The president finalized a new 6-pronged plan to fight against Covid (and stupidity). Watch LIVE at 5pm Eastern.
No more opting out of vaccination by Federal employees. Contractors who work with the government? Vaccine requirement with no opting out with testing. Major expansion to free Covid testing. More about vaccine booster shots, but no dates yet.
The video says “We will begin shortly”, so I’m sure it will be any minute. Ha!
Click on the tweet below for all 12 points the will be covered.
?The full Biden plan here:
1. Requiring All Employers with 100+ Employees to Ensure their Workers are Vaccinated or Tested Weekly
2. Requiring Vaccinations for all Federal Workers and for Millions of Contractors.
3. Requiring vax for over 17 Million Health Care Workers at— Heidi Przybyla (@HeidiNBC) September 9, 2021
Open thread.
Update: from RSA below
Heidi Przybyla @HeidiNBC’s list:
- Requiring All Employers with 100+ Employees to Ensure their Workers are Vaccinated or Tested Weekly.
- Requiring Vaccinations for all Federal Workers and for Millions of Contractors.
- Requiring vax for over 17 Million Health Care Workers at Medicare and Medicaid Participating Hospitals and Other Health Care Settings.
- Calling on Large Entertainment Venues to Require Proof of Vaccination or Testing for Entry.
- Requiring Employers to Provide Paid Time Off to Get Vaccinated.
- Requiring Staff in Head Start Programs, DOD Schools, and Bureau of Indian Education-Operated Schools to be Vaccinated.
- Calling on All States to Adopt Vaccine Requirements for All School Employees.
- Providing Additional Funding to School Districts for Safe School Reopening, Including Backfilling Salaries and other funding withheld by states for implementing COVID Safety Measures.
- Using the Dpt of Education’s Full Legal Authority to increase access to in-person instruction.
- Getting Students and Staff Tested Regularly.
- Making At-Home Tests More Affordable, Sending Free Rapid,At-Home Tests to Food Banks and Community Health Centers Expanding Free, Pharmacy Testing.
- Bigger push on monoclonal antibodies, more support for small businesses affected.
SpaceUnit
I’d go even further and suggest that the weekly testing should be rectal, but our health care workers are traumatized enough as it is.
SpaceUnit
Also frist!
dr. bloor
I can already hear the bleating for impeachment from FREEDUMB fighters.
WaterGirl
@SpaceUnit: Didn’t you get the memo? We’re not doing that anymore. Please don’t make Raven come to smack you down.
Bokonon
Let’s see NPR continue to call Biden’s approach to COVID weak and ineffectual after this.
Oh wait … NPR will continue doing that anyway. Because that’s what they do these days. Never mind.
NotMax
Gray area if members of Congress (and their staff and ancillary Capitol Hill workers) and the federal judiciary (and their staff and ancillary courthouse workers) technically fall under the heading of federal employees as adjudged by this policy?
RSA
Heidi Przybyla @HeidiNBC’s list:
Twitter is such a pain the ass.
SpaceUnit
@WaterGirl: Fine!!
WaterGirl
Biden on now!
WaterGirl
Biden is bringing it!
dmsilev
Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy, in a desperate attempt to become the worst of that name to hold Federal office, is apparently trying to make a Supreme Court case out of the House implementing proxy voting as a COVID safety measure.
“Both sides are the same, really they are.”
UncleEbeneezer
Now make vaccination a requirement for any air travel!
Karen
It’s not like there wasn’t gonna be a RWNJ rally next week anyway. I figure this will start WW3.
Matt McIrvin
This is a big fuckin’ deal.
mrmoshpotato
Shut up, cicadas! The President’s speaking!
Mike in NC
Friends picked us up at our hotel in Crystal City today and took us to lunch at the Chart House on the Potomac in Old Town Alexandria. It was a favorite back when we lived in NoVA over ten years ago. A great place which we highly recommend.
Looks like there were a few very interesting discussions on BJ today. Will try to catch up this evening. Just turned on MSNBC to hear the president take issue with our GOP governors and other Moron-Americans.
We fly home in the morning and hope the cats haven’t completely trashed the place in our absence.
MazeDancer
Yes!
Yes!
This is what I am shouting after every point Mr. Biden makes.
Baud
Haha. “Even Fox News.”
dmsilev
Heh. “Even Fox News” has a vaccine mandate for employees. Not that Fox News goes out of their way to tell their viewers.
WaterGirl
All nursing homes, or who work in hospitals!
NotMax
“You’re not the boss of me!”
“As of one minute ago, that’s absolutely correct.”
hueyplong
I saw a clip of WV’s governor getting exasperated with anti-vaxxers. Under normal circumstances that would be a green light for Biden to get aggressive without institutional bad faith GOP pushback.
I know…
WaterGirl
@Baud: Biden is bringing it. Protecting vaccinated workers from unvaccinated coworkers!
SpaceUnit
Shorter Joe Biden: “This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco. This ain’t no fooling around.”
dmsilev
“My message to unvaccinated Americans is this: Stop fucking around.”
Baud
“our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.”
WaterGirl
What the hell are you waiting for? (paraphrase)
“We’ve been patient, and our patience is wearing thing. And your approval has cost all of us.”
Kelly
Oregon has silly vaccine exemption laws on the books which exempt HEALTH CARE WORKERS from employer mandates. Many large providers such as Kaiser have announced vaccine requirements anyway. This will override the silly state law.
Cops are also exempt under silly Oregon law. That’s why Portland backed off from cop vaccination requirements. Hopefully there’s some federal funding or something that can draw them under federal rules. Hmm, a bunch of Portland cops were deputized to enforce federal laws during the long running protests..
Would employers with more than 100 employees include local governments?
Oregon has been lax about vaccines for a long time.
WaterGirl
Biden isn’t talking about long covid for people who get breakthrough cases. That’s a worry.
SiubhanDuinne
@RSA:
Hell, I wish I’d known you were doing that. I just finished laboriously copy-pasting every tweet in her thread to Notes so I could share it.
I hate how Twitter is now (not talking about content, just the technical access side of things).
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
He is! What a treat!
Ken
“State law says you can’t make me get the vaccine!”
“Federal rules say this hospital won’t receive any Medicare funds unless all employees are vaccinated. So guess how much your opinions matter to me?”
NotMax
“If he were really serious about this he would have delivered the speech from Needles.”
//
VeniceRiley
Watching Biden on FB and the comments section …. ugh. These people are f-ingnut wingnutz. SCARY
Matt McIrvin
The home tests should be free too, but this is a step forward.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Shown some respect!
mrmoshpotato
@VeniceRiley: You’re reading a comments section that isn’t Balloon Juice?
Are you trying to pop a blood vessel?
and
Why are you cheating on us?
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: You’d need to build an alternative distribution network for it to be free, though. I think that’s the trade off.
SiubhanDuinne
“Show some respect!!”
I love this Joe.
WaterGirl
“real doctors, not conspiracy theorists”
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
This is a wonderful speech.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: It really is.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
And not pillow salesmen.
:)
HalfAssedHomesteader
“BTW, show some respect!”
I love it!
mali muso
I’m a little behind, but loving what I’m hearing. Go Joe!
Elizabelle
I love that man. Closes with a whispered “get vaccinated.”
WaterGirl
I’m a little disappointed that Biden didn’t say “just fucking get vaccinated already!”
But he came really close!
WaterGirl
@mali muso:
I like exasperated Joe Biden.I love exasperated joe Biden!
mrmoshpotato
OT but goodness gracious great
gherkins of AldiUlughbegasaurus of Uzbekistandmsilev
@WaterGirl: He needs an Anger Translator, just like Obama had.
mali muso
@WaterGirl: I almost typed “Uncle Joe” but I didn’t know if we were still using that moniker now that he’s President. lol
Elizabelle
@VeniceRiley: They are probably scary in their native Russian and crazed evangelical voices too. Not to mention the “antivax moms.” Fuck ‘em. FIDO.
pat
the right will go ballistic. Maybe a few strokes on Fox?
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: Or just hop over to McSweeney’s and read OH MY FUCKING GOD, GET THE FUCKING VACCINE ALREADY, YOU FUCKING FUCKS.
ETA – that would be awesome if Biden read that. I would settle for Samuel L. Jackson though.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
No accompanying wink to send tingles down the legs of the Villagers?
//
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: I would watch that!
trollhattan
Cletus safari, dateline: the Ozarks. Vaccination schmaccination.
The spouse has never regretted her family throwing in the towel and decamping back to California. There’s still a contingent living there today.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: That was SO good. i read it a few days ago and shared it.
VeniceRiley
I have a reason, I SWEAR! I needed the video and I am juicing on my work pc, where video is blocked. So I tapped the notice on my phone fb feed. Ugh misTAKE!
Baud
@WaterGirl:
“Don’t make me take off this belt.”
Benw
As a frankly terrified parent of an unvaccinated kid starting school in person again, this hurts:
Punishing people who are trying to keep kids safe FUCK YOU.
Clarified that the Biden admin is not punishing people, they are un-punishing the people who were already punished, and the FUCK YOU is intended for the people punishing the people trying to keep kids safe that the Biden admin is trying to un-punish. FUCK
NotMax
@mali muso
Please limit Uncle Joe to Stalin and >Petticoat Junction.
;)
MazeDancer
Matt Miller on Twitter:
comrade scotts agenda of rage
We have contractors that have been with us for so long, they should be Feds but don’t ever call it a “personal services contract”. Federal contracting within my agency is a crock like that and dates back to when the Bushies tried to outsource everything. No accountability, massive overhead costs. I digress.
So this is great news if for nothing else it’ll force some of these scabs to either get vaccinated or get the fuck out. One in our building came down with the plague a several weeks back. I was gonna be moved into a cubicle next to his whenever we finally go back and was wondering how I could protest/bitch about being stuck next to a dumbshit anti-vaxxer because weekly testing wasn’t gonna cut it for me. I doubt the rest of that particular contract crew were vaccinated either.
Problem solved. I knew there was a reason I supported Biden the first two times he ran for this job.
SiubhanDuinne
@mrmoshpotato:
Charlie Pierce will be very excited by this news. “They lived then to make us happy now.”
trollhattan
@dmsilev:
Too bad we no longer have Sam Kinison. He’d have been an excellent Joe Anger Translator.
Matt McIrvin
@HalfAssedHomesteader: “for Christ’s sake, you assholes, I cannot believe this shit”
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: Odds are better than even he’d be an antivax loon.
NotMax
@trollhattan
(cue spooky music)
Who died in … Needles.
mali muso
@NotMax: Will make a note. :)
Done with the speech now. That was good stuff.
Facebones
Good. Our small theatre in NYC was already requiring all staff to be vaccinated and wear masks indoors. Make it as hard as possible for the unvaccinated to function in society.
E.
@trollhattan: Agreed, but what about Bobcat? Is he still around? I 5hink that was his name. A yelly, sweaty comedian.
Another Scott
Good speech. Good plans.
I really like the emphasis on reduced-cost testing availability and free testing in drug stores, etc.
Paid time off for getting vaccinated (and for helping others get vaccinated) could be huge. It’ll be interesting to see how the vaccination numbers change after these new initiatives take effect.
“Get vaccinated!” [ pow! ]
Cheers,
Scott.
Ken
@E.: Bobcat Goldthwait, still alive.
Jeffro
@Mike in NC: my old stompin’ grounds! Hope you had a good time and spent a lot of dough ;)
Jeffro
@Baud: I saw that and mannnnn do I love Uncle Joe
Jeffro
@dmsilev: he is his own anger translator. =)
FelonyGovt
I’m very happy about (all of them, but in particular) Item 4. We decided, with some trepidation, to go see an LA Kings hockey game at Staples Center in November for my husband’s birthday. The more protocols the better.
brendancalling
The anti-vaxxers must be going absolutely APESHIT right now. PRAYER WARRIORS, ASSEMBLE!!!
This is when they start to get violent, I suspect.
Another Scott
@NotMax: Mighty Joe??
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@VeniceRiley: Hahaha! And, yes, definitely a mistake. I will only imagine what a cesspool the comments section was.
pat
Has anyone else seen a report that 40-50% of the hospitalized covid patients in Israel were vaccinated?
It was a report in Science, which I suppose would have been peer reviewed. Vaccine, Pfizer…
trollhattan
@E.:
He is! He was even one of the panelists when we went to a taping of “Wait, Wait.” He dialed it back for the radio show but clearly still has his classic schtick when it’s called for.
mrmoshpotato
@Benw:
Totally. It’s so fucking ghoulish and unconscionable.
Matt McIrvin
@Ken: Bobcat was bizarre and shouty but not mean. Kinison was mean. Super misogynistic too.
mrmoshpotato
@SiubhanDuinne: Brother Charlie will be very happy with Biden losing his patience with the plague rats.
RSA
@SiubhanDuinne: Great minds… :-)
I get so irritated with Twitter, when a paragraph or maybe a list of just twelve items needs to get broken into five separate tweets, with a break sometimes happening within a single sentence. Good God.
And then there’s the travesty of tweeting an image of a block of text. The creators of the Internet are rolling over in their graves (or would be, if not for most being still alive today).
I’ve read about the history of the size of tweets–totally not compelling.
JPL
Kemp is going to sue in order to stop Biden’s mandates.
GA today Georgia has 68 ICU beds left for a population of 10.6m people.
Matt McIrvin
I fully expect the wingnut courts to knock a lot of this down with injunctions or something. But a lot of employers will probably just play ball because this gives them an excuse for what they may have wanted to do anyway–it sets a norm.
brendancalling
@MazeDancer: I tend to call him, affectionately, President Grandpa Joe, because (yes) he’s old, but mainly because he’ll yell at you if you deserve it, but he’ll still buy you an ice cream at the end of the day.
Matt McIrvin
Friedersdorf is going “people who like vaccine mandates don’t like abortion bans and vice versa, everyone’s a hypocrite!!“
trollhattan
I wasn’t the only one on Jan 6 who looked at the prep for protecting the capitol on teevee while the speeches were going on, and opined it looked soft, really soft compared to your basic Antifa-hippie mob response. Well, the jury’s back and it looks bad for the Capitol Police brass.
Much, much more at the link.
Now, maybe we can find out more about why the military brass cock-blocked National Guard help.
New link from WG
mrmoshpotato
@JPL:
Jesus Fucking Himself!
I’m so sorry that those of you in Rethuglican states have governors who want to kill you.
Another Scott
@pat:
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
@JPL: Yoikes! And it’s not as though neighbor states will be bailing them out.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Everyone’s not a hypocrite. Everyone just doesn’t adhere to the libertarian paradigm.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@E.: Bobcat is still around. I think he’s a semi-regular on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me – the NPR quiz show.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: Needs a better link.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan:
Oopsy!
Uncle Cosmo
@mali muso: Ignore the whining of that half-arsed punster. The Current Guy is PUJOTS: President Uncle Joe Of The United States. Period.
sherparick
Cermet
@pat: Sorry but I’ll call bull sh$t – so much false and misleading information has come out of Israel the last two or three months that was patently false as reported that I don’t care about anything someone posts about that place.
No doubt when (and if) it is read in detail – as said in the Prince Bride – “I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
I see ‘Another Scott’ clarified it and it isn’t.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: There’s a problem with your link.
dmsilev
@Matt McIrvin: I’ll grant the hypocrisy just as soon as he produces a study showing that abortions are contagious.
pat
@Another Scott:
Thank you. Evidently the Austrian press has reported this without the details.
MisterForkbeard
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: Bobcat Goldthwait, right? That guy is great.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@MisterForkbeard: Yes Bobcat Goldthwait of One Crazy Summer fame.
Matt McIrvin
@pat: Remember, whenever you see a result that says “some percent of victims were vaccinated”, that’s the wrong way around–what you care about is the probability of illness if you’re vaccinated, not the probability of being vaccinated if you’re sick.
And the latter is subject to the base-rate fallacy. If the most vulnerable populations are almost 100% vaccinated, a large fraction of the sick people will be vaccinated. There just won’t be so many of them.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Matt McIrvin: Abortion is not contagious doesn’t enter Connor’s beautiful mind, I take it?
Edit: And I see I got beaten to the punch. Need to read more.
Matt McIrvin
@Cermet: Everyone looks at Israel because they started mass vaccination early and the assumption is that any failure of a vaccination-heavy approach will appear first there.
But there seem to be a marked tendency to put incredibly stupid panic spins on every piece of news that comes out of there, and they’ve generated all these vaccine-efficacy studies that are weird low outliers (even early on). I have to assume there’s some political angle here and I don’t know what it is.
Mike in NC
@Jeffro: Yes and yes!
Matt McIrvin
The other rule about efficacy studies is, don’t pay attention to Eric Feigl-Ding.
smith
@Bluegirlfromwyo: Conor in particular doesn’t have to worry about catching it.
JaneE
Yes please. We have waved the carrot long enough. Time to break out the stick.
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
Thanks for da fix!
Ken
“See, here on the application where it says ‘Do you plan to storm the US Capitol’, they checked ‘No’.”
RSA
@WaterGirl: Thanks for the new link! Wow.
gwangung
I’m hoping #FuckYouGetVaxxed gets popular as a hashtag.
Another Scott
@Ken: Yeah, that got me, too.
I understand that there were conflicting ideas on how the 1/6 thing was thought to go by the people planning for protest contingencies. IIRC, Mayor Bowser was telling people not to come for counter-protests, and she didn’t want a big, overbearing, police presence because of what had happened at various protests over the summer. And, undoubtedly, there were some people – in various places – concerned that TFG was going to use any pretext to call out the Army/National Guard and make the Lafayette Square protest look like a tea party.
But, the main question in my mind is, after people were attacking the Capitol Police and breaking past the barricades, why did it take so long for reinforcements to arrive? Why did it seemingly take the governors of VA and MD announcing that they were sending officers and troops to DC for the Pentagon to act? Pence wasn’t in the “chain of command” so that’s a fig-leaf. Who was saying “NO”, why were they doing so, and who was preventing things like deploying police/guards in areas closer by who could be activated in minutes rather than hours (even if, somehow, they needed other approval to move into DC)?
Lots and lots of questions…
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
(Posted this downstairs, also too.)
rofl.
(via Popehat)
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: Phillip Klein of I forget which WIngnut Welfare Daily Shopper also forgot the internet never forgets.
WaterGirl
@RSA: @trollhattan:
Pretty shocking. They can’t be that dumb, so they must have been in on it?
RSA
@Another Scott: Wow. This is the first piece from Ben Domenech that I’ve found to be non-garbage. Thanks.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
sometimes you forget, they aren’t all faking all of it, some of them are quite genuinely stupid
ETA : I love that Biden mentioned it, I wonder how the TV hosts will address it, if more Todd Starneseses start wondering if Tucker has actually sold out to Fauci
The Pale Scot
I see the hospitality and landscaper labor markets loosening up.
Can’t even say “so quit, Walmart is hiring”
New Deal democrat
@Matt McIrvin:
Exactly.
The Pale Scot
France is giving citizenship to frontline workers
https://twitter.com/AlexTaylorNews/status/1435920498244919296
WaterGirl
@The Pale Scot: What a great idea.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Another Scott: Didn’t the Sec of Defense outright say he seriously though if he called out the DC Guard Trump was going to use to in a coup and that’s why it wasn’t called out until the Va and Md Guard arrived?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott:
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Wow. I never heard of Todd Starnes so I looked him up and read 8-10 of his recent tweets. What an unpleasant person.
dopey-o
That’s President Handsome Joe.
Ruckus
@brendancalling:
I call him President Brother Joe Biden. He’s the age one of my siblings would be if she hadn’t developed cancer. My grandfather would be 131 yrs old now. Must be an old man thing….
The Pale Scot
@WaterGirl:
Casablanca La Marseillaise
How apropo,
There will always be dirty stinking nazis
cain
@Kelly:
Strangely i guess by the liberal side. But yeah, play time is over and no more coddling. The Oregon legislature needs to revert those laws pronto and get those goddam cops vaccinated or get the fuck out.