- April 17, 2024
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Dear Editor:
“We're in an environment in which truth and consequences are fungible.” Dr. Robert Malone made this very bold statement during a Dec. 30, 2021, episode of the Joe Rogan Podcast, which has now been listened to over 50 million times. During a time when every statement from the media or from politicians feels hyperbolic, the recent Supreme Court oral arguments on OSHA’s vaccine mandates illustrates just how true this statement is.
Albeit likely unintentional, Justices Sonia Sotomayer and Elena Kagan both made egregiously inaccurate statements from the Supreme Court Bench as the premise to their questions posed to the oralists. Presumably, they are making decisions, which have grave consequences on personal liberties, based on misinformation. This is not only dangerous, it opens a floodgate of possibilities for future jurists to rely on inaccurate information when making decisions that impact millions of lives. Jurists have an obligation to rely on accurate information and to not further disseminate misinformation when hearings are either viewable or audible by the Public.
So, when did our Supreme Court Justices become politicians first and jurists second?
The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, Jan. 13, that while OSHA’s vaccine mandate for private employers with over 100 employees was unconstitutional and an overreach of executive power, the vaccine mandate for facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding could stand.
Here in Palm Coast, that affects several facilities, most notably AdventHealth and most — if not all — of our assisted living facilities. So, while our nurses, doctors and other facility workers sacrificed their own well-being on the front lines of this pandemic for two years, they are now being told to either undergo an irreversible medical treatment or lose their job. These workers have a right to know that nine Justices on the Supreme Court made this decision based on facts. What our Supreme Court justices said during live oral arguments were not facts, and this court’s decision is final. It’s binding. And in this instance, it could be based on falsities that were made with impunity.
Not a single person from the CDC — including Director Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky — while under oath during Congressional hearings, confirmed Justice Sotomayer’s comment regarding children on ventilators, and we’ve heard the CDC director now tell us that the COVID vaccines may stop hospitalization or severe illness, but they do not stop COVID transmission. These are the facts.
Regardless of one’s political beliefs or one’s opinions on vaccines and vaccine mandates, all citizens should be able to rely on all branches of our government to tell us the truth and to use the truth, rather than agendas, to drive its legislative policy-making and its judicial decisions in landmark court cases that will forever shape the laws of this country and the lives of the people that inhabit it.
The fact of the matter is, truth and consequences are only fungible by those at the top, those driving the narratives, those controlling the news feed, and those making decisions that affect the citizenry. We, the people, feel the consequences of their lies for them.
What will happen to our necessary medical and assisted living facilities in Palm Coast? Will we continue to be plagued with staff shortages due to workers being out from having contracted COVID and now from quitting or being fired because they don’t want to take a vaccine? When essential workers in a community begin to be eliminated, the citizens feel it. There is nothing truer or more consequential than that.
Theresa Carli Pontieri
Palm Coast
Editor's Note: Theresa Carli Pontieri is an attorney with Carli Law, in Palm Coast.
