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How judges are weaponising vaccines

Credit: Getty

September 1, 2021 - 3:19pm

Refusing to take a vaccine in America comes at a heavy price. In the land of the free, you can lose access to international travel, your job, your place at university, and now, even your child.

This week, a Chicago judge ruled that the mother of an 11-year-old could no longer see her son because she was not vaccinated against Covid-19.

According to mother Rebecca Firlit, her vaccination status was not raised as an issue by her ex-husband in their child support hearing, but the judge decided that she posed a big enough health risk to her son that no physical contact would be granted. Until yesterday (when the decision was reversed), Firlit was only allowed to talk to her son on the phone. “I talk to him every day,” Firlit said, “He cries, he misses me. I send him care packages.”

Notably, Firlit was advised not to take the vaccine by her doctor. “I’ve had adverse reactions to vaccines in the past and was advised not to get vaccinated by my doctor,” Firlit said. “It poses a risk”.

This case takes place against a backdrop of vaccines increasingly being utilised — and weaponised — in the US criminal justice system. In this instance, Firlit was punished by a judge for having not taken the vaccine, but in others, vaccines have been deployed as a way to incentivise or coerce individuals in plea deals. This marks a new juncture in the intersection between public health and the criminal justice system.

At one end of the spectrum, the approach is relatively benign. In Georgia, for example, where vaccination rates are as low as 37%, judges have been cutting community sentences by half if defendants get a Covid vaccine. These are low-level offences that do not involve prison time, so the safety risk to the community is low. 

Elsewhere, however, judges have been inserting vaccines into more serious sentences. Earlier this month, at least two judges in Ohio made receiving Covid-19 vaccinations a condition of probation. In one case, a man who pleaded guilty to drugs and firearms offences was given up to 30 days to get vaccinated or face prison for up to 36 months. Meanwhile in New York, two defendants were ordered (in separate trials) to get vaccinated as part of a plea deal. According to the NYT, one judge argued that:

It fell to him to determine whether a person seeking release represented a danger to their community. The unvaccinated, he wrote, did pose such a danger, given their “enhanced risk of infecting other, innocent people and even potentially causing their deaths.
- NYT

In the other case, the judge stated that the defendant — accused of drug possession, criminal trespass, shoplifting and criminal contempt — put his own interests above others’. In getting the vaccine, he would be doing the opposite, and so vaccination would amount to a form of ‘rehabilitation’.

This may seem like neat logic, depending on the effect on transmission of new Covid variants (still being researched). But we can be highly confident that the Covid vaccine has no effect whatsoever on a person’s proclivity towards criminality: will communities feel happy about a criminal returning home early just because they are vaccinated? It’s a pandora’s box, that would better be left closed.


is UnHerd’s Newsroom editor.

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George Glashan
George Glashan
3 years ago

is there no end to the elites hubris? what medical qualification do these judges hold to allow them to prescribe medical intervention as part of a sentence?

George Glashan
George Glashan
3 years ago
Reply to  George Glashan

Last edited 3 years ago by George Glashan
Alka Hughes-Hallett
Alka Hughes-Hallett
3 years ago

These are crimes committed by people in authority be it judges, doctors, teachers, against ordinary folk under the guise of safety from Covid -more heinous than the petty crimes committed by an individual. This is coercion and wielding of power requiring submission openly and there is no way to report this to any authority.

It’s happening all over and the stories are coming out regularly. The government has successfully brainwashed the people and now some of the lower tiered are trying to wield their power simply because they can . I do not hear of stories in which an unvaccinated is given an advantage by the virtue of them being simply unvaccinated. There will never be such a story.

Jean Nutley
Jean Nutley
3 years ago

Arguably, this is exactly what was behind the outrage about Geronimo. I felt, as I am sure many others may have done, that the authorities were not listening to the owner. It was her honest belief that the tests were skewed, another independently organised test could have been done.
It is the third great lie,
“I am the man from the Ministry, and I know what is good for you”
The other two being “of course I love you darling” and “the cheque is in the post”

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
3 years ago

FDA officials are resigning from their positions because they believe COVID vaccine clearance was given too early. What these judges, universities and employers are doing is completely totalitarian. I can’t believe anyone with any intelligence or survival instinct would be ok with this.

Martin Smith
Martin Smith
3 years ago

As someone sceptical but open-minded about the vaccines I inch towards getting ‘the jab’. Yet when I read something shocking like this treatment of Ms Firlit I instinctively retreat. The issue is becoming less ‘are the vaccines safe?’ and more ‘are the vaccines being used to control us?’

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
3 years ago
Reply to  Martin Smith

I feel exactly the same. Just as I seriously consider getting the vaccine, another article or news item I read puts me off it again. I can’t tell if I’m being foolhardy or smart.

Bella OConnell
Bella OConnell
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

Likewise!

Jean Nutley
Jean Nutley
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

And that is the great dilemma.I did not want the vaccine, as I felt it had been rushed through, and not enough time had elapsed to know of any side effects. But what it came down to was that as I am classed as “vulnerable” (and how I hate that word!), if I had caught Covid, particularly the early form, it would have killed me. That was the grim reality. So I had the jabs, and so far, so good. The choice I had was risk of death or certain death.

Glyn Reed
Glyn Reed
3 years ago
Reply to  Jean Nutley

Death is a certainty for us all. But it is never a certainty that a person classed as vulnerable will die from covid. People in their late 80s and cancer patients have recovered.

Francis MacGabhann
Francis MacGabhann
3 years ago

When you don’t believe in anything greater than yourself — not even the law you’re supposed to be upholding; when you think that things like strict interpretation and separation of powers were fine in the past but unnecessary now that history has ended and people like YOU are in control, then the world has a serious problem, and the problem is YOU.

Iris C
Iris C
3 years ago

I should have thought that penalising those who have reasons to refuse vaccination could have legal consequences if such a dictat led to death or maiming. What you the lawyers say?

Galeti Tavas
Galeti Tavas
3 years ago

These Judges are pure Soros. Soros, that evil elite, who funds the election campaigns of thousands of Prosecutors, DAs, and Judges (these are elected positions in USA, except at Federal Level).

His people he paid to get in, they always work to let criminals out, their goal is to increase crime – wile decreasing the people’s feelings of being safe – and wrecking community, and trust in Rule of Law and Justice.

The Left are very much out to increase Crime. Defund the Police? Do away with ICE, close Prisons. not jailing violent felons, releasing criminals without bonds, allowing rioting…………

The reason is the more the people fear society, the more scared they are, and distrusting of society, the more Surveillance they will tolerate. They will give up their rights gladly, for security. Crime and Covid are the tools being used to create this fear.

This is Exactly the covid Response. Train the citizens to yield their rights for some perceived safety. The Government’s (even Fouchi and Ferguson admitted this!) ‘Project Fear’ was instituted in almost all the West, in all the left leaning West mostly. Psy-Opps techniques were used to cause an irrational fear, The MSM, Government, Social Media, the Pharma/Medical Industrial Complex, the Teachers Unions – all complicit in creating this irrational fear – the lockdowns were never to stop covid (see Texas, Florida contrasted to New York and California, no difference except in freedoms.) but to take your rights. To get you to beg for more rights to be taken from you.

The lockdowns, like Masks, were to create fear so people would yield their rights to be ‘protected’.

Soros is winning more every day, Biden is doing his bidding.

Roger Inkpen
Roger Inkpen
3 years ago

The US judicial system might be buggered, but at least it’s open and transparent. Here this would be a family court matter – in most cases secret!

Glyn Reed
Glyn Reed
3 years ago

Fascism is stalking the west. It is now flagrant and acts with confidence born of impunity. What to do?

Last edited 3 years ago by Glyn Reed