An Open Letter to Chicago Police Officer John Catanzara: You Are 100% Correct To Be Objecting To The LightFoot Vaccine Mandate in Already Immune COVID-Recovered Officers.
Chicago Police Officer and FOP president, John Catanzara, has been objecting to Mayor Lightfoot’s draconian and indiscriminate vaccine policy directed at Chicago Police officers. He’s right. Cops are front line in public engagement. Many are COVID-recovered and are already immune. Mandating vaccination in these already immune officers puts then at risk of harm and is medically unnecessary.
Honorable officer Catanzara,
I write this open letter of support to you as a friend to Chicago and to a few good officers on its Police force.
I am frankly shocked to see the indiscriminate and punitive vaccine mandate being imposed on the Chicago Police force by your mayor.
Specifically, because as a physician-immunologist and public health advocate, I recognize that a large proportion of your officers, in big cities like Chicago especially, have recovered from COVID and are already immune to the virus.
It is my professional opinion, that exposing such COVID-recovered and already immune officers to an unnecessary, or very marginally beneficial, vaccination is only going to impose an unacceptable risk of harm to these officers.
As such, Mayor Lightfoot’s punitive mandate is violating the key ethical principle of “medical necessity”, while also robbing these already officers of their right to choose a medical treatment that may only be marginally beneficial to them, of their own volition.
I believe that Mayor Lightfoot’s mandate is not only potentially in contractual violation with the Chicago Police department. But even more egregiously, she is dictating a potentially unsafe/unnecessary medical practice in a good proportion of your fellow officers. That this harmful public policy may be guided from the Biden administration or the CDC, at a federal level, is besides the point. In America, local government has the authority and duty to protect the citizens under is jurisdiction, irrespective of inappropriately calibrated federal guidance.
My main point to you is that if a Chicago Police officer, who is COVID-recovered and already immune, chooses to get a booster shot out of an abundance of caution, then fine, that’s their personal choice and it may be marginally beneficial. BUT, if an officer who has already contracted the infection and recovered from it, is reluctant to get vaccinated, THAT is also reasonable and safe medical decision.
Let me be clear on this public record, COVID-recovered Chicago Police officers with antibody immunity in their blood, but who are NOT vaccinated, do NOT pose any more a risk of harm to themselves or the community than would others who are “fully vaccinated”.
I am privileged to offer you, and your colleagues, my voice of professional support. Because I know that just like every day you wear a bullet proof vest to protect your lives and other, every Chicago Police officer ought to also test their blood for COVID-19 antibodies: Those who are POSITIVE for these antibodies, vaccinated or not, are highly likely to be as well protected from infection as is possible — these already IMMUNE officers are well within their ethical and professional right to refuse COVID-19 vaccination. On the other hand, those who are NEGATIVE for antibodies are UNIMMUNE, and are thus vulnerable to infection — for them, I would strongly recommend vaccination.
I will look forward to discussing this issue with you and your colleagues further — and I sincerely hope that Mayor Lightfoot is able to wisen up and see the terrible problem she is creating for Chicago, and the rest of America, by engaging in an irrationally punitive and discriminatory action against the city’s Police officers.
Respectfully,
Hooman Noorchashm MD, PhD.
