Dear Members of the Safety and Health Codes Board:

I am writing today to express my opposition to the Covid-19 permanent workplace standards – whether the January version or the new proposed amended version.  I believe that the amended version should not be adopted and the existing version should be abrogated. 

In reviewing the amended order, I fail to see any rational basis for it.  Instead, it seems designed to make life more difficult for people who have made a different medical choice than you would like. 

To illustrate my point, let’s take a two-person example – Person A is vaccinated; Person B is not.  Under the amended standards, Person B would be required to wear a mask and maintain social distance at his place of employment (presumably forever since there is no end date in the standards).  Person A would not need to wear a mask and does not need to maintain social distance. 

If the theory is that this policy protects Person A, it does not hold up.  In order for this theory to be correct, Person A would have to be able to catch Covid-19 from an unvaccinated person but not be able to catch Covid-19 from a vaccinated person.  Such a contention defies not only logic, but evidence.  Even the premise of the theory underlies it.  The theory assumes that despite being vaccinated, Person A can catch Covid-19.  So if Person A can catch it, then any other vaccinated person can catch it.  And if Person A is around such a vaccinated person that has caught it, then this only protects Person A if it’s not possible to transmit Covid-19 from a vaccinated person.  But recent cases (such as the New York Yankees, the Texas Democrat delegation, the wedding written about in Forbes, and even recent documents released by the CDC) show that even among fully vaccinated individuals, Covid-19 can spread.  So distinguishing between vaccinated and unvaccinated makes no difference in protecting Person A and makes it an arbitrary distinction.  Person A’s protection comes not from being distant from unvaccinated people, Person A’s protection comes from the vaccine.  This vaccine, like virtually all vaccines, is designed to protect the person who receives it.  If Person A does catch Covid-19, that person is almost certainly not going to have any serious outcome because of the vaccine (again, making any additional protections unnecessary). 

If the theory is that this policy protects Person B, it is unnecessary, paternalistic and overreaching.  The vast majority of people who are not vaccinated have made a choice not to be vaccinated.  Some do so because they have already had Covid and have natural immunity; some have concerns about the safety of the vaccines (including unknown long-term effects); some have concerns that the vaccines are not fully approved, but only have been given emergency use authorization; some have determined that given their age and medical situation (e.g., lack of comorbidities) that it is unnecessary.  If the theory is this policy protects Person B, then that leads to the conclusion that you are mandating this because you don’t agree with a medical choice someone made for themselves (since, as discussed in the previous paragraph, the vaccine is not about protecting others).  This is absolutely not the place of the government period, but certainly not this agency. 

These regulations also have no end date.  When the pandemic first started, the restrictions that were put in place were done so under the guise of “two weeks to flatten the curve.”  The idea was to avoid the hospital system from being overwhelmed.  Then when that was achieved, the restrictions did not go away, but instead the goalpost shifted.  The restrictions were then recast as  necessary until all adults have had the opportunity to get vaccinated.  That has been achieved.  And yet again, we are faced with a moving goalpost, but this time, there is not even a pretense of when Covid restrictions will go away.  It is intended to be a permanent change.  This is unwarranted and ignores reality.  Our hospital systems are not in danger of being overwhelmed; every adult has the ability to obtain a vaccine if they so choose; the daily death rate from Covid is low (something like Alzheimer’s at this point).  Covid has become a livable disease that everyone has the ability to protect themselves from.  The government should step back and allow people their freedoms. 

As further evidence that these regulations are designed just to punish those with whom you disagree, it makes no distinction about when a person is vaccinated.  Evidence is coming out that the vaccine’s effectiveness drops off (by some measures fairly significantly) after some period of time (around 6 months).  The drug companies and federal agencies are already talking about the need for booster shots.  Yet these regulations define a person as someone who received the vaccine at least 2 weeks prior.  So if someone gets the vaccine in January 2021, under these regulations in July 2022, they would still be classified as “vaccinated” even though the effectiveness of that vaccine at that point (18 months after it was received) may be on the level of someone who never got it.  And yet no restrictions are placed on that person.  This distinction is arbitrary and without any rational basis. 

These regulations also make no allowance for those who have natural immunity from Covid because they had it.  Some indications are that the immunity one gets from having Covid is better and lasts longer than the immunity received from the vaccines (including with the Delta variant).  Yet those individuals under these regulations are put into the class that needs to be protected.  Again, such a delineation is arbitrary.

And finally, these regulations impose additional and unnecessary burdens on Virginia businesses.  These standards are different than other states and the federal guidelines.  So companies would now have an additional set of possibly conflicting guidelines to navigate and implement.  It also takes time and effort for their compliance employees to track the status of each employee and their actions.  These additional burdens are not what Virginia businesses need after over a year of being hampered in their ability to conduct business.  They need to be allowed to reopen and resume their normal activities. 

For all these reasons, I strongly oppose the proposed amendment and believe that the existing permanent regulation should be abrogated.