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Sept. 7, 2021 - Jim Fetzer
15:34
Crisis in America: Millions of Nurses are Resigning or Being Fired Over COVID Vaccine Mandates
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Thank you.
That should be a huge red flag.
That should be a huge flag.
Why is nobody asking these questions?
Because you have health care systems that have very minimal people vaccinated.
They want to tell you that they're fully vaccinated.
They are not.
There is departments with 20% vaccinated.
ER departments are very low.
Why?
Why, people?
We are seeing it and they're not listening.
I think the last 18 months for a lot of us is a blur.
I mean, what's normal anymore?
Nothing.
To think that we were once hailed as heroes and people that other people looked up to because of what we were doing, and to now suddenly we're being referred to as ignorant, uneducated, and that we're directly responsible for spreading this virus around is absolutely absurd.
And what's happened in the last three months even has perpetuated that absurdity to just downright insanity.
I can't.
It's disgusting that humanity has turned to this and all of this division amongst, you know, just good people and even coworkers.
You know, we're all experiencing bullying, coercion, name-calling, segregation.
It's just unacceptable.
Hi, my name is Heather Kauvel and I'm a registered nurse here in San Diego.
I actually resigned from my job yesterday as a registered nurse because of this state mandate to be vaccinated.
I was no problem working in the healthcare system over the last 18 months without a vaccine, but now all of a sudden I'm a threat to public health?
Tell me where this makes sense.
All of you sitting up here with your masks on, you know that those masks don't do anything.
As a healthcare provider, we are taught how to use PPE.
We're taught universal precautions, and we know how to implement them when we're dealing with patients who have a viral infection.
I don't understand how you guys don't see the bigger picture here.
What you're doing is you're creating a healthcare crisis.
We already have a nursing shortage in America.
So now, in San Diego County, I know for a fact there's several hospitals that are operating on an all-bed crisis.
You know why we're doing that?
Wilma, do you know why?
Because we have a healthcare shortage.
A healthcare nursing shortage, excuse me.
And you know that.
These numbers are skewed.
The testing is skewed.
This needs to stop.
I don't understand.
Nathan, you can't even look at anybody when they're up here speaking.
It's so rude.
So rude.
And I do have to say one thing.
Jim Desmond, I want to thank you personally, because I have reached out to you over the last 18 months, and you are the only supervisor to ever respond to any one of my emails.
So thank you.
Thank you.
What I find is funny is that Obviously everybody agrees we were heroes this last 18 months.
We went into the fire, we used PPE that was so ragged because it was used so many times, we were taping it on our face.
Okay?
And now we actually have PPE that we can use once and get rid of it like it was supposed to be used.
And they're telling us now that we're terrorists and that we're dangerous and we're gonna kill people.
But yet the ultimatum doesn't come for two and a half, three months.
So now, like where I work, we're at critical staffing levels.
They're offering $20 an hour bonuses on top of our overtime.
They're shutting down ORs because we don't have enough staff to run all the ORs that we have.
So they're begging us, begging us to work these extra shifts so we're safe enough now.
We're not killing patients.
But as soon as a certain date comes along, we're no longer safe.
It's like an expiration date on a carton of milk.
My name is Katie and I've been a Michigan resident for 35 years.
I graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science in Nursing.
I'm in my 11th year of nursing and I've worked for a very prominent healthcare system in Michigan since 2014.
I am, or was, an educator on a general practice unit where we do care for COVID patients, most of which are fully vaccinated.
The threats from my employer all started in March of 2020 when I, like many others, received an email
stating I was deployed to help during the pandemic and to care for COVID patients.
If I did not accept, I would be suspended for three days, offered the same assignment,
and if I refused, I would be fired.
I was deployed for three months and, like many others, received no COVID pay while caring for COVID patients.
We did run out of PPE on many units and many hospitals.
No one likes to hear this, but it is the ugly truth.
We made it work because we had no other choice.
We risked our lives and the lives of our families.
Many of us left our shifts feeling like a walking biohazard, like we were the virus.
People shunned us, and we shunned other people out of fear.
The isolation, the physical and mental strain, and the emotional strain taken on by the healthcare community is tremendous.
We stepped up to serve, and the people called us heroes.
A title we did not ask for, but that we earned through our service.
In June of 2021, I received an email from my employer threatening termination, this time for non-compliance with their COVID vaccine mandate.
The hospital offered COVID listening sessions for staff to ask questions.
I attended and did ask questions respectfully.
Shortly after, I was greeted by leadership and administration stating that they noticed I was at the sessions and that I seemed distressed.
They said I needed to take a week off work to think.
I was told that as a leader, it is not my job to question policy.
This was followed up with an email from administration stating I would be off work for the week and I needed to report to them upon my return.
When I did return, I was pulled aside for a meeting with administration in the middle of my 12-hour shift with a six-patient assignment and a nursing student.
I was warned that I could have been fired for my questions at the listening sessions.
I was warned that as a leader, I must get on board with what the system is doing.
I was told not to answer any further questions regarding the COVID vaccine.
I was offered help finding another job and told that if I disagree with this mandate, I should be respectful to leadership and administration and resign my position.
Since then, I've been pulled aside almost every shift and asked, for example, do you have questions about the mandate or your termination?
Or how do you feel about me posting your position?
They are taking a head count and actively attempting to fill our positions before we are even gone.
It's disgusting, it's constant harassment, and it's true discrimination.
Managers have been sent a list of employees on the unit who have not been vaccinated.
These staff are now being pulled aside one by one and questioned.
They are being pressured, coerced, and intimidated into receiving the vaccine.
They are being told they won't be able to find other jobs in healthcare, and those in school are being told they must comply in order to receive future education.
We have now been branded anti-vaxxers and have scarlet letters on our chest.
I ask you, what happened to HIPAA?
Is medical segregation okay?
Should we also be stripped of our right to bodily autonomy?
Do we really not deserve a choice?
The hospital is now offering a $10,000 sign-on bonus for nurses and $25 extra per hour for extra shifts.
They're actively recruiting Canadian and agency nurses.
Please, I ask you to consider who will care for you when these hospitals force us to voluntarily resign our positions for refusal of vaccine mandate.
After working through this entire pandemic and risking our lives, they will even make receiving unemployment a challenge.
Please remember, healthcare workers did not get a COVID vacation to sit safely at home and receive extra government stimulus from their couches.
This is a term I've really grown to resent.
We worked and we risked our lives for the patient, the same patients we are now being deemed unsafe to care for.
We may be in a vulnerable position, being hit when we are already down, but we will not be taken advantage of and we do deserve a choice.
Let's be clear, we are not being presented with a choice from these hospitals.
We are being presented with an ultimatum.
Do it or else.
We are being forced to decide between risking debilitating injury or death from this experimental vaccine with the highest mortality rate in history, which of course will not be covered by the manufacturer, government, or hospital, or losing our jobs and financial stability.
Many nurses are leaving healthcare altogether.
Exemptions are not the answer.
We should not be forced to apply for an exemption from a mandate that is unconstitutional in the first place.
Freedom is the answer.
We went from hero to zero, essential to completely expendable.
Please help us.
Help us to protect our freedom of choice.
It's the best things you can give to all health care workers and to your community.
Our body's our choice and we ask you for liberty and justice for all.
Thank you so much.
Devon says she's lost respect from patients, colleagues, even family over her choice.
I talk to God every day.
I pray before I go into work for him to give me the strength.
And for someone to come and say, I'm not compassionate for making a choice that is best, I feel for myself and my family, it's shameful for people to say.
You know, I don't know if some of my family is going to see this, but it does hurt to those people who, sorry, To lose people who are supposed to be the ones that will stand by you no matter what.
Milwaukee area hospitals have set October and November as deadlines for staff to be fully vaccinated.
I just want to bring up a legal thing that I want everybody to know because in nursing we are taught about intentional crimes and torts.
Right?
That's what you're speaking to is informed consent.
Okay?
It says an intentional tort is assault and battery.
Assault is the threat of an unwanted action or bodily contact.
Battery.
is an assault that is carried out and includes willful, angry, violent, negligent touching of another person's body,
clothing, or anything attached to them.
Forcibly removing patient's clothing and administering an injection after patient has refused it are all examples of
battery.
This is out of my nursing book from four years ago.
This is what they teach us.
If we did this to a patient, if you told your patient informed consent, and they said no and you did it anyway, you would go to jail, you'd get your nursing license take away, and you'd be a criminal.
So now what they're doing is they're putting us in the position of saying either you become a victim of a crime voluntarily, And the nurse giving the injection, when they know you don't want it, is committing a crime.
That nurse can lose their license, and we're being told to be a victim of a crime in order to keep our employment.
I understand conditions of employment.
I understand there's certain things you do and don't have to do.
But nobody should have to become a victim of a crime that could result in somebody going to jail and losing their medical license in order to keep our job.
Yeah, that's great.
That is great.
So I just wanted to touch base on a few of those things because about the adverse reactions.
I'm a triage nurse and so people will call with like concerns whether it be from COVID directly or the vaccine.
And I feel like a lot of people from their doctors are getting discouraged or invalidated almost to say that.
Those symptoms are specific to the vaccine or from the vaccine, I should say.
And then as far as transparency goes, we were also at one point reporting positive COVID cases Of people that were vaccinated and I feel like, I don't know, it must have been two, three short weeks later, mass email that said, we don't want to know anymore whether they're vaccinated or not.
So I don't know, red flags, like why don't you want to know whether this vaccine is working or not?
Because clearly it's not.
So what are you seeing for vaccine injuries?
Um, 33.
Just this past week, how about this?
Three fully vaccinated individuals deceased in quads left and right, DVTs, pulmonary emboli.
I mean, on blood thinners, and this was ever since they got vaccinated.
I had a 30-year-old woman who She started bleeding, basically, hemorrhaging, ever since she got injected, literally within the 48 hours.
This poor woman is a mother of two.
Like I said, 30 years old, and she was fully vaccinated and regrets it deeply.
This was a month ago, and she is now intubated in critical condition, fighting for her life.
Potentially about to leave her children motherless and of course she regrets 1000% being injected and she acknowledges this.
So did her physician, so.
I don't know why the lies continue.
I see it every single day.
This whole story about 90% unvaccinated cases.
No.
I can tell you I've been in the front of the lines for the last year and eight months or however long it's been.
Too long.
And that is a complete lie.
I have seen nothing but vaccinated individuals.
Unvaccinated as well.
But don't believe the lies.
Don't believe the media.
It's awful.
And you work in the ICU, right?
I have worked ICU.
I am on a unit that is strictly COVID patients at this point.
So the news media is lying.
How about that?
The whole time.
The entire time.
My name is Christina Ast.
I'm a resident of Cowles County.
My husband owns a... My husband owns a business in Woodland.
I work here at Peace Health St.
John's.
I'm actually a charge nurse.
On the fourth floor.
That's the COVID floor.
All our COVID patients are being held there.
And I don't know if our CEO intentionally lied or was just mistaken, which is hard to believe knowing this is such a huge pandemic.
The patients on the COVID floor, as I am charged, I get to look at charts.
I know why patients are there.
I know their comorbidities.
I know if they've been vaccinated or not.
As of the day that she gave the podcast, one-third of our patients had been fully vaccinated.
Prior to then, before we opened the entire COVID floor, we had a quarter of our floor closed off for COVID patients.
There were times that 100% of our patients had been vaccinated.
The vaccine does not work.
But some of us nurses did write to our CEO about the mandate.
And what he had to say about bears was very interesting.
I commented on the death number.
He said, the death number is wrong, but most importantly, the data is related to death after they received the vaccine.
In other words, the vaccine didn't cause the death, but was given in a timeframe where death was reported.
I just wanted to say something about the mandates again.
I really believe this is a terrible slippery slope.
they're already in hospital.
Yeah.
And they're going to die in the next few weeks anyway.
And they just happen to contract COVID.
They didn't die, but they're in hospitals where they died from COVID.
But if you get a vaccine and you just happen to die, oh, it's something else.
Right.
It's something else.
Right.
I just wanted to clarify that that's what we're interpreting there.
I just wanted to say something about the mandates again.
I really believe this is a terrible, slippery slope.
I'm 1 and 1⁄2 years from retirement.
I'm a nurse educator.
I have two master's degrees.
They need me at my hospital.
The nurses need me.
The patients need me.
Without good education, it's a requirement.
But if I don't get the vaccine, I'm going to lose my job.
I'm going to lose Thousands of dollars in retirement.
I'm going to lose my health insurance, my life insurance, my over 400 days of extended illness bank hours.
I'm going to lose a lot.
But I'm here because I believe in medical freedom.
And I believe that if we don't stand up and stop these mandates, they're going to keep twisting our arm and twisting our arm and twisting our arm until we're all broken.
And the system can't handle it.
The crisis is bad now.
Staffing is bad now.
We haven't seen anything yet.
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