WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration will end most of the last remaining federal COVID-19 vaccine requirements next week when the national public health emergency for the coronavirus ends, the White House said Monday.

Vaccine requirements for federal workers and federal contractors, as well as foreign air travelers to the U.S., will end May 11. The government is also beginning the process of lifting shot requirements for Head Start educators, healthcare workers, and noncitizens at U.S. land borders.

The requirements are among the last vestiges of some of the more coercive measures taken by the federal government to promote vaccination as the deadly virus raged, and their end marks the latest display of how President Joe Biden’s administration is moving to treat COVID-19 as a routine, endemic illness.

“While I believe that these vaccine mandates had a tremendous beneficial impact, we are now at a point where we think that it makes a lot of sense to pull these requirements down,” White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha told The Associated Press on Monday.

Deeply polarizing at the time and the subject of numerous legal challenges — many of which were successful — the vaccination requirements were imposed by Biden in successive waves in late 2022 as the nation’s vaccination rate plateaued even amid the emergence of new, more transmissible variants of COVID-19.

More than 100 million people at one time were covered by Biden’s sweeping mandates, which he announced on Sept. 9, 2021, as the delta variant of the virus was sickening more people than at any time up to that point in the pandemic. Biden had ruled out such requirements before taking office that January, but came to embrace them to change the behavior of what he viewed to be a stubborn slice of the public that refused to be inoculated, saying they jeopardized the lives of others and the nation’s economic recovery.

“We’ve been patient. But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us,” Biden said at the time. The unvaccinated minority “can cause a lot of damage, and they are.”

Federal courts and Congress have already rolled back Biden’s vaccine requirements for large employers and military servicemembers.

Mandates remain for many employees of the National Institutes of Health, Indian Health Service and Department of Veterans Affairs — which implemented their own requirements for healthcare staff and others independent of the White House — will remain while those agencies review their own requirements, the administration said.

Over 1.13 million people in the U.S. have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic began more than three years ago, including 1,052 people in the week ending April 26, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That was the lowest weekly death toll from the virus since March 2020.

“COVID continues to be a problem,” Jha said. “But our healthcare system or public health resources are far more able to respond to the threat that COVID poses to our country and do so in a way that does not cause problems with access to care for Americans.”

He added, “Some of these emergency powers are just not necessary in the same way anymore.”

More than 270 million people in the U.S., or just over 81% of the population, have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the CDC.

For more than a year, U.S. health officials have been eyeing a long-term response to COVID-19 that is more similar to the approach to influenza, with updated shots yearly targeted at the latest strains of the virus — particularly for the most vulnerable. But fewer than 56 million people in the U.S., or 17% of the population, have received a dose of the updated bivalent boosters that became available in September 2022 and provide better protection against the omicron variants that remain in circulation.

“We don’t have a national mandate for flu vaccines in the same way, and yet we see pretty good uptake of flu vaccines,” Jha said. “The goal here really is to continue to encourage people to get vaccinated, but I don’t think mandates are going to be necessary for getting Americans vaccinated against COVID in the future.”

While federal mandates are ending, Jha predicted that some employers, especially medical facilities, may decide to maintain their COVID-19 vaccination requirements. He noted that the hospital where he practices has had a flu vaccine requirement for employees for 20 years.

Jha dismissed concerns that the ending of the international traveler vaccination requirement would increase the risk of a new variant from overseas entering the U.S. Biden has already rolled back virus testing requirements for both American citizens and foreign travelers to the U.S.

Jha said the U.S. was already protected by a traveler genomic surveillance program, which, for instance, tests for different virus strains in aircraft wastewater.

“We think that we are much more able to identify if a new variant shows up in the United States and respond effectively,” he said. “And I think that’s what makes the need for a vaccine mandate for travelers less necessary right now.”

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed. Last April, when asked about vaccine mandates, she made her position clear, “So—so here is the thing. We are—we cannot require someone to be vaccinated. That’s just not what we can do. It is a matter of privacy to know who is or who isn’t.”

Yet here we are, with Big Brother issuing this new edict, The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has issued an emergency temporary standard (ETS) to minimize the risk of COVID-19 transmission in the workplace. The ETS establishes binding requirements to protect unvaccinated employees of large employers (100 or more employees from the risk of contracting COVID-19 in the workplace.

Their rationale is to protect workers from themselves, “Unvaccinated workers are much more likely to contract and transmit COVID-19 in the workplace than vaccinated workers.”

Maybe, or maybe not.

According to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky in August, “Vaccines no longer prevent you from spreading COVID.”

This leads to several questions, which the corporate media seems uninterested in exploring or asking. Why is this now suddenly an “emergency”? The vaccines have been available for almost a year and COVID has been with us for two years, yet now OSHA sees mandatory vaccination as an “emergency.”

Why are workers at companies with 100 employees at such risk while similar companies with 99 employees are not, such that the mandate does not apply to them? Does that one extra employee turn a business from a safe enterprise into a superspreading workplace? Not to worry though. The Surgeon General “suggests federal vaccine mandate could expand to small businesses.”

Are all businesses equal? Obviously, a business with all employees working in a single large room is different from one where employees are distant from each other, working outdoors or working remotely with little close contact.

One can go from work, with a vaccine mandate, to a crowded health club, grocery store, airplane, or mall, in contact with even more people, but without a vaccine mandate. If a mandate is life-saving, why does it only apply in select circumstances? It’s much like telling people to eat healthily and not smoke when at work but, after work, they are free to do whatever they want to.

The leaders, who enforce such mandates, of these larger companies should know the vaccination status of their employees, perhaps not individually but collectively. Yet the CDC director, heading the organization at the forefront of America’s COVID response, does not know what percent of CDC staffers, in the bureaucracy she leads, have been vaccinated. Director Walensky could not answer this question posed to her last week by a U.S. senator. Another “do as I say, not as I do” moment from our government.

President Biden insists his administration’s vaccine mandates are popular, asserting there is “broad public support.” With such support, it would be easy for Congress to pass legislation mandating vaccines, rather than leaving the decision to an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracies and courts. Perhaps these mandates are not as popular as Biden claims, including in the halls of Congress.

Members of Congress and their staffers are not subject to Biden’s vaccine mandate. How rich if Congress required vaccines for you and me, but not for themselves.

Are average Americans behind these vaccine mandates? Rasmussen Reports says no, “More than half of voters support workers refusing to comply with mandatory vaccination against COVID-19, and believe that firing workers for non-compliance would hurt the U.S. economy.”

America is now mostly vaccinated. For working-age adults, 18 years and older, 80 percent have had at least one dose and 70 percent are fully vaccinated. What about the rest? This is the small subgroup that the mandates are directed toward.

There was a surge in vaccinations last spring when vaccines were readily available to the general public. By summer, the vaccination rate flattened, with about 1.3 million doses given per day currently in the U.S., and it’s unclear if these are newly vaccinated or booster doses.

We are now in the zone of diminishing returns, where despite pushes for vaccination, most of those willing or interested in being vaccinated have already received the jab. Those still unvaccinated, for whatever reason, are far less inclined to change their minds at this point.

I must add the standard and necessary disclaimer that I am not anti-vaccine, having been personally vaccinated. Nor am I offering medical advice, only an analysis of this newsworthy issue. Those unvaccinated by now are unlikely to reverse course. As reported by the Daily Mail, a survey of 6,000 adults found that half of the unvaccinated would not change their minds.

These vaccine hesitant, despite media claims to the contrary, are not knuckle-dragging Trump-supporting deplorables waiting for JFK Jr.’s return, but instead include two-Democrat leaning groups: the most highly educated as well as people of color.

So, what now? Vaccine passports and QR codes are already balkanizing the world, creating a new group of socio-economic pariahs, blocking the unalienable rights of many for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Other countries are taking an even more extreme approach.

Unvaccinated Australians in the state of Victoria will remain in virtual prison until at least 2023, their key freedoms eliminated. Similar restrictions are in place in Germany, and America is following suit. Will this all be temporary or permanent? Eventually, herd immunity will be reached via natural infection and vaccinations and such draconian restrictions will no longer be necessary. Or will they?

Power is addictive, an aphrodisiac to those charged with representing their people. Now it’s vaccines, but what next? Once a population is compliant, beaten down by fear and shame, they are less likely to resist present and future controls, regardless of founding documents or natural law. Law enforcement and the military can squash any pockets of rebellion, as we know from history, whether Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s USSR, or Mao’s China.

The courts may temporarily halt the mandates, but there will be appeals, likely all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and there is no way of predicting how that will end. Do mandates even matter if companies are taking it upon themselves to enforce vaccinations with the non-compliant being fired?

If most are vaccinated or cowed into submission by the time the courts or Congress settles the issue, it won’t matter anymore. At least until the next pandemic or public emergency.

There may also be selective enforcement, backing off when resulting economic pain becomes too much, affecting the ruling class in their day-to-day lives. The Department of Labor has now decided that most truckers will not fall under the mandate. Perhaps Biden and Pelosi are concerned about delays in receiving their favorite gourmet ice creams.

Putting hope in elected Republicans may be wishful thinking, as we learned during the Trump presidency. While Trump pushed back against the deep state during his first two years, Paul Ryan and the GOP establishment worked to undermine him every step of the way.

Will a new Republican Congress in 2022 matter? COVID will likely be over by then, but the government’s appetite for tyranny will only be whetted. Voters will push back, as they did last week, but will it matter in the big picture?

As Ronald Reagan said in 1964, it’s “a time for choosing”, with the vaccine mandates bringing this issue to the forefront. Elections and compliance have consequences, at least for the time being. Choose wisely.

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. On Twitter as @retinaldoctor.

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D. | Columnist

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is pushing forward with a massive plan to require millions of private sector employees to get vaccinated by early next year. But first, he has to make sure workers in his own federal government get the shot.

About 4 million federal workers are to be vaccinated by Nov. 22 under the president’s executive order. Some employees, like those at the White House, are nearly all vaccinated. But the rates are lower at other federal agencies, particularly those related to law enforcement and intelligence, according to the agencies and union leaders. And some resistant workers are digging in, filing lawsuits and protesting what they say is unfair overreach by the White House.

The upcoming deadline is the first test of Biden’s push to compel people to get vaccinated. Beyond the federal worker rule, another mandate will take effect in January aimed at around 84 million private sector workers, according to guidelines put out this past week.

On Saturday, a federal appeals court in Louisiana temporarily halted the vaccine requirement for businesses with 100 or more workers. The administration says it is confident that the requirement will withstand legal challenges in part because its safety rules preempt state laws.

“The president and the administration wouldn’t have put these requirements in place if they didn’t think that they were appropriate and necessary,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “And the administration is certainly prepared to defend them.”

If the mandates are a success, they could make the most serious dent in new coronavirus cases since the vaccine first became available, especially with the news this past week that children ages 5-11 can get the shot making an additional 64 million people eligible. But with two weeks remaining until the federal worker deadline, some leaders of unions representing the employees say that convincing the unvaccinated to change their mind is increasingly challenging.

“I got the vaccine in February, it was my own choice and I thought it would stop the virus,” said Corey Trammel, a Bureau of Prisons correctional officer and local union president in Louisiana. “But it hasn’t. And now I have people resigning because they are tired of the government overreach on this, they do not want to get the shot. People just don’t trust the government, and they just don’t trust this vaccine.”

Vaccines have a proven track record of safety, backed by clinical trials and independent reviews showing them overwhelmingly effective at preventing serious illness and death from COVID-19. More than 222 million Americans have received at least one vaccine dose and more than 193 million are fully vaccinated. More than half of the world population has also received a shot.

Scientists have been battling anxiety over the vaccine since it was first authorized; an AP-NORC poll earlier this year found one-third of adults in the U.S. were skeptical, despite assurances the vaccine was safe and effective and few instances of serious side effects. About 70% of American adults are fully vaccinated and 80% have received at least one dose of a vaccine.

Vaccinations have unfolded at uneven rates across the federal government.

Officials at Health and Human Services, U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Housing and Urban Development said they were working on getting their employees vaccinated but had no figures yet.

Several intelligence agencies had at least 20% of their workforce unvaccinated as of late October, said U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association President Larry Cosme said there are about 31,000 members from 65 federal law enforcement agencies in the association and he estimated 60% of them have been vaccinated.

Homeland Security, a giant government department with more than 240,000 employees, was about 64% fully vaccinated by the end of last month. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has received at least 6,000 requests for medical or religious exemptions, according to the union that represents Border Patrol agents.

Federal agencies are warning employees about the upcoming mandate, offering time off to get the vaccine and encouraging workers to comply. But they won’t be fired if they don’t make the Nov. 22 deadline. They would receive “counseling” and be given five days to start the vaccination process. They could then be suspended for 14 days and eventually could be terminated, but that process would take months.

Republicans have argued the mandate goes too far. House Oversight Committee Republicans sent a letter in late October suggesting the president’s “authoritarian and extreme mandates infringe upon American freedoms, are unprecedented, and may ultimately be deemed unlawful.”

In their letter, Reps. James Comer of Kentucky and Jody Hice of Georgia said they worried about a large number of government vacancies should thousands of workers refuse and get fired. That concern was also felt by those in the already-understaffed Bureau of Prisons.

A federal corrections officers union in Florida filed a lawsuit this past week over the mandate, saying it was a violation of civil rights. Some prison workers say they’re torn about the vaccine, not wanting to lose their livelihoods but also unwilling to sacrifice their personal beliefs. Officers near retirement age are contemplating leaving rather than go through with the vaccine.

One prison worker in West Virginia texted a colleague that the worker wasn’t willing to be a guinea pig, writing: “It would be different if it wasn’t new. But it is. And I don’t wanna be your experiment.”

The worker, describing how agonizing the decision had been, said: “I’ve cried and puked so much my eyes and stomach hurts.” The worker wondered if it was wrong to stand firm against the vaccine.

Border Patrol employees have been directed to confirm their vaccination status by Tuesday, according to union President Brandon Judd. As of Thursday, 49% of Border Patrol agents responded to say they are fully vaccinated and about 7% reported not being vaccinated, Judd said.

It’s unclear at this point how many will continue to refuse if they aren’t granted an exemption and face losing their job as a result.

“When it comes down to losing your livelihood or getting vaccinated, I think the vast majority are going to ultimately get vaccinated,” Judd said. “We are going to lose people. How many? I really couldn’t predict that.”

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“Over the past couple of weeks, the idea of forced vaccination has caused much concern across the entire country,” Bianco said in a statement released Monday. “I will not enforce the vaccine mandate on Sheriff’s Department employees.”

“The government has no ability and no authority to mandate your health choices,” he said. “As your sheriff, I have an obligation to guard your liberty and freedom.”

Bianco, who along with his entire family recovered from coronavirus infections last winter, emphasized that “I am certainly not anti-vaccine; I am anti-vaccine for me.”

According to the sheriff, his motivation for stating the policy unequivocally came after his podcast last week was monitored by a newspaper reporter, who he claimed “cherry-picked statements from supposed health experts in an attempt to paint me … in a negative light.” He did not name the reporter and publication.

Last year, Bianco refused to assign deputies to enforce the state’s mask mandate and rejected Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-and-home orders, calling them a violation of “constitutional rights.”

The sheriff’s statement comes after President Joe Biden last week announced sweeping new federal vaccine requirements that would affect companies with 100 or more employees.

Riverside County Sheriff’s Department

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About 3,000 Los Angeles Police Department employees are citing religious objections to try to get out of the required COVID-19 vaccination. In Washington state, thousands of state workers are seeking similar exemptions.

And an Arkansas hospital has been swamped with so many such requests from employees that it is apparently calling their bluff.

Religious objections, once used sparingly around the country to get exempted from various required vaccines, are becoming a much more widely used loophole against the COVID-19 shot.

And it is only likely to grow following President Joe Biden’s sweeping new vaccine mandates covering more than 100 million Americans, including executive branch employees and workers at businesses with more than 100 people on the payroll.

The administration acknowledges that some small minority of Americans will use — and some may seek to exploit — religious exemptions. But it said it believes even marginal improvements in vaccination levels will save lives.

It’s not clear yet how many federal employees have requested a religious exemption. The Labor Department has said an accommodation can be denied if it causes an undue burden.

In the states, mask and vaccine requirements vary, but most offer exemptions for certain medical conditions or religious or philosophical objections. The use of such exemptions, particularly by parents on behalf of their schoolchildren, has been growing over the past decade.

The allowance was enshrined in the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which says employers must make reasonable accommodations for employees who object to work requirements because of “sincerely held” religious beliefs.

A religious belief does not have be recognized by an organized religion, and it can be new, unusual or “seem illogical or unreasonable to others,” according to rules laid out by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But it can’t be founded solely on political or social ideas.

That puts employers in the position of determining what is a legitimate religious belief and what is a dodge.

Many major religious denominations have no objections to the COVID-19 vaccines. But the rollout has prompted heated debates because of the longtime role that cell lines derived from fetal tissue have played, directly or indirectly, in the research and development of various vaccines and medicines.

Roman Catholic leaders in New Orleans and St. Louis went so far to call Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 shot “morally compromised.” J&J has stressed that there is no fetal tissue in its vaccine.

Moreover, the Vatican’s doctrine office has said it is “morally acceptable” for Catholics to receive COVID-19 vaccines that are based on research that used cells derived from aborted fetuses. Pope Francis himself has said it would be “suicide” not to get the shot.

In New York, state lawmakers attempted to make the vaccine mandatory for medical workers, with no religious exemptions. On Tuesday, a federal judge blocked the rule because it lacked the opt-out.

An August AP-NORC poll found that 58% of white evangelical Protestants, 72% of white mainline Protestants, 80% of Catholics and 73% of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated say they have been vaccinated. Seventy percent of nonwhite Protestants say they have been, including 70% of Black Protestants.

Among white evangelical Protestants, the religious group least likely to have been vaccinated, 33% say they will not get the shot.

Across the U.S., public officials, doctors and community leaders have been trying to help people circumvent COVID-19 mask and vaccine requirements.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, pastor Jackson Lahmeyer is offering a “religious exemption” form on his church’s website for download, along with links for suggested donations to the church. The 29-year-old is running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican.

Anyone interested can get the form signed by a religious leader, or Lahmeyer can sign it himself if the person joins the church and donates. He said more than 35,000 people downloaded the form in just three days.

“We’re not anti-vaxxers. We’re just pro-freedom,” Lahymeyer said. “A lot of these people who have signed … have already taken the vaccine. They just don’t think it’s right that somebody else should be forced or lose their job.”

But obtaining a religious exemption is not as simple as producing a signed form. Measles outbreaks in schools over the past decade prompted some states to change their policies. Some now require an actual signed affidavit from a religious leader, instead of an online form. California got rid of nonmedical exemptions in 2015.

Some private employers are taking a hard line. United Airlines told employees last week that those who obtain religious exemptions will be put on unpaid leave until new coronavirus testing procedures are in place.

In Los Angeles, Police Chief Michel Moore said he is waiting for guidance from the city’s personnel department regarding the exemptions. The city has mandated that municipal employees get vaccinated by Oct. 5 unless they are granted a medical or religious exemption. A group of LAPD employees is suing over the policy.

“I can’t and won’t comment on the sincerity level” of people claiming a religious exemption, the police chief said. “I don’t want to speculate. Religion in America has many different definitions.”

Ten LAPD employees have died of COVID-19, and thousands in the department have been infected.

In Washington state, approximately 60,000 state employees are subject to a mandate issued by Gov. Jay Inslee that they be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18 or lose their job, unless they obtain a medical or religious exemption and receive an accommodation that allows them to remain employees.

As of Tuesday, more than 3,800 workers had requested religious exemptions. So far, 737 have been approved, but officials stressed that an exemption does not guarantee continued employment.

Once the exemption is approved, each agency has to evaluate whether the employee can still do the job with an accommodation while ensuring a safe workplace. Seven accommodations so far have been granted.

Inslee spokeswoman Tara Lee said the process “may help distinguish between a sincerely held personal belief and a sincerely held religious belief.”

In Arkansas, about 5% of the staff at the privately run Conway Regional Health System has requested religious or medical exemptions.

The hospital responded by sending employees a form that lists a multitude of common medicines — including Tylenol, Pepto-Bismol, Preparation H and Sudafed — that it said were developed through the use of fetal cell lines.

The form asks people to sign it and attest that “my sincerely held religious belief is consistent and true and I do not use or will not use” any of the listed medications.

In a statement, Conway Regional Health President and CEO Matt Troup said: “Staff who are sincere … should have no hesitancy with agreeing to the list of medicines listed.”

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From Walt Disney World to Goldman Sachs, a flurry of private and public employers are requiring workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 after the federal government gave full approval to the Pfizer shot. And the number is certain to grow much higher.

For the past eight months, coronavirus shots were dispensed in the U.S. under emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. Some workers and unions objected to getting the vaccine — and some employers were reluctant to require it — because it had yet to receive FDA full approval. That happened on Monday.

“The FDA decision takes that off the table,” said Devjani Mishra, a New York-based attorney with the firm Littler Mendelson, which specializes in workplace matters. She and others in the worlds of business, law and health predicted more companies will mandate vaccines for their workforces.

Shortly after the FDA acted, Walt Disney World reached a deal with its unions to require all workers at its theme park in Orlando, Florida, to be vaccinated.

Goldman Sachs told employees Tuesday that it will require anyone who enters the bank’s U.S. offices to be fully vaccinated starting Sept. 7, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.

Drugstore chain CVS said pharmacists, nurses and other workers who have contact with patients will have to be inoculated. Oil giant Chevron Corp. said it will require some of its workers — such as those who travel internationally, live abroad or work on its offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico — to get their COVID-19 shots.

“We pushed ‘go’ when the FDA made that decision,” said Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, president of Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, which announced on Monday that its 800 faculty members, 1,500 staff members and 18,000 students will have to be vaccinated. Before that, only students living on campus had to get the shot.

She said the university could have legally mandated vaccines before the FDA decision but waited for it because Pescovitz, who is a pediatrician, believes the authorization will help persuade those still on the fence.

Ohio State University, too, announced Tuesday that it would require all students, faculty and staff to complete the full vaccination process by Nov. 15. Ohio State is among the country’s largest universities and is a major employer in Columbus, Ohio.

On Monday, health experts expressed hope that the FDA’s action would boost the U.S. vaccination rate, which bottomed out at about a half-million shots a day in July — down from a peak of 3.4 million a day on average in April.

The number of shots dispensed has since climbed to about 850,000 a day amid growing alarm over the highly contagious delta variant, which has sent deaths, cases and hospitalizations soaring, wiping out months of progress.

Littler Mendelson released a survey Monday showing that 9% of employers are already mandating vaccines for at least some of their workers, and an additional 12% are planning to impose some sort of mandate in the near future. In January, just 1% of firms Littler Mendelson surveyed had issued vaccine requirements.

There is a risk for employers at a time when many are struggling to fill openings and workers are confident of finding better jobs: Faced with a vaccine requirement, an employee might “say, ‘OK, fine. I’m leaving,'” Mishra said. “It’s not a given you’re going to be able to fill that job with someone who is vaccinated.’’

But Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, said he doesn’t foresee a large backlash.

“People will see that mandates can open their businesses and save their paychecks. They will see the effects and they will welcome it,” he said.

Earlier this summer, President Joe Biden announced that federal workers will have to get vaccinated or else face weekly testing and other measures.

The nation’s two largest private employers don’t seem to be budging. Walmart said Tuesday there is no change to its policy, which requires vaccinations for office workers but not store employees. And Amazon, which doesn’t mandate vaccines for any of its employees, declined to comment.

As for the auto industry, Ford Motor Co. said it is not requiring the vaccine, and General Motors has said it isn’t either, though CEO Mary Barra has held open the possibility.

The career-advice website Ladders Inc. released a study last week showing a more than 50-fold increase since January in job openings that require applicants to be vaccinated.

Ladders spokeswoman Laurie Monteforte predicted vaccine requirements will only rise after the FDA decision. Many employers, she said, have exhausted vaccine incentives such as bonuses or other perks.

Employers that require vaccines are on solid legal ground. Private companies and government employers can generally require workers to be inoculated as a condition of working there, though they must offer exemptions or accommodations in some cases.

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BOSTON (AP) — As COVID-19 cases surge around the country, a majority of Americans say they support mask mandates for students and teachers in K-12 schools, according to a new poll, but their views are sharply divided along political lines.

About 6 in 10 Americans say students and teachers should be required to wear face masks while in school, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Similar shares say teachers and eligible students should also be required to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

Masks have been a point of contention as U.S. schools reopen amid rising numbers of coronavirus cases. Questions about whether to require them have caused turmoil among parents and politicians, with some Republican governors banning mask mandates even as President Joe Biden threatens legal action against them.

In a reflection of that polarizing debate, the poll finds a wide partisan divide. About 3 in 10 Republicans said they favor mask requirements for students and teachers, compared with about 8 in 10 Democrats. There was a similar split over vaccine mandates in schools.

Some of the nation’s largest school districts will require masks for all students and staff this fall, including in New York City. That’s fine with Budhiono Riyanto, 37, of Queens, who will be sending his 7-year-old son, Gabriel, back to school next month.

“I understand personal choice, I understand personal freedom. But when it comes to public health, we should all be looking out for each other,” Riyanto said. “The best protection so far is to mask up and vaccinate.”

Others say masks shouldn’t be forced upon children.

Kim Oldfield, who lives in rural Jessieville, Arkansas, said masks are unpopular in her area. She opposes the idea of a mandate and says it should be up to families to decide. In her local school district, masks are optional this fall.

“America is supposed to be the land of the free,” said Oldfield, 70. “And when the government starts getting into your personal life and making you do things that you don’t want to do, people don’t like that.”

Parents are slightly less likely to support mask requirements than the broader population, the poll shows. Fifty-two percent of parents with school-age children said they supported a mandate for kids, while 28% opposed it, with a similar split over mandates for teachers.

There were also differences by race: About two-thirds of Black parents said they back mask mandates for teachers and students, compared with about half of white and Hispanic parents.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended universal mask-wearing for teachers and students inside school buildings this fall, citing the rapid spread of the delta variant.

In some areas with school mask mandates, tensions have flared in recent weeks. Protesters opposing mask requirements have filled school board meetings from Maryland to California, in some cases disrupting meetings and forcing them to postpone.

Most states allow school districts to set their own mask policies, but some including California, Illinois and Louisiana are requiring masks for students and teachers statewide. At least eight Republican-led states have moved to ban universal mask mandates in schools, including in Texas, Florida and Tennessee.

In Land O’ Lakes, Florida, Gail Jackson worries about sending her 12-year-old grandson to a school where masks are optional. Her grandson, Zahkai, wears a mask, she said, but some of his classmates don’t.

“I don’t know how it’s all going to play out in the end,” said Jackson, 74, who is Zahkai’s legal guardian. “My prayer is that somehow or another, an angel passes over and these kids are allowed to grow and mature without finding themselves in a hospital on a ventilator.”

Compared to mask mandates, school vaccine requirements have been rare. Some states and local districts have required vaccines for teachers, saying those who refuse must face regular virus testing. Some others have taken a harder stance, including Washington state, which says teachers must be inoculated or face dismissal.

Last week, the Culver City Unified district near Los Angeles was believed to be the first in the U.S. to require vaccines for all eligible students this fall. But student vaccine mandates are still uncommon, and the shots are not yet approved for children below age 12.

The poll shows 59% of Americans support vaccination requirements for teachers and nearly as many — 55% — say the same for students age 12 and over, who are eligible to be vaccinated. Among parents, support was lower, with 42% backing vaccine mandates for students.

Vaccinated parents were more likely to support mask and vaccine requirements than unvaccinated parents.

Jeff Hicklin in Falmouth, Maine, said he supports mask and vaccine mandates for teachers and eligible students. He says it’s the best way to protect those who are too young to be vaccinated, including his 7-year-old son, Oscar.

“We need to do everything we can to keep schools open and safe,” said Hicklin, 40, an accountant.

In Menomonie, Wisconsin, Erik Pederstuen has been vaccinated and plans to have his 9-year-old daughter inoculated once she’s eligible. But Pederstuen, a technical college instructor, said he doesn’t think coronavirus vaccines should be a requirement.

“I’m not an anti-vaccine person at all, I’ve just never liked the idea of it being forced,” said Pederstuen, 40. “I think everyone should get it, but I think it should be your choice.”

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Amber Dance | Columnist

Missing kindergarten could mean long-term repercussions

More than one million children didn’t show up for school — virtual or in-person — last year, according to a new analysis from researchers at Stanford University and The New York Times. Elementary students were most likely to go unaccounted for, with kindergarten enrollment dropping by 9.3%. The biggest declines were in neighborhoods just above or below the poverty line. “Just as the pandemic lay bare vast disparities in health care and income, it also hardened inequities in education, setting back some of the most vulnerable students before they spent even one day in a classroom,” write reporters Dana Goldstein and Alicia Parlapiano.

While kindergarten is optional in 32 states, it plays an important role in setting students up for long-term success, both socially and academically, before the workload increases in higher grades. Low-income students are already more likely to drop out before graduation. “We have to be deeply concerned,” said professor Thomas S. Dee of the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

U.S. states outstrip some countries in COVID case rates

The delta variant continues to pummel the U.S., creating sky-high case rates in several Southern states. Louisiana is averaging more than 100 cases per 100,000 people daily, the highest per capita rate in the nation, while Florida has the highest number of cases at more than 20,000 a day. “The COVID-19 surges in states like Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi are so severe they rank among the very worst outbreaks in the world,” writes Robert Hart at Forbes. “And many states have outbreaks worse than the countries on the CDC’s ‘Do Not Travel’ list.” Rural areas, where vaccine uptake is low and health care is scarce, are especially vulnerable amid the delta wave, reports Erin Banco at Politico. “Delta can spread in a rural community just like it can in an urban community,” said Kim Proffitt, public health nurse and county manager for Uinta County, Wyoming. “Especially if, in those rural communities, people are not being very cautious.”

Military announces vaccine mandate

For the U.S. military, being all that you can be will soon require a coronavirus shot, the Pentagon said last week. The mandate, which will likely apply to civilian employees and private contractors too, is expected to take effect in mid-September, or earlier if the FDA fully approves the Pfizer vaccine before then. About 65% of active-duty military have been fully inoculated against COVID-19, and 28 service members have died of the disease since the pandemic began, reports Dan Lamothe at The Washington Post. Those who refuse vaccination going forward could be subject to penalties ranging from a written reprimand to dishonorable discharge, reports Jonathan Custodio at Politico.

The Pentagon’s plans are part of an ongoing wave of vaccine mandates, supported by NIH director Dr. Francis Collins, who told ABC’s “This Week,” “We ought to use every public health tool that we can when people are dying.” A majority of American voters agree, according to a Morning Consult/Politico poll, with Republicans the outliers. And Dr. Anthony Fauci told USA Today to expect a “flood” of vaccine mandates once the Pfizer vaccine gets the full FDA nod, a move expected within weeks.

Many institutions aren’t waiting. The latest organizations to require vaccination (or a negative test) include the state of California for school employees; Amtrak for its employees; and the city of New Orleans for anyone who wishes to enter public spaces including casinos, restaurants and the Superdome. While some employees are pushing back against the requirements, the mandates are lawful, ethical, and likely to be quite effective, writes Lawrence O. Gostin, an expert in global health law at Georgetown University, in Scientific American. “Requiring people to get a vaccine is part of the fabric of American history going back to the Revolutionary War,” Gostin notes.

Breakthrough cases incite new vaccine worries

With delta surging, there are fresh questions about how effective vaccines are in warding off infection. A scientific preprint — not yet vetted by other scientists — suggests Pfizer’s vaccine efficacy is waning, according to authors from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and nference, a biomedical computing company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The team compared the efficacy rates for the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines between January and July, when the alpha strain dominated, and during July, after delta took over. Moderna’s efficacy against breakthrough infections dropped from 86% to 76% over that time, but Pfizer’s went from 76% to 42%. Breakthrough cases in people vaccinated with either shot had similar rates of complications and hospitalizations. There are some caveats to the study, notes Molly Walker at MedPage Today: It did not cover the entire U.S., and does not definitively conclude that delta defanged the immunity created by the Pfizer shot. Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist at Scripps Clinic who closely tracks and tweets COVID-19 research, spurred online debate when he estimated that Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are 50% to 60% effective against symptomatic infections, tweeting “There needs to be truth-telling about the reduced protection of mRNA vaccines vs symptomatic Delta infections.” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, responded that his own “best estimate” for mRNA vaccines was between 75 and 85%.

Growing fears of breakthrough infections have renewed discussions on booster shots. Some people have already gotten a third shot — more than 1 million, according to CDC estimates. And some of those who initially got the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine are also seeking boosters. The practice has not yet been authorized or recommended for the general population, since the vaccines still provide excellent protection against severe illness and death. But the FDA just granted emergency authorization to a booster for immunocompromised individuals, such as organ transplant recipients and people with HIV. Those who fall into that category can receive a third dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, 28 days or more after their second shot. (There’s no change to recommendations for people who got the J&J vaccine.) Moderna has also developed a reformulated booster shot that works against delta and other variants; the company’s CEO said it could be available by fall.

The CDC last week updated its guidelines for pregnant women to a “strong recommendation” to get vaccinated. Only about one-quarter of this group has received one dose of vaccine, and more of them are requiring hospitalization, reports NPR’s Ashley Lopez for “All Things Considered.” A recent study found that coronavirus infection increased, by 60%, the risk of very preterm birth (before 32 weeks; 40 weeks is full-term). People who’ve had the coronavirus already can also gain protection from vaccination, though evidence is building that one shot is sufficient for that population.

Schools counter politicians to require masking

While pediatric cases surge as children under 12 remain ineligible for vaccination, some schools are bucking governor’s orders against setting mask mandates — and they’re starting to get some support from judges and the White House. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order preventing school districts from requiring masking, and then told the state Board of Education it could withhold salaries from school board members and superintendents who don’t follow the order. At least four districts are defying the governor’s office by moving ahead with mask mandates, and the White House is considering reimbursing officials with unspent stimulus funds. “We want what DeSantis wants: to keep schools open,” wrote Alachua County Public Schools superintendent Carlee Simon in The Washington Post. “I value life too much to take chances with the lives of others, even under threat of retaliation.” Parents of students with disabilities who are vulnerable to the virus are suing the governor.

In Texas, too, school districts are defying Gov. Greg Abbott’s prohibition against mask mandates, but the courts appear to be on the side of local officials. Judges in Dallas and San Antonio issued temporary orders blocking the state’s mandate against mask mandates. The CDC recommends that all students wear masks at school.

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