Our friend Ed Morrissey observes that the enforcement of mandatory Covid-vaccination requirements is serious enough that the “Mayo Clinic fire[d] 700 of its workers last night for failing to get vaccinated according to its mandate, a number that amounts to one percent of its overall workforce.” We’re in the middle of the Omicron wave, people are testing positive in record numbers, but that’s not a good enough reason to keep these employees, nurses, doctors, etc. Without a vaccination, everybody’s gotta go!
Meanwhile, the federal government still hasn’t quite decided what to do with its unvaccinated employees, more than six weeks after the deadline to get vaccinated:
The start of the new year brings the end of the waiting period the Biden administration imposed on serious disciplinary actions against federal employees not in compliance with the vaccine mandate, although uncertainty remains regarding how soon such actions might begin and how widespread they might be.
While the administration initially had set a November 22 deadline for employees to be fully vaccinated or else face discipline — unless they have an approved or pending request for an exception — it later termed employees compliant if they had received at least one dose of a vaccine or had requested or received an exception for medical or religious reasons. It also told agencies to generally hold off on discipline more serious than counseling “until the new calendar year begins in January.”
That did not specify a date, but now that the new year has begun, agencies are free to take additional steps against unvaccinated employees who never requested an exception or those whose request was denied. That is to begin with an unpaid suspension of under 14 days (not subject to an appeal), then potentially a longer unpaid suspension or an immediate notice of firing.
The latest accounting — now nearly a month old — showed 92.5 percent of federal employees had received at least one dose of vaccine and another 5 percent had requested exceptions.
That may not sound like much, but 2.5 percent of the 2.93 million federal employees adds up to 73,250 people.
Maybe you agree with the vaccination mandate, and maybe you disagree with it; I think mandates are counterproductive and spur the unvaccinated to dig in their heels. But I think we can all agree on the supreme absurdity of having a national vaccination mandate for private employers, but having no enforcement of vaccination mandates within the federal government, the one institution with the clearest authority to enact a mandate among its employees.