There's Actually No Vax Policy

The other day I saw a story that confirmed my surmise about having OSHA issue a national workplace vax policy, as Biden had announced:

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has yet to release a draft to force private businesses to mandate coronavirus vaccines or implement rigorous testing requirements, nearly two weeks after President Joe Biden made the demand.

The normal rule making process involves not just drafts, but public comment periods, advance notice, and so forth. But as I posted on September 16, OSHA doesn't have the staff or budget to enforce such a policy, which in any case is months from implementation. But employers who would be affected can't file suit against the policy until it's published and goes into effect, which delays likely reversal in the courts.

In fact, we could even think this is deliberate. It reminds me of the complaint in a recent New Yorker piece:

The Biden Presidency, on both the foreign and domestic fronts, remains a jumble of aspirations—and retains a haze of uncertainty about how to achieve them. Much of his political problem, it seems to me, is a vast gap between his articulated goals and what is politically possible. . . . the Democratic Party is barely a majority party in the U.S. Congress. It’s a fifty-fifty Senate, and a fifty-fifty world. In a purely practical sense, the challenge for Biden is that he hasn’t got to the hard part yet.

But as far as I can see, this isn't a bug, it's a feature. Biden's intent is to look like he's Doing Something about COVID, but his choices are all bad ones. Anyone who actually means to enforce vaccine passports, like Mayor DeBlasio, runs into the problem that many people who are denied entry for not having a passport are going to be minority, especially African-American. They claim with some justice that the policy is racist.

There's another conundrum here. The well-publicized New York brawl at Carmine's restaurant started when a staffer "accused [three women] of presenting fake COVID-19 vaccine cards". Wait a moment. What's an authentic COVID vaccine card? How can you tell a fake?

For instance, my barber shop, in a spontaneous policy, requires "proof of vaccination". My wife and I keep our vaccination cards in our home safe for the simple reason that if we lose them, some future policy could cause difficulties if we don't have them. So for my barber and anyone else who asks, I made a photocopy of the card and keep it in my wallet. But it's clearly a photocopy. My barber accepts it, but why should he? You can't use a photocopy of a driver's license or a birth certificate. Did the Carmine's staffer refuse to accept a photocopy? Is a photocopy "fake"?

There's no rule, because there's no actual policy. An employer who fires people for not being vaxxed in advance of an official OSHA policy runs a great deal of risk, especially if many affected are minorities. But this becomes the employer's problem, not Biden's, while the employer has no recourse, because he can't point to any actual policy that he's following, while on the other hand, he can't sue OSHA for redress, either. Meanwhile, Biden can claim he's Done Something.

And the ambiguity gets worse. On September 9, Biden strongly implied that in addition to the two jabs last spring, people would be required to get the boosters once they were available (which Biden at the time said would be nearly a week ago, September 20). But now, Dr Walensky of all people says the CDC is not changing its definition of "fully vaccinated".

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said Friday that the definition of “fully vaccinated” won’t change when COVID-19 booster shots are rolled out—at least in the near future.

Well, the FDA isn't completely on board with the boosters.

While they endorsed it for those who were 65 years and over, as well as those at high risk of severe disease, they didn’t endorse it for everyone else. That blew up Biden’s plans for a huge roll-out. Two senior FDA officials even quit last month, reportedly over what they felt was a rush to push out the shots for everyone in the country.

My wife and I are over 65. Barring any surprises, which I don't rule out, we'll probably get the boosters, but as of now, we have no idea when, where, or how we'd get them, except if it's anything like the first jabs, we can't just call our doctor at Kaiser, we've got to go to a cattle pen. But even if we didn't bother, it looks like for the foreseeable future, our existing vax cards will work.

Unless they change their minds.