Note: This letter was adapted from my Letter to the Washington State Board of Health so it can be used for legislators, policymakers, boards, employers, or any others involved in making decisions related to COVID-19. Several of my readers are already using it in their efforts to combat employer mandates. If you use this tool, I just ask that you include credit and link back to this post. I’d love to hear about it if you are willing to document your actions in the comments, too.
“Everything went strictly ‘by the book,’ using means that were permitted by the constitution. At first there were ‘emergency decrees’ by the president of the Reich, and later a bill was passed by a two-thirds majority of the Reichstag giving the government unlimited legislative powers, perfectly in accordance with the rules for changing the constitution.”
—Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler (paperback, Kindle, audiobook)
I am writing because you are considering legislation or policies related to COVID-19.
Although this letter is addressed to a governing body, I am actually writing to you—you, the living, thinking, feeling individuals who comprise this body.
I am asking that you listen not in your capacity as a member but as a fellow human being, as a neighbor, as a friend.
For nearly a year, you have been gradually conditioned to view the unvaccinated as enemies. You have been subjected to a relentless propaganda campaign designed to divide you from us; to dehumanize us; to paint us as science-deniers, conspiracy nuts, spreaders of disease, and threats to society.
“Men under pressure are first dehumanized and only then demoralized, not the other way around. Organization and specialization, system, subsystem, and supersystem are the consequence, not the cause, of the totalitarian spirit.”
—Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45 (paperback, Kindle, audiobook)
The United States Holocaust Museum describes this process as “Defining the Enemy: The Excluded”:
“One crucial factor in creating a cohesive group is to define who is excluded from membership. Nazi propagandists contributed to the regime’s policies by publicly identifying groups for exclusion, justifying their outsider status, and inciting hatred or cultivating indifference.… But a second, more sinister aspect of the Nazi myth was that not all Germans were welcome in the new community. Propaganda helped to define who would be excluded from the new society and justified measures against the ‘outsiders.’”
Regardless of what the propagandists have told you, we are not your enemies. We are your neighbors; we are your colleagues; we are your friends; we are your family members—your grandparents, your parents, your siblings, your children.
We are human beings just like you. We love, we live, we think, we feel.
We have merely made a different choice from you. And contrary to what the propagandists tell you, that choice poses no threat to you or our shared community.
This CDC paper (“Outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 Infections, Including COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Infections, Associated with Large Public Gatherings — Barnstable County, Massachusetts, July 2021”), explains that the study found “three-quarters of cases occurred in fully vaccinated people”:
“It also found no significant difference in the viral load present in the breakthrough infections occurring in fully vaccinated people and the other cases, suggesting the viral load of vaccinated and unvaccinated persons infected with the coronavirus is similar.”
New stories documenting COVID outbreaks in fully vaccinated groups keep emerging, including cruise ships such as the MS Europa, MS Europa 2, Mein Schiff 6, and Aidanova.
While reporting on a third Royal Caribbean cruise ship outbreak, this Miami Herald article notes:
“The CDC reported there were 5,013 confirmed COVID-19 cases on cruise ships between Dec. 15 and 29, compared to just 162 cases in the two weeks prior, Nov. 30 to Dec. 14.
“According to the CDC’s database for COVID-19 on cruise ships as of Wednesday, all 92 cruise ships currently sailing in U.S. waters had people on board infected by COVID-19.”
After Puerto Rico health insurer Mmm Multi Health lost a court case that struck down their mandate and restored employees’ rights to decide about what would be injected into their bodies, the company instituted segregation: one building housed fully vaccinated employees, while the second building housed unvaccinated employees.
