The Daily Signal - Meet Doctor Suing Rhode Island Over Vaccine Mandate

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Dr. Stephen Skoly's request for a medical exemption to the state's vaccine mandate was denied. Then the Rhode Island Department of Health ordered him to stop his critical surgical care in October.  Now, represented by the Washington, D.C.- based civil rights group the New Civil Liberties Alliance, he is suing Rhode Island to stop the state from prohibiting him from practicing medicine.   Skoly shares with "The Daily Signal Podcast" why he asked for a medical exemption to the vaccine mandate, what he hopes to gain through his lawsuit, his views on the vaccines as a medical professional, and more.  "I would think that in most instances a vaccination like this that was authorized under emergency use authorization, you should have some freedom of choice and some freedoms that exist still in America," he says. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, February 10th. I'm Doug Blair. And I'm Mary Margaret O'Lohan. Dr. Stephen Scully, a Rhode Island surgeon, has been prohibited by the state from practicing medicine over his vaccination status. The Daily Signal recently broke the news that Dr. Scully is suing Rhode Island after the state health department denied his medical exemption to the COVID-19 vaccine and ordered him to cease his critical surgical care in October. He'll explain to us why he needed this exemption and give us his take on COVID vaccine mandates as a medical professional. Before we get to that interview with Dr. Scully, let's hit our top news stories of the day. As more and more state lawmakers announced that they will be ending mask mandates, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walenski, announced Tuesday that the agency will not yet recommend relaxing mask restrictions.

We are not there yet, Wollenski said. here's what else she had to say on the matter via ABC. We are prepared. We are working on that guidance. We are working on, you know, following the trends for the moment. What I will say, though, is, you know, our hospitalizations are still high. Our death rates are still high. So as we work towards that and as we are encouraged by the current trends, we are not there yet. New York Governor Kathy Hochel announced Wednesday that the state will be dropping its mask or vacs rule.

when it expires on Thursday, according to the New York Times. The rule required businesses to ask for proof of vaccination or to require mask wearing. In a press conference Wednesday, Hoku called the former rule an emergency temporary measure via ABC. It was an emergency temporary measure put in place literally two months ago. And at this time, we say that is the right decision to lift this mandate for indoor businesses and let counties, cities, and businesses. to make their own decisions on what they want to do with respect to mask or the vaccination requirement.

Given the declining cases, given declining hospitalizations, that is why we feel comfortable to lift this in effect tomorrow. The White House has been meeting quietly with health experts on crafting a pandemic exit strategy, the New York Times reported, but Democratic governors like Hockel are not waiting any longer to end their mandates. On Wednesday, senior U.S. defense officials confirmed reporting from the Wall Street Journal that the Pentagon has a White House-approved plan

for Poland-based American troops to help evacuate U.S. nationals fleeing Ukraine in the event of a Russian attack. The report indicated that troops were planning to set up checkpoints, tent camps, and other temporary facilities inside Poland's border with Ukraine in preparation to serve arriving Americans, according to Fox News.

Notably, the troops do not have authorization to enter Ukrainian territory and won't conduct operations from inside the country. To help oversee the process, Major General Chris Donahue was deployed to Poland last weekend. Donahue also oversaw the American evacuation from Afghanistan last August. According to U.S. officials, up to 5 million refugees are expected to flee Ukraine if Russia invades. Fox News also reports that 30,000 Americans are estimated to still be in Ukraine. President Joe Biden's administration is denouncing a Florida bill that would ban discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools. I want every member of the LGBTQ plus community, especially the kids who will be impacted by this hateful bill,

to know that you are loved and accepted just as you are, Biden tweeted Tuesday. I have your back and my administration will continue to fight for the protections and safety you deserve. The bill, which is supported by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, advances. parental rights and education by letting parents sue schools discussing gender identity or sexual orientation in class. DeSantis denounced discussions of sexual identity and orientation in schools, calling such conversations inappropriate. Here's what he had to say. Schools need to be teaching kids to read, to write. They need to teach them science, history. We need more civics, understanding the U.S. Constitution and what makes our country unique.

All those basic stuff to get into situations where you're not. not having the parent, you're hiding things from the parent, you're ejecting these concepts about choosing your gender, that is just inappropriate for our schools. Opponents of the bill call it the don't say gay legislation, arguing that it creates a hostile environment for LGBTQ students. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Dr. Steven Scholey as we discuss COVID-19 vaccine mandates. At the Heritage Foundation, we believe voting is a sacred duty.

It's how people express what course they want our nation. to take. Given the importance of the ballot box, it's necessary to have a transparent and fraud-free system that can be trusted. This is why Heritage created the Election Integrity Scorecard. The scorecard compares the laws and regulations for elections state-to-state and ranks them on their security and transparency. Check out the Election Integrity Scorecard at heritage.org slash election scorecard. My guest today is Dr. Stephen Scholley, a Rhode Island surgeon prohibited by the state from practicing medicine over his vaccination status. Dr. Skolli, thank you so much for joining us today. Good morning. Thank you for having me.

So let's dive right into this. You are suing Rhode Island to stop the state from preventing you from practicing medicine. Can you fill us in on this lawsuit? I have been through this process for a long time. I don't want to say I openly defied a compliance order, but back in October of last year, I challenged a vaccine mandate. promulgated by the state of Rhode Island. And in that challenge, I wanted a medical exemption for my BELS palsy associated with some disease I had with Lyme disease a long time ago. This was necessitated by the fact that on October 1st, because of my challenge of the vaccine mandate, I received a compliance order, which prevented me from seeing patients.

the order was such that although my license wasn't suspended or revoked, and it was never challenged in terms of my license, I never went before a regulatory body, and what happened was I was preventive from the compliance order from seeing patients. It was a challenge. So can you walk our listeners through this a little bit more? Why did you not want to get the COVID vaccine initially? Sure.

I got COVID in late December of 2020. I received it probably one of the hospitals that was just inundated with COVID virus. I survived, did fine, quarantined, did everything appropriately. Lost my taste actually for a couple months. I was tired, I'm sure, a little bit of the long COVID, but I came back to work and worked all through the pandemic, like a lot of health care workers, like a lot of first responders. At that point, not a lot was known about the treatments and what we were doing. And there was certainly no vaccine.

So health care workers like myself and others in some of the congregate care settings, they weren't to work every day. They were working in environments that were infested with COVID. They worked overtime. They worked hungry. They worked tired. And they just did their thing. And they got us basically through the pandemic.

Fast forward, you know, seven or eight months. after this, now there's a mandate for a vaccine. Well, at that point, I had already survived COVID. I was monitoring my antibodies, and I had naturally acquired immunity. For that reason alone, I probably didn't need a vaccine. But in addition to that, I had a couple bouts of Bell's palsy as a younger adult. Yeah, what's Bell's Palsy? The Bell's Palsy is a facial paralysis that can affect some of the muscles of the face.

When I had it the first time, and the first and second times, it actually affected my eye, where your ability to open and close your eye becomes compromised. I got this as a young adult in southern New England, so in Connecticut, Long Island, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, the Cape, and the islands, Bell's palsy at that point was almost pathonomonic of Lyme disease. So I had Lyme disease twice. the first time it happened, I was like, oh, I got to hope this is Lyme disease. I'm either having a stroke or I have a brain tumor, thank God it's only Lyme disease. Then I'm outside a lot.

I developed it again. Fast forward to where we are now in terms of the vaccine mandates. The literature suggests that those who have been subjected to a previous bout of Bell's palsy are at an increased risk of developing Bell's palsy after vaccinations. What the studies have now shown, and I'll talk about that in a second, is even without a history of Bells palsy, the vaccine puts you in an increased risk of getting it. If you look at the VERS or the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, there is a tremendous increasing number of patients that are responding with a history of Bells Palsy after vaccinations or boosters. In Rhode Island alone, there are, in the last two years, over 25 cases that I see in the VAIR system. And that's just what's reported.

To show you the challenges of my administrative process and hearing and trying to get through this and get a medical exemption for the Bell's palsy, in our discovery with the Department of Health, we asked the multitude of questions. and this is going to lead to just the frustration with dealing with, you know, the administrative state and big government. One of the questions is, in all documents from the Rhode Island Department of Health of any instance in which a person received a COVID vaccine approved by the Rhode Island Department of Health and subsequent to the vaccination, did anybody exhibit symptoms of Bell's palsy or actually another neurological disease called Gianbury? This was the answer to this derogatory from the Department of Health. The Department objects to this request on the grounds that it is not relevant to the subject matter involved in the pending action. It is unduly burdensome and cannot lead to discovery of admissible evidence in this case.

So you asked the Department of Health to give you more information on whether any other patients have suffered from Bell's policy as a result of the vaccine, and they said that they weren't going to answer that? Correct. That was the answer to basically the eight or nine interrogatories that we asked. Why do you think that is the case? Why wouldn't they tell you? I think they don't want the public to know the risks associated with this particular vaccine. As this has gone forward now, and now that this case is becoming more public in Rhode Island, you can't imagine a number of people that say, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, my cousin got the vaccine and, you know, he had Bell's palsy, you know, for a month.

Or my cousin got the vaccine and he has Bell palsy and it hasn't resolved yet. Wow. I think it's shameful that transparency for those that are dictating, you know, health care policy is, it doesn't exist. I think it's sad. It's frustrating as well. So you requested a medical exemption based on your own knowledge of your health. as a medical professional as well, but they wouldn't give it to you? Did they give you any explanation as to why you couldn't get one?

Sure. The medical exemption that exists in the state, Rhode Island, mirrors the CDC's medical exemption form. There's no place to check. There's no box and there's no other for Bells-Pauzy. what the CDC's form addresses is a previous allergic response resulting in anaphylaxis to a vaccine or to the COVID vaccine. A known allergic reaction to a component of the vaccine. A history of paracarditis or myocarditis status post receiving a vaccine. and or a history of Mabs or monoclonal antibody treatment within a certain period of time.

Those are the exclusions, and there is no place for any exemptions. Wow. So a common accusation that we hear lately is that people who oppose COVID vaccines or COVID vaccine mandates are anti-vaxxers. Have you been accused of this? Yes, but I try to put that to rest of. very, very quickly. I'm not an anti-vaxxer. I used to work, and I've done work for the USAID, which was an arm of the state department, and traveled all around the world. I've been vaccinated, I would assume, more than most people. Even recently, you know, I got a seasonal flu vaccine,

knowing that at that particular time when I got it, it was only 22 or 23 percent effective, that was the only time I really got the flu, the time I got the vaccine. No, I'm not an anti-vaccine at all. as a child and in health care, I've had all the appropriate vaccinations. So why do you think that this phrase is thrown out there when we're talking about the COVID vaccines? I guess it's part of that dividing, dividing the nation, dividing the population, dividing, you know, politicizing, weaponizing it. I'm not sure. It's certainly unfortunate. I would think that, you know, in most instances, a vaccination like this that was authorized, or an emergency use authorization, you should have some freedom of choice and some freedoms

that exist still in America. I haven't even addressed my vaccine mandate on that basis about having freedom of choice and personal responsibility and some liberty. The complaint that we filed certainly addresses it when it addresses, you know, the 14th Amendment and my freedom to make an informed decision on this. So I would love to hear a little bit more about your experience working as a medical professional during the pandemic before any of this happened because you you continued your critical care throughout the pandemic, right? I did. Yeah, tell us about that. Sure. I mean, I trained, so I went to dental school at the University of Connecticut. Then I trained at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Your listeners would know that. If you remember ER, that's the hospital,

that ER was based on. Cook County Hospital is the first level one trauma center in the country. And, you know, a shout out to my colleagues who trained me and got me seasoned there. So I did my oral and maxile facial surgery training there, which consisted of a lot of trauma. When I came back to Rhode Island in 1988, I began my practice here and immediately wanted to continue, you know, what my training seasoned me for. So in addition to my private practice here, I've worked at the Department of Corrections, which is one of the prison industries. A lot of the state facilities, you know, a Zambrano hospital and an illustrator hospital, which are special needs hospitals or psychiatric hospitals.

I work at Rhode Island Training School, which is a school for adolescents who are troubled. And I also did some work for, you know, for the medical examiner's office. So I had a full scope background. through the pandemic because of the necessity for emergency treatment, I continued to work. The only time I did not work was when I was quarantined for my bout of COVID. And a lot of other health care workers, you know, did the same thing. We certainly were cognizant and aware of the disease process and COVID, you know, but with practicing universal precautions and because of the fear of the initial nature of the pandemic,

you know, those universal precautions were certainly heightened. Healthcare workers continued to practice. And we did that through the whole pandemic. And now that you're in this situation, I would love to know how have your patients reacted to Rhode Island censuring you in this way and ordering you to stop your critical care? The support has been, quite honestly, unbelievable. This happened from the get-go when I first, you know, and I would say challenge. The media would say I defied the mandate and I defied my compliance order.

Actually, that's not true. The compliance order that was issued by the governor prevented me from seeing patients. My license to practice was never suspended or revoked. Unfortunately, in the hearing process, a compliance order, which would have, by state statute, I would have had a hearing within a couple weeks, morphed into an emergency or an immediate compliance order, which basically said that I was a threat to the safety of the health of the public. That occurred on October 1st. In the whole prior 18 months, before the vaccine mandate, I obviously wasn't a threat to the health of the public.

But now with the vaccine mandate, I was a threat to the health of the public. which is just insanity, but that's what we've been dealing with through this, you know, COVID crisis. Right. Well, as a medical professional, why do you think such black and white lines have been drawn on the COVID vaccines? You know, if you get them, you're following the rules and you're in the clear. But if you don't, then you're an anti-vaxxer and you should be shamed. Why is this? You know, as this pandemic has evolved and more and more science is coming to light, I'm really not sure.

I think that in this particular situation in Rhode Island, what I see what we've done with the political process is unelected public health officials were kind of intoxicated with power, and they had the opportunity to kind of dictate what they wanted you to do. If you challenged that or your narrative wasn't consistent with theirs, I mean, at this point in time and around, I'm almost like an enemy of the state. Again, I never, I never didn't honor my compliance order. I didn't defy it.

I just challenged it. And I haven't seen a patient since October 1st. Wow. Why they weaponized it and politicized it. I mean, scientists are great at telling, at telling us what's happened in the past. And then, you know, we looked at, you know, Spanish flu. we've looked a lot of things in researching this. Scientists are also great at telling you what's going on right now,

and they look at the epidemiology. Scientists can't predict what's going to happen in the future. In this particular pandemic, we try to develop these models, which would do that, and these models have failed. It looks like at this point, you know, the vaccines haven't been as successful as we want. Masking probably doesn't work. Social distancing and things like that were ineffective. it's a respiratory virus.

I guess the point is the algorithms going forward for public health officials need to change. They need to look at the science as much as they can, and we need to do something different and then shut the economy down and shut our schools down and do everything that we've done for two years, which really hasn't worked. The medical therapeutics is much better now than it was at the beginning of the pandemic. the research, hopefully, that develops out of, you know, the development of the vaccine with CRISPR technology and reverse transcriptin and the MRNA, hopefully that helps another disease process, but, you know, these things need to be studied.

Right. And I think the other important thing is if we don't do things different, if there is another pandemic, and I'm not going to dismiss the severity of COVID-19 and those that have have lost people. I mean, you know, we're up to the anticipation as a million Americans will have lost their life from COVID, whether it's COVID associated or COVID caused. So I'm not going to diminish that. And the fear initially was certainly well-founded. Well, I'm just curious, Dr. Schooley, would you recommend the vaccines for someone who doesn't have a condition like you do or who isn't worried about exacerbating conditions that they already have? You know, I think that's

the decision between that the patient and the health care provider or their primary care, and you have to look at a lot of things. I was, and I'll get back to that in one second. I was going to say going forward for, you know, those that get vaccinated and not vaccinated, the public wants to trust the government. They want to trust their health care experts. They want to trust the CDC, the WHO. If there's ever another pandemic with a morbidity and mortality associated with a virus,

Like, say it mimics something like smallpox many, many years ago where the mortality is 30%. I think America's in trouble because they're not going to trust their public health officials. We have to change that. We need to, we have to change that culture. In terms of, you know, vaccinations for patients, I think we need more information. And mandates always don't work. We've seen what the mandate caused here. I think the wrong population was targeted in America.

It looks as if at this point in time, it was age-related. The mortality that existed was in those that were old. And then the second predominant factor is those with multiple comorbidities, hypertension, asthma, obesity, diabetes. The mortality was associated in mostly that age group. I think we targeted the wrong group. we should have looked at taking care of and protecting the most vulnerable in our society, which is what a good society does, rather than mandating a vaccine for everybody.

In a case that they look at very, very frequently, and again, I'm not the legal person on this. If anybody wants to correct me, I'll certainly adhere to that. But they look at a case that's called Jacobson v. Massachusetts, and it had to do with smallpox vaccinations. It was mandated at that point, but the conditions were much different. Smallpox had a mortality rate of up to 30%. And for those, in some of those that survived, it was also disfiguring. The second component of it was that in that mandate, they mandated it for everybody.

At this point in time, things have changed. Mandates have to be number one reasonable. and for this particular mandate, the vaccine mandate, obviously nationwide the mortality rate is much different than the original mandate that they reference. I mean, the mortality rates for American population, I mean, do the math, they're like 0.1 or 0.2 tenths of 1%. Again, not to diminish those that lost loved ones. The second thing is mandates can't be arbitrary. They have to be reasonable and they can't be arbitrary. Well, in that particular mandate for smallpox, the mandates were for everyone.

This is different. This is a mandate for, well, initially health care workers. Then it became a mandate for fire and police officers. Well, we know, at least in Rhode Island, those mandates aren't enforced. In Rhode Island, there's a moratorium on the enforcement of those vaccine mandates for some of those entities I just mentioned. It's even a little worse in Rhode Island. This is what's so frustrating for me.

Believe it or not, at one point a few weeks ago, because of the self-inflicted wound of having a mandate and the shortage of health care workers, there was a moratorium on health care workers who were COVID-positive. So a COVID-positive health care worker, as long as they were vaccinated, could go back into the health care system,

because there was challenges in staffing. But a COVID-negative, unvaccinated worker couldn't go back to work. That's insane. That's insane. That's the COVID chaos. That's the frustration. That's the challenge that I've been facing here. And we just want to get the information out there and have good public policy based on scientific principles.

So the state forbid you from seeing patients and now you're suing. What is the lawsuit hope to accomplish? The lawsuit, and I will read the beginning of the lawsuit for you, the complaint alleges that the state's actions, barring me from caring for patients, are unconstitutional, irrational, and in fact arbitrary. This is not where I wanted to be. I've never sued anybody in my life. We went through about three or four months now of administrative hearings.

the due process has been an adventure to say the least. I never went before my appropriate regulatory body. I'm licensed by the Board of Examiners, and normally if there was any kind of issue and the issue here would be my objecting to the vaccine mandate, what would happen is I'd go before the regulatory body and there would be some decision and some hearing within a few weeks. Because of the COVID chaos and the COVID situation,

they promulgated an emergency order, which was, and including in that was the vaccine mandate. So I never went before my appropriate regulatory body, but I went before an administrative body from the governor's office. So when the governor initiated the emergency orders, they then went to the Department of Health for new rules and regulations, which included the vaccine mandate. I have been through this administrative hearing process now for months.

and at this point in time, a lot of the emergency orders, including the mass mandates in Rhode Island and the vaccine mandates, they're about to expire. So there's some thought and there's some new negotiations, both for the governor's office and the General Assembly, to continue new emergency orders, which will include new mandates. If that continues, and it could continue for an unknown period of time, I can't continue this any longer. I'm not getting anywhere with the administrative process and the hearing process in the Department of Health. That's what initiated me filing the lawsuit. It's unfortunate. Like I said, I've never really done this. We were scheduled for the first hearing on my lawsuit.

My lawsuit is against Dan McKee as the governor stayed around in the Department of Health. And I'm seeking injunctive relief. What happened yesterday was they actually continued it for a few more. days and I understand the federal court in its abundance of question wants to kind of do the right thing here there is a younger doctrine that exists and I'm not the legal experts so if I'm out of my space here and somebody wants to correct me I'm fine with that but the younger doctrine states that in the jurisdiction of her who sees the case since there's an ongoing appeal and hearing from the Department

of Health in the administrative office in the state of Rhode Island the federal court is going to hold and see how long and when this can be resolved. They did opine and say and basically compel the Department of Administration and the Department of Health and the State Rhode Island to resolve the administrative hearings by Thursday of this week. If that happens, I might have an answer from the Department of Health on the initial complaint or compliance order. if not, then there's some speculation that a lot of the emergency orders promulgated by the governor actually expire next week. The dilemma that I was faced with, if they expire next week, that doesn't preclude the governor from initiating new orders, which would prevent me from practicing because there might be some new orders, including a mask or a vaccine mandate. The mask mandate is important around here for the school children.

the vaccine mandate is important for health care workers. If that exists, I'll be back in the same position as I was before, but the judge in the federal district court has also said that they would then hear my case in its completion on February 23rd. So a lot will happen in the next few weeks. I mean, I've waited this long for resolution. Hopefully they'll start to look at some of the science in a more appropriate fashion. and politics won't be so involved in some of these decisions,

and good health care public policy will proceed and prevail. Well, Dr. Scholey, we're really interested in your story, and we'd love it if you could keep us updated. But thank you so much for being here with us today, and we're looking forward to hearing what happens next. Thank you for having me. Much appreciated its entities like yourself that get this information out, and I want to also thank my attorney.

attorneys and Mike Stenhouse from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity. My attorneys at this point are doing outstanding. I mean, I can't thank them enough. I've been working with the New Civil Liberties Alliance out of Washington, Brian Rosner and Janine Unis, and my local council is Greg Piccicelli and Christy Durant, and they are equally as frustrated and challenged by everything we have going, and I will certainly keep you posted.

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