Even though there were medical and religious objections included in San Francisco’s coronavirus vaccine mandate policy, officials did not allow them when reviewing the cases of 17 firefighters. Thirteen have already been fired and the hearings for the others are proving contentious.
Former firefighter Michael Kricken, who already contracted the virus, had his hearing in March before the Fire Commission.
“God gave me natural immunity already,” Kricken said, adding it was his “God-given right to decide what I put and not put in my body.”
Kricken has been on unpaid leave since October 14 and was fired on March 16.
Ken Cleaveland resigned as fire commissioner in February, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
“I just can’t go through this torture anymore,” Cleaveland said, adding that the stories from firefighters who were losing their livelihoods were “heartbreaking.”
“Despite testimony from families, pastors and others, city officials did not exempt any of the firefighters,” the Chronicle reported. “Ultimately, Cleaveland became frustrated with colleagues and department heads who refused to budge on the health order.”
“If we had a little more flexibility, I would still be on the Fire Commission today,” Cleaveland said.
The left-wing Chronicle spun its reporting to cast doubt on the firefighters:
Currents of politically charged vaccine hesitancy appear to run deep within a segment of San Francisco’s firefighters. Last June, 103 of them, and 89 other city employees, submitted identical letters to the city’s human resources department, rebuffing the vaccine mandate and suggesting it infringed on their “God-given and constitutionally secured rights.”
While such hearings normally take place behind closed doors, many firefighters have elected to let the public participate, and some sympathizers have posted videos of the meetings on social media or in blogs that present the terminated firefighters as martyr-like figures. In these videos and in minutes supplied by the commission, public speakers have recited scripture, invoked the Nuremberg trials, and cited unsubstantiated theories about laboratories in Wuhan, China, or the “racial specificity” of proteins in the coronavirus.
The Chronicle included comments from other firefighters.
“You guys are all puppets, and — and you’re answering to your slave masters, and you’re committing horrible atrocities against these people,” Michael Crotty told the commission on March 30. “Think about that. You sold us out for money. You took away our careers.”
Firefighter Jessica Beers wore a T-shirt at her hearing that bore the slogan “Let’s Go Brandon,” which the Chronicle described as “acknowledged disparagement of President Biden.”
Next on the coronavirus chopping block could be paramedics who miss the June 30 deadline for a virus booster shot.
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