The U.S. Navy will not deploy a guided-missile destroyer out of Norfolk, Virginia, because the ship’s commander has chosen not to take one of the experimental vaccines for COVID-19. The unnamed commander is an 18-year naval veteran and has applied for a religious exemption to President Biden’s order that all military personnel take the vaccine.
The commander is part of a lawsuit pitting more than 30 unnamed officers from various military branches seeking religious exemptions for the COVID-19 shots. The officers are suing the Department of Defense on grounds that the military didn’t take religious exemptions to the vaccines seriously.
U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday, from the Middle District of Florida, blocked the Navy from removing or demoting the commander on February 2 and then extended that injunction on February 18. Merryday’s injunction also prevented the Navy from taking “any punitive or retaliatory measure” against the commander.
According to Military.com, Merryday also appears to believe “that the stays reflected [the judge’s own] view that the Navy is likely unable to prove that it was considering religious exemptions on a case-by-case basis, as required by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).
Merryday called the commander in question as “triumphantly fit and slim and strong, who is robustly healthy, who is young.”
The military, on the other hand, called Merryday’s injunction “an extraordinary intrusion upon the inner workings of the military that presents a direct and imminent threat to national security during a global military crisis, and it indefinitely sidelines a Navy warship.”
The commodore of Destroyer Squadron 26, Captain Frank Brandon, the commander’s immediate superior officer, claims that the unnamed commander displayed some risky COVID-19 behavior in the past, claiming in a deposition, “My loss of confidence in [the commander] is not based on his vaccination status or his denied request for a religious exemption. It is based on the fact that I cannot trust his judgment, I cannot trust him to look after the welfare of his sailors, and I cannot trust him to be honest with me.”
Brandon claimed that the unvaccinated commander ran afoul of Naval Executive Order 20-32.011 which states, “Personnel exhibiting influenza or COVID like symptoms in the past 48 hours, have had known close contact with COVID positive personnel in the last 14 days and/or have traveled without a completed risk assessment within the past ten days should avoid entering the workplace until consultation with a supervisor and medical personnel.”
So, the Navy apparently wants documentation for each time an officer sneezes. Apparently, the commander had exhibited symptoms of COVID-19 and went to work anyway.
For not properly reporting COVID symptoms and refusing to take an experimental vaccine, which has been linked to heart inflammation and blood clots, the Navy has decided to sideline an American warship. Instead of taking the blame for that ship’s absence from its duty station, the Navy is blaming Judge Merryday.
“The court’s order effectively requires the Navy leave a subordinate commander in command of a warship, despite his senior officer’s questions relating to his fitness to discharge his duties as ordered,” said Vice Admiral Daniel Dwyer, commander of the U.S. Second Fleet. “Under no circumstances would the Navy typically deploy a commander in an operational capacity with whom his or her superior officers have such reservations.”
Given that, in this case, the superior officer’s reservations about the commander are the result of COVID-19 hysteria, one would think that a rational navy would simply put the ship to sea, whatever the commander’s vaccination status.
But that’s not today’s Pentagon, run by Joe Biden. In the Pentagon’s estimation, Merryday’s order “effectively places a multi-billion dollar guided missile destroyer out of commission,” as they claim it is “forcing the Navy to keep in place a commander of a destroyer who has lost the trust of his superior officers and the Navy at large.”
In today’s Navy, we must keep guard against every stray sneeze, sniffle, or cough.
The unnamed commander in this case seems to understand that possibly getting a virus with an extremely high survival rate for young healthy men is a risk worth taking. In today’s Navy, apparently that’s not the case.
