[Updates below!]
In my previous post I was focused on making sure that the religious leaders and thinkers who enabled Covid lockdowns and vaccine injustice were included in a summary rejection of Emily Oster's call for amnesty for that (by no means over) episode.
Her arguments are so spurious that it boggles my mind. But I encourage you to take the 12 minutes necessary to watch Doug Wilson's careful fisking of her piece, with his emphasis on what the true objection is to what happened (and her role in it) -- censorship and loss of freedom:
The Coast Guard is being particularly intransigent about vaccine mandates. Good servicemen are hanging in limbo over their jobs and pensions. Yet, the USCG is also in a crunch, recruitment-wise! And is offering up to $50,000 signing bonuses for even the most menial positions. Wonder why that would be...
The U.S. Coast Guard is offering up to $50,000 signing bonuses in an effort to bolster recruitment, after the number of guardsmen has plummeted, in large part due to the military's strict COVID-19 vaccination mandate.
According to internal USCG documents obtained by Fox News Digital from October detailing fiscal year 2023 workforce planning, "Culinary Specialist," or "CS," level recruits could receive bonuses up to $50,000 each.
Active-duty Coast Guard Lt. Chad Coppin called the $50,000 CS-level bonuses, which would involve positions such as cooks, "absolutely unheard of."
"This means the USCG response to future disasters like Hurricane Ian will suffer, and lives will be lost due to lack of personnel, a readiness issue that the USCG is voluntarily compounding... overall, the USCG is short over 2,700 members," Coppin said.
"We are not meeting recruiting goals, and a service that was once difficult to get into is now offering $50K bonuses, increasing age limits and lowering standards in order to try and fill billets," he continued.
According to an internal "Retention & Recruiting Study" from September by the Office of Strategic Workforce Planning, the vaccination mandate has led directly to personnel shortages.
The great tragedy of the lockdown was not caused by the people who made innocent mistakes—like wearing cloth masks or wiping down counters—in the mistaken belief that they were preventing the spread of the virus. The tragedy occurred because, once the appointed experts had issued their edicts, no one was allowed to question them. From the early days of the Covid era, there were eminently qualified scientists offering reasonable arguments against the lockdown policies. (See the Great Barrington Declaration, which has now drawn nearly one million signatures.) But they were not given a hearing. On the contrary, they were treated as pariahs, in many cases stripped of their academic credentials. How about an amnesty for them, now that their ideas have been vindicated?
