It’s not often the Pope gets invoked in a city council meeting, but these are strange times indeed.

The head of the Catholic Church was recently mentioned in the Oct. 21 Black Diamond City Council meeting as part of a 40-minute discussion surrounding King County’s vaccine verification mandate, which requires people to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test to enter businesses like restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues. The mandate went into effect Oct. 25.

The resolution relied heavily on a unanimously-passed Nov. 5, 2020 proclamation made by the city council stating that “division, isolation, hatred, and discrimination have no place in our community and do not reflect our core values,” the resolution reads. “Therefore, the city council… hereby resolves… to condemn any form of discrimination toward any person that does not possess or present proof of COVID-19 vaccination.”

“It is not about what choice a person has made,” Council member Chris Wisnoski said. “This is a resolution that confirms our oath to support the Constitution, both of our country as well as the state, in support of individual rights.”

Vaccine status “is the most divisive thing in our country right now, and I think it’s time to say, ‘We’re not going to allow people to discriminate against vaccination status either way,’” he continued. “We’re not going to let that divide our city. We don’t want people treating others differently because they made a choice that maybe some others disagree with.”

Council member Bernie O’Donnell was quick to offer a dissenting voice.

“With all due respect, I disagree with this wholeheartedly,” he said. “It is important that the federal government, the state of Washington, King County, all of our leaders have made it very clear that there’s ramifications if you don’t follow the mandate. It is… not a discriminatory act to say that, [if] you don’t follow the mandates, there’s consequences. Consequences aren’t discrimination.”

Council member Kristiana de Leon, who crafted the inclusion proclamation, said that this new resolution was a “pro-COVID” measure “under the guise of equity and inclusion and justice, and under the guise of Constitutional freedom.”

“I am deeply saddened that this is becoming such a partisan, political issue. It really saddens me that when we started this, when we were really coming to grips with this in March, we had this idea of cohesion and that we would all be in this together and in the same boat together,” she continued. “And now it’s becoming this partisan soundbite. And it didn’t need to be. We already take vaccines for things like polio and for hepatitis and all of these other things that are just not becoming this partisan issue. It’s tragic.”

Council member Melissa Oglesbee then had her turn to chime in, saying that the city needs to stand behind the resolution to support the local economy and support individual freedoms.

“I feel that we need to promote economic recovery, and I feel when we sit there and tell restaurants and business owners that they can’t have customers in their businesses to make them financially secure… to me, is wrong,” she said. “I find that it is very — and I’m going to say the word — discriminating to people. I feel everybody has the right to make their own choices, to be vaccinated or not to be vaccinated… We need to stand behind all of our citizens and their choices, and our businesses, and our employees, for their freedom of their right to make their choices.”

It was about then that the conversation got a little heated; Wisnoski said that while the state’s vaccine mandate has a religious exemption provision — allowing people like teachers and healthcare workers to not receive the vaccine for religious reasons — that the vaccine verification program has no such clause.

“The biggest exemption request is been on religious basis, right? And religion is one of the categories we have in our inclusivity proclamation. And there is not a religious exemption for this mandate,” he continued. “I can’t get a Catholic a religious exemption card to go to a restaurant or go to a bar. I have to have a COVID vaccination… you don’t get an exemption. That is discrimination. I’m Catholic. It is against my religion to have that vaccine because of what it contains.”

“The pope has the vaccine,” O’Donnell jumped in.

“Not all Catholics follow the pope, dude. Sorry,” Wisnoski replied. “Welcome to the real world.”

The Courier-Herald reached out to Wisnoski for clarification on what is in the vaccine that he religiously objects to, but did not receive a reply.

Council member Deady quickly restored order and the debate continued in a cooler manner.

Like Oglesbee, Deady has concerns about local businesses, but drew an opposite conclusion.

“If this doesn’t work, I’m afraid they’re going to shut these businesses down because these are where people like to go, to gather, like to sit, like to talk, like to hang out in close proximity,” she said. “If it doesn’t work, then I have a feeling it’s going to get closed again, because, [the] No. 1 care here is your hospitals.”

As an example, Deady said her mother needed to go to a local hospital for an emergency, but was turned away because the facility was “overcrowded.”

Deady was also the only council member to point out that proof of vaccination is not the only way to go about enjoying a sit-down meal or a cold beer; customers can simply show a negative COVID test that was taken in the last 72 hours.

Council member Leigh Mulvihill added some out-of-country perspective to the discussion.

“I just spent the last month in a country that was 82 percent vaccinated. Every single business that you went into, you had to wear a mask. And if you wanted to sit down and eat, you had to show your vaccine card,” she said, not naming the country. “This country is highly religious… They felt it was their civic duty, their responsibility, to protect not only themselves, but their neighbors, by getting a vaccine.

“I only have two more words: smallpox and polio,” she concluded. “Where would we be today?”

Council member Debbie Paige declined to comment on the issue.

Having gone through all the council members, de Leon had some parting words.

“I’m just going to leave with one additional, possibly crude metaphor here: If we’re talking about a pool, and there’s a restroom right next to it, you saying that you have a right to go in the pool instead of the restroom, that might be your choice, but now we’re all living with it, and we all have to get out of the pool,” she said. “Where’s our freedom there?”

Wisnoski disagreed with the metaphor.

“Vaccinated people can transmit the virus, they can catch it, they can die from it, just like unvaccinated people. I know people that are vaccinated, I know people that have had the disease, got vaccinated, got the disease, and passed away,” he said. “It’s not pissing in the pool. The risk is the same. The risk is out there.”

Public Health officials have made it clear that the risk of catching, being hospitalized, and dying from COVID is much higher for the unvaccinated than the vaccinated. According to an Oct. 27 report from the Washington state Department of Health, unvaccinated individuals were between 4 to 5 times more likely to get COVID compared to the vaccinated.

Additionally, the unvaccinated are between 9 and 16 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID, and 9 times more likely to die from COVID (if you’re 65 years old or older) than the vaccinated.

It’s less clear how vaccines mitigate the risk of spreading the virus; according to a Sept. 15 CDC science brief, “Infections with the Delta variant in vaccinated persons potentially have reduced transmissibility than infections in unvaccinated persons, although additional studies are needed.”

A study published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, however, shows that “people who contracted COVID-19 had a similar viral load regardless of whether they had been vaccinated,” The Hill reported.

According to the study: “Although vaccines remain highly effective at preventing severe disease and deaths from COVID-19, our findings suggest that vaccination is not sufficient to prevent transmission of the delta variant in household settings with prolonged exposures.”

The study added that vaccination was more effective at preventing the COVID-19 alpha variant within households.

Wisnoski then moved to adopt the resolution, with Oglesbee seconding the motion; it failed in a 5-2 vote, with Oglesbee and Wisnoski the only votes in favor.