Local healthcare facilities (Colorado Veterans Community Living Center at Rifle, Grand River Hospital, Valley View Hospital) and other healthcare facilities in Garfield County are mandating the COVID-19 vaccines for employees. The front line workers who bravely served us during the pandemic are now being threatened to lose their jobs, careers, and ways of life this fall if they do not receive the COVID-19 vaccines. 

We believe this is a violation of medical ethics, the Nuremberg Code, the Geneva Convention, international law, and our Constitutional rights.

The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization states, “Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be express and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice”

We request that any healthcare facility in Garfield County that has instituted a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy immediately withdraw this mandate. 

As a community we stand together to oppose the coercive environment we are seeing in many healthcare facilities and institutions. We oppose pressuring, coercing, or discriminating based upon vaccination status.