To the editor:

Fun fact: OSHA stands for Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It was enacted in 1968 under the Nixon administration (Republican).

The employer obligation under OSHA is to mitigate or remove harmful dangers to workers in the workplace. Dangers that cannot be completely removed, can be mitigated. For example, firefighters wear protective gear to mitigate against the certainty that fire is dangerous. Masks protect doctors from germs. Mitigation strategy is behind the vaccine workplace mandate. It is jaw-droppingly astonishing that public officials should waste valuable time litigating the legitimacy of this 50-year-old legislation while daily roughly 1,500 people die and 120,000 are newly infected.

It is utterly appropriate that OSHA would mandate workplace employers to protect employees from a virus that can be avoided with sensible precautions, like testing, a quality face mask, or a vaccine.

It is astounding that any public figure would impede protections for hospital workers in a pandemic. It defies logic that the Supreme Court was asked to weigh in on this no-brainer.

In Florida our best mitigation survival strategy may be registering to vote in the 2022 election for a new governor that is not hiding COVID tests, lying about the data, and attempting to legislatively shield from prosecution those who are encouraging medical chicanery, quackery and malpractice.

Ellen Starbird

Cape Coral