Political analysis: Omicron complicates Biden vaccine mandate efforts

Omicron puts pinch on Biden vaccine mandate efforts The rapidly spreading omicron variant poses a problem for the White House as officials try to convince a skeptical public that vaccine mandates are necessary. Nathaniel Weixel TheHill

The rapidly spreading omicron variant poses a problem for the White House as officials try to convince a skeptical public that vaccine mandates are necessary.

Opponents of mandates are seizing on early evidence that shows vaccines are not as effective at stopping transmission of the new strain, which they say undermines the administration's key arguments for championing them.

This week, airlines were forced to cancel thousands of flights as COVID-19 swept through its flight crews and other employees.

Many U.S. airlines require their employees to be fully vaccinated, and anti-mandate groups claimed that hundreds of otherwise-healthy crew members were sidelined, unable to help alleviate the worst of the shortages because of their vaccination status. 

Administration officials have cast vaccine mandates for health workers, and mandate-or-test requirements for large employers, as essential tools to get more people vaccinated.  

While vaccines don’t necessarily keep someone from getting COVID-19, they greatly reduce the chances of hospitalization or death. If the mandates result in more people getting vaccinated, it could also reduce stress on the nation’s healthcare system if waves of people do get infected.

More than 85 percent of U.S. adults over the age of 18 have gotten at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, but overall close to 40 percent of all Americans remain unvaccinated. 

“We feel that the vaccination-or-testing rules will ensure businesses enact measures that protect employees, create more certainty for the economy. And we don't feel that this is a time for organizations to be backing away from these requirements,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a recent briefing. 

A recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found nearly 90 percent of unvaccinated adults said they remain unmoved to get a shot regardless of the omicron variant.

Mandates might be the best way to convince some of those people to get vaccinated, and public health experts say vaccinations remain the best way to end the pandemic.

“You know, we've done the carrot stuff, and now it's kind of the stick part of it,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “We are still getting better containment of a disease by vaccinating people. Which is why the mandates.”

Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health at Georgetown University, said there's been too much fatalistic messaging from the administration. If people are under the impression that they're going to get COVID-19 no matter what, that will make selling mandates much more politically difficult, he said. ...