Biden May Restrict Grants to Promote Vaccinations; Health Care Institutions May Face New COVID Vaccination Requirements
Q2 2021 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
Restricting Grants to Promote Vaccinations
WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 9, 2021) - The White House admitted that President Joe Biden is considering requiring health care institutions receiving federal funding to vaccinate their workers.
This may be the first step towards using his power over grants and other federal funding to save lives, and reduce the spread of the new delta variant, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf.
The professor, who has had many successes in several public health fields, suggested this approach almost a year ago to members of Biden's Coronavirus Advisory Board, and more recently to dozens of his COVID advisors within the government.
Banzhaf says his proposals are even more imperative now since unvaccinated Americans are permitting the COVID virus to mutate to more dangerous variants, and even children's hospitals are overflowing and beginning to turn away very sick children.
He had also suggested, before Biden acted, that the President require federal workers to be vaccinated or face consequences; an action which seems to now be encouraging other public and private entities to impose their own vaccine requirements.
The law professor notes that there are three recent decisions, as well as older Supreme Court precedent, all holding that requiring people to be vaccinated is perfectly legal.
These rulings might help encourage other companies to impose vaccine requirements on employees, and perhaps visitors and customers at theaters, sporting venues, and even restaurants, he suggests.
Awarding The Adoption Of Vaccine Requirements
Banzhaf has also proposed that the President order federal agencies within the executive branch which award health-related grants, and as to which they have been permitted significant discretion in selecting applicants (both public and private), to award grants only from entities within states which had vaccine requirements in place as of a given date; at very least, give applications from entities in such states preference over other applicants.
Alternatively, agencies could give lower priority in awarding grants to entities which have refused to adopt vaccine requirements in states which do not prohibit such restrictions.
After all, argues Banzhaf, why send taxpayers' money earmarked to protect public health to cities, counties, hospitals, universities, and other entities which risk the lives of employees and the public by imposing no restrictions on the unvaccinated who create a very high risk of exposing others to a deadly disease.
He has also suggested to dozens of Biden's COVID advisors that the President consider no longer requiring airline passengers to wear masks during flight, but instead require those wishing to fly to have at least one vaccination shot several days before they board.
Since it has been announced that the White House is planning to mandate that foreign nationals be vaccinated to enter the U.S. once international travel restrictions are lifted, Biden can and should apply the same rule to returning U.S. citizens, and perhaps to domestic flights also, says the Professor. Here's why.
Even if the U.S. does not require vaccinations for its own returning citizens, the major countries to which Americans will be traveling will almost certainly adopt the same vaccination requirement for their arrival, so anyone who wants to fly internationally will soon have to provide proof of vaccination. The same argument, and reasons for such a requirement on international flights, should also apply to domestic airline flights within the U.S.
Reducing The Spread Of The Delta Variant
Limiting flights to adults as well as older children who are vaccinated, as well as younger children and those exempted from the requirement for medical or religious reasons, would reduce the transmission of the rapidly spreading delta variant, as well as other variants which may develop, and also provide a very strong incentive for holdouts to become vaccinated. Both effects would help prevent thousands of needless deaths, and many more very expensive hospitalizations, at a time when both are soaring.
If flights were largely limited to those who have been vaccinated, it would probably also be possible to eliminate the mask requirement during flights, especially given the ventilation and filtration systems on modern passenger aircraft.
As more and more people are beginning to appreciate, it is very unfair to continue to burden the majority of adults who have wisely agreed to be vaccinated - in this case by requiring them to wear masks for hours while flying - because of the minority which refuse to agree to this common sense precaution.
While now we may have only an "epidemic of the unvaccinated," on airlines passengers who are vaccinated are being burdened for the stubbornness of the holdouts.
Note that international travelers are already required to undergo expensive and inconvenient tests for COVID just before both arrival and departure, and to present documented proof of such tests before boarding. So requiring documented proof regarding vaccination is not unreasonable, nor unreasonably burdensome on passengers or carriers.
As another example, even for domestic flights, flyers will soon have to go through the difficult and time-consuming process of obtaining a REAL-ID driver's license - even though the American lives likely to be saved from such terrorist attacks are minimal given existing TSA measures. And those who wish to travel abroad have for a long time had to endure the many problems of obtaining (and sometimes even of renewing) a passport.
Compared to these burdens to which the federal government already subjects all those who wish to fly (as well as the vaccination requirement on federal workers, onsite government contractors, and the active duty military) - not to mention the delays, hassles, inconvenience, and invasions of privacy from TSA check points - the burden of having to obtain a free and usually-no-waiting-time COVID vaccination in order to fly would be minor, and certainly not unreasonable.
The federal government, and an ever growing number of employers, colleges, and places of public accommodation are already requiring people to prove that they have been vaccinated, so it's not as if this is a novel or unreasonable requirement, especially given the new wave of totally unnecessary COVID deaths and hospitalizations, and the growing impact on innocent your children.
Moreover, since trying to further refine or clarify the government's messaging on COVID seems to be about as ineffective as the government's messaging during the last century urging people not to smoke, we should now do what finally turned the tide and helped prevent millions of unnecessary smoker deaths by persuading tens of millions of American to protect their own health - by adopting restrictions aboard aircraft, and by permitting if not encouraging employers to insist upon vaccinations as a condition of employment.
