President Biden playing hardball on COVID-19 vaccinations
With over 1/4 of Americans eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, almost 80 million, being unvaccinated, President Joe Biden gave a televised address to the nation concerning the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that almost a quarter of America is still unvaccinated, despite the vaccine being free, easily accessible, and FDA approved, the final thing, FDA approval, being what many cited as the reason for waiting!
A year and a half since this pandemic hit the US, and we are back up to the numbers of January 2021, with the most recent seven-day average being 136,558 new cases, 11,754 hospitalizations, and 1,077 deaths, according to the CDC. In my opinion, nine months after the vaccine was released, this is too high, especially with the vaccine being free, and available in many locations without an appointment, you can literally go to a Walgreens or CVS, pick up your regular medications and get a COVID-19 vaccine.
President Biden has said he will sign executive orders which will force healthcare workers, whose facilities receive money from Medicaid and Medicare, federal executive branch employees and contractors who work with the federal government, to get vaccinated, and will require private companies with 100 or more employees to either enforce vaccinations or weekly testing for COVID-19 for their employees.
Of course, the GOP is screaming FREEDOM from the rooftops, calling on people and companies to rise up against the Tyrany of the radical left, which is a joke, Biden is nowhere near the far left, he’s a centrist through and through. We are 19 months into this pandemic and the COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and death stats are trending upward once again. So, I applaud President Biden for his harder stance, this is a national emergency, and without firm action, it’s going to get worse. How many deaths are acceptable? 659,000 Americans have already died from COVID-19, increasing by 1,000 – 1,200 per day.
School districts in California are poised to require that all students eligible for the vaccine, get vaccinated. We already have mandates for vaccinations to attend school for children’s illnesses like mumps, measles, and rubella. So, why not mandate vaccination for a virus that has killed over 650,000 Americans, including children? I’m not sure whether it’s possible, as schools are locally administered, but could the federal Department of Education hand down a mandate to vaccinate all children old enough for the vaccine?
I hear from many people, including media personalities like Tucker Carlson, that forcing your child to wear a mask is child abuse. You know what is child abuse, not doing everything you can to protect your child from this deadly virus. Wearing a piece of cloth over your mouth and nose, and getting a vaccine where available, is a small price to pay to know that your child is as protected as possible.
Call me a member of the radical left, but my view is that if your freedom is putting millions of people’s lives at risk, your freedom needs to be put on the back burner, I value people’s lives over your freedom.
Of course, we know that legal challenges to Biden’s executive orders are coming from the right, and we will see how that goes. Hopefully, judges will throw their challenges out, but we’ll have to wait and see. What is the truth is that with one quarter of Americans unvaccinated, COVID-19 is going nowhere, whether or not, Biden’s orders survive the legal challenges, it’s the right thing to do, clearly people cannot be trusted to use their best judgment, because they have all drunk the right-wing media Koolaid
On a personal level…
I got my second dose yesterday, so I am now fully vaccinated, should I have gotten it sooner? yes, but I work from home and rarely go out, probably not the best justification for waiting, but I always wore a mask and was socially distancing whenever I did have to venture out. My wife and son are also fully vaccinated, although we did have a scare recently with our son, who got sick with symptoms of Coronavirus, thankfully, after being tested, his test came back as negative. It’s scary that in these times, when anyone gets sick with a garden variety virus, our immediate thought is that it is COVID-19.