SHAKOPEE, Minnesota (LifeSiteNews) – Rep. Erik Mortensen of Shakopee, Minnesota recently hosted a town-hall event for nurses from the area, to give them a platform to express their concerns about mandatory vaccinations and their frustrations over frequent hospital suppression of the fact that many of their patients were obviously suffering serious reactions to the vaccines.
The event was live-streamed by Alpha News, an independent news outlet in Minnesota that famously produced the videos of Father Altman that went viral last fall. The names of the nurses in the video are not shared, nor is the specific location for reasons of confidentiality.
Mortensen was kicked out of the New House Republican Caucus in May for his defiance of lockdown measures, and advocacy for small business to stay open. He even held a “freedom party” as a way of highlighting that he believed the measures imposed on citizens were unjust. During the nurse event he hosted, he mentioned “personal choice” and “freedom” more than once as the reasons for his support of people who refuse the jab.
After explaining that he had spoken with a number of nurses who were unhappy with the mandates, and worried about losing their jobs, he stated: “So the idea was well why don’t we try to do like a nurse town hall. And typically these town halls it’s, you know some politician on a stage and you guys are asking a politician questions., but my thought is, why don’t we kind of flip the script… to facilitate a discussion and ask you guys questions. You have an opportunity to air your grievances your stories.”
Fears on behalf of nurses about vaccine mandates and impending nursing shortages have intensified as deadlines for taking the jab approach. As LifeSiteNews has reported, health-care workers have been reluctant to take the jab, and the application of mandatory inoculation about the COVID shot has caused numerous nurses to call it quits.
Some of the nurses from Shakopee expressed their frustration with the health system, and some also believe that the reported dangers associated with the jab are being ignored. One woman said: “So I just wanted to touch base on a few of those things because about the adverse reactions. So, I’m a triage nurse and so people will call with like concerns whether it be from COVID directly or the vaccine, and I feel like a lot of people from their doctors are getting discouraged or invalidated almost, um, to say that those symptoms are specific to the vaccine or from the vaccine I should say.”
The same woman also commented on how she and her colleagues were told to stop identifying the fact that vaccinated people were diagnosed with COVID. “And then as far as transparency goes, we were also at one point reporting positive COVID cases of people that were vaccinated and I feel like, I don’t know, must have been two three short weeks later, a mass email that said we don’t want to know anymore whether they’re vaccinated or not.”
Another nurse explained that in all her years of experience, she is concerned about the types of side effects that she has heard of from patients. “I also work telephone triage now and I hear the weirdest side effects. I used to work up north as an immunization coordinator… your standard vaccines… you know, fever, some chills, fatigue, okay go to bed, take some time, you’ll be fine. The side effects are, I’m like, I don’t even know what to do with this. You have lymph nodes swelling in your chest and in your neck and in your armpit and your foots hurt and I don’t know what to do. So we send them to the emergency department and then it gets written off and I don’t know what happens.”
Due to the risks of the jab, which have been well documented, nurses are concerned about the restrictions they face if they seek an exemption. One nurse explains that her hospital administration sent an email to staff recommending against clinicians providing exemptions for those who ask. She read an excerpt from the email for everyone to hear: “We expect to see an increase in patients seeking vaccination exemption letters, we have recommended against our clinicians from providing medical exemptions including pregnancy unless the patient has a documented allergy to a specific ingredient.”
The same woman expressed earlier in the video her frustration with how the same nurses that were heralded as “heroes” in the early days of the pandemic are now being threatened with termination for not receiving the jab. “What I find is funny… everybody agrees we were heroes these last 18 months… we used PPE that was so ragged because it was used so many times that we were taping it on our face. And now we actually have PPE we can use once and get rid of it like it was supposed to be used. And they’re telling us now that we’re terrorists and that we’re dangerous and we’re going to kill people. But yet the ultimatum doesn’t come for 2-3 months… Where I work, we are critical staffing levels, they are offering 20 dollar an hour bonuses on top of our over-time. They’re shutting down OR’s because we don’t have enough staff… So they are begging us to work these extra shifts. So we’re safe enough now, we’re not ‘killing patients,’ but as soon as a certain date comes along, we’re no longer safe.”
Another nurse suggested that the rates of vaccination are quite low in some hospital departments: “How come no one is asking the nurses why they don’t want it [the jab] … you have health care systems that have very minimal people vaccinated… there are departments with 20% vaccinated.”
For now, it is not clear how many nurses will be pushed out of the profession due to vaccine mandates. Whatever the result may be, research has already indicated that the U.S. faces a stark nursing shortage.
The National Center for Biotechnology Information published information before the advent of obligatory jabs indicating that America already faced a massive nursing shortage. According to the NCBI, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that – at the time – 11 million additional nurses would be needed to avoid a further shortage. There are currently 3.8 million nurses working in the US.
Adequate nurse staffing is a crucial element in today’s pandemic work climate. According to Alex Berenson – who was just suspended from Twitter – some hospitals are facing a crisis as significant numbers of nurses are refusing to take the jab, even with impending termination or suspension from work.
During the pandemic, nurses have reported raised levels of fatigue and burnout from their jobs, which leads to resignation. As of writing this, there are at least thirteen states and jurisdictions that have mandatory vaccination requirements in place. Some are offering frequent testing as an alternative for those who are exempt, but it is not clear if the employer will pay for it. As the mandates come into effect in September and October, the effect that pending terminations and registrations will have on the growing nursing shortage remains to be seen.
LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here.