JOE JAB BLITZ
Issues strict vax rules for fed workers, pushes gov’ts to pay holdouts
President Biden on Thursday dramatically escalated his effort to cajole Americans into receiving COVID vaccinations, calling on local governments to dish out $100 payments with shots and announcing that federal workers who remain unvaccinated will face regular testing and other onerous restrictions.
By introducing the carrots and sticks, Biden took the risk of thrusting the White House even further into a pitched culture war around vaccination mandates. But with the more-contagious delta variant driving a dramatic rebound in coronavirus cases this month, the president took to a lectern at the White House and attempted to reach tens of millions of American adults who have still not received a single vaccine dose.
“Right now, too many people are dying or watching someone they love die and say, ‘If I’d just got the vaccine,’ ” Biden said in a somber address from the East Room of the White House. “This is an American tragedy. People are dying who don’t have to die.”
He promised that the vaccines are safe and worked to decouple them from politics, noting they were developed when President Donald Trump ran the White House and highlighting conservatives who have encouraged Americans to get jabbed.
“This is not about red states and blue states,” Biden declared. “It’s literally about life and death.”
Six months into the inoculation rollout, vaccination rates are far higher in blue states than red states, and Republican counties have often faced the most ferocious rises in COVID tallies this summer. Overall, the American coronavirus death count has eclipsed 600,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with the tally growing by 481 last week.
Under new rules for federal employees and contractors outlined by the Biden administration, workers who are not fully vaccinated will be forced to wear masks on the job, distance from other employees and take frequent tests. The federal workforce numbers more than 4 million Americans, according to the White House.
For workers resistant to face coverings, the rules could amount to a de facto vaccine mandate, though officials have shied away from the phrase. Biden still deployed the word in his speech, stressing that the Justice Department has said that it is legal for businesses to require coronavirus vaccines.
“We all want our lives to get back to normal, and fully vaccinated workers will make that happen more quickly,” Biden said. “We all know that in our gut. With incentives and mandates, we can make a huge difference and save a lot of lives.”
More than 30% of the adult U.S. population had not received a single coronavirus shot as of Thursday, according to federal data.
The president had once set a goal of reaching partial vaccination for at least 70% of American adults by July 4.
On Monday, the Department of Veterans Affairs became the first federal agency to announce a vaccination mandate for its workers, saying it would require shots for its frontline healthcare workers.
Biden had guarded his plans to push federal workers to get vaccinated in recent days, but his frustration boiled out Tuesday when he was asked whether he was considering instituting a mandate. “If you’re not vaccinated, you’re not nearly as smart as I thought you were,” he said. “We have a pandemic because of the unvaccinated.”
On Thursday, he emphasized that the shots represent America’s most powerful tool to dispatch the virus — and a luxury that the country is lucky to enjoy.
“It’s an American blessing that we have vaccines for each and every American,” he said. “It’s such a shame to squander that blessing.”