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April 30, 2021 at 06:27PM
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Many Americans and Brits will face de facto vaccine mandates, as a new poll shows that 56% of businesses will require at least some employees to be inoculated against Covid-19, in many cases under threat of losing their jobs.
The poll, which was conducted by Arizona State University and released on Thursday, showed that 40% of businesses will require all employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19, while 16% will mandate the jabs for at least some of their workers. All told, 88% of businesses will require or encourage their employees to be vaccinated, and 60% said they will demand some kind of proof of inoculation.
The survey, which was backed by the Rockefeller Foundation, paints a bleak picture for those who plan to resist getting the Covid-19 jabs. While the US and UK governments have refrained from making vaccines mandatory – and facing legal challenges that might ensue – the private sector may effectively do it for them. Businesses are already setting the stage to require so-called ‘vaccine passports,’ forcing customers to show proof of inoculation or a negative Covid test before accessing certain goods, services and events.
While many people can choose not to travel abroad or go to business venues that require proof of vaccination, an employer mandate could be more problematic. Arizona State said 31% of businesses plan to take disciplinary action, including possibly firing employees who refuse to comply with their vaccine policies.
A further 44% said non-compliant employees won't be allowed to return to the workplace, while 27% said they will change the work responsibilities of those who fail to obey. Only 15% said there will be no consequences, even though the vaccines are being administered under emergency authorizations and so far lack the long-term study needed for full regulatory approval.
The survey was conducted at 1,168 companies, mostly large businesses with 250 or more employees based in the US and UK. The average business in the poll still has 57% of employees working remotely. About 75% expect workers to be back on site within the next one to six months, but 72% said they plan to offer more flexible work-from-home policies after the pandemic.
Employee wellbeing has suffered greatly during the pandemic. Nearly 58% of businesses said their concerns over employee mental health have increased, while 52% were more concerned about worker engagement. Other troubling issues included Covid-19's impact on burnout, productivity and morale.
US President Joe Biden said all US military personnel may be forced to get Covid-19 vaccinations once the shots receive final approval by government regulators, either through an executive order or a Pentagon edict.
“I'm not saying I won't,” Biden said on Friday when asked by NBC News if he will order a military vaccination mandate himself. He said he prefers to leave the decision to military leaders, however.
“Once the FDA gives final approval for the vaccinations, not emergency use authorization, but final approval, will you order service members to get the COVID vaccine?” -@CraigMelvin asks President Biden pic.twitter.com/f9W50USvaa
The US reached a milestone of having more than 100 million people fully vaccinated against Covid-19 on Friday. But tens of thousands of American troops are reportedly declining inoculation. The Pentagon said earlier this month that nearly 40% of the 123,500 US Marines who had been offered the shots had chosen to pass. At Fort Bragg in North Carolina, less than 50% of Army troops were agreeing to be vaccinated.
“I think you're going to see more and more of them getting it,” Biden said. “And I think it's going to be a tough call as to whether or not they should be required to have to get it in the military because you're such close proximity with other military personnel – whether you're in a quarters where you're all sleeping or whether you're out on maneuvers.”
It is common for the US military to require vaccinations, but only those that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The three Covid-19 shots currently being offered in the US have received only emergency use authorization, not full FDA approval.
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which received emergency use authorization last November, haven't yet applied to the FDA for formal approval. The third vaccine that's currently available, made by Johnson & Johnson, was authorized on February 27, putting it more than two months behind the other two in the approval timeline.
As the Pentagon declares a pullout from Afghanistan, the US corporate press is voicing concerns about an imminent terrorist resurgence, with CNN all but acting as an Al Qaeda mouthpiece, amplifying threats from nameless militants.
In a much-touted “exclusive interview” published on Friday, CNN spoke with two purported “Al Qaeda operatives,” playing up their threats of renewed attacks on the US while implying some connection to the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“War against the US will be continuing on all other fronts unless they are expelled from the rest of the Islamic world,” the fighters, kept entirely anonymous, reportedly said. CNN added that the terrorist faction is “planning a comeback after US forces leave Afghanistan.”
Despite a documented history of rocky relations between Al Qaeda and the Taliban, CNN took the unnamed jihadists at their word when they claimed ties had improved. The network claimed this was proof that the Taliban “is being less than honest” with Washington when it said to have severed links with Al Qaeda.
Ominously headlined “Al Qaeda promises 'war on all fronts' against America as Biden pulls out of Afghanistan,” the CNN story comes less than a day after the White House confirmed that US forces had finally begun their exit from the war-torn country.
President Joe Biden delayed a planned May 1 pullout deadline set in the peace agreement with the Taliban under his predecessor, Donald Trump. Even his later September 11 deadline triggered a wave of hand-wringing in the US mainstream media, generating countless stories warning of a ‘hasty’ withdrawal despite nearly 20 years of war and occupation.
“Will Afghanistan Become a Terrorism Safe Haven Once Again?”asked the New York Times in its typical pensive tone, while the Washington Post declared“After troops leave Afghanistan, US will face challenges maintaining counterterrorism capability.” The Los Angeles Times similarly informed readers“US troops are leaving Afghanistan, but Al Qaeda remains,” and another Post piece – a column from the hawkish Marc Thiessen – claimed“Biden is making an al-Qaeda mastermind’s prophecy come true” by leaving the country.
In lockstep with the corporate media, the US national security state has also expressed dire warnings about ending America’s longest war, with Biden’s CIA chief William Burns telling Congress earlier this month that it would create a “significant risk” of increased terrorism in the region. General Frank McKenzie, who heads CENTCOM – the US military command covering the Middle East and Central Asia – also argued the fight against terrorist groups would become “harder” after the pullout.
Those concerns may be premature, however. Despite Biden’s declared plan to leave the country by September 11, it remains unclear what will become of the 18,000 Pentagon contractors currently deployed alongside some 2,500 uniformed troops. The Defense Department recently suggested some of them would remain in Afghanistan after US forces leave, potentially maintaining some military footprint there.
Biden himself, meanwhile, has spoken of the need for an “over-the-horizon capability” in the region to monitor future threats, with Pentagon officials telling the Times that US troops could simply move to nearby countries, to be redeployed in an instant if needed.
The White House’s ambitious new “peace plan” for Afghanistan might also give pause to the critics of withdrawal, as the administration wants to rewrite the country’s constitution, arrange fresh elections and work out a long-elusive ceasefire deal between the Taliban and the government in Kabul. The lofty project virtually guarantees continued US involvement in Afghan politics, potentially setting up new tripwires for future military intervention should the negotiations go sideways.
While Biden called for an end to the “forever war” in his first joint address to Congress earlier this week, many in the media – as well as in Biden’s own administration – have apparently not had enough. Despite two decades of bloodshed, trillions in tax dollars and countless failed objectives, the drumbeat for continued occupation is only growing louder, even as the pullout looms on the horizon.
Elon Musk’s joy over SpaceX getting the Artemis lunar lander contract may have been premature, as legal challenges from rivals Dynetics and Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origins have caused NASA to suspend work on the project.
“NASA instructed SpaceX that progress on the HLS contract has been suspended until GAO resolves all outstanding litigation related to this procurement,” spokeswoman Monica Witt said on Friday, citing protests from the two rivals.
HLS refers to the human landing system, NASA-speak for the lunar lander intended to be used in the Artemis program, the ambitious US project to land the first woman and “the first person of color” on the Moon.
The decision comes just two weeks after NASA announced that SpaceX would get the “firm-fixed price, milestone-based contract” with a $2.89 billion total award value. Musk’s Starship was selected as the basis for the HLS, beating out the proposals by Blue Origins and Dynetics, a division of Leidos. Back in April 2020, NASA had signed a 10-month contract for $135 million with SpaceX, while giving $579 million to Blue Origins and $253 million to Dynetics for further design work on the landers.
Dynetics, the Alabama-based division of the mammoth Pentagon contractor Leidos, complained that NASA has ignored the fact that four Starships have “have exploded at various stages of their test flights in recent months,” according to Space News.
NASA should have revised its approach to the Human Landing System program or withdrawn the solicitation entirely once it was clear the agency didn’t have the funding to support two companies, Dynetics argues in its protest of the award. https://t.co/4typoMB7l8
In the complaint, filed Monday with the Government Accountability Office, Dynetics argued that “the anti-competitive impact and downstream effect of NASA’s changed acquisition strategy cannot be overstated.”
NASA should have amended their solicitation or asked the bidders to revise their proposals, once it was clear Congress would give it only 25% of the $3.3 billion requested for the fiscal year 2021, the company said.
Blue Origins also challenged the decision on Monday, arguing that there were “errors” in the process that “needed to be addressed and remedied.” SpaceX founder Elon Musk responded by taunting the rival company on social media.
The corporate infighting is another setback for NASA’s play to resurrect the American lunar program. Artemis, named after the twin sister of Apollo – the Olympian deity for which the original US moonshot was named after in the 1960s – was launched by the Trump administration in 2017, with the aim of landing on the moon by 2024.
That timeline has slipped further away as Congress declined to fully fund the project, which is among the few Trump-era initiatives not scrapped by the new Biden administration. It remains to be seen whether the new NASA administrator – long-time Democrat lawmaker Bill Nelson, confirmed unanimously by the Senate on Thursday – will be able to turn things around.
On the same day Nelson was confirmed, China launched the core module of its own permanent orbital space station. This is a major step forward in space exploration for Beijing, which only sent its first astronaut into orbit in 2003.
Once Tianhe, or ‘Harmony of the Heavens, is completed, China will become only the third nation ever to operate an orbital station. The Soviet Union was the first, with its Salyut program, which evolved into Mir and later the International Space Station (ISS). The only US space outpost, Skylab, was crewed for about 24 weeks between May 1973 and February 1974, before it was abandoned.
Earlier this week, Russian space authorities brought up the possibility of launching their own space station to replace the aging ISS as early as 2025. Moscow has also struck a deal with Beijing to potentially build a joint research station on the moon.
