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US hits 70% vaccination rate -- a month late, amid a surge
The U.S. on Monday finally reached President Joe Biden’s goal of getting at least one COVID-19 shot into 70% of American adults -- a month late and amid a fierce surge by the delta variant that is swamping hospitals and leading to new mask rules and mandatory vaccinations around the country.
In a major retreat in the Deep South, Louisiana ordered nearly everyone, vaccinated or not, to wear masks again in all indoor public settings, including schools and colleges. And other cities and states likewise moved to reinstate precautions to counter a crisis blamed on the fast-spreading variant and stubborn resistance to getting the vaccine.
“As quickly as we can discharge them they’re coming in and they’re coming in very sick. We started seeing entire families come down,” lamented Dr. Sergio Segarra, chief medical officer of Baptist Hospital Miami. The Florida medical-center chain reported an increase of over 140% in the past two weeks in the number of people now hospitalized with the virus.
Read:Delta variant: Fauci warns of more 'pain and suffering' ahead
Biden had set a vaccination goal of 70% by the Fourth of July. That figure was the low end of initial government estimates for what would be necessary to achieve herd immunity in the U.S. But that has been rendered insufficient by the highly contagious delta variant, which has enabled the virus to come storming back.
There was was no celebration at the White House on Monday, nor a setting of a new target, as the administration instead struggles to overcome skepticism and outright hostility to the vaccine, especially in the South and other rural and conservative areas.
The U.S. still has not hit the administration’s other goal of fully vaccinating 165 million American adults by July 4. It is about 8.5 million short.
New cases per day in the U.S. have increased sixfold over the past month to an average of nearly 80,000, a level not seen since mid-February. And deaths per day have climbed over the past two weeks from an average of 259 to 360.
Those are still well below the 3,400 deaths and a quarter-million cases per day seen during the worst of the outbreak, in January. But some places around the country are watching caseloads reach their highest levels since the pandemic began. And nearly all deaths and serious illnesses now are in unvaccinated people.
The surge has led states and cities across the U.S. to beat a retreat, just weeks after it looked as if the country was going to see a close-to-normal summer.
Health officials in San Francisco and six other Bay Area counties announced Monday they are reinstating a requirement that everyone — vaccinated or not — wear masks in public indoor spaces.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York City airport and transit workers will have to get vaccinated or face weekly testing. He stopped short of mandating either masks or inoculations for the general public, saying he lacks legal authority to do so.
Read:Florida breaks record with more than 21,000 new COVID cases
Denver’s mayor said the city will require police officers, firefighters and certain other municipal employees to get vaccinated, along with workers at schools, nursing homes, hospitals and jails.
Minnesota’s public colleges and universities will require masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status. New Jersey said workers at state-run nursing homes, psychiatric hospitals and other such institutions must get the shot or face regular testing.
North Carolina’s governor ordered state employees in the agencies under his control to cover up indoors if they are not fully vaccinated.
And McDonald’s said it will require employees and customers to resume wearing masks inside some U.S. restaurants regardless of vaccination status in areas with high or substantial coronavirus transmission. The company didn’t say how many restaurants would be affected by the new mask mandate.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said a nationwide vaccination requirement “is not on the table,” but noted that employers have the right to take such a step.
The U.S. Senate saw its first disclosed breakthrough case of the virus, with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina saying he has mild symptoms.
In Florida, it took two months last summer for the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 to jump from 2,000 to 10,000. It took only 27 days this summer for Florida hospitals to see that same increase, said Florida Hospital Association President Mary Mayhew.
She noted also that this time, 96% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated and they are far younger, many of them in their 20s and 30s.
Amid the surge, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis doubled down on his anti-mask, anti-lockdown stance, warning in a fundraising email over the weekend: “They’re coming for your freedom again.”
Read:Biden lands win, but virus surge threatens to derail agenda
While setting a national vaccination goal may have been useful for trying to drum up enthusiasm for the shots, 70% of Americans getting one shot was never going to be enough to prevent surges among unvaccinated groups. And when he announced the goal, Biden acknowledged it was just a first step.
It’s the level of vaccinations in a community — not a broad national average — that can slow an outbreak or allow it to flourish.
Vaccination rates in some Southern states are far lower than they are New England. Vermont has fully inoculated nearly 78% of its adult population. Alabama has just cracked 43%.
Evacuations lifted as progress made against western fires
Firefighters in Oregon reported good progress in the battle against the nation’s largest wildfire, while authorities canceled evacuation orders near a major blaze in Northern California.
Containment of the Bootleg Fire in remote southern Oregon was up to 74% on Sunday. It was 56% contained a day earlier.
“That reflects several good days of work on the ground where crews have been able to reinforce and build additional containment lines,” fire spokesman Al Nash said Sunday.
Read:Western wildfires calm down in cool weather, but losses grow
The blaze has scorched over 646 square miles (1,673 square kilometers) since being sparked by lightning July 6 in the Fremont-Winema National Forest.
California’s Dixie Fire covered nearly 383 square miles (992 square kilometers) in mountains where 42 homes and other buildings have been destroyed.
The fire was 32% contained Sunday, and evacuation orders and warnings were lifted for several areas of Butte and Plumas counties.
The cause of the blaze, which ignited July 13, was still under investigation.
Authorities warned that with unpredictable winds and extremely dry fuels, the risk of flare-ups remained high.
In recent days, lightning sparked two wildfires that threatened remote homes in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. Evacuation warnings remained in place Sunday for communities along the Trinity River.
In Montana, a wind-driven wildfire destroyed more than a dozen homes, outbuildings and other structures, authorities said Sunday. Evacuations were ordered after flames jumped a highway and moved toward communities near Flathead Lake in the northwestern part of the state.
Crews also battled major blazes in northeast Washington and northern Idaho.
Read: Wildfires blasting through West draw states to lend support
Nearly 22,000 firefighters and support personnel were battling 91 large, active wildfires covering 2,813 square miles (7,285 square kilometers) in mostly western states, the National Interagency Fire Center said.
A historic drought and recent heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West. Scientists say climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
The U.S. Drought Monitor reported last week that while a robust monsoon has delivered drought-easing rainfall to the Southwest, critically dry conditions persist across Northern California and the Northwest, where there has been an expansion of “exceptional drought,” the worst category.
Dry conditions and powerful winds made for dangerous fire conditions in Hawaii. A wind advisory was issued Sunday for portions of Lanai, Maui and the Big Island.
A fast-moving wildfire on Hawaii’s Big Island grew to 62.5 square miles (100.58 square kilometers), prompting evacuation orders.
The wildfire prompted officials to ask about 2,500 residents living in Waikoloa Village to evacuate Sunday, a day after people living in two other communities were asked to evacuate.
“This isn’t the time to panic,” Fire Chief Kazuo Todd said during a televised briefing.
About 50 fire apparatus are being employed to fight the fire, and the National Guard has been called in to help, he said.
Read:Western wildfires: Crews make progress on huge Oregon blaze
“Due to the high wind and weather patterns that are going on through the area, the fire is continuing to break through our fire breaks,” Todd said.
Local media report at least one home has been destroyed. An evacuation center was being set up at the old Kona airport.
Delta variant: Fauci warns of more 'pain and suffering' ahead
Dr. Anthony Fauci warned Sunday that more “pain and suffering” is on the horizon as COVID-19 cases climb again and officials plead with unvaccinated Americans to get their shots.
Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, also said he doesn’t foresee additional lockdowns in the U.S. because he believes enough people are vaccinated to avoid a recurrence of last winter. However, he said not enough are inoculated to “crush the outbreak” at this point.
Read:Global Covid situation worsening as cases near 198 million
Fauci’s warning comes days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed course to recommend that even vaccinated people return to wearing masks indoors in parts of the U.S. where the delta variant is fueling infection surges. With the switch, federal health officials have cited studies showing vaccinated people can spread the virus to others.
Most new infections in the U.S. continue to be among unvaccinated people. So-called breakthrough infections can occur in vaccinated people, and though the vast majority of those cause mild or no symptoms, the research shows they can carry about the same amount of the coronavirus as those who did not get the shots.
“So we’re looking, not, I believe, to lockdown, but we’re looking to some pain and suffering in the future because we’re seeing the cases go up, which is the reason why we keep saying over and over again, the solution to this is get vaccinated and this would not be happening,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week.”
According to data through July 30 from Johns Hopkins University, the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases in the U.S. rose from 30,887 on July 16 to 77,827 on July 30. The seven-day rolling average for the country’s daily new deaths rose over the same period from 253 on July 16 to 358 on July 30, though death reports generally lag weeks after infections and even longer after hospitalizations.
Currently, 58% of Americans 12 years and older are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC’s data tracker.
Read: Global Covid cases top 197mn as Delta variant presents new challenges
However, people are “getting the message” and more are rolling up their sleeves amid the threat of the delta variant, according to the director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Francis Collins said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that vaccinations are up 56% in the U.S. in the last two weeks.
Louisiana, which has the most new cases per capita among states in the past 14 days, has seen vaccinations up threefold over that period, Collins said.
“That’s what desperately needs to happen if we are going to get this delta variant put back in its place, because right now it’s having a pretty big party in the middle of the country,” Collins said.
Collins also said that even with the prevalence of the delta variant, the shots are working “extremely well” and reduce a person’s risk of serious illness and hospitalization “25-fold.” The guidance for vaccinated people to start wearing masks indoors again in certain places with worsening outbreaks, he said, is mostly meant to protect unvaccinated and immunocompromised people.
The CDC has also recommended indoor mask-wearing for all teachers, staff, students and visitors at schools nationwide, regardless of vaccination status.
Florida breaks record with more than 21,000 new COVID cases
Florida reported 21,683 new cases of COVID-19, the state’s highest one-day total since the start of the pandemic, according to federal health data released Saturday, as its theme park resorts again started asking visitors to wear masks indoors.
The state has become the new national epicenter for the virus, accounting for around a fifth of all new cases in the U.S. as the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus continues to spread.
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has resisted mandatory mask mandates and vaccine requirements, and along with the state Legislature, has limited local officials’ ability to impose restrictions meant to stop the spread of COVID-19. DeSantis on Friday barred school districts from requiring students to wear masks when classes resume next month.
Read:Pentagon grappling with new vaccine orders; timing uncertain
The latest numbers were recorded on Friday and released on Saturday on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website. The figures show how quickly the number of cases is rising in the Sunshine State: only a day earlier, Florida reported 17,093 new daily cases. The previous peak in Florida had been 19,334 cases reported on Jan. 7, before the availability of vaccinations became widespread.
The state reported 409 deaths this week, bringing the total to more than 39,000 since its first in March 2020. The state’s peak happened in mid-August 2020, when 1,266 people died over a seven-day period. Deaths usually follow increases in hospitalizations by a few weeks.
DeSantis has blamed the surge on a seasonal increase — more Floridians are indoors because of the hot weather with air conditioning circulating the virus. About 60% of Floridians 12 and older are vaccinated, ranking it about midway among the states.
The Florida Hospital Association said Friday that statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations are nearing last year’s peak, and one of the state’s largest health care systems, AdventHealth’s Central Florida Division, this week advised it would no longer be conducting nonemergency surgeries in order to free up resources for COVID-19 patients.
Universal Orlando Resort and SeaWorld on Saturday became the latest theme park resorts in Florida to again ask visitors to wear masks indoors, with Universal also ordering its employees to wear face coverings to protect against COVID-19, which has been surging across the state.
Read:Biden to launch vaccine push for millions of federal workers
All workers at Universal’s Florida park on Saturday started being required to wear masks while indoors as the employees returned to practicing social distancing. The home to Harry Potter and Despicable Me rides also asked visitors to follow federal and local health guidelines by voluntarily wearing face coverings indoors.
“The health and safety of our guests and team members is always our top priority,” Universal said in a statement.
Health officials on Friday announced that coronavirus cases in Florida had jumped 50% over the past week with COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state nearing last year’s peak.
SeaWorld on Saturday posted on its website that it was recommending that visitors follow recently updated federal recommendations and wear face coverings while indoors.
The change in policy this week at the theme park resorts came after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that everyone wear masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status.
Read:Should vaccinated people mask up with COVID-19 cases rising?
Crosstown rival Walt Disney World started requiring employees and guests older than 2 to wear masks on Friday, but it also went a step further. The Walt Disney Co. said in a statement that it will be requiring all salaried and non-union hourly employees in the U.S. who work on site to be fully vaccinated.
Disney employees who aren’t already vaccinated will have 60 days to do so and those still working from home will need to show proof of vaccination before returning. Disney said it was discussing the vaccine requirements with the union, and added that all new hires will be required to be fully vaccinated before starting work at the company.
Pentagon grappling with new vaccine orders; timing uncertain
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is vowing he “won’t let grass grow under our feet” as the department begins to implement the new vaccine and testing directives. But Pentagon officials on Friday were scrambling to figure out how to enact and enforce the changes across the vast military population and determine which National Guard and Reserve troops would be affected by the orders.
The Pentagon now has two separate missions involving President Joe Biden’s announcement Thursday aimed at increasing COVID-19 vaccines in the federal workforce. The Defense Department must develop plans to make the vaccine mandatory for the military, and set up new requirements for federal workers who will have to either attest to a COVID-19 vaccination or face frequent testing and travel restrictions.
Austin said the department will move expeditiously, but added that he can’t predict how long it will take. He said he plans to consult with medical professionals as well as the military service leaders.
Any plan to make the vaccine mandatory will require a waiver signed by Biden, because the Food and Drug Administration has not yet given the vaccine final, formal approval. According to federal law, the requirement to offer individuals a choice of accepting or rejecting use of an emergency use vaccine may only be waived by the president, “only if the president determines in writing that complying with such requirement is not in the interests of national security.”
READ: Pentagon cancels disputed JEDI cloud contract with Microsoft
Mandating the vaccine prior to FDA approval will likely trigger opposition from vaccine opponents, and drag the military into political debates over what has become a highly divisive issue in America.
Military commanders, however, have also struggled to separate vaccinated recruits from those not vaccinated during early portions of basic training across the services in order to prevent infections. So, for some, a mandate could make training and housing less complicated.
Military service members are already required to get as many as 17 different vaccines, depending on where they are based around the world. Some of the vaccines are specific to certain regions. Military officials have said the pace of vaccines has been growing across the force, with some units seeing nearly 100 percent of their members get shots.
According to the Pentagon, more than 1 million service members are fully vaccinated, and another 233,000 have gotten at least one shot. There are roughly 2 million active duty, Guard and Reserve troops.
A vaccine mandate will also raise questions about whether the military services will discharge troops who refuse the vaccine.
National Guard officials said initial guidance suggests that Guard troops who initially refuse the vaccine once its mandatory will receive counseling from medical personnel. If they still refuse they would be ordered to take it, and failure to follow that order could result in adminitrative or punitive action.
On Friday, Guard officials said leaders were still nailing down legal recommendations on which citizen soldiers would be affected by the new requirements and who would not. Officials said it appears the bulk of the Guard would eventually have to get the vaccine, when it is mandated.
Guard troops on federal active duty would be given the vaccine in their units wherever they are deployed, and others would get it when they report to their monthly drill weekend or annual training. The system, according to Guard officials, would resemble any other vaccine requirement.
Guard members who are on state active duty would not be subject to the requirement initially because they are subject to state laws. But once they return to a monthly drill, the order would apply to them. Guard officials spoke about the new vaccine process on condition of anonymity because procedures are still being finalized.
READ: The big Pentagon internet mystery now partially solved
While the number of COVID-19 deaths across the military has remained small —- largely attributed to the age and health of the force — cases of the virus have been increasing.
As of this week, there have been more than 208,600 cases of COVID-19 among members of the U.S. military. Of those, more than 1,800 have been hospitalized and 28 have died.
Earlier this year, the number of cases and hospitalizations had been growing by relatively small, consistent amounts, and the number of deaths had stalled at 26 for more than two and a half months. In recent weeks the totals spiked. The number of cases increased by more than 3,000 in the last week alone, and those hospitalized grew by 36. Two Navy sailors also died in the last week.
Biden lands win, but virus surge threatens to derail agenda
Joe Biden wagered his campaign and now his presidency on the premise that government itself could still work, even at a time of fractious political division.
When the Senate voted this week, with bipartisan support, to begin work on an infrastructure bill that Biden supported, he seemed to have proof of the concept.
But the triumph was overshadowed by the surging delta variant of the coronavirus that has forced the restoration of mask guidelines, imperiled the nation’s economic recovery and threatened Biden’s central promise that he would lead the United States out of the pandemic.
READ: Biden to launch vaccine push for millions of federal workers
“Democrats have to put wins on the board going into 2022, and COVID clouds on the horizon make getting infrastructure and reconciliation done all that much more important,” said Robert Gibbs, former press secretary to President Barack Obama. He added that it’s “imperative for the Biden administration to communicate on this regularly and prepare for us for the ups and downs of this pandemic.”
The president’s first six months in office, for which he has received strong marks in most public polls, featured the full vaccination of more than 60% of Americans, the creation of more than 3 million new jobs and the passage of a sweeping $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. And in recent days, he has made progress along the massive, two-pronged infrastructure track that could pour $4.5 trillion into the United States’ economy while he also eyed future moves on voting rights and immigration.
But the virulence of the delta strain coupled with stubborn vaccine hesitancy among a significant portion of the American population have raised alarms about another punishing wave of the pandemic, a prospect that has rattled financial markets already nervously eyeing the possibility of long-term inflation.
And now Biden has entered a more challenging phase of his presidency as the virus has once more proven to be an intractable foe that now endangers the nation’s fragile return to normalcy.
“I know this is hard to hear. I know it’s frustrating. I know it’s exhausting to think we’re still in this fight,” Biden said to reporters at the White House on Thursday. “And I know we hoped this would be a simple, straightforward line, without problems or new challenges. But that isn’t real life.”
At the same time, the administration response has hardly been seamless. The administration has been criticized about its messaging on the virus, including confusing guidance this week as to when and why even vaccinated people would need to resume wearing masks indoors.
Biden himself had decreed July 4th to be the day that American declared its “independence” from the virus in front of 1,000 mask-free people at the White House. But just weeks later, staffers and journalists working at the White House were required to don face coverings again, regardless of their vaccination status.
And across the country, Americans who reveled in a return to normalcy are now being asked to wear masks again, stirring resentment in some of those who have followed health guidelines throughout the pandemic, including getting the shot. And the rollback calls into question whether the Biden administration had been too quick to relax guidelines and now risked losing some of the public’s confidence.
READ: Biden woos working class with new ‘buy American’ efforts
“They broke their word. They broke their own rules,” said Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. “And now they’ve broken the trust of the American people.”
To be sure, though, the vaccine hesitancy has been most pronounced in areas strongly associated with support for former President Donald Trump, and some conservative media outlets have amplified the wariness.
Any president must be able to set aside the most organized, carefully laid plans to deal with a sudden crisis. Trump was overwhelmed by the pandemic, his best reelection argument — a strong economy — vanishing overnight while his administration’s erratic and sporadic response to the virus was judged harshly by voters.
Biden’s White House is more methodical and spent months carefully working on its infrastructure plan, which the president has prioritized for months even amid calls from some in his own party to focus on voting rights. The strategy was crafted to reach a bipartisan agreement by persuading at least 10 Republicans to lay down their partisan arms to reach a deal on so-called hard infrastructure — highways, broadband internet access, mass transit — while then proceeding on a larger, Democrats-only budget reconciliation vote for the rest of the plan.
Though the negotiations were left for dead more than once, Biden’s bet on reaching across the aisle paid off, as 17 GOP senators voted to advance the nearly $1 trillion bipartisan plan. It marked a significant win for the White House, even as numerous twists and turns surely lie ahead, including keeping all the Democrats in line for the $3.5 trillion reconciliation plan.
Biden had framed it as necessary to prove that the two parties could still work together as a demonstration that democracies could still deliver for their people.
“Our economy grew more in six months than most Wall Street forecasters expected for the entire year before we implemented our plan,” said Biden, who predicted that the infrastructure deal is “going to continue this momentum over the long term by making the most significant investment to rebuild America in nearly a century.”
Biden has pushed his broadly popular agenda directly into conservative strongholds — he has held about a half-dozen events in Republican-controlled districts in recent weeks — in an effort to paint Republicans as the party of no while hoping to rein in their turnout next fall when he tries to help preserve threadbare Democratic majorities in Congress.
With a wary eye on inflation, the president is betting that voters will reward him for his policies, as the White House argues it is Republicans who are running solely on identity politics rather than sincerely delivering for their voters.
But that strategy depends on the policy working — which is what makes the virus so dangerous.
READ: Russia and China vexing Biden
If another wave causes businesses or schools to close, not only would the public’s faith in Biden’s management of the virus surely waver, but the economic recovery would likely stagnate, jeopardizing the Democrats’ central arguments heading into next fall’s midterms.
“We’re not out of the woods,” Gibbs said.
First US evacuation flight brings 200 Afghans to new home
The first flight evacuating Afghan interpreters and others who worked alongside Americans in Afghanistan landed early Friday at Washington Dulles International Airport, according to an internal U.S. government document and a commercial flight tracking service.
An airliner carrying the 221 Afghans, including 57 children and 15 babies, according to the internal document obtained by The Associated Press, touched down at Washington Dulles International Airport in the early morning hours, according to tracking of the flight by FlightAware.
The evacuation flights, resettling former translators and others who fear retaliation from Afghanistan’s Taliban for having worked with American servicemembers and civilians, are highlighting American uncertainty about how Afghanistan’s government and military will fare after the last U.S. combat forces leave that country in coming weeks.
Also read: UN: Women, children casualties on the rise in Afghanistan
Family members are accompanying the interpreters and others on the flights out.
They were expected to stay at Fort Lee, Virginia for several days, U.S. officials said earlier this month.
Subsequent flights are due to bring more of the applicants who are farthest along in the process of getting visas, having already won approval and cleared security screening.
Also read: US to begin evacuating Afghans who aided American military
Biden to launch vaccine push for millions of federal workers
Hoping to set a model for employers nationwide, President Joe Biden will announce Thursday that millions of federal workers must show proof they’ve received a coronavirus vaccine or submit to regular testing and stringent social distancing, masking and travel restrictions.
An individual familiar with the president’s plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity to confirm details that had yet to be announced publicly, emphasized that the new guidance is not a vaccine mandate for federal employees and that those who decide not to get vaccinated aren’t at risk of being fired.
The new policy amounts to a recognition by the Biden administration that the government — the nation’s biggest employer — must do more to boost sluggish vaccination rates, as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations rebound, driven largely by the spread of the more infectious delta variant.
Biden has placed the blame for the resurgence of the virus squarely on the shoulders of those who aren’t vaccinated.
Read:Biden woos working class with new ‘buy American’ efforts
“The pandemic we have now is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Biden said during a visit Wednesday to a truck plant in Pennsylvania, where he urged the unvaccinated to “please, please, please, please” get a shot. A day earlier, he mused that “if those other 100 million people got vaccinated, we’d be in a very different world.”
The administration on Wednesday was still reviewing details of the expected guidance, and significant questions about its implementation and scope remained. It was unclear whether the president would issue similar requirements for the military and how federal contractors would be affected. The administration is announcing the move now with the hope that it will give agencies enough time to craft their own guidelines and plans for implementation before workers return fully to the office.
The announcement is expected to come as part of broader remarks Thursday that Biden promised would outline “the next steps in our effort to get more Americans vaccinated.”
The individual said the conversation around the new vaccine guidance had been in the works for some time and was intended to provide an example for private companies to follow as they get ready for workers to return this fall. But it’s just the latest policy shift from the administration during a week of new coronavirus mitigation efforts, as the White House grapples with a surge in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations nationwide driven by the delta variant and breakthrough infections among vaccinated Americans.
On Monday, the Department of Veterans Affairs became the first federal agency to require vaccinations, for its health workers. And on Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed its masking guidelines and said that all Americans living in areas with substantial or high coronavirus transmission rates should wear masks indoors, regardless of their vaccination status.
With the latest CDC data showing that Washington, D.C., is facing substantial rates of transmission, by Wednesday reporters and staff were again masking up at the White House.
The new guidance on vaccinations for federal employees reflects the reality that Biden’s national vaccination drive has fallen short of his goals. Public opinion seems to have hardened around the vaccines, with a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finding that among American adults who have not yet received a vaccine, 35% say they probably will not, and 45% say they definitely will not.
“Doing more of the same just will not work,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore health commissioner who’s become a leading public health commentator on the pandemic.
“This is the logical next step,” Wen continued. “If you want to be going in to work and interacting with other people, then you have to be sure you wouldn’t have COVID, and you can do that either by getting vaccinated or by testing.”
About 60% of American adults have been fully vaccinated. Biden missed his goal of having 70% of adults get at least one shot by July 4. The latest figure is 69.3%.
Federal workers and contractor employees are dispersed throughout the nation, including many in states where vaccine skepticism runs high. New York University public service professor Paul Light suggested the new guidance from the Biden administration could help boost vaccination rates in states where there’s been significant resistance.
Read: Biden says US combat mission in Iraq to conclude by year end
“You can’t throw a stick without hitting a fed in many parts of the country,” he said.
Light noted that the government’s influence goes well beyond the people it directly employs. Federal contractors and grant recipients will have to weigh how they’ll adjust to vaccination requirements from Washington.
“If the federal government were to say that everybody who works for the government directly or indirectly must be vaccinated, that’s a massive footprint,” Light said.
He estimated that the federal government directly employs 2.2 million full-time civil servants, plus 1.4 million active-duty military personnel and about 500,000 workers in the U.S. Postal Service. Private contractor employees working on federal jobs number about 5 million, and there are 1.8 million other people employed under federal grants.
While the administration hopes the new guidance will boost vaccination rates, having Biden wade squarely into the middle of the ongoing political debate surrounding vaccines could backfire if it further fuels GOP criticism and distrust of the vaccine among the president’s detractors.
The AP-NORC poll found that views on vaccinations divide sharply along party lines, with Republicans far more likely than Democrats to say they have not been vaccinated and definitely or probably won’t be, 43% to 10%.
Indeed, South Carolina GOP Rep. Ralph Norman, who has resisted the new mask requirements on Capitol Hill, hinted at the fight to come over the new guidelines.
“To require individuals to provide proof of vaccination would be a massive intrusion on the doctor-patient relationship and the privacy of the individual,” he said in a statement.
The Biden administration may also have to grapple with legal challenges to the latest guidelines.
The federal workplace is governed by layers of rules and regulations, so private employers as well as state and local governments will be looking at the White House vaccination policy to signal how far they can go without triggering resistance from employees or even lawsuits.
But while the Justice Department and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have both said no federal laws prevent businesses from requiring vaccinations as a condition of employment, litigation is certain to follow workplace mandates, said Sharon Perley Masling, an employment lawyer who leads the COVID-19 task force at Morgan Lewis.
Read: Biden says getting vaccinated ‘gigantically important’
“It’s a really challenging issue for employers,” Masling said. “We have seen employers explore a whole range of options, from encouraging vaccinations, to incentivizing vaccinations, to mandating vaccinations for new hires, or for everyone.”
Among examples from major companies, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines are requiring new employees to show proof of vaccination. Goldman Sachs is requiring its employees to disclose their vaccination status but is not mandating they be vaccinated.
If an employer does set a hard requirement, employees can ask for an exemption for medical or religious reasons under federal civil rights laws.
According to EEOC rules, the employer must provide “reasonable accommodation that does not pose an undue hardship on the operation of the employer’s business.” Some accommodations could include masking up at work, social distancing, working a modified shift, regular COVID-19 testing or the option to work remotely, or even offering a reassignment.
Should vaccinated people mask up with COVID-19 cases rising?
Should vaccinated people mask up with COVID-19 cases rising?
Yes. In places where the virus is surging, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that vaccinated people return to wearing masks in public indoor places.
Read:Bhutan fully vaccinates 90% of eligible adults within a week
The CDC recently announced the updated guidance, citing new evidence that vaccinated people who get breakthrough infections could carry enough virus in their noses and throats to infect others.
COVID-19 vaccines greatly reduce the chance of severe illness and death and remain effective against variants, including the now predominant delta variant. But it’s still possible to get infected.
Masking could prevent the spread of the virus to children too young for vaccination and people with weak immune systems.
In short, the vaccine protects you. A mask protects others in case you are carrying the virus without knowing it.
Read: Tokyo governor urges youth to get vaccinated to slow surge
You can find out your county’s level of coronavirus transmission at the CDC’s COVID-19 data tracker website. The CDC recommends indoor masking in areas where transmission is substantial or high. Those areas are marked in orange and red on the site.
The CDC also recommends indoor masks for all teachers, staff, students and visitors to schools, regardless of vaccination status.
Biden woos working class with new ‘buy American’ efforts
President Joe Biden checked out the big rigs at a Pennsylvania truck factory on Wednesday and promised workers that his policies would reshape the U.S economy for the working class — a message clearly aimed at a group of voters who have drifted to Republicans.
Biden highlighted new “buy American” rules from his administration that he said would put a new muscle behind an initiative that he argued had become a “hollow promise” in recent years.
“They got a new sheriff in town,” Biden said after touring Mack Truck’s Lehigh Valley operations facility. He said the effort would help create jobs, a central thrust of his administration’s “build back better” program.
Administration officials, who have made manufacturing jobs a priority, believe Democrats’ political prospects next year might hinge on whether Biden succeeds in reinvigorating a sector that has steadily lost jobs for more than four decades.
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Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump each said his policies would save manufacturing jobs, yet none of them broke the long-term trend in a lasting way.
The administration is championing a $973 billion infrastructure package, $52 billion for computer chip production, sweeping investments in clean energy and the use of government procurement contracts to create factory jobs.
On the visit, Biden heard about Mack’s electric garbage trucks.
“The ability to build and sell these new trucks would be helped by the president’s proposed investment in buy American production incentives for domestic electric vehicle manufacturing,” said White House deputy press secretary Karine Jeanne-Pierre.
The plant was neatly organized, with the thousands of truck parts organized in aisles and the hulls of half-finished trucks awaiting the president’s inspection. The plant was silent other than the whir of fans. Work was halted as part of a two-week hiatus during which Biden visited.
The president won Lehigh County in the 2020 election, but he is facing the perpetual challenge of past administrations to revive a manufacturing sector at the heart of American identity. Failure to bring back manufacturing jobs could further hurt already ailing factory towns across the country and possibly imperil Democrats’ chances in the 2022 midterm elections.
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said Biden should siphon off unspent money from his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package to cover the investments in infrastructure, instead of relying on tax increases and other revenue-raisers to do so.
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“Hopefully, he will use his visit to learn about the real, physical infrastructure needs of Pennsylvanians — and the huge sums of unused ‘COVID’ funds which should pay for that infrastructure,” Toomey said in a statement.
Layoffs of white factory workers led communities to vote for Republican challengers and turn against Democratic incumbents, according to a 2021 research paper by McGill University’s Leonardo Baccini and Georgetown University’s Stephen Weymouth. They found a connection between deindustrialization and greater racial division as white voters interpreted the layoffs as a loss of social status.
Areas with more factory layoffs also became more pessimistic about the entire economy. The trends documented in the research were most pronounced in 2016, when Donald Trump won the White House while emphasizing blue-collar identity and racial differences.
One challenge for Democrats is that they’re not being forced to deal with the most recent manufacturing job losses, but layoffs that began decades ago.
“Biden would benefit from an improved manufacturing jobs outlook,” Weymouth said. “But a lot of economists think that many of these jobs are gone for good. And so, it’s an uphill battle. There’s alternatives: The president can pursue a more substantial social safety net for people who lose their jobs or investments in these communities that declined for decades.”
The Biden administration is trying to help domestic manufacturers by proposing to increase the amount of American-made goods being purchased by the federal government.
The administration is proposing that any products bought by the government must have 60% of the value of their component parts manufactured in the United States. The proposal would gradually increase that figure to 75% by 2029, significantly higher than the 55% threshold under current law.
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Manufacturing has improved since the depths of more than a year ago during the coronavirus pandemic-induced recession. Labor Department data show that factories have regained about two-thirds of the 1.4 million manufacturing jobs lost because of the outbreak. Factory output as tracked by the Federal Reserve is just below its pre-pandemic levels.
But the manufacturing sector — especially autos — is facing serious challenges.
Automakers are limited by a global shortage of computer chips. Without the chips that are needed for a modern vehicle, the production of cars and trucks has dropped from an annual pace of 10.79 million at the end of last year to 8.91 million in June, a decline of nearly 18% as measured by the Fed. Analysts at IHS Market estimate that the supply of semiconductors will only stabilize and recover in the second half of 2022, right as the midterm races become more intense.
For the past several decades, presidents have pledged to bring back factory jobs without much success. Manufacturing employment peaked in 1979 at nearly 19.6 million jobs, only to slide downward with steep declines after the 2001 recession and the 2007-09 Great Recession. The figure now stands at 12.3 million.