…calls the tune.
That is the hard economic lesson in the recent Supreme Court’s vaccine mandate decisions.
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin relates to a real pandemic–the bubonic plague–and ends in the Piper vengefully leading the children of Hamelin to their demise.
THE WAY THROUGH THE FOREST
Before analyzing the Court’s decisions, the short story is that the Supreme Court split the baby. First, it refused to allow the OSHA mandate to go forward. This released over 80 million private employees from being coerced into submitting to experimental the drug treatment commonly referrred to as Covid “vaccines.” Second, the Court nevertheless allowed the CMS (the federal agency that pays Medicaid and Medicare bills) mandate to go forward. This means 10 million private health care employees will potentiallly be coerced into shots or weekly tests. For the employers who read and follow the recommendations in this piece, however, compliance will be relatively riskless and likely temporary. Smart health care employers will comply with the law and at the same time will not do anything that could injure or harm their employees or someday subject themselves to a Nuremberg trial.
As with any crisis, there is great opportunity in this crisis for smart and prudent health care employers. That is because the CMS “guidance” rules are out and three things are clear: (1) CMS enforcers will not question, audit, or challenge any employee exemption request; (2) 100 percent “compliance” with the mandate will be much more about recordkeeping than coercion–employers who adopt and maintain a sound process for keeping track of the vaccination and exemption status of 100 percent of their employees will not be fined or punished; and (3) the major risk to employers, which will likely also be negligible, appears to be in maintaining compliance and recordkeeping with weekly testing.
This is what health care employers should do to obey the CMS mandate and at the same time avoid risking the lives, health and safety of 10 million innocent people:
Liberally Grant Exemptions. The CMS guidance expressly states that CMS will not be auditing, examining, or questioning exemption requests. This is very good news. Employers should communicate to employees a deadline–see below–and tell employees that they must provide proof of vaccination or must provide an exemption request before the deadline. There is no harm in communciating, even formally, that because of the known and uncertain risks surrounding the shots, that the employer will trust that all employees’ exemption requests are based on the employee’s sincere beliefs and that the employer will therefore liberally grant exemptions.
Develop Sound Recordkeeping Processes. Good records will be the best defense against any CMS enforcement action. Develop processes for communicating the new policy to all employees and gather all information on all employees quickly. Develop a “new hire” policy that informs the new hire that they must provide vax/exemption information prior to their first day of work. Keep the records private and remind HR employees that vaccine status is private information. Do not allow vax/non-vax division to develop in the workplace. Respect both those who have submitted to the vax and those who have not. Recognize that fearful vaxxed employees are living in a delusion that is very real to them and that waking them up abruptly is, like waking up a sleepwalker, unwise. Most of them will be fully awake in 60 days. Let them wake up on their own. In the meantime, nod, be agreeable, and say that you understand when they tell you how afraid they are of the pandemic that never was and which, at its height, had an IFR of less than .01 percent for everyone under 70 and living outside a nursing home.
Figure Out a Way to Test that Builds Bonds with Employees. I have not yet found any particular guidance on testing other than weekly testing is required for exempt employees. I have e-mailed the CMS help line and asked specifically what kind of tests will be required, whether employees have to pay for the tests, and whether employees could use some of the 500 million self-tests that the federal goverment is sending out. No word back yet and I have not found the specific anwers in the guidance. One would think that the federal government’s tests would suffice, particularly now that the CDC has itself debunked the always illegitimate PCR tests. Employers can nevertheless e-mail the CMS at [email protected] and ask for specific guidance before implementing their testing plan. The blessing in the CMS decision is that applies exclusively to health care providers so whatever testing is required, it should be relatively easy for these employers to accommodate their exempt employees.
It appears likely that the CMS rule, together with the pandemic psyop, will be over very soon, perhaps 60 days. The Covid narrative has become a political liability to Leviathan (see also). The State of the Union is coming up soon and mid-term congressional elections are right around the corner. Leviathan’s minions who are running this little psychological war recognize that they have created too much friction and the current administration is too unpopular. They have read CIA analyst Martin Gurri’s Revolt of the Public. They know that, the longer the real facts in the real world don’t match the propaganda on smartphones and TVs, the more likely that the deluded will wake up and the more quickly the revolt will come. Time to change the psychological channel for the sleepers and give Biden a “win” over the pandemic.
The CMS mendate is actually a temporary, proposed emergency administrative rule. The 30- and 60-day “notice and comment” periods applicable to rules conveniently coincide with mandate compliance periods detailed below. Given Leviathan’s interests in keeping 10 million health care workers in the Red v. Blue game and, for the time being, voting for Team Blue, it seems likely that CMS will quietly withdraw the testing requirement, and perhaps the mandate completely, on or shortly after March 1, 2020.
Until then, smart health care providers will obey the law and at the same time do what they can to protect 10 million innocent people by granting every employee’s exemption request. If they do, someday their employees may feel the way Dr. Mary Talley Bowden’s employees feel about her. Treating employees with respect and protecting them from Leviathan will build lasting loyalty, and may save some lives.
