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President Biden’s vaccine mandate for America’s 10.3 million health care workers, set to kick in with their first shot due by 6 December and full vaccination by 4 January, has been halted by a preliminary injunction issued on 30 November by a federal judge.
Confirming what Judge Andrew Napolitano has repeatedly stated in podcasts with Gerald Celente over the past several weeks, the federal judge’s ruling states that it is the province of Congress, not a regulatory agency (in this case the Occupational Safety and Health Administration), at the behest of the president, to impose such a mandate.
Putting another wrinkle in the Biden imposed mandate, the judge added that, “It is not clear that even an act of Congress mandating a vaccine would be constitutional.”
The injunction supports the contention by a coalition of more than a dozen states opposing another Biden vaccine mandate—one that would require private employers of 100 or more workers to compel all workers to be vaxxed—that OSHA had exceeded its authority.
The Biden administration had threatened to withhold Medicare and Medicaid funds if health care providers didn’t comply by requiring workers to be vaxxed, but hospital and nursing home operators resisted on the grounds that vaccine-hesitant staff would leave and thus exacerbate an already serious worker shortage; see “SPOTLIGHT: WORKERS ON DEMAND” (26 Oct 2021).
TRENDPOST: This latest ruling is hardly the end of the story; for one thing, it is sure to be appealed. But it shows that pushback against vaccine mandates is organized and has some teeth. As to the “why” of health care workers’ vaccine hesitancy, see “NOT ‘RIGHT WING,’ NOT ‘CONSPIRACY THEORISTS.’ ONE THIRD OF HEALTHCARE WORKERS WON’T GET VAXXED” (23 Nov 2021) and “NURSING HOME EMPLOYEES STILL JAB-WARY” (26 Oct 2021).