decision, it has advised businesses to implement the mandate.  There is strong enough sentiment against the mandate, however, to offer hope that it will be challenged further in the courts and ultimately quashed.

Protesters are taking to the streets.  In Los Angeles, thousands gathered last week to protest the vaccine mandate for city workers that goes into effect in mid-December.  The March for Freedom rally attracted more than 4,000 people opposed to the Los Angeles City Council's ordinance requiring all to be vaccinated, and another requiring residents to provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test in order to enter restaurants, gyms, hair and nail salons, some retail stores, and city buildings.

Now for how the gym story ended, leaving me gobsmacked.  The staff complained about my tirade to the owner, but she wrote me a conciliatory email, saying she is an immigrant from a communist country and believes strongly in freedom of choice.  She wrote that she was gravely alarmed at the degree of repression and censorship in America today, but as a business-owner who built her American dream from the ground up — three facilities in upscale Los Angeles neighborhoods — she was determined to survive and avoid onerous daily fines.  Instead of banishment from her gym (what I expected), she offered private outdoor sessions under her tutelage — sans mask and authorization papers.

It takes someone who has seen the worst of communism to read the portents.  It's time all Americans did — and acted before it's too late.

Image: Triggermouse via Pixabay, Pixabay License.

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