With legal challenge, U.S. COVID-19 vaccine mandate enjoys scattered popularity

A man walks past a mobile vaccine clinic in New York, the United States, on Aug. 31, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

As COVID-19 vaccine requirements take effect for workers across the country, new Morning Consult polling suggested employees' support or opposition to the vaccine varied wildly based on the industry they work in -- financial services workers have the highest vaccination rate.

NEW YORK, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Joe Biden's administration suffered a blow after a federal court upheld the block of its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for large businesses, while the country continues to respond to the government's universal vaccination call with various actions.

POLITICAL SETBACK

On Friday, a federal appeals court in New Orleans halted the Biden administration's vaccine or testing requirement for private businesses, "delivering another political setback to one of the White House's signature public health policies," reported The Washington Post.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, helmed by one judge who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and two others who were appointed by President Donald Trump, issued the ruling after temporarily halting the mandate last weekend in response to lawsuits filed by Republican-aligned businesses and legal groups.

Calling the requirement a "mandate," the court said the rule, instituted through the Labor Department, "grossly exceeds OSHA's (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) statutory authority," according to the opinion, written by Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt and joined by Judges Edith H. Jones and Stuart Kyle Duncan.

"Rather than a delicately handled scalpel, the Mandate is a one-size fits-all sledgehammer that makes hardly any attempt to account for differences in workplaces (and workers) that have more than a little bearing on workers' varying degrees of susceptibility to the supposedly 'grave danger' the Mandate purports to address," they wrote.

In addition, they said they believed that the ruling imposed a financial burden on businesses and potentially violated the commerce clause of the Constitution.

"The Mandate imposes a financial burden upon them by deputizing their participation in OSHA's regulatory scheme, exposes them to severe financial risk if they refuse or fail to comply, and threatens to decimate their workforces (and business prospects) by forcing unwilling employees to take their shots, take their tests, or hit the road," they wrote.

VACCINATION SCENARIO

As COVID-19 vaccine requirements take effect for workers across the country, new Morning Consult polling suggested employees' support or opposition to the vaccine varied wildly based on the industry they work in -- financial services workers have the highest vaccination rate, with 78 percent of workers vaccinated and an additional 6 percent planning to get the shot.

According to the poll conducted Nov. 5 to 8 among 48,018 U.S. adults, the sector of financial services was followed by the insurance industry (76 percent vaccinated), technology (74 percent), professional and business services (74 percent), leisure and hospitality (71 percent) and property and real estate (71 percent).

A medical worker prepares a dose of COVID-19 vaccine at the Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles, California, the United States, June 18, 2021. (Photo by Zeng Hui/Xinhua)

The poll found 70 percent of health care workers, who have been subject to vaccine mandates, are vaccinated, while 5 percent plan to get the shot, 10 percent are uncertain and 15 percent are unwilling to get vaccinated. The lowest vaccination rate was among agricultural workers, with only 49 percent vaccinated.

The National Basketball Association (NBA) supported the national vaccination efforts, raising the level of urgency regarding getting booster shots against the coronavirus, telling players and coaches that it is no longer advisable to wait before receiving the additional dose.

The booster shots should be received "as soon as possible, particularly in light of the current coronavirus situation and increasing cases," the league told teams on Friday in a memo.

Earlier in the week, the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association said they were recommending the booster shots be received by those who are fully vaccinated, suggesting that it get done by Dec. 1 in most cases.

PIVOTAL DECISIONS

Republican Senator Ron Johnson's YouTube account was suspended for one week starting on Friday for uploading content violating the platform's policy against COVID-19 misinformation. The video that triggered the suspension was a roundtable discussion in which the lawmaker falsely claimed that coronavirus vaccines are unsafe.

"The updated figures today are 17,619," said the lawmaker from Wisconsin. "That is 225 times the number of deaths in just a 10-month period versus an annual figure for the flu vaccine. These vaccine injuries are real." Johnson was citing numbers from the self-reporting database the Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention once warned that reports in the system, which can easily be gamed by activists hoping to prove a point, "do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem."

In Florida, every school district that had been punished by the state for imposing a mask mandate that violated a statewide ban on them has now lifted its mask order as of this week, as schools across the country drop mask requirements in response to falling COVID-19 cases and vaccines becoming available for children ages five to 11, reported Forbes.

A student prepares to receive the COVID-19 vaccine at the Woodrow Wilson Senior High School in Los Angeles, California, the United States, on Aug. 30, 2021. (Xinhua)

Florida's Miami-Dade, Broward and Alachua counties all dropped their mask orders this week, three of eight school districts that the Florida Department of Education voted to withhold funding from after they imposed strict mask mandates despite a state order prohibiting them.

Schools in such states as Ohio, Michigan, Texas, South Carolina, Massachusetts and Arkansas have lifted their mask mandates in recent weeks, citing falling cases and the fact children can now get vaccinated as reasons behind the changes, with Massachusetts requiring schools to only lift mask orders if 80 percent of the student population is inoculated.