Dr. Anthony Fauci seemed to be a bit disappointed with President Joe Biden's newly announced COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal and many private-sector workers because it doesn't go far enough.
Biden told the nation on Thursday a new rule will be created and enforced by the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) which will require businesses that employ more than 100 people to have a vaccine mandate. If employees do not get the vaccine, they have to conduct weekly testing. Any business caught violating the rule will face heavy fines.
Biden also warned the Republican governors who have not implemented or removed strict COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates that they will be moved out of the way.
BIDEN: "If these governors won’t help beat the pandemic, I’ll use my power as president to get them out of the way." pic.twitter.com/KBG2fwgQ9v
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 9, 2021
"My understanding of what the President was saying, Dr. Fauci was that either you get a vaccine or you have to be tested regularly. And oftentimes, it seems like these two things are commingled, like do one or the other. But in one case, you are preventing it. In the other case, you are diagnosing it. Why not just do the vaccine mandate? And not say that the testing can be sort of this off-ramp?" CNN's Sanjay Gupta asked.
"Well, I think the President is — is — is, you know, being somewhat moderate in his demand, if you want to call it that. In that, there are some people who really don’t want to get vaccinated but they don’t want to lose their job," Fauci said. "You got to give them an off-lane and the off-lane is if you get tested frequently enough, and find out you’re positive, you won’t come to work and you won’t infect other people. So, it really is somewhat of a compromise there. Myself, I would make it just vaccinate or not. But he was trying to be moderate in what his pronouncement was."
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