By Todd Lassa
Non-smokers in the U.S. have been able to enjoy fresh air in offices, office lobbies, restaurants, hotels, retail stores … bars, even, for decades now. Laws barring cigarette and cigar smoke from public spaces began in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco and reached most every corner of the U.S., even tobacco-growing states like Virginia and Maryland, after Brown & Williamson executive Jeffrey Wiegand blew the whistle on how his industry squelched research on the dangers of secondary smoke, as Vanity Fair revealed in its 1996 investigative article, “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”
Today, you only have to watch for those smoke-stations, usually just outside the lobby of a hotel or office building, if you’re a non-smoker. If you are a smoker, you may be fuming about how hard it is to consume a legal product in public, especially in the rain or the middle of winter.
That’s the kind of struggle many Americans face today. The on-and-off virtual shutdown of the national and global economy has put many hard-working business owners and entrepreneurs, and their employees, out of work.
After a few weeks last summer in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared “masks off!” in a confusing policy on social distancing, the Delta variant of COVID-19 began filling hospitals again, particularly in states where governors resisted or opposed reverting to life before March 2020.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, R, has gone so far as to threaten localities in his state with $5,000 fines for imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
It should be noted that many on the left who were anti-vaxxers before March 2020 remain resistant as well. For both ends of the political “horseshoe,” it comes down to personal liberty.
But Joe Biden was elected president in part because of his promise to make eradication of the coronavirus his top priority. Last week, Biden announced a vaccine mandate for private employers with more than 100 employees to be enforced by the Occupational Safety & Health Administration.
Key provisions:
•Requires all employees with 100 or more employees to ensure workers are vaccinated or tested weekly, requires vaccination for all federal workers and for millions of contractors that do business with the federal government, and requires COVID-19 vaccinations for more than 17 million health care workers at Medicare and Medicaid participating hospitals and health care “settings.”
•Also “calls on” entertainment venues to require either proof of vaccination or testing for entry.
•Requires employers to provide paid time off to get vaccinated.
•Provides easy access to booster shots for all eligible Americans, and ensures Americans know where to get such shots.
•Sweeping school mandates call on all states to adopt vaccination requirements for all school employees, provide federal funding to school districts for safe re-opening, require students and staff to get tested regularly, and provide “every resource” to the Food & Drug Administration to “support timely review of vaccines” for children under 12 years old.
•Increases testing and masking, and adds new support for small businesses affected by shutdowns, while also streamlining the paycheck protection program loan guarantees.
The Republican National Committee said it would sue the Biden administration over “un-Constitutional mandates.” Republican governors Greg Abbott of Texas, Mark Gordon of Wyoming, Kristi L. Noem of South Dakota, and Brian Kemp of Georgia, also announced they would sue the White House.
To which Biden responded: “Bring it.”