The Madness Continues...
University of Illinois says unvaccinated employees still must test weekly for covid-19
King Pritzker released higher ed from his unlawful vax-or-test executive order last week, but the University of Illinois said today unvaccinated employees are still required to submit to the weekly ritual.
More testing has led to less covid exactly nowhere in the world, yet U of I’s saliva-testing company SHIELD Illinois can’t stop finding ways to get people to spit. So, instead of doing the scientific and ethical thing, the state’s flagship University is continuing to do the pointless and profitable thing — at least for now.
How many unvaxed staffers will keep being subjected to this condition of employment, and what exactly is the goal? Wearing people down so they quit or get an unwanted medical treatment? Pumping test & case numbers? Lining the pockets of whomever is politically & financially invested in the SHIELD racket?
To make matters worse, the Illinois General Assembly illogically amended the Healthcare Right of Conscience Act last fall to exclude covid-19. (Lists of how legislators voted below.)
The bill took effect June 1, 2022, but doesn’t change or suspend either the U.S. Constitution or other legal remedies that might exist under the law.
I’d love, love, love to see all U of I employees, regardless of vaccination status, protest this insane policy. Friends in Champaign-Urbana tell me the culture there has been just as covidian Chicago & Oak Park, so maybe I’m too optimistic. Perhaps we should send planes to drop leaflets about about natural immunity and differential risk and all that pesky “data” stuff?
Granted, today’s announcement does suggest U of I is taking a look at its policies. Yet the phasing “while [the school] evaluates mitigation measures that will be required going forward” makes it sound like the institutional devotion to ZeroCovid isn’t going to die anytime soon.
Resistance needed.
Announcement from the following week:
The inertia of bureaucracy is one thing, the inertia of stupid bureaucracy is quite another.
That amendment to the Healthcare Right of Conscience Act is Orwellian and tyrannical in equal proportion. My (least) favorite part is its pretense that the amendment is merely a "declaration of existing law," as if bodily autonomy and informed consent to medical treatments had never existed.
p.s. For those, like me, not familiar beforehand with the amendment and its history: The text of the amendment is on the penultimate screen/slide at https://www.awakeil.com/post/sb1169-amends-healthcare-right-of-conscience-act .