COVID-19 vaccine mandates for hospital workers a ‘despicable act’

Separate lawsuits filed Monday against the Cincinnati area’s six hospital systems claim that requiring hospital workers to vaccinate against COVID-19 is illegal and violates their constitutional right to “protect their physical integrity.”

Earlier this month, hospital leaders announced that tens of thousands of staff and volunteers will need to be vaccinated this fall as a condition of employment.

Five of the lawsuits are filed in the Hamilton County’s Common Pleas Court, naming: UC Health, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, the Christ Hospital Health Network, Bon Secours Mercy Health, and TriHealth. The sixth lawsuit was filed in Boone County against St. Elizabeth Healthcare.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys are also seeking a court order to prevent hospital systems from “enforcing, ordering and / or demanding” the vaccines.

The local lawsuits follow the pattern of growing opposition to the growing number of employers calling for workers to be vaccinated, including non-healthcare employers in the Cincinnati area. In other states, corporate vaccine mandates have resulted in some employees being fired or terminated in addition to filing lawsuits.

Private companies are free to set working conditions as long as they do not violate applicable state and federal laws, say legal experts. In particular, there is no federal law prohibiting companies from requesting vaccines. The Federal Commission for Equal Opportunities decided this year that employers can make a COVID-19 vaccine a condition of employment.

The approximately 127 plaintiffs named in the local cases are employees of the hospital groups. They are represented by the law firm Deters, whose spokesperson Eric Deters supported recent protests outside hospitals against vaccine mandates. Deters retired from the legal profession and earlier this month abandoned his yearlong pursuit of a license reinstatement after the Ohio Supreme Court said he was involved in the unauthorized legal practice.

Deters, who runs the Bulldog Reports website, regularly posts videos on his YouTube channel. In a video on Monday, he claimed there was “a criminal conspiracy between the government, the pharmaceutical industry and the hospitals”.

The lawsuits are about “whether we in the United States of America have reached a point where Americans have to decide whether to take a dangerous and unknown vaccine or lose not just their jobs but their lifelong careers.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has rated the COVID-19 vaccines as “safe and effective”. They were evaluated in clinical trials involving tens of thousands of participants and met the Food and Drug Administration’s stringent standards for safety, efficacy, and manufacturing quality.

The FDA announced on Monday that it had fully approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for people 16 years and older. It had previously approved this vaccine, as well as the emergency vaccines made by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.

On Tuesday, the President of the American Medical Association, Dr. Gerald Harmon, the public and private sectors to make vaccinations mandatory. The COVID-19 vaccines, he said, “are safe, effective and the only way out of this pandemic”.

FDA approval “a scam”

Deters said in the video that the FDA approval “is a scam” adding that the vaccine has not been properly tested.

He also said there was “no COVID crisis at all”.

“None. It doesn’t happen. You’re trying to create one,” he said in the video.

The hospitals, he said, have committed “massive crimes” including health fraud and false statements about health matters. He also claimed to have blackmailed.

Each lawsuit is more than 100 pages long. At least some of the information in the complaints came from nearly 10,000 emails that Deters said his company had received from local health workers.

A spokesman for the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center said the hospital does not normally comment on any pending litigation. Spokespeople for UC Health, Mercy Health and St. Elizabeth Healthcare also declined to comment on the lawsuits. Speakers from other hospital groups did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a statement, UC Health spokeswoman Amanda Nageleisen said the health system relies on science “to help us make the best decisions possible to keep our employees, clinicians and patients safe.”

“As a health care provider, UC Health requires vaccination against other communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, hepatitis and influenza,” said Nageleisen. “Science has shown that COVID-19 vaccinations have been shown to be safe and effective. They overwhelmingly protect people from hospitalization, intensive care and death. “

The lawsuits include hundreds of lawsuits. One of them is that “vaccinating or firing health workers is the most despicable act against workers in American history.”

The COVID-19 pandemic, the lawsuits read, are based “on lies, misrepresentation and fear” to “serve the purposes of the US government, state governments, the media, pharmaceutical companies, US corporations and hospitals to advance “.

The lawsuits add, “It’s all a diabolical public scam.”