Whether or not a person is vaccinated for anything, should be a personal choice, not a mandated one. Taking into account advice from a person's physicians, families, social circles, religious leaders, and their own convictions it should be up the each individual whether he or she chooses to accept the vaccines against coronavirus (Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen) or refuse them. West Virginia University Health Systems (WVUHS) has for many years recognized the rights of patients to receive respect, dignity, to be informed about their care, specific access to their health information, a second opinion, and to refuse treatment. The right of patients to refuse has been a recognized right for decades. WVUHS recently announced that all employees of their system must be vaccinated by October 31st. Like WVUHS, other companies and healthcare systems are mandating these vaccines. Many can seek exemptions for medical or religious reasons, and must supply documentation which supports these. While employers have been allowed to mandate vaccinations among their workers for a long time, many people are still wary of the long-term effects of the current COVID-19 vaccines. When an individual is to be medicated he or she is a patient, and employees are asking that the same 'right to refuse' be afforded to them. 

I work in the healthcare field, and have never once witnessed medical personnel coerce or force a fully capacitated individual to take medication. The very idea that employees are being commanded to get these new vaccines or lose their jobs is absurd to its core. Especially alarming is talk of companies setting forth policies that refuse to do business with unvaccinated inviduals. Do companies refuse to do business with diabetics if they see them drinking soda? Do companies witness people smoking and force them to produce medical documentation that they don't have COPD? This has to stop, and yesterday.

Safe staffing ratios in healthcare systems are already suffering across the United States, and those providing direct care or ancillary services feel the brunt of this issue the most! To mandate these vaccines, knowing that hundreds are willing to quit or face termination over them would be unwise on the part of executive staff and administrators. Why? Because the staff lowest on the totem pole will feel it quite terribly, and then patient care would take a huge blow. If patient care is truly a priority, then leaders of the healthcare in WV should put a hold on these mandates until more is known about the vaccines. As data continues to roll in, the world is discovering that the efficacy originally touted by the vaccine manufacturers is not quite what is occurring in the real world. If company leaders follow through with this vaccine mandate there is also a dangerous precedent that will continue. That is one in which medical tyranny takes place across the United States, and many Americans will be robbed of freedoms they once held dear. 

We, the people of West Virginia and Americans of every background, adjure Governor Jim Justice and all legislators of West Virginia to ban the COVID vaccine mandates which restrict the freedoms and autonomy of the people of this great state.