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Healthcare Workers in Maine Win Revival of Their Challenge to State’s Covid Vaccine Mandate

Healthcare Workers in Maine Win Revival of Their Challenge to State’s Covid Vaccine Mandate

A paper recently published concludes that the covid polices developed by “experts” and prompted by “real media” were a horrific disaster.

This country will be digging-out from the disastrous and unintended consequences of its covid pandemic policies for many years.

For example, slowly but surely, lawsuits related to the covid vaccine mandates are wending their way through the courts. Recently, a U.S. appeals court revived claims that Maine’s covid vaccine mandate for healthcare workers is unconstitutional because it lacks a religious exemption.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it was plausible that Maine had no justification to bar exemptions on religious grounds while allowing them for medical reasons, and a judge should not have thrown out the lawsuit by seven healthcare workers.

The office of Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, a Democrat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did lawyers for the plaintiffs.

Maine adopted the healthcare mandate, which exempts workers with certain medical conditions, on an emergency basis in 2021 and made it permanent later that year. At least eleven other states including New York, California, and Illinois adopted similar requirements during the pandemic.

Interestingly, when the lawsuit was originally presented, the plaintiffs withheld their names out of concern for their safety.

The Portland Press Herald, Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel and Sun Journal filed a motion in November 2021 challenging the group’s right to anonymity. The newspapers, which were represented by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, argued that the plaintiffs “alleged fear of harm no longer outweighs the public’s interest in open legal proceedings,” according to court documents.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled in July that the plaintiffs had to reveal their names in an amended complaint in order to continue the lawsuit. Seven of the nine original plaintiffs complied with the order, while the other two abandoned the lawsuit.

Last August, Levy dismissed the group’s lawsuit, saying that the workers failed to prove several claims, including that the COVID-19 vaccine requirement was different than any other vaccine requirement imposed on health care workers.

Meanwhile, a recently published paper by Kevin Bardosh of the University of Washington and the University of Edinburgh Medical School concludes that the covid policies developed by “experts” and prompted by “real media” were a horrific disaster.

Early in the Covid pandemic concerns were raised that lockdown and other non-pharmaceutical interventions would cause significant multidimensional harm to society. This paper comprehensively evaluates the global state of knowledge on these adverse social impacts, with an emphasis on their type and magnitude during 2020 and 2021.

A harm framework was developed spanning 10 categories: health, economy, income, food security, education, lifestyle, intimate relationships, community, environment and governance. The analysis synthesizes 600 publications with a focus on meta-analyses, systematic reviews, global reports and multi-country studies. This cumulative academic research shows that the collateral damage of the pandemic response was substantial, wide-ranging and will leave behind a legacy of harm for hundreds of millions of people in the years ahead.

Many original predictions are broadly supported by the research data including: a rise in non-Covid excess mortality, mental health deterioration, child abuse and domestic violence, widening global inequality, food insecurity, lost educational opportunities, unhealthy lifestyle behaviours, social polarization, soaring debt, democratic backsliding and declining human rights. Young people, individuals and countries with lower socioeconomic status, women and those with pre-existing vulnerabilities were hit hardest.

Societal harms should challenge the dominant mental model of the pandemic response: it is likely that many Covid policies caused more harm than benefit, although further research is needed to address knowledge gaps and explore policy trade-offs, especially at a country-level. Planning and response for future global health emergencies must integrate a wider range of expertise to account for and mitigate societal harms associated with government intervention.

The nine plaintiffs in the Maine case are only a few of the millions whose lives were upended. It is up to all of us to never forget and make choices for political representation among those who actively tried to prevent “significant multidimensional harm to society” before it actually occurred.

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Comments

Here is a link to further good news in a related Covid case from the Brownstone Institute;

https://brownstone.org/articles/censors-are-exposed-major-update-to-missouri-v-biden/

fwiw – I have noticed a change in various courts attitudes in allowing more challenges – possibly in recognition that the vaccine was never very effective

    Olinser in reply to Joe-dallas. | May 30, 2023 at 2:55 am

    In recognition of the fact THAT IT WAS NOT A VACCINE.

    They had to CHANGE the definition to let them call it that, and there was ZERO actual testing data that it did anything to stop people getting it.

    This should never have been authorized in the first place, and it is utterly criminal that they FORCED untold numbers of people to take it or be fired.

      CommoChief in reply to Olinser. | May 30, 2023 at 8:15 am

      Yep. The underlying precedent for a mandate rests upon a vax that confers immunity in order to prevent widespread transmission and the bad health, economic and societal outcomes that would otherwise happen in the absence of a vax.

      The Covid jab doesn’t confer immunity and doesn’t prevent transmission. At most it acts to mitigate level of severity when the recipient contracts Covid. It doesn’t really offer any of the traditional protections for society which undermines the mandate argument for the broader public under a State’s general police power.

It is up to all of us to never forget and make choices for political representation among those who actively tried to prevent “significant multidimensional harm to society” before it actually occurred.
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Nice thought, wish there was some reality to it.
I have a buddy who is still scared to death of the flu. He’ll vote for wHitler every time because he thinks she saved him.
Forget all the grandmas and grandpas who died due to her placing the ones with the flu in old folks homes, he believes her aisle plan, 6 feet of separation and all the other bullschiff was good.

Last August, Levy dismissed the group’s lawsuit, saying that the workers failed to prove several claims, including that the COVID-19 vaccine requirement was different than any other vaccine requirement imposed on health care workers.

Unfamiliar with the term “emergency use authorization”? Meaning that an as-yet-to-be-approved medical product may be used, but not mandated. If I recall correctly, the Obama administration lost a lawsuit concerning the mandatory administration of an EUA vaccine to the US military. (COVID is confounding all of my Google searches for the specifics of this case.)