Viewpoint: Take a Deep Breathe, COVID Controversy Isn’t Over

?The Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote last Thursday, blocked the federal COVID mandate which required employees at companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated or tested weekly.?An estimated 84 million people were affected by that ruling.

?In a separate, simultaneously released ruling on the administration’s vaccination rules for health-care workers, a 5-4 majority sided with the Biden administration.?That decision effected 17 million health care workers.?The health care mandate requires all employees at hospitals or other medical facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid payments from the government to be fully vaccinated.?

?The controversy to vaccinate or not to vaccinate barely took a breather.?On the same day, stories were released from Missouri, where the claim was that unvaccinated individuals were more than 50 times likely to get infected.?Sharing the news for the day was a study from Danish researchers that found the vaccinated were, yes, you guessed it, fifty times more likely to get the Omicron strain of COVID.?That report noted that Pfizer and Moderna effectiveness was nearly zero percent against the current COVID strain.

?The Supreme Court ruling may be used as a competitive edge among companies who search a dwindling labor pool for workers with no required vaccination as a recruitment tool.

David Gordon, a partner at the New York law firm Mitchell Silberberg &?Knupp, said of the Supreme Court ruling, “employers will now be free to set their own requirements, subject to applicable state and local laws.”

Gordon also said the ruling will allow a large employer to make a decision on vaccinations that reflects competition in the job market for workers.

“It’s no longer an even playing field among large employers in terms of recruitment,” Gordon said. “Now, if a large employer believes that it would be advantageous not to require employees to be vaccinated, it will be free not to adopt a vaccine mandate, if permissible where they are located.”

???“Although Congress has indisputably given OSHA the power to regulate occupational dangers, it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly,” the court wrote in an unsigned opinion.

?“Requiring the vaccination of 84 million Americans, selected simply because they work for employers with more than 100 employees, certainly falls in the latter category,” the court wrote.

?In regard to the requirement for health care workers the majority wrote, “We agree with the Government that the [Health and Human Services] Secretary’s rule falls within the authorities that Congress has conferred upon him,” said the majority, writing that the rule “fits neatly within the language of the statute.”

“After all, ensuring that providers take steps to avoid transmitting a dangerous virus to their patients is consistent with the fundamental principle of the medical profession: first, do no harm,” the majority opinion read.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, four of the six conservatives on the nine-seat bench, dissented.

“I do not think that the Federal Government is likely to be able to show that Congress has authorized the unprecedented step of compelling over 10,000,000 healthcare workers to be vaccinated on pain of being fired,” Alito shared.

?The National Retail Foundation praised the ruling blocking the mandate on large companies as a “significant victory” for employers.

?The NRF made the statement that it had joined with more than two dozen other trade associations to make oral arguments this week opposing the mandate, which it referred to as “onerous and unprecedented.”

?But the retail foundation also said it “has maintained a strong and consistent position related to the importance of vaccines in helping to overcome this pandemic.”

?The NRF said it “urges the Biden Administration to discard this unlawful mandate and instead work with employers, employees and public health experts on practical ways to increase vaccination rates and mitigate the spread of the virus in 2022.”

?More to come…………..