Nurse Michael Murray of St. Mary's Medical Center in Langhorne, Pennsylvania was terminated from his job on December 6 after he sought a religious exemption from the hospital's COVID vaccine mandate. Murray reasoned that he was already naturally immune to the coronavirus after he was infected in November last year and recovered.
The Pennsylvania nurse, who has 25 years of experience, claimed that he now had "God-given" immunity and that vaccine mandates were "a violation of my conscience and, really, basic common sense."
"I refused to get vaccinated and tried to reason with them - I tried to apply for a religious exemption, because it is legitimately a violation of my conscience," Murray said as reported by Faithwire. "I didn't want to go with what I thought was mob thinking, groupthink, and over-simplification by the CDC."
St. Mary's Medical Center, which is part of Trinity Health, rejected Murray's religious exemption request and subsequent appeal. It is unclear if the fact that Murray is also a pastor of a small, nearby congregation had anything to do with it. The Pennsylvania nurse claimed that there were others who were "far less devout than him" who were granted religious exemptions.
Murray remarked that people were aware he was a pastor who was denied his religious exemption. He also complained that "other co-workers that really no one would think had any religious background at all, they were given their religious exemption," calling the decision "very random and arbitrary and weird."
Murray announced his firing from St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne in a Facebook post, where he recounted how he was even "surprised" that the hospital pushed through with their COVID vaccine mandate given that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requirement for vaccination was blocked by the court a few weeks ago.
Murray also lamented how natural immunity was being "downplayed and ignored by health authorities" due to "pharmaceutical influence and corrupted politicians." He added that his experience as an emergency room nurse "never contradicted the fact that natural immunity provides better protection than vaccination without the disease."
The nurse's Facebook post was actually a second attempt to share a link to an article from the BrownStone Institute, which provided information on 140 studies, all of which proved that natural immunity to COVID-19 is indeed better than the jabs. He reasoned that the social media platform's algorithm, known for censoring posts contradicting the vaccine narrative, "might restrict it."
Elsewhere in the state, several medical systems in southwestern Pennsylvania are foregoing the COVID vaccine requirement without a federal mandate, which is still being worked out in the court system, 90.5 WESA reported.
When the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a vaccine requirement in November requiring healthcare employees to be vaccinated by January 4, 2022, the chief medical officers of southwestern Pennsylvania's 12 health systems released a joint statement declaring their commitment to the mandate.
But following the preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge, only two of the signatories in the joint statement are pushing through with the pledge to comply. Allegheny Health Network's chief medical officer Dr. Don Whiting remarked that requiring COVID vaccines for healthcare workers keeps patients and staff safe, arguing that "As health care leaders, it shows the community that we believe in the science and we're willing to walk the walk."
Conversely, the Butler, Conemaugh, Excela, Penn Highlands and Washington health systems are not requiring the COVID vaccine on their employees without a federal mandate. St. Clair Medical System said it encouraged its staff and employees to get the jab, but has no intentions of requiring it.
