White House touts effects of vaccine requirements ahead of Biden trip

Clayco manager, no name given:

“When we really when we really began pushing vaccinations, we enacted a mandate internally and in the spring, things shot up for us. We’re still, you know, in the field that’s kind of where things are still a struggle. All right. Our team, all, you know, has the incentive to to get vaccinated, but not all the tradesmen necessarily work for us. It’s it’s a, it’s a process. Well, we want to get better.”

Joe Biden, U.S. President: “Well, Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, I’m allowed to insist that anyone doing any income at work has to be vaccinated, all federal workers and federal contractors. And it’s beginning to make it from a profound change in the number of people who are not vaccinated. And you saw what United Airlines did. United Airlines was having real, real trouble and so they mandated it.  And now they’re at 90-some percent and you know, and we’re we’re saving lives. This most recent pandemic is a consequence of the unvaccinated. Seven, think about this, 700,000 people dead in the United States. That’s more than every war we fought by double. I mean, it’s just it’s just such a… anyway.”

“Folks, vaccination requirements work and there’s nothing new about it. They’ve been around for decades. We’ve been living with these requirements throughout our lives. Students, health care professionals, our troops have been required to see vaccination for everything from polio to measles to mumps to rubella. And the reason most people in America don’t worry about polio, measles, mumps, rubella is because they’ve been vaccinated.”

“We have to beat this thing. So, while I didn’t race to do it right away, that’s why I have had to move toward requirements and everyone had to get vaccinated where I had the authority to do that. It wasn’t my first instinct. My administration is now requiring federal workers to be vaccinated. We’ve also required federal contractors to be vaccinated. If you have a contract with the federal government, working for the federal government you have to be vaccinated. We’re requiring active duty military to be vaccinated. We’re making sure health care workers are vaccinated, because if you seek care at a healthcare facility you should have a certainty that the people providing that care are protected from COVID and cannot spread it to you. ”

“The Labor Department is going to shortly issue an emergency rule, which I asked for several weeks ago, and they’re going through the process to require all employers with more than 100 people, whether they work for the federal government. This is within the purview of the Labor Department to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated or face testing at least once a week. In total, this Labor Department vaccination requirement will cover 100 million Americans. About two thirds of all the people work in America. And here’s the deal. These requirements are already proving that they work. Starting in July, when I announced the first vaccination requirement for the federal government, about 95 million eligible Americans were unvaccinated, as was mentioned a little bit earlier. Today we reduced that number to 67 (million) eligible Americans who are infected and today released a new report outlining effective vaccination requirements that are already proving their worth.”

“So, today I’m calling on more employers to act. My message is require your employees to get vaccinated. With vaccinations, we’re going to beat this pandemic. Without them, we face endless months of chaos in our hospitals, damage to our economy and anxiety in our schools and empty restaurants and much less commerce. Look, I know the vaccination requirements are tough medicine, unpopular with some, politics for others, but their life saving. Game changing for our country.”

“We have a plan. We have the tools. We’re using them. We’re making progress. We just have to finish the job. Finish the job. So for God’s sake, for your own sake, for the sake of your families, get vaccinated. We can do this. We can do this if we do it together and we can literally change the circumstances, the health, the camaraderie, the employment and the access to a growing economy, if we step up and lead the world.”