Michigan meteorologist Karl Bohnak opts out of vaccine, leaving job of 33 years instead

Meteorologist Karl Bohnak, long a fixture on the Michigan weather-prediction scene, has opted out of his job at NBC affiliate WLUC-TV rather than get a coronavirus vaccine.

“Today, it is with a heavy heart, I announce after over 33 years, I am no longer employed at TV6,” Bohnak, 68, wrote in a lengthy Facebook post last Wednesday. “I am leaving TV6 because the station’s corporate owner, Gray Television, has mandated vaccination against COVID-19 for anyone entering a property owned by the company. Since I chose not to take one of the shots, I was fired. Many of you have taken one of these injections, and that is absolutely your right. It is also my right to choose the medical options I feel are right for me. I have authority over my body.”

Vaccines have shown time and time again that they prevent severe illness and death from COVID-19. But Bohnak chose to ignore that, saying instead that the manufacturers are not liable if someone dies or is injured after being jabbed. It was not clear what injuries he was referring to, given that the side effects generally dissipate after a day or two.

“I asked myself, would I buy brakes for my vehicle if the brake company had no liability if the brakes failed? No!” he wrote. “So, I will certainly not allow a medicine in my body from a company that does not stand behind its product.”

He seemed to think that his chances of death would be higher with the vaccine than from the disease that has wantonly killed more people, as of Monday, in the U.S. than the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic. He felt that as a healthy adult, he had a more than 99% chance of surviving COVID and decline the potential “serious side effects.”

COVID itself has been shown to bring serious side effects, with many people suffering for months from random symptoms, and others needing physical therapy after being intubated. Still others have had double lung transplants in the wake of their infection.

Bohnak went on to frame recent vaccine mandates as a disturbing “abrogation of our liberty and freedom under the guise of a pandemic” and characterized the debate in terms of political leanings rather than science, biology or the laws of physics. “We are being bludgeoned with fear, I believe, in an effort to control us.”