Free Republic

At least some Massachusetts state employees who were fired after refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, under Gov. Charlie Baker’s sweeping executive order last year, are being offered their jobs back. In two separate letters shared with MassLive, former MassDOT employees who were terminated due to the mandate were offered reinstatement to their former positions with “duties and responsibilities” the same as when they left. In the letters, MassDOT Chief Human Resources Officer Matthew Knosp wrote the department was making the offers, in part, because “high levels of immunity and availability of effective COVID-19 prevention and management tools have reduced...

I was appalled, but not surprised, when on Saturday, September 24, the Dean of Students at Wellesley College, where I am a student, buried at the end of an email to the student body that all students at Wellesley would be required to receive a shot of the new bivalent Covid-19 booster. Then on October 11, we were informed this mandate would take effect on December 1, nearly three weeks before the end of the semester. This announcement follows similar decisions from Tufts University, Harvard University, and the University of California, among others. It also follows a growing body of...

Hospitals across the United States are overwhelmed with children suffering from a specific respiratory illness, according to reports. According to a report from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), data showing Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) cases spiked over the last month. Typically, RSV causes children to contract the usual mild-cold symptoms, but the impact could be far worse for those with a compromised immune system or a heart defect. ... “We are treating a very high number of severely ill children,” Sarah Combs, an emergency medicine physician at Children’s National, told The Washington Post.

A group of Republican lawmakers are calling on the Biden administration to reassess the U.S. Coast Guard’s policy for “religious exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccination order,” which will likely force the involuntary discharge of a service member whom President Joe Biden thanked last month for his “heroic work.” Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., along with 16 other congressmen, sent a letter to Biden, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan on Monday regarding the administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for U.S. Coast Guard members. “Service members that have not obtained a COVID-19 vaccine risk an...

CNN CNN — US health officials are becoming increasingly concerned about this year’s flu season – and are already seeing signs that the virus is spreading. As the 2022-23 flu season gets underway, one high school in California is facing a “high number of absences” among students due to possible flu cases. Flu activity in the United States often starts to increase in October and usually peaks between December and February. “We can confirm that there is a high number of absences at Henry High School due to probable Influenza,” Samer Naji, a spokesperson for the San Diego Unified School...

Mandatory mask wearing saw more than 90% of deaf people struggle to communicate during the pandemic, University of Essex research has revealed. It also discovered that 76% missed vital information and 59% felt disconnected from society due to the face coverings. This is because masks restrict the ability to read lips and judge expressions. It also emerged that over-55s who became deaf later in life found communication using masks more challenging. And profoundly deaf people and signers experienced more disconnection from society and negative effects on their well-being. Dr. Eva Gutierrez-Sigut, from the Department of Psychology, led a team of...

Internal polling conducted days before Ottawa announced it would suspend the vaccine mandates suggested they were unpopular and caused a loss of “trust” in the federal government. Vaccine mandates “represented overreach on the part of the federal government and unfairly infringed upon those who made the personal choice to not get vaccinated for Covid-19,” respondents told The Strategic Counsel, according to Blacklock’s Reporter. “As a result of this some felt they had lost their sense of trust in the federal government.” The results of the survey were published in a May 16 report, “Continuous Qualitative Data Collection Of Canadians’ Views”...

Rapper Coolio has passed away on Wednesday at the age of 59. The musician - famous for his 'Gangsta's Paradise' song on the soundtrack of the Michelle Pfeiffer film, Dangerous Minds - was visiting a friend on Wednesday afternoon when he was found dead according to TMZ. The star's manager, Jarez, shared that Coolio was found unresponsive on a bathroom floor, with the paramedics suspecting he suffered cardiac arrest. The publication reported that the EMTs pronounced Coolio dead on the scene. An official cause of death has not been determined.

Politicians who enacted strict COVID-19 measures including lockdowns and vaccine mandates should be brought to justice, says Republican Maryland Attorney General candidate Michael Peroutka. “Nothing could be more on the point that all these lockdowns, mandates, orders, edicts, proclamations, declarations, whatever you want to call them, none of them were lawful. They were all violation of the law, and that can’t continue,” Peroutka told The Epoch Times. “Those people who have violated this document [the Maryland Constitution] need to be brought to justice.” He believes that implementing the restrictions was an abuse of power under the Maryland Constitution, citing Article...

Over the weekend, the Canadian government said it is dropping all COVID-19 measures at borders from next month. This means, as of October 1, travelers won’t need to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination when entering Canada or wear masks on planes and trains. They will also not have to undergo any testing before and after arrival. There will also be no mandatory isolation and quarantine. The ArriveCan app - used to upload health documents when entering Canada - will now become optional. In Canada, 82% of the population has taken both doses of the vaccine. Despite that, the BBC reports...

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank said the city's vaccine mandate was invalid "to the extent it has been used to impose a new condition of employment" for members of the Police Benevolent Association (PBA), the largest union to which NYC police belong. A Manhattan supreme court judge ruled on Friday that cops who were fired because of the city's Covid vaccine mandate had to be reinstated. According to the New York Post, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank said the city's vaccine mandate was invalid "to the extent it has been used to impose a new condition of employment"...

A Louisiana federal judge on Wednesday permanently blocked the federal government from enforcing its mask and vaccine mandates for children and teachers in public preschool. The Head Start program, which provides early education to infants, toddlers, and kids preparing for kindergarten, cannot require that any adults or students in the applicable centers or daycare be vaccinated against Covid-19 or wear masks, U.S. District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty ruled. The regulation applied to children as young as two years old, Doughty noted, both indoors and outdoors during activities that involve close contact with other people. The court rejected the argument...

The Biden administration mask and COVID-19 vaccine mandates for the Head Start program have been blocked in additional 24 states by a federal judge. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump nominee, granted a preliminary injunction on Jan. 1 to Georgia and 23 other states against the mandates. Doughty said he thinks the government lacks the authority to impose the mask mandate on all children two years and older and the vaccine requirements on all workers and many volunteers and contractors. The law in question does not mention masks or vaccines, leaving the administration reliant on the health secretary’s ability...

Dr. Anthony Fauci dismissed shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic as collateral damage while speaking at an event on Wednesday. Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president, blamed “divisiveness in society” and people on social media for creating an “understandable confusion” about his guidance during the pandemic. He went on to justify the harsh COVID-19 mandates imposed by the federal government under his guidance, including lockdowns, vaccinations, and mandatory masking, by stating that hospitals were being “overrun” and he was forced to take “draconian” steps. “And sometimes when you do draconian things, it has collateral negative consequences. Just like when...

The invisible government of the Deep State has long worked with the Nazis to accomplish its nefarious objectives, going back to the rise of Hitler. =============================================================== Witness Osh, Kyrgyzstan, a modest outpost in Central Asia. Boiling clouds enliven the sky as a breeze lazily strums the tall grass. Meanwhile a farmer tends his yaks, as clouds of gnats move across a meadow in a body like a mournful specter. Life here has gone on in a relatively unbroken pattern for thousands of years. But peasants have noticed something unusual appearing in the soil of late: train tracks. The construction is...

Abstract Students at North American universities risk disenrollment due to third dose COVID-19 vaccine mandates. We present a risk-benefit assessment of boosters in this age group and provide five ethical arguments against mandates. We estimate that 22,000 - 30,000 previously uninfected adults aged 18-29 must be boosted with an mRNA vaccine to prevent one COVID-19 hospitalisation. Using CDC and sponsor-reported adverse event data, we find that booster mandates may cause a net expected harm: per COVID-19 hospitalisation prevented in previously uninfected young adults, we anticipate 18 to 98 serious adverse events, including 1.7 to 3.0 booster-associated myocarditis cases in males,...

BREAKING: Alex Jones claims Trump called him & his team reached out to him after he set an ultimatum. Trump is proud of the shot, Trump is the vaccine man & Trump wants people to stop questioning it. Interesting! What do you think…?Trump wants people to stop questioning the COVID-19 Vaccines

Officials in Washington, D.C., are delaying enforcement of the school COVID-19 vaccine mandate after a federal judge struck down vaccination requirements for city workers. Students aged 12 and older who do not receive a COVID-19 vaccine will not be barred from school until Jan. 3, 2023, the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) said on Aug. 27. Before the change, students who did not provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination were going to be prohibited from attending classes just 20 days after the school year started. The office’s immunization attendance policy, for instance, states, “Schools are not permitted...

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), who is up for reelection in November, voted for a bill that economists say drove inflation. Now, Phoenix, Arizona, is seeing the highest rates of inflation in the country. Kelly voted in favor of a bill dubbed the “American Rescue Act” early last year. Since its passage, economists have noted that the bill is one of the driving forces behind inflation. Even economists associated with the Democrat party have noted that the American Rescue Plan has had disastrous effects. Jason Furman, a Harvard economist who previously chaired the White House Council of Economic Advisors for the...

This must be a first in communist China. Adam Minter reports in Bloomberg:Beijing's stout city leadership rolled out China's first Covid-19 vaccine mandate last week. The policy made boosters mandatory for some professions, while entry to busy public venues like movie theaters and gyms was restricted to the vaccinated. The public reacted quickly, with many residents turning to social media to declare the mandate an illegal usurpation of their rights. Beijing's response was just as quick: Less than 48 hours after announcing the policy, the city government rescinded it.We are accustomed to seeing China’s citizenry meekly accepting draconian measures, even...