City Manager Teresa Wilson, issued yesterday a Memorandum concerning the City of Columbia’s vaccination audit for City Employees. Within this memorandum Ms. Wilson states, “currently the city is not requiring all employees to be vaccinated,” and that it would seem that they are taking direction from a non-medical agency such as the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
What is more amazing is that Ms. Wilson states the reason for this questionable audit is the “recent increase in Covid-19 rates and the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant in our community”. But if one educated themselves and looks at the CDC website maps concerning cases in S.C. one sees that the CDC has South Carolina listed as “LOW”.
This Memorandum also states that this audit does not violate any of the Health Insurance and Portability Accountability Act (HIPPA) or the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and again states that this guidance comes from the EEOC, a non-medical or emergency agency.
It would also appear that the City of Columbia seeks to instill a fear factor in their employees and general public by stating, “unvaccinated employees in the workplace pose a direct threat to the health or safety of others.”
Columbia will be using Assistant City Managers, the Fire and Police Chiefs who will be responsible for making sure all employee information is gathered for their departments/divisions. And continues to state that once the audit is completed it will begin implementing periodic screenings of unvaccinated employees as they pose a direct threat to the health of others. Stating once more that this is allowed under the EEO Laws.
We are reminded that these sort of fear tactics upon the general public were used back in World War 2, to instill fear of the Jewish people and blind obedience of the German populace.
According to medical sources including the CDC even vaccinated individuals are capable of contracting Covid and its Delta variant. Which has brought into question the function of even getting the unproven vaccine.
Many agencies have compared the Covid-19 pandemic to the Swine Flu pandemic of 1976. The swine flu pandemic also had the populace vaccinated with an untested/unproven vaccine, which later led to law suits against the Government for requiring the populace to receive this vaccine and the many side effect and deaths it later led to.
The main question here is, has the City of Columbia overstepped their authority to ask their employees (private citizens) about their personal medical decisions? And does it have the authority to require it’s non-vaccinated employees to undergo periodic testing, when even vaccinated employees can be infected?
One Legislator has reached out through their Facebook page and asked people to begin calling Ms. Wilson’s Office and “demand that she stop this gross invasion of her employee’s privacy.”