The Burden of Safety

By Don Varyu

Jan. 13, 2022

In 1970, a President not known for pro-big government policies signed into law the creation of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). Richard Nixon responded because 14,000 American workers were dying on the job every year. The organization began protecting workers from workplace dangers posed by coal mining, asbestos, benzene and hazardous waste (among many others). It also instituted the first workers’ compensation programs.

Today, the radical conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme cast aside half a century of OSHA protections when they ruled that the President had no right to require vaccines and thus protect workers from COVID*. Many are claiming the court overstepped its role in negating the President’s directive (among the topics spelled out here in America is Over.)

But even if you accept its authority, it is impossible to ignore the inherent hypocrisy in the ruling. The court DID agree that such vaccine mandates would stand for health care workers. How does this make sense? Is it just because those doctors and nurses shouldn’t be able to transmit the virus to patients? What about the patients who pose the same threat to them? Extend that thinking, and you’d be just as consistent saying that patients should not be admitted to hospitals without proof of vaccination.

But there’s a much larger issue here: control of the virus itself. There’s no evidence that the overwhelming threat posed by COVID played a meaningful part in the votes of those six justices. So, to be helpful, I will include the following statistics:

U.S. DEATHS FROM…
…Pearl Harbor attack: 2,335
…9/11: 2,977
…World War II: 407,300
…Civil War: 620,000
…COVID: 833,016 (and counting)

Whose interests are those six Supreme Court justices protecting?
*private entities with more than 100 workers