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WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden is using his last resort weapon in the nation’s fight against COVID-19 as he campaigns for vaccination regulations across the country to force the roughly 67 million unvaccinated American adults to roll up their sleeves.
It’s a tactic he never wanted to use – and one he ruled out before taking office – but one he feels compelled to do by a stubborn section of the public who refused to get the life-saving shots and the lives of others and that endangers the nation’s economic recovery.
In the coming weeks, more than 100 million Americans will be subject to Biden’s mandated vaccine requirements – and his government encourages employers to voluntarily take additional steps that would push vaccines on people or subject them to onerous testing requirements.
Forcing people to do what they don’t want is rarely a successful political strategy. But with the majority of the country already vaccinated and the industry by his side, Biden has proven to be an unlikely advocate of intimidation tactics to promote vaccination.
Biden is bringing the news to Chicago on Thursday, where he will be visiting a suburban construction site owned by Clayco, a major construction company that will announce a new vaccination or testing requirement for its employees. The company is already taking measures weeks before an imminent regulation by the occupational safety and health authority requires all employers with more than 100 employees to vaccinate their employees or test them weekly for the coronavirus.
White House officials said Biden will encourage other companies to follow suit by taking action in advance of the OSHA rule and going further by requiring shots for their employees without offering a testing option.
Biden will also meet with United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, whose company has successfully implemented a vaccine mandate – with no option to test workers instead. Less than 1% have not complied with it and are risking termination.
But Biden’s mandates have “worked spectacularly well,” said Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University’s law school. He added that the president’s rules also “modeled” cities, states and businesses. That is the purpose of the White House.
US officials began anticipating the need for a more vigorous vaccination campaign in April when the country’s supply of vaccines exceeded demand. But the political conditions meant that immediate steps requiring gunfire would likely have proven counterproductive.
The idea of mandatory vaccination has been rejected by critics, who argue that it smells like government excess and deprives people of the right to make their own medical decisions.
First, the officials carried out a multi-billion dollar educational and incentive campaign to convince people to get the vaccines on their own initiative.
It wasn’t enough.
By midsummer, the more transmissible Delta variant of the virus eroded months of health and economic advancement and the rate of new vaccinations had slowed to a trickle. Biden’s strategy shifted from solicitation to coercion, 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 you have a lot of people who are already vaccinated. then mandates become more acceptable, ”said Gostin.
It started with a mandatory vaccination requirement for frontline federal health workers serving veterans at VA hospitals. Then the military, followed by all health care workers who are paid by the government, all federal employees, and then the more than 80 million Americans who work in medium and large companies.
Nearly 100 million adult Americans were unvaccinated in July – a number that has decreased by a third since federal, state, and private mandates were imposed.
In connection with the President’s trip to Chicago, the White House released a report detailing the early successes of vaccination mandates in increasing vaccination rates and the economic reasons for corporate and local governments to implement them. It points to everything from reduced working hours to reduced restaurant reservations in areas with fewer vaccinations, not to mention significantly reduced cases of serious illness and deaths from the virus in areas with higher vaccination rates.
Millions of workers, according to the White House, say that due to the impact of the pandemic, they are still unable to work because their jobs are closed or restricted, or because they are afraid to work or not getting childcare.
“The evidence was overwhelmingly clear that these vaccine mandates are working,” said Charlie Anderson, director of economic policy and budget for the White House’s 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 mandates are the ultimate tool for urging Americans to get vaccinated, Biden has – at least so far – resisted requiring gunshots or tests for interstate or international air travel, a move that legal experts say is within his power. But the officials said it was still under consideration.
“We have a track record and I think it is clear that we are pulling the levers available to require vaccinations,” said Jeff Zients, the White House COVID-19 coordinator. “And we don’t take anything from the table.”
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