Kevin Surdi, a former ER nurse and congressional candidate, exposes the severe damage of vaccine mandates, citing cases where pregnant and medically vulnerable staff were fired or forced to resign. He details how Northwell Hospital lost dozens of workers while Governor Hochul plans to replace 83,000 non-compliant healthcare employees with National Guard members. Surdi argues these policies ignore natural antibodies and scientific data, creating a critical staffing crisis that regular testing could have prevented, ultimately framing the mandates as a political power grab rather than a medical necessity. [Automatically generated summary]
You know, I've been telling you guys that my inbox is absolutely blowing up from people reaching out to me about losing their jobs or potentially losing their jobs because of these vaccine mandates.
I'm hearing from people in the healthcare field, I'm hearing from airline workers, people just across the economy, across the country.
And I wanted to start interviewing a couple of the people that are speaking out against this.
And I saw a tweet from this guy that I'm about to introduce to you.
He is a frontline ER nurse, former EMT, and current congressional candidate in New York's 3rd District.
Okay, so I just mentioned my inbox is just crazy with people reaching out to me, wanting their stories to be heard, just telling me about all sorts of awful things, having to make the choice between basically being fired or going against their conscience related to the vaccines.
But I saw a tweet from you.
This is why I reached out to you specifically.
You sent this just a couple of days ago.
I'm an ER nurse on Long Island.
I'm pro-vaccine and anti-mandate.
In my department, four nurses either resigned or will be fired due to the mandates.
24 administrators have been fired.
Another five were forced against their will to get the shot.
So now that in mind, we also have the governor of New York, who nobody voted for, who in essence is firing 83,000 healthcare workers, the people we were told are the heroes.
They are going to be replaced by the National Guard if they so choose not to get The vaccine.
So I'll let you unpack that tweet, but to start, you're saying you're pro-vaccine, you're anti-mandate.
I got both my shots and my family got their shots.
All my friends got it.
And I think the vaccine does help limit the symptoms of COVID if you get it.
So it does prevent ICU stays.
It does work.
The problem is it doesn't prevent you from spreading the virus.
So the vaccine that I got, it is a risk.
Any vaccine we take, any medicine, any medical procedure, there's always risks to it.
And understanding those risks, I got the vaccine.
And I would encourage people to get the vaccine.
However, it's not a perfect vaccine yet.
This thing cannot stop transmission.
It can't stop you from getting COVID, which the CDC also just said the other day.
We can't be firing people that choose not to get the vaccine.
Thankfully, my wife was pregnant during this, and we chose not to get her the vaccine while she was pregnant.
After she gave birth, we gave her the vaccine.
But what if my wife was a nurse?
My wife would be forced to either get the vaccine while you're pregnant or fired, and thankfully at the time, we had the opportunity of that choice, and that choice is not being offered today.
So I'm pro-vaccine.
I just don't think anybody should be fired if they think they don't want the vaccine at this time.
You know, bizarrely on the pregnancy front, you may have seen the head of the CDC, Walensky, just a couple days ago saying, oh, it's completely fine for pregnant women and for breastfeeding women, et cetera, et cetera, except there's simply no way they could have that data yet.
When you mention some of the nurses and administrators that you know that now are either being forced to step down or ultimately will be fired, or in essence, they're furloughed, so you just don't have to go to work, but you don't get paid, so you're fired by any reasonable estimation.
What have their rationalities been as to why they're not getting vaccinated?
Have you guys brought that up with administrators?
I mean, I get that sort of, it's just going down the chain and everyone's just like, well, they told me to do it and you told me to do it and we're going to do it.
But when you bring that up about the natural antibody thing, which nobody seems to want to discuss, you know, Fauci and the head of the CDC and everything else, what are the administrators saying to you guys?
Well, any government should employ, they should not be dictating how medicine should work.
You know, we're the people that, they've gone to medical school, we've gone to nursing school, we've gone to pharmacy school, we know what we're talking about, we know how to treat this.
They should not be telling us what we should be doing, what we can't be doing, and it's not based on science.
We're not seeing if there's any data behind this, so we can only allude that this is some kind of a power grab, or there's money behind it, there's some other reason, because it's not the science.
We're trying to follow the science of it, and they're telling us not to.
If I would have said to you a year ago at the height of COVID, you know, let's say, or even a little more than a year ago, year and a half ago, it's now May of 2020, something like that.
If I would have said to you, you know, in a year and a half from now, half of your friends and colleagues are gonna be stepping down or forced out or fired because they didn't take a vaccine.
What do you think you would have said when at that time you guys were the greatest heroes of all time?
When we were in this, the thick of it, we didn't have enough PPE to wear.
And mine, myself, was wearing the same mask for weeks on end.
And before COVID, that mask was supposed to be worn one patient at a time.
You wear it, you take it off, you throw it in the garbage, you get a new one.
And we were wearing this for weeks at the same time.
I haven't had one of the straps break on a mask.
I was told just tie it together.
So we went through a lot of sacrifice, and it's a risk that we all knew we were taking.
We were in healthcare.
That's what we do.
We're first responders, and any of us would do it again immediately without any hesitation.
And we're still doing it.
We're still treating COVID patients, many vaccinated COVID patients as well.
And for them to say you're going to be fired for not getting a vaccine after everything we just went through, it's mind boggling.
And where I'm really sticking on why this doesn't make sense, because we are in a health care pandemic.
We are in a national nursing shortage.
Right now, currently today, before a lot of people even being fired or terminated, I get text messages every single day all across Long Island begging for overtime.
Come in.
We need help.
$250 extra to come in.
If you lose just one or two providers, you are going to devastate that department.
We're already short-staffed.
So if you're going to fire more people, I don't understand how that's better.
Because me personally, I'd much rather get treated by an unvaccinated person with antibodies than being treated by nobody at all.
And there's going to be a time where you're going to come to that hospital and your care is going to be delayed because there are not going to be enough people to care for you.
Right, and by the way, do we even have any numbers, or do you know of any numbers of, at the peak of this thing, unvaccinated healthcare workers that were somehow infecting people at hospitals?
Have they done any studies on that that you know of?
And you're out for two, three weeks, and you're fine.
You're right back.
Yes, it was devastating.
A lot of people did die.
I held the hands of dying patients.
It was a lot to deal with in the hospitals.
But there's a high survivability rate.
Personally, in one of the hospital systems, we did lose a few healthcare workers, but the majority of them were fine.
And if they got COVID, they got the antibodies, and they're still working currently today, Why are we forcing this vaccine on them, even though we think the vaccine does work and it limits your symptoms?
But a lot of people have very legitimate reasons, like I spoke about, to not get this vaccine.
Why are we firing these people?
Yeah, it just doesn't make sense that we need health care professionals right now more than ever.
For some of my audience that may be hesitant and as I have said completely from the beginning the entire time it's I believe the same position you're taking which is that you have to make the right choice for yourself and you should consult with your doctor and your age and your health and your diet and all of those things should matter.
If someone's hesitant do you have a recommendation on which one they should take or just anything on that side of things?
What of your colleagues that are now stepping down or being furloughed, et cetera, do they know what they're gonna do with their lives?
I mean, most people don't have months in salary just waiting in the bank, and you didn't think you were gonna step away from a career, and here we are.
If you do want to find more information, my website, Surdi4Congress.com, S-U-R-D-I 4Congress.com, a ton of information on there you can follow.
And one note about the governors using the National Guard.
This is a horrible policy decision.
God bless the people in the National Guard.
They're absolutely heroes.
They do a ton of great work for us.
But if we're going to activate the medical people from the National Guard, these are doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and they're working right now In hospitals.
The National Guard is a part-time military position.
What's going to happen is when the Guard is activated, you're going to pull these full-time doctors and nurses that are working at other hospitals today away from their home hospital and put them in other hospitals.
So we're just going to make staffing shorter all around by deploying the National Guard.
And I don't know if a lot of people know that.
The National Guard has a horrible policy decision amongst a lot of other horrible ones.
Are you hopeful that enough people will hear the message that you're trying to get out there, that enough people will come around and be like, oh yeah, maybe my own personal choice is more important than what the government demands that I do?