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Reason.com: In Gavin Newsom's California, COVID-19 Rules Are for Those Without Political Power
Follow the science folks—the science of money and political “pull”.
Reason.com: In Gavin Newsom's California, COVID-19 Rules Are for Those Without Political Power
by C.J. Ciaramella, 2021-10-15
Newsom's opposition to a judge's order requiring vaccinations for prison staffers lays bare the hypocrisy of the governor.
When should you be forced to get a vaccination and when should you be exempt? In California, it depends on how much political clout you have.
The California Attorney General's Office announced Tuesday that it will appeal a federal judge's September order that would require all state prison staffers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The notice of appeal comes after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom declared last month that Democratic officials should "lean in" to COVID-19 prevention efforts, citing their "moral authority" to save people's lives.
And it comes after Newsom's office announced on October 1 that California would become the first state in the country to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for students, pending full Food and Drug Administration approval of the vaccines.
The power dynamics at play here are not subtle or hard to divine. California is insisting that school children get vaccinated, while simultaneously fighting to protect prison guards from a vaccine mandate, because students, who are at very low risk of serious COVID-19 complications compared to older age brackets, don't have a public sector union with deep pockets. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), the state's powerful prison guard union, donated $1.75 million to Newsom's recall defense.
Meanwhile, prisons have been the epicenter of many major COVID-19 clusters. In U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar's September order requiring that all 66,000 state employees entering California prisons be vaccinated or have a religious or medical exemption, Tigar noted that from August to mid-September, 48 outbreaks have been traced back to prison staff.
As I wrote last year during the early stages of the pandemic, prisons are petri dishes for disease. At one point last April, eight out of 10 of the biggest COVID-19 hotspots in the U.S. were prisons and jails...
This is not "following the science" or leaning in. It's just naked machine politics, another example of hypocritical "rules for thee, not for me" policy making that spread like, well, an epidemic during the past year and a half.
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WIND: Newsom sacrifices children on the alter of COVID dogma, but gives a free pass to the politically powerful. If this is not financial corruption—a literal payoff/bribe—I don’t know what is. Perfectly legal. And why in hell aren’t all teachers already vaccinated, if it’s so important?
