The debate about COVID-19 vaccines and face masks that has been ongoing across the nation and in San Luis Obispo County since 2020 recently flared to life again at the county government center.
At the Oct. 17 SLO County Board of Supervisors meeting, roughly a dozen residents criticized Public Health Director Penny Borenstein and her Sept. 21 mandate ordering health care workers to get influenza and updated COVID-19 vaccines.
The notice directs SLO County’s health care facilities and organizations to adopt and enact such a policy. Any health care worker who refuses to get those vaccines must sign a written declaration and wear a surgical mask or higher-level respirator while on duty during respiratory illness season. Unless rescinded, Borenstein’s order will apply every influenza season from Nov. 1 to April 30 of the following year.
Atascadero resident Eric Greening pleaded action from the supervisors and claimed they might be held liable if the mandate results in health care workers being harmed.
“I’m not sure what role the supervisors can play relative to the coercion imposed on health care workers to take dangerous, experimental, spike protein-dispensing substances, but please do what you can to ameliorate it,” he said.
Greening went on to cite the Nuremberg Code, ethical principles that set boundaries on permissible medical experimentation on human subjects. The code rose from the United States v. Karl Brandt case—one of the Nuremberg trials that took place after World War II.
“Although the mandate sidestepped [vaccination] by constant masking, just imagine laboring through a physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausting 12-hour nursing shift wearing a mask,” he said. “This choice actually constitutes pressure, which violates the Nuremberg Code.”
Currently, two strains—EG.5 and FL.1.51.—are the most prevalent COVID-19 subvariants. County health officials recommend the new booster for everyone ages 6 months and above.
But according to one local resident, many community members aren’t interested.
Linda Quinlan told the supervisors that her group conducted a survey about the new mandate. She said she is the SLO County chair of the New California State—a movement to develop a new state within the existing state of California that “has become governed by a tyranny,” according to its website.
“When I heard that Penny Borenstein had issued another order, we started to hear rumblings within the community about what people were feeling and sensing,” Quinlan said. “We decided to put out a survey. Within 48 hours, we had over 600 responses. This morning, we had over 800 responses.”
She added that 241 survey participants were in favor of the mandate while 638 said they weren’t.
Borenstein herself later commented on the matter at the supervisors meeting. She defended her decision and cited the county’s history with mandates. Vaccines have been required in the health care system and by the state’s school immunization law for decades, she said, combating diseases like diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, and hepatitis-B.
“Those are rare diseases,” Borenstein said. “They got to be rare because of vaccines.”
Further, SLO County has an influenza mandate that’s been in place for 12 years. Similar to the new mandate, it’s offered health care workers the choice to either get inoculated or mask up.
Borenstein stressed that COVID-19 is the third leading cause of death and is more prevalent than the flu. She added that the vaccine is safe and effective.
“It just seemed like, given the implications of COVID in our community, that the health care order would be a natural extension [of the influenza order],” she said. “What we’re dealing with here is the politicization around COVID in particular because it really is no different than the influenza mandate that has been in place.”
However, the two conservative supervisors paid heed to calls for rescinding her mandate. First District Supervisor John Peschong motioned to bring back an item before the end of the month to discuss the COVID-19 vaccine and mask health order. Fifth District Supervisor Debbie Arnold seconded it. She said that she only learned about the mandate when some constituents complained to her, and that it wasn’t first run by elected officials.
“I found it ironic that … it is a government order where one physician can mandate to other physicians and medical professionals that they have to personally take medication they may not agree with,” Arnold said. “I think we can all agree that medicine has never been an exact, exact science. People go and get second opinions often when they have an ailment.”
Supervisors Bruce Gibson, Dawn Ortiz-Legg, and Jimmy Paulding shot down Peschong’s motion in a 3-2 vote. Δ
This article appears in Pet Issue 2023.
If a new flu arrived which had a fatality rate of 20% of those infected (or left them crippled) instead of the maximum 2% death rate for Covid AND there was an effective vaccine available (or effective face protection), would the argument still be that health care workers don’t need to get the vaccine or mask up? It seems fair and balanced to offer health care workers the option of wearing protective gear if they don’t want to get vaccines. The alternative seems like a perversion of the concept of personal freedom because it comes at the expense of others (their lives and their money).
I say let the “roughly dozen citizens lambast away.” Respectfully, unless they produce peer-reviewed documentation to counter Public Health Director Penny Borenstein’s directive, I’m following the science. Let them follow the Pied Piper of Contrarianism.
And as far as Eric Greening and his Nuremberg Code, it was formulated in response to the atrocities committed by Nazi doctors during the Holocaust.
Vaccine mandates for healthcare workers have been effective in reducing the incidence of vaccine-preventable diseases among healthcare workers and patients. For example, the hepatitis B vaccine mandate has been credited with reducing the incidence of hepatitis B infection among healthcare workers by more than 95%.
Vaccine mandates for healthcare workers are controversial, and there are some who argue that they violate individual rights. However, the courts have generally upheld vaccine mandates for healthcare workers, finding that the public’s interest in protecting public health outweighs the individual’s right to refuse vaccination.
What data are you referring to that Penny Borenstein has provided to be countered? Her response, when asked to provide the data used in her decision making, is always an avalanche of brochures and procedures along with the predictable two-word sentences that mock…baby-talk ‘safe and effective’….etc.. The overwhelming amount of information and data available that this shot is killing thousands and injuring millions is now indisputable. Penny Borenstein has this data. It has become willful ignorance. There is no more debating this…time to investigate anyone promoting this experiment, what the DoD calls a Bioweapon. At your own peril trust “The Science” another two word sentence…the brainwashing of the masses. Comfortable but dangerous.
For those wanting peer reviewed medical studies showing the danger of covid vaccines, there’s literally a thousand of them (ask yourself why our pharmaceutical industry-funded media hasn’t reported on these?): https://drtrozzi.org/2023/09/28/1000-peer-…
And regarding masks, the world’s most revered medical/health science review network, The Cochrane Review, concluded at the beginning of 2023 that despite decades of studies and assumptions, there still remains no scientific evidence for the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of respiratory viruses, including covid, in community settings, including by health care workers wearing either surgical masks or N95 masks. (https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/1…) 

Forcing masks on those who refuse to vaccinate is coercive and discriminatory.