Marinscope
The federal government turned up the heat on vaccinations last week, issuing sweeping mandates requiring vaccinations, or weekly negative COVID-19 tests for 80 million Americans who work for businesses with 100 or more employees.
The aftermath of President Biden’s orders produced confusion and criticism.
The details of the federal mandate remained largely unknown this week. The United States Postal Service said it probably would not obey the president’s order. The Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District said it would require vaccinations for new hires only, not existing employees. Conservatives said the constitutionality of the president’s order will be challenged in court, to which the president said “bring it on.”
Critics said the president’s forced vaccinations to keep a job creates a false choice that could cause recriminations against the un-vaxxed, many of whom are minorities. Others said it’s an political power play designed to give the illusion of doing something, but actually results in making the unvaccinated dig in.
A Washington Post-ABC poll released last weekend showed that only 18 percent of the unvaccinated would get vaccinated if forced by their employers. Seventy-two percent of the unvaccinated said they would quit first, if they couldn’t get a medical or religious exemption.
With that controversy swirling nationally, Marin County remained calm, a place in which the Variant D of COVID-19 has been held at bay.
In the last 14 days there have been seven fewer cases than the previous two weeks. There has not been a COVID-19 related death in Marin for weeks.
Dr. Lisa Santora, the Marin County deputy public health officer, reported that the number of new COVID cases in Marin schools is about the same, or even lower, as the previous time last year.
Health records show that there were 71 coronavirus cases involving Marin students of school employees since school began almost a month ago. Of the 71 cases, 65 were students and six were adults. Not one case required hospitalization.
As for California as a whole, as of last week Wednesday (Sept. 8), California had 4,322,361 confirmed cases (+0.2% from previous day) and 66,257 deaths (+0.3% from previous day), according to state data. California has administered 47,621,874 vaccine doses, and 67.6% of eligible Californians are fully vaccinated.
The president also called for all students eligible for a COVID vaccination to be vaccinated to attend school. Los Angeles Unified School District leaped on that and now requires all students there to have their first shot by Nov. 3.
Other California school districts did not follow suit and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, who faced a recall election this week, said there is no conversation about a statewide mandate for school children to be vaccinated.
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