Biden’s Vaccine Command

Thou shalt be inoculated or risk losing your job 

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"But his national mandate on business is needless overkill in a free country. He’s forcing all private employers with more than 100 workers—two-thirds of the workforce—to require vaccinations or weekly testing. The non-compliant can be dunned $14,000 per violation.

Many large businesses already require vaccinations or regular testing, and some have offered workers financial incentives to get inoculated. A few have been more forceful. Yet many businesses have been reluctant to mandate shots because they respect individual conscience or worry some employees will quit. Workers have been hard to hire amid the incentives Democrats have created not to work. Mr. Biden thinks that’s not his problem.

Employers understandably have concerns about compliance and enforcement. Are they supposed to pay for unvaccinated workers’ weekly testing, and what kind of proof of testing or vaccination must they require? Will franchisees and corporations be liable as joint employers? Nobody knows.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Emergency Temporary Standards code allows it to enact a rule if “workers are in grave danger due to exposure to toxic substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or to new hazards.” But Mr. Biden is stretching the government’s authority.

OSHA has typically applied this to particular industries. In June it required healthcare facilities to create plans to prevent Covid transmission, though nearly all were already doing this. It has also required employers whose employees may be exposed to Hepatitis B to pay for worker vaccinations. But OSHA has never mandated vaccinations.

Mr. Biden’s logic is also contradictory. In his speech he stressed that the vaccinated are safe from serious Covid. Yet he said the unvaccinated must protect the vaccinated. In fact, the unvaccinated are mainly a danger to themselves and their loved ones who aren’t vaccinated.

The President blamed unvaccinated Americans for clogging up “emergency rooms and intensive care units, leaving no room for someone with a heart attack, or pancreatitis, or cancer.” This is false. Some hospitals have cancelled elective surgeries, but they’ve done so to ensure that people who need urgent care can get it—whether for Covid or something else."

"states with Democratic governors like Louisiana, North Carolina and Oregon have also experienced virus surges this summer, and few of them have imposed vaccine mandates.

Vaccination rates are also no better in big cities controlled by Democrats than in GOP states. In Miami-Dade County, 79% of those eligible are fully vaccinated and 66% in Orange County (Orlando). That’s higher than in Chicago’s Cook County (63%), the Bronx (62%), Clark County around Las Vegas (54%) and Detroit’s Wayne County (53%)."