An employee of Montana Ace Hardware shared a letter they received from President & CEO Stewart Weis in July where he writes to employees how “profoundly disappointed” he is with employee vaccination rates and that decisions to not be vaccinated, outside of a physician recommending against a vaccine, are, “rooted in either being uninformed, misinformed, disinformed [sic], engaging in conspiracy theory, or just plain being selfish and/or not using your brain.”

The letter is filled with bromides like, “You are not entitled to your own facts or truth” and “The virus certainly does not give a damn about your or anyone’s politics.”

In the screed, Weis also claimed that, “In the case of Covid-19 the vaccines that we know with absolute certainty are our society’s best defense against Covid-19 and its variants.”

America’s Frontline Doctors has information about alternative treatments that are effective against COVID-19 including Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine. “Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID- 19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance,” according to a review of evidence demonstrating the efficacy of Ivermectin by the American Journal of Therapeutics.

Weis asserted that for employees who choose not to get the vaccine, “it’s difficult to imagine a greater act of selfishness, short of mass murder.”

Referencing Montana House Bill 702 which prohibits employers from discriminating against their employees based on vaccination status, Weis stated that he wanted to keep employees who are not vaccinated away from Christmas parties and store meetings, but that the law would not allow it.

“Therefore I have no choice but to completely eliminate Company Christmas parties and all-employee store meetings from our agenda until further notice. You see, folks, your actions (or in this case, inaction) have consequences,” Weis wrote.

Weis repeated another claim often found circulating through social media channels and news outlets regarding hospitalization and death rates of vaccinated versus unvaccinated individuals, “Today, over 99% of hospitalizations and over 99% of Covid-related deaths are among the unvaccinated. You can fact-check this and you will find it to be true.”

Last week, the Jerusalem Post reported the Israeli Health Ministry announcement that 694 people were being treated in Israeli hospitals for the virus. The Health Ministry said that 400 patients are in serious condition of which 64% are fully vaccinated, indicating that vaccination against COVID-19 is far from full-proof.

Former New York Times writer Alex Berenson tweeted on Friday that hospitalizations of COVID-19 have only gone up in Israel with a 22% increase year-over-year, despite being the 10th most vaccinated country in the world, according the New York Times Covid Vaccination Tracker. The United States ranks 34th in total population vaccinated.

As of Wednesday, Israel had 451 seriously ill Covid patients in its hospitals.

276 are vaccinated: 266 fully, 10 partly.

A year ago today, before vaccines existed, it had a TOTAL of 368 seriously ill hospitalized patients.

If this is vaccine success, I'd hate to see failure.

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) August 13, 2021

Weis operates seven Ace Hardware locations with two in Missoula at Trempers and Eastgate, and locations in Ronan, Polson, and Kalispell.