Virginia is now tenth among U.S. states for percentage of population fully-vaccinated against COVID-19, Governor Ralph Northam announced Wednesday.
“We’ve reached the top ten because so many Virginians have worked so hard for so long,” Northam said in a press release. “It’s something we can all be proud of. Vaccines will soon be available for children, and thousands of adults are getting boosters. This is all great news.”
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After filing the first lawsuit in the country to stop President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for businesses with over 100 employees, federal employees and federal contractors, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is now amending it to request a temporary restraining order and nationwide preliminary injunction. He cites a lengthy list of problems with the mandate, beginning the 54-page brief by saying, “This case presents circumstances that would have been unthinkable to our Founding Fathers.”
In a statement, Brnovich declared, “Once a vaccine has been administered, it can never be undone. The COVID-19 vaccine mandate is one of the greatest infringements upon individual liberty, federalism, and the separation of powers by any administration in our country’s history.”
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Students as young as five years old may still need to wear masks in school after the COVID-19 vaccine is approved for children ages 5-11, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said in a White House briefing Wednesday. Walensky did not discuss if or when children would not be required to wear masks in school.
“After we have authorization from (the Food and Drug Administration) and recommendations from the CDC, we will be working to scale up pediatric vaccination. That said, it will take some time … as we head into these winter months, we know we cannot be complacent,” Walensky stated.
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Joe Biden delivered a short speech from the administration’s fake White House set, Thursday, urging all Americans, including children as young as five, to get vaccinated. Biden claimed that the administration’s draconian vaccine mandates are working, and boasted that the seasonal decline in COVID cases is due to his policies.
Biden stressed that there is still more work to do to get the remaining 66 million American holdouts injected with the experimental jabs.
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As one-size-fits-all COVID vaccine mandates sweep government, academia, and corporate America, new data are emerging that undermine the public health justifications for these policies. Studies from multiple countries now indicate that vaccination alone is less effective than the acquired immunity many already possess and unable to prevent transmission in the medium-to-long term.
Since the pandemic began, more than 100 million Americans have recovered from the virus. Many are workers deemed “essential” just last year. While the government paid others to sit at home, essential workers were required to continue working, exposing themselves to the coronavirus in a pre-vaccine world.
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An Ohio law banning schools from forcing students to take vaccinations that haven’t been fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took effect Wednesday.
HB 244 says that primary and secondary schools, along with public universities, may not “Discriminate against an individual who has not received a [non-fully approved vaccine], including by requiring the individual to engage in or refrain from engaging in activities or precautions that differ from the activities or precautions of an individual who has received such a vaccine.”
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New Jersey teachers said they were instructed during a teachers union training to log conversations regarding the COVID-19 vaccine with parents and students, Fox News reported.
The training provided by Made to Save, a vaccine “equity” nonprofit, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) directed instructors to “follow up and track” conversations with parents and teachers regarding the COVID-19 vaccine, Fox News reported. They were told to log their conversations into the Democrat campaign app, “Reach,” and were incentivized with gift cards to be active users.
Campaign operative Jake DeGroot devised Reach, which New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez utilized in her 2018 campaign, Fox News reported.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday that they strongly recommend pregnant women get a COVID-19 vaccination.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended “urgent action” Wednesday for “people who are pregnant, recently pregnant … who are trying to become pregnant now, or who might become pregnant in the future” as 125,000 COVID-19 cases reported among pregnant women have resulted in 22,000 hospitalizations and 161 deaths.
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New polling on President Joe Biden’s federal vaccine mandate shows the majority of Americans do not think unvaccinated workers should lose their jobs.
Convention of States Action released the poll Wednesday, which reports that 65% of surveyed voters “do not believe Americans should lose their jobs if they object to taking the COVID-19 vaccine.”
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Orlando Magic forward Jonathan Isaac this week responded to criticism he received in Rolling Stone for his personal decision not to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
The article, called “The NBA’s Anti-Vaxxers Are Trying to Push Around the League — And It’s Working,” chastised the 23-year-old basketball pro, who has had COVID-19, and recovered from the virus.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that a southern Arizona county has reached 99.9 percent vaccination of its eligible population, apparently the first county in America to reach that benchmark since the COVID-19 vaccine became available earlier this year.
Santa Cruz County, which includes the city of Nogales, is almost completely vaccinated, though the county’s Heath and Human Services (HHS) Director says the numbers may be a bit inflated.
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The investigative media organization Project Veritas released video secretly recorded by a Phoenix hospital worker of her co-workers discussing how there is a cover-up going on hiding the adverse effects of the COVID-19 vaccine. Jodi O’Malley, who works as an RN at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center, was so horrified at what she saw that she felt an obligation to go public, risking her job.
O’Malley told James O’Keefe, the head of Project Veritas, “This is evil at the highest level. You have the FDA, you have the CDC, that are both supposed to be protecting us, but they are under the government, and everything that we’ve done so far is unscientific.”
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Amazon is handing out cash prizes and vehicles to its workers that receive the COVID-19 vaccine as part of a push to vaccinate more of its frontline employees.
The company announced on one of its Instagram pages Monday that five employees were awarded cars worth up to $40,000 dollars as winners of a vaccine sweepstakes.
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Two famous individuals from opposite sides of the political divide— Nicki Minaj and Juanita Broaddrick—were suspended from Twitter in the past 24 hours for voicing their concerns about the experimental COVID vaccines, or as Twitter put it, spreading “vaccine disinformation.”
Minaj addressed her 157,000,000 followers on Instagram Live on Wednesday, warning in a powerful speech that the COVID Cancel Culture is turning America into a country like China.
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One Georgia doctor is taking a common sense approach to COVID-19 vaccine booster shots, which could be authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a matter of days.
Dr. Cecil Bennett of Newnan Family Medicine in Newnan, Georgia, says he recommends that all of his patients take the COVID-19 vaccine. He will not, however, recommend booster shots for patients who have taken the vaccine and still have immunity from the virus, unless they are immunocompromised.
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How to encourage more Virginians to get the COVID-19 vaccine is the latest battleground in the gubernatorial race. On Monday, Terry McAuliffe announced his “Virginia is for vaccine lovers” plan with a push for school divisions to require the vaccine and ensure health care providers follow federal guidance. His plan also includes business incentives, enhanced marketing, and a voluntary COVID-safety compliance certification.
“COVID is here. It’s not going away anytime soon, so we have to do everything that we possibly can to keep our children in school, build the strongest economy, and we’ve got to really get serious, and we’ve got to fight this deadly infection of COVID,” he said on a Tuesday press call.
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Arizona’s state police force is in the Pacific Northwest in an attempt to bolster its ranks. The push comes on the heels of news that Washington Gov. Jay Inslee isn’t allowing exceptions to his vaccine mandate.
The Arizona Department of Public Safety announced that they would be in Washington from Sept. 7 through Sept. 19 to recruit potential new officers.
Their counterpart, the Washington State Patrol, shared Arizona’s announcement on Twitter.
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Federal District Court Judge Paul L. Maloney granted 16 Western Michigan University (WMU) athletes’ request to continue participating in intercollegiate athletic competition without being injected with the COVID-19 vaccine.
Initially, four soccer stars sued in August over WMU’s vaccine mandate for athletes, which required athletic participants take the COVID-19 vaccine by Aug. 31 or forfeit their spot on the team. WMU has denied all the athletes a religious liberty accommodation.
No similar vaccine requirement exists for any other students at WMU and other universities. The lawsuit says Michigan State University and the University of Michigan are granting religious accommodations to their athletes.
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The Los Angeles public schools opened last month with some of the strictest coronavirus control measures in the country. Students and staff are required to wear masks inside and outside, participate in weekly virus testing, and obey social distancing protocols. District staff are also required to get the COVID-19 shot, and now all Los Angeles public school students ages 12 and over are forced to get the vaccine.
On Thursday, the Los Angeles school board voted to pass the student vaccine mandate, with one board member stating: “So I do not see this as your choice or my choice or about my great nieces and nephews and grandchildren or your children. I see this as a community necessity to protect the children under 12 who cannot be vaccinated.”
Los Angeles public school students have until the end of the calendar year to get fully vaccinated, unless they participate in extracurricular activities which requires full vaccination by October 31st. If they don’t comply, students will be pushed into a district-run online learning program. In 2015, California eliminated its religious vaccine exemption and now only recognizes medical exemptions for schoolchildren.
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President Joe Biden announced in an address to the nation on Thursday that his administration will implement stricter COVID-19 vaccine requirements.
The new mandate will use the Department of Labor to require all employers with over 100 workers to have them vaccinated or tested weekly for COVID-19, which affects about 80 million Americans, Biden said. Those employers will also be required to provide paid time off to get vaccinated.
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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich issued a legal opinion on Tuesday stating that the City of Tucson’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for city employees violates S.B. 1824 (soon to be A.R.S. 36-681) and Gov. Doug Ducey’s Executive Order 2021-18 prohibiting local and state governments from implementing them. Sen. Kelly Townsend (R-Mesa) submitted a SB 1487 request for the investigation.
“Tucson’s vaccine mandate is illegal, and the city could be held liable for attempting to force employees to take it against their beliefs,” Brnovich said. “COVID-19 vaccinations should be a choice, not a government mandate.” His spokeswoman, Katie Conner, told reporters during a phone call, “Adhering to the rule of law in Arizona is not optional.”
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A law mandating the COVID-19 vaccine among Tucson city employees is illegal, according to Arizona’s Attorney General.
“Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced that his office (AGO) determined the City of Tucson’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for public employees does violate state law for purposes of S.B. 1487, and also is in direct conflict with the Governor’s Executive Order 2021-18,” a press release from Brnovich’s office said.
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Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is ramping up its punishments for faculty, staff, and students who refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
According to one report, those faculty, staff and students will be removed from campus completely if they do not take the vaccine or submit to regular COVID-19 testing. The stricter policies come after VCU’s American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapter wrote a letter to the school demanding that the administration take a stronger stance against the unvaccinated.
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Top U.S. health officials told the White House pandemic coordinator on Thursday to scale back the Biden administration’s plan to administer the coronavirus booster shots to individuals in September, The New York Times reported.
Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeffrey D. Zients that they need more time to collect and analyze the necessary data relating to the booster shots, The New York Times reported.
The doctors told Zients that their agencies might be able to determine whether to recommend boosters for recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the coming weeks, according to the Times.
The two doctors presented their argument to Zients at a meeting on Thursday. It is unclear how Zients responded to the news.
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Ohio University is the latest school to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine among students, faculty, and staff, according to a letter from school President Hugh Sherman.
“Public health experts are tracking an increase in cases in Ohio and on our campuses due to the extremely contagious Delta variant, and we need to do everything we can to continue to show our care and respect for one another and do our part to help keep the entire community safe and healthy,” the letter says.
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Michigan State University recognizes COVID-19 vaccines not approved for use in the United States with lower documented efficacy than natural immunity, according to a federal lawsuit.
It’s the second filed by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) against a public institution of higher education for refusing to exempt recovered individuals from a vaccine mandate.
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A lengthy Facebook post from an Ohio nurse who is set to be fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine has nearly half a million shares, and more than 220,000 comments.
“I’m an RN of 10 years and I am being fired December 1. I’m not political. I don’t watch the news. I do my job and I go home to my family. I love caring for others from every single walk of life and I take that responsibility seriously,” Melissa Rexroth said in a Facebook post written in the early morning last Saturday.
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In response to various business and governmental entities mandating the COVID-19 vaccine for employees, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb told people in a video posted to Twitter that he would not be imposing a mandate for his workers. Gov. Doug Ducey issued an order on August 16 prohibiting local governments from issuing vaccine mandates. It is punishable by a class 3 misdemeanor or other legal action.
Lamb said, “As long as I am your sheriff, we will never mandate the vaccine. We believe that your health choices are yours and yours alone. Whether you get the vaccine, or don’t get the vaccine, that’s your private information. Here, we believe in America and freedom and we’re going to continue on with that. God bless.”
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The Ohio State University used this week’s full approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to mandate all students, faculty and staff to be vaccinated by Nov. 15.
OSU President Kristina Johnson wrote in a letter “the university is taking this step because vaccines are the safest and most effective form of protection against COVID-19. We are focused on enhancing the health and safety of our community.”
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Despite the fact that the school has encouraged all students to take the COVID-19 vaccine, and decided to follow the Georgia University System’s guidance on mask recommendations in indoor spaces, two professors at the University of North Georgia have resigned in protest.
They say the school is not doing enough to protect their health during the recent uptick of cases of the virus.
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Jesse Jackson, the civil rights icon who was an of early recipient and champion of all the coronavirus vaccine, was hospitalized Saturday with COVID-19, his organization announced.
Jackson, 79, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, and his wife Jacqueline, 77, were being treated at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition said.
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in Memphis is battling a new form of contraband: fake COVID-19 vaccination cards.
“U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers (CBPOs) working at the port of Memphis flagged a suspicious shipment coming from Shenzhen, China en route to the central business district of New Orleans,” a CPB press release said. “It was described in the manifest as ‘PAPER CARD, PAPER’ and CBPOs already knew what it was. It was the 15th such shipment of the night, though all to different cities. Inside were 51 low quality, counterfeit COVID-19 vaccination cards.”
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A famous Tennessee music festival is set to require its patrons to be vaccinated, or submit to compulsory testing.
“The safety of our patrons and staff is our number one priority. As such a full COVID-19 vaccination or negative COVID-19 test will be required to attend Bonnaroo 2021,” Bonnaroo said on Twitter. “Bonnaroo strongly encourages vaccination. The last day to receive the second shot of Moderna or Pfizer, or a single dose of Johnson and Johnson is Thursday, August 19th.”
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A new requirement from the U.S. armed forces has sparked controversy and furthered the debate over mandating the COVID-19 vaccine.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin wrote a memo to Department of Defense employees Monday announcing that the COVID-19 vaccine will be added to the list of required vaccines for all service members.
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About 3,000 people gathered at the Michigan Capitol on Friday to protest governments and employers mandating the COVID-19 vaccine.
Dressed in American flag clothing, Donald Trump flags, and back-the-blue shirts, they waved signs, saying, “my body, my choice.”
“2020: heroes. 2021: victims,” another said of frontline health care workers, many of whom must be vaccinated to continue work or quit.
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Though the COVID-19 vaccine does not stop the transmission or contraction of the virus, students, faculty, and staff at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) will be forced to take the experimental jab in order to return to campus this fall.
Everyone on campus is expected to receive the shot by September 30, WZZM reported. The school will provide numerous opportunities to get vaccinated at free at pop-up clinics.
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Despite the fact that only 23 people under the age of 20 are currently hospitalized in the state of Tennessee with COVID-19, the state’s health director is scaremongering, telling reporters that all of the pediatric hospitals in the state will soon be full.
Dr. Lisa Piercey said Thursday that every children’s hospital in the state will be full as children contract the delta variant of the COVID-19 virus.
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Democrat and Republican governors alike are promising not to implement new mask mandates as COVID-19 cases rise again.
“All Virginians should consider wearing a mask in public indoor settings where there is increased risk of [COVID-19] transmission, as the new [CDC] guidance recommends. This is not a requirement, but a recommendation,” Gov. Ralph Northam (D) said Thursday on Twitter.
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The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) teamed up Wednesday with the Washington Football Team to offer incentives for fans to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in Richmond.
“We are pleased to work with the Washington Football Team to help ensure that Training Camp is a fun, safe, and educational environment for everyone in attendance,” State Health Commissioner M. Norman Oliver, M.D. said, according to a press release. “Plus, with our mobile vaccination site set up all week at Training Camp, this is another wonderful opportunity for anyone who is able to get vaccinated to do so. Your best protection from COVID-19 is to get vaccinated.”
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The State University System of Florida (SUSF) released a letter to students across the state entering the 2021 fall semester, encouraging them to get the Covid-19 vaccine prior to arriving to campus in August.
Although the letter does not require students to get vaccinated, the low vaccination rate in Florida and the rise in delta variant cases have given university Presidents the reason for concern.
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A Florida congressman joined CNN Tuesday evening to debate host Chris Cuomo on his decision not to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Do you feel responsible for spreading a message where [you say] ‘I’m not gonna take [the vaccine] because I don’t care what Biden wants. Byron Donald’s not gonna take it ’cause he doesn’t care what Biden wants?'” Cuomo asked Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL-19). “Do you think that’s a good message for people to hear?”
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The CDC awarded the University of Arizona (UA) $15 million to study COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness and immunity in children and underserved communities. Children as young as 4 months to minors as old as 17 years will be eligible for study of the emergency use authorization vaccine. The announcement didn’t specify who qualified as an “underserved community.” The grant was awarded specifically to the Arizona Healthcare, Emergency Response, and Other Essential Workers Surveillance (AZ HEROES) study, originally designed with a focus on frontline workers such as firefighters.
AZ Heroes lead official and associate dean for research and professor at Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, Jeff Burgess, asserted that this research would offer a better understanding of how effective COVID-19 vaccines are in youth.
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Despite fears that COVID-19 cases are surging in Arizona due to the state’s low vaccination rate and the emergence of the delta variant, new cases barely exceed 1,000 per day. The most recent data from Worldometer, which is cited by reputable organizations and governments around the world, shows the number of new daily cases was 1,043 on July 21. The number of new cases has stayed generally between 500 and 1,000 since the beginning of March.
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Just days after Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed HB 244, banning colleges and public schools from forcing students to take the COVID-19 vaccine, one Ohio lawmaker wants to ban mask mandates in public schools too.
“Senate Bill 209, introduced by state Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Powell, is unlikely to impact school districts’ decisions for the fall, as lawmakers are on break until after most schools return to class,” News 5 reported. “SB 209 would prohibit the state school board, the Ohio Department of Education or individual school districts’ boards of education from requiring anyone to wear facial coverings in a public education setting.”
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Gov. Mike DeWine (R) Thursday signed HB 244 into law, a bill that disallows schools and universities from forcing their students to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Until the three COVID-19 vaccines, developed by Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Pfizer, respectively, receive full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), that law will stand, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.
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An advisor for Governor Doug Ducey sent letters Wednesday to two Arizona school superintendents letting them know their policies of requiring unvaccinated students exposed to COVID-19 to quarantine is illegal. Education policy advisor Kairlin Harrier told the superintendents of Peoria Unified School District and Catalina Foothills School District their policies violate a new law, HB 2898, which states, “A school district or charter school may not require a student or teacher to receive a vaccine for covid-19 or to wear a face covering to participate in in-person instruction.”
Harrier went on, “The policy must be rescinded immediately.” She pointed out that children under age 12 haven’t even received approval from the federal government to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Children ages 12-15 only received approval for the vaccine in May.
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Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine plans to double down on an incentive program to encourage more Ohioans to receive a COVID-19 vaccine as cases are on the rise in the Buckeye State.
Speaking to reporters at a ribbon cutting celebrating the completion of a highway project in Columbus, DeWine said he expects to announce a new program soon in an effort boost the state’s vaccination percentage, which ranks as one of the lowest in the nation.
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One Democrat in the Tennessee Legislature is accusing the state of firing its top COVID-19 vaccine expert for partisan political reasons, despite the fact that no official reason has been given for her termination.
“Science denying TNGOP legislators demanded a sacrifice to their anti-mask, anti-vax, anti-fact ideology & a great woman, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, who worked tirelessly for Tennesseans every day during the pandemic was fired by [Gov. Bill Lee] to appease those who deny data & research,” state Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-TN-13) said on Twitter.
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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich called President Joe Biden’s plan to go door-to-door encouraging COVID-19 vaccinations “alarming.” In a letter submitted to the president Tuesday, Brnovich told Biden that he wouldn’t tolerate breaches of privacy concerning Arizonans’ vaccination status.
“I, along with many Arizonans, was greatly alarmed by your White House indicating that it might be in possession of medical records revealing the contact information for Americans who have not been vaccinated,” wrote Brnovich. “If this is the case, this is a severe breach of privacy, and I will not tolerate such intrusions within Arizona.”
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Michigan has become the latest state to implement a plan to bribe its residents into receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.
Following Ohio, which, led by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine encouraged people to get the vaccine and enter into vaccine lottery, Michigan’s Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has done the same.
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