Way back when it all started

Last year near the end of October was when the City of Eureka implemented its covid vaccine mandate, I remember it well since my wife lost her job of 5 years for not bowing down and falling in line. This was back when it was still widely believed that the covid vaccines would stop both transmission and infection from the disease. We all know it now to be untrue.

At this time the city was not having in-person public meetings, meetings were held over zoom due to fear propaganda spread far and wide that masking and social isolation were somehow a practical safety measure. We now know that both masking and social isolation had severe social, health, and psychological impacts.

The Eureka City Council Zoom meeting regarding the implementation of a covid vaccine mandate was packed with people in opposition, yet this did not sway the council. Fear combined with trust in the lock-step global medical narrative had the councils’ minds made up before a single person spoke at the meeting.

Busy people with no time to research

They are, after all, busy people having little time to research the decisions that they make for the community, over and over they state that they don’t have time and that they trust in the experts. For example, Kim Bergel told me at her announcement gathering for her board of supervisors runs that she had no idea about people in Australia being held in covid internment camps.

This may not be surprising because of deceptive tactics employed by many mainstream media/news sources, such as underreporting, misreporting, or failing to cover important events at all. A national example of this phenomenon can be seen in the Hunter Biden Laptop scandal, misreported by practically all mainstream news sources during the 2020 elections.

A local example of this occurred shortly after the Vax-Mandate vote when the city returned to in-person meetings in November.  Local media completely failed to report on people with medical exemptions being removed from a city council meeting by police for not wearing masks, until footage taken by citizen journalists started to circulate on social media.

Medical Exemptions – Were any Granted?

Before my wife was forced out of her job, she considered trying for a personal belief exemption, as they were listed in the City of Eureka Covid Vaccine Policy. After hearing of attempts of other people trying for exemptions and all being refused, she decided that the effort was futile.

Word around the office was that if you tried to claim exemption by the personal belief you were required to provide documentation, no documentation was adequate, and your word somehow wasn’t good enough to relay personally held beliefs. One co-worker even had a severe medical reaction to the first shot resulting in a medical procedure, they were still required to get the second shot to keep their job, apparently, medical exemptions were off the table as well.

About 6 months later I did a records request, not asking for any names or details, just a number for how many exemptions were granted. Below is the response I got, stating that somehow divulging a simple number would violate medical privacy laws. To me, this reinforces the truth I know my wife had told me before she was forced out of her job. 

The week before the deadline to get the shot or kick rocks, she received an email from the HR department asking about when her last day was, she replied that it was on the 19^th of October as stated in the mandate.  In a cowardly attempt of denying her the simple fact that she was being terminated, the HR person responded that they would be taking that as a formal notice of resignation.  Like the whole thing was somehow her idea, being forced after 5 years of dedicated service to take an experimental medical treatment or lose her job.

Bergel gives Misleading Information

In the video below you can see a discussion I had with council member Kim Bergel at council member Castellano’s re-election announcement event, regarding what it would take to roll back this discriminatory medical policy, she claimed at the time that it was dependent on the covid emergency declared by our local (DHHS) Department of Health and Human Services. Something I later found to be less than factually accurate.

A Records Request Brings Clarity

What Kim Bergel had told me just did not make sense, how could the City of Eureka be incapable of voting out a policy which they themselves voted in? In an attempt to figure out what made absolutely no sense to me, I first did records request through the County of Humboldt DHHS, asking if there were any records containing verbiage or legal phrasing designating that the City of Eureka’s covid vaccine mandate was somehow dependent on the DHHS ending the covid emergency.

The DHHS responded, stating that there were no records that were responsive to my request. They also recommended doing a records request to the city of Eureka asking the same question, so I did and to my surprise, I was actually provided with a document that gave me the answer I was looking for. As seen in the image below the section in the document about ending the City of Eureka’s covid vaccine mandate is very clear, it states that ending the mandate is under the sole discretion of the non-elected City Manager position currently held by Miles Slattery.

So, at the Eureka City Council meeting held on October 18^th, 2022 (the one-year anniversary of the City of Eureka covid vaccine mandate) as seen in the video below, I confronted the City Council and City Manager Slattery about this new information I had been made aware of.

Somehow with people coming to Eureka City Council meetings for a full year asking the Council about this, and me asking them about this in person no one had provided an honest answer that the council was no longer in charge of making the decision. It is true that Council policy dictates that they do not reply to public comment during the meetings, but I had spoken with council member Bergel in person at Council member Castellano’s re-election announcement.

It is possible that some members of the Council are simply ignorant of the details of their own policy. As I had been told many times, they are very busy, don’t have time to research some things, and often rely on what they believe to be qualified experts to make many decisions.

City Manager’s Illusive Criteria to End Covid Mandates

Following the meeting on October 18^th, 2022 I decided to call City Manager Slattery to get further clarification of what criteria he held for ending the city covid vaccine mandate since he alone was named to make the decision. Below are some questions and answers from the call between myself and City Manager Slattery, the wording is based on notes I took during the call due to City Manager Slattery declining to allow me to record the call for accuracy.

Interview with Miles Slattery, Eureka City Manager

Unanswered Questions

As can be plainly seen from the questions and answers during my call with city Manager Slattery, true clarification to end the City’s covid vaccine mandate may lie with public health experts he mentioned, Sofia Pereira and Connie Beck. I will attempt to contact these individuals and then compose a follow-up article to relay what information they can provide.