Column: Job platform for unvaccinated people is silent on COVID-19 dangers

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Helping employers and potential employees find one another sounds like a good idea.

If that effort seeks to match businesses and workers of like minds beyond the actual job, all the better, it would seem.

But what if those mutually agreeable views potentially threaten public safety?

That question is pertinent concerning a new local online platform that offers to pair up businesses that don’t require COVID-19 vaccines with workers who don’t get them.

A new San Diego-based website, PublicSq., this week announced a job board aimed at helping more than 65 mostly local businesses looking to hire employees, “regardless of vaccination status.”

The announcement release quotes the PublicSq. leader and business owners participating in the platform talking about people having to leave their jobs because of their “medical choice.”

PublicSq. features a broad digital platform that says it “connects freedom-loving Americans with local communities, reliable information, and the businesses that share their values.”

The announcement mentions vaccinations, but never says what they’re for. Neither “COVID-19″ nor “coronavirus” appear in the announcement or the organization’s main website. There’s no discussion about the millions of people the disease has infected and killed. Nothing is said about how unvaccinated people are much more at risk of being stricken by COVID-19 than those who got the shots.

“We’re all pretty aware at this point of the risk COVID-19 poses,” PublicSq. CEO Michael Seifert said in an interview. “We don’t seek to dismiss that reality at all.”

A sidelight here is a member of the PublicSq. team has familial ties to the founder of a San Diego nonprofit that offered financial assistance to restaurants struggling through the coronavirus pandemic, including an offer to pay fines for violating coronavirus rules. That connection extends to the staff of county Supervisor Jim Desmond, one of the highest-profile COVID-19 skeptics in the region.

Seifert said PublicSq. does not support or oppose people getting vaccinated and added he has no problem if businesses choose to require employees get the vaccine — as long as that policy isn’t forced on the companies.

“We respect both sides of the vaccine debate,” he said.

The county has no mandate for private business employees or their customers to get inoculated, but strongly urges people to do so.

“The fastest and most sure way out of the pandemic is vaccination,” county spokesman Michael Workman said this week in an email. “They are available now across most age groups. Consult with your doctor, get vaccinated.”

Seifert objects to the notion that unvaccinated people are prolonging the pandemic because people who are vaccinated also can transmit the virus. Vaccinated people can transmit, but that’s far less likely than with unvaccinated people because the vaccines often prevent infection, according to Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center.

“And if someone isn’t infected, they can’t spread the coronavirus. It’s truly that simple,” he wrote in The Atlantic.

The county is requiring its own new hires to be vaccinated and existing employees to be vaccinated or tested regularly for the coronavirus.

The state has enacted various mandates, including the requirement that health care workers and teachers be vaccinated, along with students in the term following the Federal Drug Administration’s approval of the vaccine for their age group.

President Joe Biden has issued an order that businesses with 100 or more employees require their workers to be vaccinated or show a negative COVID-19 test at least on a weekly basis. A federal appellate court has suspended that requirement pending further legal review.

A couple of business owners quoted in the PublicSq. announcement are clear they simply want people who can do the job, period.

“We are looking for qualified candidates, regardless of your vaccine status,” said Orion Ruckle, owner of Ruckle Construction. “As a business owner, I don’t care what anyone’s vaccination status is, I just want the best employees I can find.”

The person listed as PublicSq.’s contact, Kristin Himmel, is married to Miles Himmel, founder of the Larry Himmel Neighborhood Foundation and spokesman for Desmond.

Late last year, the foundation offered to assist restaurants that were ordered to shut down service except for takeout and delivery — including possibly paying fines for coronavirus protocol violations.

The foundation website lists a dozen restaurants that it helped, but the program didn’t end up paying for fines, according to Miles Himmel.

“No fines whatsoever,” he said in an interview this week.

While numerous restaurants and businesses were warned about staying open during the state-ordered coronavirus shutdown — some received cease-and-desist orders — very few were prosecuted.

Miles Himmel this week said the foundation assistance was focused elsewhere, such as paying for equipment, to help restaurants patch through difficult times. He said the foundation donated more than $50,000 to local restaurants.

He added the foundation is separate from PublicSq., and does not necessarily share its philosophy.

“We don’t want to get involved with the political aspect,” he said.

The foundation was set up in honor of the late San Diego humorist and media figure Larry Himmel, Miles’ father. The organization has a broad charge to help “organizations large and small, and individuals in need.”

Desmond has gained notoriety for skepticism of COVID-19 and for criticizing shutdown orders, which he said would ruin many businesses and devastate the economy.

In May 2020, he generated headlines and criticism when he said the county had only “six pure, solely coronavirus deaths.” He suggested the rest of the roughly 190 deaths attributed to the virus at the time should be discounted because the victims had underlying health conditions.

There had been 4,272 coronavirus deaths recorded as of Wednesday, according to the county.

Regardless of how many business owners and individuals resist vaccinations, they will be under continuing pressure from health officials, governments and society at large to reconsider.

In some regions of the state, COVID-19 hospitalizations are on the rise again.


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