President Joe Biden is expected to sign an order Thursday requiring all federal employees to be vaccinated, without any option for regular coronavirus testing to opt out of the mandate, according to a person familiar with the plans.
The person spoke on the condition of anonymity ahead of the president’s scheduled 5 p.m. remarks.
The action affecting the estimated 2.1 million workers comes as Biden plans to outline a “robust plan to stop the spread of the delta variant and boost covid-19 vaccinations,” the White House said.
It’s expected to be a significant speech at a turning point for the United States, where hopes that vaccinations would ease the strain on hospitals and allow more social freedoms were dampened by the spread of the highly contagious variant. Biden also plans to call for a global summit, to be held during the U.N. General Assembly later this month, to respond to the coronavirus crisis and boost vaccine supply to the developing world.
The pressure on Biden is increasing as the public health outlook worsens. The seven-day average of coronavirus deaths across the United States was 1,524 as of Wednesday, compared with 509 one month ago, amid lackluster vaccine uptake in many states and controversies over mask and vaccine mandates.
Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci warned that the United States is “still in pandemic mode” because of the number of new coronavirus infections reported each day.
In an interview with Axios published Thursday, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said a rate of about 160,000 new infections a day is “not even modestly good control … which means it’s a public health threat.”
“In a country of our size, you can’t be hanging around and having 100,000 infections a day. You’ve got to get well below 10,000 before you start feeling comfortable,” Fauci said in the interview. His comments suggested that coronavirus infections now are more than 10 times higher than the level needed to end the covid-19 pandemic.
As of Thursday, average daily new cases in the United States are over 149,000, according to data tracked by The Washington Post.
The United States reached its latest vaccination milestone on Tuesday: Three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
Fauci noted to Axios that once enough individuals have been vaccinated, “you’ll still get some people getting infected, but you’re not going to have it as a public health threat.”
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President Biden is not incompetent, as many label him. He is a shrewd, seasoned politician that knows how to manipulate and maneuver to get to and stay at the top. He knows his best hope to avoid a midterm disaster is to have a pandemic crisis approaching the election in order to invoke all manner of election irregularities and fraud in order to not lose Democrat majorities in both houses of congress. He will do as much or as little as possible to keep the pandemic “alive and well” even at the expense of many U.S. citizens who will end up “dead and done” as a result. He recently demonstrated to the world at large that he has no hesitation to sacrifice human lives to achieve his objectives when he left an unknown number of U.S. citizens and at-risk foreign collaborators to fend for themselves in Afghanistan. The pandemic will be in full force until November 8th, 2022 or whatever date after that when votes stop being created and counted for Democrats. He is most assuredly “dumb like a fox”.
That Biden and those Dems sure are cagey, Mark H. Let’s see, maybe the GOP can counteract all this shrew manipulation by, say, getting vaccinated, wearing masks, and ending the pandemic? What a diabolical idea! That’ll show ‘em!
The best thing for Biden is to show that the pandemic is under control and the economy is doing well due to his administration’s efforts. Would make no sense to delay efforts to end the pandemic as Mark H suggests. It also makes no sense to blame Biden for those still in Afghanistan even after warnings. Hopefully, those wanting to leave will be able to do so in the next months.
Mark T we really don’t know how easy it was to leave Afghanistan as your suggesting. I suspect it could have been very difficult if not impossible to get to and into the airport especially if you lived outside of Kabul. We have to do all we can to help those that are trapped and want to leave.