Police stance on COVID mandate is ‘reckless’

To the editor,

To read the Aug. 22 comments of David O’Meara, vice president of the Stamford Police Association, is to enter into his self-validating world of arrogance and ignorance.

His ad hominem attacks on Mayor David Martin, calling the mayor’s vaccination mandate for the police “rooted in hysteria” and “an overreaction,” is based on nothing more than O’Meara’s own reckless personal opinion.

He questions the mayor’s motives, blaming his mandate on the so-called “hotly contested” mayoral campaign, but that is flatly untrue. Martin has broad community support and is rightly asking for a primary to decide the Democratic candidate in the fall. Big deal!

I question O’Meara’s motives. What’s the problem? Are the union members losing their freedom to infect the public? Isn’t it equally possible that the mayor is motivated to stop the spread of COVID, which is skyrocketing again in Stamford? O’Meara makes little of the fact that the police are “merely” “employed by the city.”

“Merely”? Yes, we the citizens pay the police to protect us. Their union categorically refusing to mandate the members to be vaccinated does NOT protect us. In fact, it threatens us.

Mr. O’Meara has forgotten who he’s working for. He cites the mayor’s actions from March 2020, but guess what? We are in August 2021 now! Wake up! The very easily contracted delta variant is here. This isn’t hysteria. It’s fact, it’s reality. Action must be taken to stop COVID right now!

Then O’Meara claims without proof that the police have natural immunity to COVID. His assertion would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous. He plays the sympathy card and claims the police led the COVID response, giving them all the credit for saving us. I don’t think so.

The heroes are the very underpaid women and men who wear white coats, not uniforms, and have nursed the sick, vaccinated thousands, and worked double shifts as they watched people around the clock suffer and die. O’Meara then trots out the old trope of “sacrifice” the police have made. Last time I checked, they are more than well-compensated for their sacrifice and for what we see everywhere of their waving traffic around construction sites and talking on their cell phones.

The mayor is using cold, hard science to mandate vaccines. They work. More than 200 million Americans have been vaccinated. Death rates and hospitalizations have plunged. O’Meara claims the mayor isn’t using “convincing scientific evidence.” Really? Nonsense!

I applaud Mayor Martin. Let’s all protect and respect one another and get vaccinated!

John Sollami Stamford