Letter To My Employer

Like many of you, I’m starting to get pressure from my company to get the vaccine. They’ve not made it a requirement for employment yet, but you are expected to mask up while on company grounds if not vaccinated. I hate this, but as a remote employee it also doesn’t effect me much.

More recently they implemented a double vaccination requirement to attend our upcoming sales achievement bonus trip, which is an annual event that rewards sales people for meeting their quotas. I’ve always enjoyed these trips, as you get to mingle with colleagues, who for most of the year you only communicate with virtually and everyone feels appreciated and rewarded for all their hard work.

I won’t be attending this year because I have not gotten the vaccine, nor do I plan to.

I know many of you are facing much more dire circumstances with these mandates and risk losing a job, or perhaps you already have. I’m so saddened that this is happening, but really am not surprised. I think those of you that share my concerns have realized by now that no one is coming to save us from this Covid madness.

There is a mass psychosis going on that’s hostile to common sense, data and logic and thus more of the same failed policies from 2020 are being re- implemented with the addition of vaccine mandates. It’s up to us to say no, to speak out for others who can’t and to push back hard against harmful narratives and policies.

After a discussion about this with my boss, I decided to write a letter that I’m hoping will be shared with the policy decision makers at my company. Even if it goes nowhere it felt good to get this off my chest.

If you’d like to create your own letter, feel free to use any part of my mine that you think will help. This is what I wrote:

For what it’s worth, I want to expand on our conversation the other day about the company’s vaccine requirement to attend the Club trip. While I understand and can respect its desire to protect employees from Covid infection and the liability issues involved, there are some things that disturb me.

First, these vaccines do not provide sterilizing immunity, which means a vaccinated person can get and transmit the virus just like the unvaccinated (1), something that’s become obvious these past few weeks. In fact an infected vaccinated person may spread the virus even more than an unvaxxed person due to large viral loads found in nasal passages during the highly contagious first 5 days of infection (2). A vaccinated person is also likely to have less symptoms and thus not apt to change behavior and quarantine, becoming their own super spreader.

If this is true, and as of now there is no reason to believe it’s not, then what is the purpose of singling out unvaccinated employees? This doesn’t seem aimed at mitigating viral spread, but more of a punishment to coerce people to get vaccinated.

Second, what about those of us that have had Covid and who now have natural immunity? It’s pretty well known that the Covid recovered have long lasting and robust immunity to the virus (3,4,). This is true of most viruses actually, look at SARS1 where almost 20 years later those those that were infected with it still have protection (5). Natural immunity also provides better protection than the vaccines (6) because the body is exposed to the whole virus, while the vaccines just target the spike protein. That’s probably why we’re seeing so many breakthrough cases with Delta, as the vaccines were not targeted to this variant.

Given this information, why is the company not acknowledging natural immunity? I don’t want a special exemption for the trip because I’ve had Covid (I want everyone to attend), but it troubles me that natural immunity is not part of the discussion. Again it leads me to think that the vaccine requirement is more about coercion than creating a safe environment for employees.

The decision to get vaccinated is a highly personal one and the choice should be left to each individual based on their own medical history and risk assessment. The vaccines were designed to give protection to the people taking them and no one else. Seeing as how they are available to anyone who wants one, there should be no restrictions for those of us that have chosen not to get it.

This goes for masks mandates for the unvaccinated as well, which also seems more about punishment than safety. It’s been known for quite some time that they are useless at mitigating aerosolized viral particles and wearing them for extended periods is harmful both physically and psychologically. (7, 8)

Vaccine mandates to participate in every day life activities don’t make sense medically or ethically, are a gross violation of privacy rights and have no place in free and democratic societies. By demonizing the unvaccinated and pressuring the private sector to impose restrictions and/or withhold employment from them, our government has opened the door to medical tyranny that history has taught will lead to atrocious and horrific acts of violence. My hope is that our company will not participate by not imposing policies that withhold privileges to employees who choose not to inject themselves with experimental drugs.

I love working for this company and and want to continue doing so for many more years. I’m worried though that this trip vaccine requirement will lead to further restrictions down the road and am hoping you can bring my concerns up during your meetings this coming week. Feel free to share this with anyone.

1. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/07/30/1022867219/cdc-study-provincetown-delta-vaccinated-breakthrough-mask-guidance
2. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02187-1
3. https://news.emory.edu/stories/2021/07/covid_survivors_resistance/index.html
4. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9
5. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563
6. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6556/eabh1766.full
7. https://www.city-journal.org/do-masks-work-a-review-of-the-evidence?wallit_nosession=1
8. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.18.21257385v2