Biden is requiring federal workers to mask up and get tested regularly if they aren’t vaccinated. Mainstream media blames “Trump country” for low vaccination rates, but the data says that’s not entirely accurate.
Summary
President Biden is mandating a rigorous testing regime for unvaccinated federal workers in a bid to increase vaccination rates among the government’s 4 million workers nationwide. Biden’s plan will require employees to “attest” they have been vaccinated but not prove it.
- The new federal workforce plan comes as Biden wants state and local governments to use federal coronavirus aid to pay people $100 to get vaccinated.
- It’s no coincidence Biden’s plan was unveiled as the CDC released a new indoor mask guidance, even for vaccinated people, that would affect 70% of counties in the United States.
- With the new CDC guidance, local governments are dealing with it differently, though in affluent and liberal Denver, Axios reported “Neither state or local governments added any mandates, and people didn’t seem to notice any shift in the pandemic” (emphasis added).
- The mask mandates imposed by Speaker Pelosi on Capitol Hill, where the average 7-day death rate for DC is ZERO, is sparking serious backlash from Republican members of the House after Capitol Police were ordered to arrest anyone not in compliance with the mask mandate.
- Vox broke down the demographics of vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans, leading off their coverage by blaming Republican counties, saying the margin of Trump’s victory in 2020 seems to be a leading indicator of low vaccination rates. (Jim Geraghty of National Review refuted this mainstream media talking point a few days ago by showing incredibly liberal cities with lower-than-average vaccination rates.)
- The New York Times reported on internal documentation at the CDC that helped spur the new mask guidance, reporting “the new data suggest”–not shows, but suggests—”that vaccinated people are spreading the virus”, “although probably to a far lesser degree than the unvaccinated”, which was also called “rare” by the CDC Director.
- Masking in schools, which was also recommended by the CDC regardless of vaccination status, is the hot topic of The Washington Post’s reporting, in which The Post laments that “several Republican-led states have barred school districts from requiring masks”.
- The Federalist’s Chris Bedford took Republican politicians to task for hesitating in preemptively banning COVID-19 vaccine passports, using some extreme and absurd examples to bolster an otherwise defensible position.
- On Newsmax, Florida Rep. Michael Waltz criticized President Biden and Democrats for their renewed push to mask the vaccinated, saying it contradicts everything they’ve said about the vaccine’s effectiveness for months, saying there’s “no science behind [the new guidance].”
- OANN reported on the battle over masks on Capitol Hill, highlighting the response from Capitol Police that “there is no reason it should ever come to someone being arrested” as long as everyone follows the rules.
Author’s Take
Mask on, Mask off, Mask on, Mask off. I don’t know whether this is a terrible, government knock-off of Mr. Miyagi or what.
The amount of flip-flopping by public health officials, the admission by CDC Director Dr. Walensky that what they’re claiming to protect against is exceedingly rare, and the smugness of their tut-tutting anyone who deviates from the mainstream-elite consensus opinion contributes far more to resistance of their guidance and mandates than anything else.
Public officials like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Walensky are losing credibility because they’re putting politics well ahead of science, something the entire mainstream media claimed President Trump was doing.
What is mainstream media saying now? Nothing.
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© Dallas Gerber, 2021
