Emergency workers in South Florida have warned that the Covid-19 vaccine mandates are creating a serious public safety crisis.

Hundreds of firefighters, paramedics, dispatchers and EMT workers in Orange County, Florida’s fifth-most populous county, say that morale is down due not only to employees within this sector being told that they must get vaccinated, but also because area residents who get injected are falling ill in record numbers.

Calls continue to pour in about fully vaccinated residents falling unwell and dying, which is spreading already troubled emergency responders thin. This is on top of the worker shortages resulting from mandates that are driving the unvaccinated out of their careers.

Jason Wheat, a firefighter and spokesman for about 500 men and women who fight fires and respond to 911 calls, said that constant infighting between the vaccinated and unvaccinated is leaving many emergency workers distracted, stressed out and unable to work as a team.

Teamwork is crucial for emergency crews to save lives, but thanks to President Biden’s vaccines and mandates, emergency teams are no longer teams.

The Epoch Times described how exhaustion, depression, harassment and a “frightening lack of cooperation and teamwork” are how many emergency workers described their lives under the “new normal.”

“Two expressed dismay about three recent suicides among department workers,” the Times reported. “They blamed the stress that has plagued the department since the pandemic began.”

Wheat and 42 of his co-workers have filed a lawsuit against Orange County requesting an emergency injunction to block the county from requiring employees to take unwanted Covid-19 vaccines.

Employees say that they were threatened with termination for refusing the shots, only to have the county change the penalty to “written reprimands” for non-compliance. It turns out that the department did not want to lose upwards of 500 employees, or 38 percent of the department, who would have rather quit than get vaccinated.

“The order required employees, including those in the Fire and Rescue Department, to receive at least one shot by the end of last month,” the Times reported.

However, the situation did escalate on October 19th when a fire battalion chief, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, was fired for refusing to discipline his unvaccinated department employees.

The individual, Stephen Davis, “was terminated on the grounds of failure to follow a direct order,” said Orange County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Lisa McDonald.

In his own defence, Davis said he did not issue written reprimands to unvaccinated employees because the vaccine mandates are inherently unlawful. Some of the employees in question had also already submitted religious exemptions that were approved.

After Davis was fired, department morale reportedly sunk even further, according to Wheat, who described it as “the lowest I’ve ever seen it.”

Wheat also said that fully vaccinated employees are becoming nasty towards the unvaccinated, calling them the “dirty unvaccinated.” This hate speech has made working conditions miserable and even unsafe for the unvaccinated, who are being discriminated against.

“The people of Orange County are being hurt,” Wheat warns, adding that rescue workers “are fighting with each other, not concentrating on their jobs.”

“We love this job so much because we want to help people,” he further stated. “But when you’re distracted, it’s not good for the public.”