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posted by martyb on Friday September 10 2021, @07:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the get-vacinated-and-wear-a-mask dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday September 10 2021, @02:05PM (4 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 10 2021, @02:05PM (#1176614) Journal

    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.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 10 2021, @02:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 10 2021, @02:53PM (#1176634)

    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)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 11 2021, @01:35AM (#1176854) Journal

    The vaccine doesn't create an immunity to catching COVID

    It creates resistance. Enough resistance over enough of the population is enough to do covid in.

    It also looks as if the resistance to catching it in the first place wanes rapidly. ISTR 2%/month being mentioned.

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:24PM (#1177059)

      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

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:32PM (#1177063) Journal
        Except of course, we do have that resistance, contrary to narrative.