Oregon Considers Making COVID Restrictions PERMANENT

Oregon is considering making COVID restrictions permanent. The Oregon OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) has proposed a rule that would make state COVID mandates, such as masking and social distancing, permanent. The regulation would expand restrictions into other areas as well. This permanent rule enumerates certain requirements that businesses must comply with if they wish to avoid being shut down by OSHA. Businesses must continue to enforce the obvious measures of physical distancing, masking, and sanitizing surfaces. However, each business would also be required to post state-approved signs, conduct regular ventilation checks and “exposure risk assessments,” and submit an “infection control plan” to the state. This rule would order businesses to train all of their employees in compliance with these regulations. If enacted, this OSHA regulation would also mandate that employers assist with employee vaccinations. An employer would be required to document any instances of employees who refuse to take the vaccine:
(A) The employer must cooperate by making its employees and appropriate space available at no cost to the workers whenever a local public health agency or Oregon Health Authority indicate that COVID- 19 vaccination within the workplace is necessary. … (C) Unless the local public health agency or Oregon Health Authority directs otherwise, employers need not require employees to accept the vaccination. If employees who are offered the vaccine decline to be vaccinated, the employer must document that declination. https://osha.oregon.gov/OSHARules/proposed/2021/text-chngs-covid19-public-health-emergency.pdf
The OSHA promises that the agency will repeal the rule “once it is no longer needed to address the coronavirus pandemic.” However, they claim, these restrictions need to be enacted permanently, as the law doesn’t allow for the extension of a temporary rule. The administrator for the Oregon OSHA, Michael Wood, explained the rationale behind this move: “The public health emergency triggered by COVID-19 remains a significant concern in Oregon – as we know, we have not yet defeated this disease and we clearly will not have done so by the time the temporary rule expires. As a result, it is critically important that we carry forward measures that we know are effective at combating the spread of this disease and reducing risks in the workplace.”
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The people are told that because COVID won’t be over by May 4– the expiration date of the current, temporary order– we are expected to allow a permanent set of restrictions. “This is for your safety,” they claim. “This is only temporary.” Under the light of history and recent policy proposals, one quickly comes to find that these measures are not temporary, but permanent usurpations of power under the guise of safety. This brings to mind allegations of “mob-like tactics” used by Oregon Governor Brown against a non-compliant business owner. It has come time for a return to the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.” Has God not endowed us all with the same unalienable rights? Why, then, are the American people acting as if they are subjects, rather than citizens? Liberty must be carefully guarded, lest it be taken away “temporarily.”