News
Featured Image

CALIFORNIA (LifeSiteNews) – A planned COVID-19 vaccine mandate for California prison guards did not fully take effect as planned Friday, thanks to a temporary restraining order from Kern County Superior Court Judge Bernard Barmann.

The Sacramento Bee reports that the California Correctional Peace Officers Association filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Public Health’s August 19 edict that government employees who work near or in prison healthcare be fully vaccinated by October 14. The order eliminated an option to submit to twice-weekly testing as an alternative to the shot.

Barmann, who was appointed by Democrat Governor and vaccine mandate supporter Gavin Newsom, issued the temporary ruling to prevent the unionized guards from being penalized while the court considers the issue; it was not a final determination on the merits of the case. 

Additionally, his order was narrower than the protection for “all affected prison employees” that the union originally sought. The Bee notes that Barmann’s injunction only applies to the union’s members, including “correctional officers and some higher-ranking peace officers who work in prisons.”

The California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation says that 240 prisoners and 39 prison employees have died of COVID-19 to date.

Across the nation, significant concerns remain about the COVID vaccines’ safety and effectiveness, especially for young people, which involve the fact that they were developed and released far faster than any previous vaccine.

Vaccine supporters note that the one-year development period was not starting from scratch, but rather relied on years of prior research into novel mRNA technology, and that one of the innovations of the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” was conducting various aspects of the development process concurrently rather than sequentially, eliminating delays unrelated to safety. However, those factors do not fully account for the condensing of clinical trial phases — each of which can take anywhere from 1–3 years on their own — to just three months apiece. 

While cases of severe harm reported to the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) after taking COVID shots represent less than one percent of total doses administered in the United States, a 2010 report submitted to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) warned that VAERS caught “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events.” 

May reporting from NBC News quotes several mainstream experts acknowledging “gaps” in federal vaccine monitoring, and a Project Veritas investigation released last month shows insiders at a federal medical facility speaking candidly about serious medical complications they’ve seen after COVID vaccination that are not being reported. 

Further, a growing body of data indicates that the mass vaccination strategy for defeating COVID-19 has failed. The federal government considers more than 65% of eligible Americans “fully vaccinated” (a designation that has lost meaning in light of growing evidence that vaccine effectiveness wears off in a matter of months), yet ABC News reported last week that more Americans died of COVID-19 this year (353,000) than in all of 2020 (352,000), according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association contributed $1.75 million to help Newsom survive his recall challenge last month, according to the Bee.

LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here