Horowitz: What we expect from state legislators in the war for our own health freedom

When King George promulgated the "Intolerable Acts," the colonial legislatures played a leading role in organizing the rebellion against the budding tyranny, which eventually led to the creation of our democratic republic. Two and a half centuries later, we have now endured 19 months of unabated tyranny that makes King George look quite tolerable, yet the representatives closest to the people have been stone silent in most cases.

On March 26, 2020, when it was already apparent to those with a modicum of foresight that something much darker than "15 days to flatten the curve" was afoot, I called upon the state legislatures to convene immediately to investigate the virus, how to deal with it properly, and to redirect policies away from the unelected federal and state departments of health. Not only did they fail to convene at the time, but even during the 2021 regular session, most states failed to enact any meaningful limitations on COVID tyranny and redirect the profligate funding and policies toward what actually saves lives. Because they failed to heed John Adams' warning, "Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud," COVID is a new tyranny affecting our lives, liberty, property, and even bodily autonomy more than anything King George ever had in mind.

Nineteen months later, it's time for Republicans in state legislatures to atone for their mistakes and finally convene special sessions to comprehensively eradicate the authoritarian and undemocratic policies. On Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called on the state legislature to come back to session and deal with the odious mandates. Other governors must follow suit, and if they fail to do so, the legislatures must vote to call themselves back into session immediately. Some states plan to use the special session on redistricting to address these issues as well. However, tinkering around the edges is not good enough. They must uproot COVID fascism – root and branch, to borrow a broken promise from Mitch McConnell on Obamacare – and redirect our COVID response to early treatment.

Here is what we expect state legislatures to cover at a minimum:

1) Ban all injection mandates: This includes all public and private mandates, without exemptions for health care. Iowa's proposed SF 193 is a good blueprint for other states. The bill should include the following provisions:

• A ban on all discrimination by insurance companies in terms of coverage for those without the shot.
• A ban on all discrimination for goods and services in the realm of public accommodation.
• A ban on all discrimination or punitive actions taken against any health care provider or patient for opting not to get the shots.
• Institute a cause of action for citizens to take legal action against those who violate the ban and for anyone injured as a result of getting the shot due to intimidation in the workplace.
• The state should assume full control of its National Guard and ensure that the guardsmen are not subject to the same mandate as the entirely federal military.
• States should offer unemployment benefits to those federal workers who lose their jobs and create a program to find jobs for them within the states.

2) The right to treat and access treatment:

• A ban on any state medical or licensing board taking action against any physician for prescribing clinically indicated, medically necessary appropriate off-label FDA-approved drugs, for offering their professional opinion on any aspect of the pandemic or its treatment, or for not wearing a mask.
• All medical licensing board officials should be subject to removal by the legislature.
• A requirement that all pharmacies fill any prescription of an FDA-approved drug used off label for the virus. Any pharmacist who denies a prescription of a medically necessary drug – unless he has a religious conscience objection – would face a $500,000 fine or a year in jail.
• Every insurance company must cover COVID-related prescriptions pursuant to the same rules they use for billing of other prescriptions, as well as for coverage of the vaccines and remdesivir.
• A new patient bill of rights for hospitalized patients, which will allow them to always have one surrogate present in the hospital, allow them to access FDA-approved drugs off label prescribed by a doctor at their own expense if they agree to assume liability, and the right to refuse any hospital-prescribed treatment.

3) The right to medical privacy:

• Nobody's vaccination status should be recorded without the affirmative consent of the patient.
• A provision requiring schools to accept religious exemptions for all other vaccine mandates.
• A ban on contact tracing or the forced quarantine of any individual who has not been infected with an actual disease that has been A) proven deadly and B) has not already proliferated through large portions of the population.

4) "Never again" lockdowns and masks:

• A categorical ban on the authority of any state or county official to issue a stay-at-home order or to shut down businesses carte blanche under the guise of public health.
• A categorical ban on the authority of any state or local official, including public schools, to forcibly mask people. Provide for a legal cause of action for anyone harmed by such violations.

5) Clip the wings of state and county health departments:

• All state and local health directors must be subject to removal by the respective governing legislative authority.
• Any public health orders issued by the health departments – state or county – are to be regarded as advisory unless they are affirmatively ratified by two-thirds of the governing legislative body.
• No public health emergency declared by the governor may last longer than 30 days without the support of two-thirds of the legislature. Any declared emergency would trigger an automatic reconvening of the legislature until the declaration has expired.

6) Investigate all actions taken by the federal government:

• Each state should form a temporary COVID committee to hold hearings and audits of all the current actions taken by the federal and respective state governments predicated on a purported scientific premises about the virus, the vaccines, or treatment. Based on the findings, any policy found to be out of sync with evidence of safety and efficacy must be terminated and defunded.
• State legislative health care committees must conduct full investigations of the treatment of patients in hospitals. The scope of investigation should include an audit and analysis of the therapeutics used, the therapeutics rejected, the deviation from standard and established care for patients in respiratory distress, and any allegations of mistreatment or discriminatory actions taken by hospital staff.
• Every state should pay for a full audit of every individual who died within the 30-day investigative window of taking the shot.
• Every state should establish its own vaccine adverse event database and encourage, rather than discourage, doctors to use it.
• All funding currently used for marketing the shots should be redirected toward funding and marketing the monoclonal antibodies and other proven treatments the committee will study.

Last March, legislators could feign ignorance about this virus, its origins, and the proper way of dealing with it. A year and a half later, if they have no desire to reclaim authority on behalf of the people from the unelected medical cabal responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, they should resign from the legislature.