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President Joe Biden listens during a meeting with business leaders about the debt limit in the South Court auditorium on the White House campus on Wednesday, October 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo / Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden brandishes his weapon of last resort in the country’s fight against COVID-19, as he defends vaccination requirements across the country in a bid to force the estimated 67 million unvaccinated American adults to roll up their sleeves.
It’s a tactic he never wanted to use – and that he had ruled out before taking office – but feels like he’s been coerced by a stubborn part of the public who refused to ‘get the life-saving shots and endanger the lives of others and the country’s economic recovery.
In the coming weeks, more than 100 million Americans will be subject to vaccine requirements ordered by Biden – and his administration encourages employers to voluntarily take additional steps that would push vaccines on people or subject them to requirements expensive tests.
Forcing people to do something they don’t want to do is rarely a winning political strategy. But with the majority of the country already vaccinated and with industry on his side, Biden has become an unlikely advocate of intimidating tactics to conduct vaccinations.
Biden will take that message to Chicago on Thursday, where he will visit a suburban construction site run by Clayco, a large construction company that is set to announce a new vaccination or testing requirement for its workforce. The company is taking action weeks before an upcoming Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule that will require all employers with more than 100 employees to require their staff to be vaccinated or tested weekly for the coronavirus.
White House officials said Biden would encourage other companies to follow suit, taking action before OSHA’s rule and going even further by requiring injections for their employees without offering an option to test.
Biden is also expected to meet with United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, whose company has successfully implemented a vaccination mandate – with no options for workers to be tested instead. Less than 1% did not comply and risk being made redundant.
But Biden’s warrants “worked spectacularly,” said Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University Law School. He added that the president’s rules have also had a “modeling effect” for cities, states and businesses. This is what the White House wanted.
U.S. officials began to anticipate the need for a stronger vaccination campaign in April, when the country’s vaccine supply began to exceed demand. But the political conditions meant that immediate measures to demand the shots would likely have proved counterproductive.
The idea of compulsory vaccination has been rebuffed by critics who argue that it is too far out for government and denies people the right to make their own medical decisions.
So, first of all, officials embarked on a multi-month, multi-billion dollar education and incentive effort to persuade people to get vaccinated on their own.
It was not enough.
By midsummer, the most transmissible delta variant of the virus was eroding months of health and economic progress, and the rate of new vaccinations had slowed. Biden’s strategy has shifted from incitement to compulsion, with a slow and deliberate tightening of vaccination restrictions.
“It’s a good political strategy, but it’s also a good public health strategy, because once a lot of people have already been vaccinated, the terms become more acceptable,” Gostin said.
It all started with a vaccination requirement for frontline federal health workers serving veterans in Virginia hospitals. Then the military, followed in regular succession by all government-reimbursed health care workers, all federal workers, and then the more than 80 million Americans who work in medium and large companies.
Nearly 100 million adult Americans were unvaccinated as of July – a figure that has been reduced by a third since federal, state and private warrants were imposed.
Along with the president’s trip to Chicago, the White House released a report outlining the early successes of vaccination mandates to increase vaccination rates and the economic case for businesses and local governments to implement them. It points to everything from reduced employee hours to declining restaurant reservations in areas with fewer vaccinations, not to mention markedly reduced cases of serious illness and death from the virus in areas with low vaccination rates. higher.
Millions of workers, the White House notes, say they still cannot work due to the effects of the pandemic, because their workplaces have been closed or service has been cut, or because they are afraid to work or cannot get child care.
“The evidence is extremely clear that these vaccine mandates are working,” said Charlie Anderson, director of economic policy and budget for the White House COVID-19 response team. “And now I think it’s a good time to get up and say, ‘Now is the time to move, if you haven’t already. “”
While warrants are the ultimate tool in pushing Americans to get vaccinated, Biden has resisted – at least so far – requiring injections or testing for interstate or international air travel, a move that, according to legal experts, is within its purview. But officials said it was still under review.
“We have a track record, and I think it’s clear, it shows that we are pulling the levers available to demand vaccinations,” said Jeff Zients, the White House COVID-19 coordinator. “And we’re not taking anything off the table.”
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