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With COVID out of control, Biden unveils hefty vaccine mandates:
President Joe Biden on Thursday unveiled a sweeping six-pronged plan to try to regain control over the COVID-19 pandemic, which is wildly raging once again in the US.
[...] The main focus of the president's "Path out of the Pandemic" plan is on reducing the number of unvaccinated people in the country. As such, the plan's most prominent elements are hefty vaccination requirements for millions of federal employees, health care workers, school employees, and even employees of private businesses.
Biden signed an executive order Thursday requiring COVID-19 vaccines for millions of federal workers plus millions more federal contractors. The new vaccine mandate eliminates a previous option that allowed federal workers to undergo regular testing in lieu of vaccination.
In addition to mandating vaccines for federal workers, Biden will also require vaccination for over 17 million health care workers who work at facilities that receive federal funding. The administration had previously required vaccination for all staff of federally funded nursing homes. The new requirements will extend vaccine mandates to hospitals, dialysis facilities, ambulatory surgical settings, and home health agencies—most facilities that receive Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements.
[...] The administration is also working on a rule—to be implemented through the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration—that will require employers with 100 or more workers to ensure that their workforce is fully vaccinated or submits to regular COVID-19 testing. The rule is expected to apply to over 80 million employees nationwide. OSHA is also working on a separate rule that will require those employers to provide paid time off to get vaccinated.
For schools, Biden will require vaccination for the nearly 300,000 staff in federal Head Start and Early Head start programs. He will also put pressure on governors to get all teachers and school staff vaccinated. Last, the administration will push more schools to implement regular testing, which will be funded by $10 billion the administration already allocated to schools earlier this year.
Also at CNN, www.aljazeera.com
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 10 2021, @08:49AM (18 children)
Now they get to take credit for the fall trough as people in the south open their windows but its not yet cold enough in the north to close them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1504_lunar_eclipse [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by FatPhil on Friday September 10 2021, @09:00AM (17 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 10 2021, @09:27AM (9 children)
> "There is no fall trough"
Get back to me in 1-2 months. Then after the winter when theres a bunch more cases in the north US.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by khallow on Friday September 10 2021, @12:06PM (8 children)
Here, for the past six months, a key component of new infections by covid has been the unvaccinated population. You can complain how unfair it is that you are such an easy target, but covid doesn't care. Even libertarians recognize that your rights end when you infringe on other peoples' rights.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday September 10 2021, @02:05PM (4 children)
Don't expect COVID to be eliminated. The vaccine doesn't create an immunity to catching COVID, though it's pretty good at that, it's much better at keeping you from having a severe case. But that means COVID keeps being passed around. It also looks as if the resistance to catching it in the first place wanes rapidly. ISTR 2%/month being mentioned.
OTOH, with SARS (COVID is sars-cov-2) TCell immunities lasts many years. It's too soon to be certain, but that's probably true with COVID also. So serious cases should rapidly decline. Of course, that's just my, non-expert, estimate, and there are considerably worse scenarios. But it's been a long time since I read anyone I believed to be competent in the field say they expected to eliminate COVID.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 10 2021, @02:53PM
Indeed, the 1918 flu strain is still around, it's just that for a variety of reasons it doesn't kill many people. That's more or less what we should expect with covid-19 doctors will get better at treating it, vaccine manufacturers will get better at creating vaccines and over time it will get less dangerous to those it infects. The likelihood of it ever going away is pretty much non-existent. It just mutates too quickly. And even if we do manage to eliminate it, you're talking decades of concentrated effort by which time, it will probably be a minor nuisance.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 11 2021, @01:35AM (2 children)
It creates resistance. Enough resistance over enough of the population is enough to do covid in.
So we need booster shots every so often? Not seeing the problem here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:24PM (1 child)
There is zero chance of herd immunity to covid. That doesn't happen for viruses that primarily replicate in the mucosa.
And it especially aint gunna happen due to the extremely limited immunity induced by the vaccines.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:32PM
(Score: 2) by PocketSizeSUn on Sunday September 12 2021, @09:49AM (2 children)
Now explain Sweden
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 13 2021, @03:26AM
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday September 13 2021, @05:01AM
Their Constitution doesn't allow restricting mobility so they've paid the price in deaths, compared to their neighbours. Not being stupid, they've done better then some.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday September 10 2021, @12:03PM (2 children)
I beg to disagree. The recent peaks coincide with the spread of new variants. Otherwise there is a clear summer/winter pattern. The US in its totality - being so large - will show overlap thereby diminishing any patterns on the aggregated scale.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday September 10 2021, @12:31PM (1 child)
I have no idea what north america's doing, probably having superspreader events, but in 2 other continents, according to 2 randomly chose countries, whatever was non-tiny and visible on the worldometers world list I have open, your autumn lull seems to be a peak: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/poland/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/peru/ .
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday September 10 2021, @02:10PM
Actually, I believe early data from China showed a mild tendency for the prevalence to decrease with rising temperature. Nothing really significant though. A reasonable guess is that people were spending more time outside.
OTOH, this was a really early study. I read it shortly after the Washington Choir event was noticed.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 10 2021, @04:07PM (2 children)
WTF you are speaking about, man?
Look at the deaths charts, not the positive-tests ones; the latter are hopelessly muddied by governments varying the number of tests in a day, through various changes in testing policy. The deaths, however, do align pretty well, if you take into account climate differences.
https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/gb [who.int]
https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/se [who.int]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday September 11 2021, @12:55PM (1 child)
I was. Why did you assume I wasn't? If you're just going to make up the thing that you're arguing against, you're making yourself not worth arguing against.
Go find another windmill.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @09:07PM
OK, so you were just plain lying. Thanks for the clarification.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 10 2021, @05:25PM
The only real relationship is that people catch it indoors. Winter peaks are due to people avoiding the cold. Summer peaks are due to people avoiding the heat.
Outdoor "super-spreader events" simply aren't, especially those during daylight hours. Staying 6 feet away from everyone in a building with a recirculating air supply is pointless, if they have it you'll catch it. If the 6 feet rule was sufficient, you could let all the smokers go back to smoking at their desks.