Biden teased his vaccine mandates two weeks ago, so what’s the hold-up? Has he realized just how badly wrong this is going to go?

Details of the unprecedented decrees, affecting around 100m unvaccinated Americans, were expected to have been published by now. Is it a legal hold-up, or has the government finally realized it’s gone much too far?

Many Americans were deprived of the last shred of illusion that they lived in a democratic society when President Joe Biden announced earlier this month that they had no choice but to receive an experimental vaccine - or face invasive weekly swab tests - to work.

While Biden acknowledged he individually lacked the authority to impose such an unprecedented rule, he vowed to do it through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), making it an “emergency rule” for companies with more than 100 employees. The captive media praised the decision, instantly othering those who disagreed as Trump-loving anti-science hicks who probably chased their morning horse dewormer with a shot of Trump-brand bleach.

But while there’s no doubt some of those previously-unvaxxed Americans have dutifully gone out and gotten jabbed in anticipation of this big ferocious mandate - supposed to carry $14,000 fines per offense, and who can afford that in 2021’s economy? - plenty more have not, and are preparing for some form of combat with the Biden administration - whether via a legal challenge or by vowing to protect their homes with arms if necessary should the “shot police” come knocking.

After all, not only had many of the estimated 100 million unvaccinated Americans not voted for Biden, no one in the country voted to extend him a mandate hitherto unheard-of in any western democracy. While defenders of the unprecedented overreach have pointed to previous court cases - most commonly a 1905 judgment in which a man was ordered to pay a fine for not submitting to a mandatory smallpox vaccination law in Massachusetts - the drugs in those cases were known quantities with regard to possible adverse effects. The smallpox vaccine had been around for over a century when the oft-referenced case was decided.

However, the mRNA vaccines being handed out like candy to all comers are an almost completely unknown quantity, with precious little (and brief) study of their effects on humans done before unleashing them on the population. Those studies that have begun to surface, while pooh-poohed in the media as so much anti-vaxxer nonsense, are backed by legitimate data (and refuted by the likes of “blogger David Gorski,” a known pro-pharma troll who uses his medical degrees to bludgeon those with differing opinions). The inventor of the mRNA vaccine himself, Dr. Robert Malone, has expressed misgivings about what is being done with his creation, especially with regard to vaccine mandates.

If the Biden administration had wanted to fan the flames of outrage, it couldn’t have done a much better job than to trot out the normally-sleepy president to harangue the nonbelievers earlier this month, blaming them for everything from the continued Covid-19 deaths among the jabbed to full emergency rooms (some of which have turned out to be hoaxes) to the supposedly-spiking deaths of children from the Delta variant (never mind those vaxxed kids in the hospital with wildly age-inappropriate myocarditis).

So what’s holding up Sleepy Joe’s trigger finger with the OSHA mandate? He’s declared the unvaccinated - the “unclean” - to be the enemy, the designated scapegoat and not-so-secret stand-in for the trumped-up (in every sense of the word) “white supremacists” against whom he’s determined to wage a domestic War on Terror. The overflow from that righteous battle is supposed to silence the remnants of “MAGA Country” and the sizable group of those on the Left who’ve been alienated from the Democratic Party by its shameless pandering to the Cerberus of Big Business, the military-industrial-security complex and Wall Street/private equity over the years.

Does whoever’s actually running the Biden administration realize that the mandate will be struck down in court? Previous attempts to ram through emergency OSHA orders haven’t fared well when exposed to legal scrutiny, and the Biden bunch does not want their grab for control over the very bloodstreams of the American people to miss. It’ll be a lot harder to try a second time. They’re more likely waiting until such legal wargaming can be completed (possibly with the help of creepy needle fetishists like Epstein pal Alan Dershowitz, who has quite openly spoken of his belief that US law allows authorities to plunge syringes into whomever they please based on a misunderstanding of the previously-mentioned 1905 Jacobson smallpox case) to at least a draw, if not a hands-down win for the mandate. 

The other possibility is that the administration, despite its near-complete control over the mainstream media, is concerned that 100 million Americans - the number expected to be affected by the OSHA mandate - are too many to sweep under the rug. It’s certainly more Americans than have ever voted for a presidential candidate, including Biden’s supposedly record-setting turnout. All the disapproving WaPo opeds declaring anti-vaxxers domestic terrorists can’t blot out the sight of 100 million people who refuse to give up this one last frontier to a government who, in many cases, has already taken everything else they have. Nearly two years of Covid-19 austerity have millions on the brink of eviction, their businesses closed, their bank accounts rapidly shrinking. Now they’re supposed to trust the same government that stole their livelihood (and the same pharmaceutical company that just over a decade ago was forced to pay what was then the largest healthcare fraud settlement in history) to take care of them?

The government - in Our Democracy™ at least - does not give, or help, except with an expectation of return on investment. It only takes. Those living in a fantasy world where Big Brother loves them and wants to keep them safe will wake up one day and realize otherwise - it’s only a matter of time. Everyone else should take heart that even the most dictatorial president since George W. Bush doesn’t feel comfortable issuing a blanket order to mass-inject Americans. It’s a small and temporary victory, but it means the ruling class is afraid of the people - as it must be for any democracy to function correctly.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.