Following his speech announcing new vaccine mandates for federal employees and facilities Thursday evening, President Biden was asked by reporters about additional requirements for citizens to receive a Wuhan coronavirus vaccine — a proposal that polls at a lower percentage than the number of Americans who've made an individual decision to get vaccinated already.
"I'd like to see them continue to move in that direction," Biden said of vaccine mandates implemented by states, private companies, and schools. "It's still a question whether the federal government can mandate the whole country, I don't know that yet," he added.
Earlier Thursday during the White House press briefing, deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked whether the Biden administration expected "resistance" to the announcement of a vaccine mandate for federal workers. Jean-Pierre dodged the question, likely because she knew that roughly half the country opposes mandated vaccination.
It's not just federal employees, though, who aren't sold on vaccine mandates — it's a lot of Americans across the country who disagree with the President when he says he wants to see mandates broadly implemented.
A survey completed this month by Politico and Harvard showed how the American people feel about vaccine mandates and proving vaccination status in different settings. In a nearly perfect split, 50 to 49 percent, only a slim majority of Americans support requiring vaccination for public school children 12 and older before allowing them to return to school, and more than one-third oppose mandatory vaccination for public school teachers.
The same survey found 46 percent of Americans oppose employers requiring vaccines — including more than 35 percent of Democrats. Greater than 40 percent oppose requiring vaccination for college students and university faculty before the fall, including one-in-four Democrats. And while, according to the Chronicle of Higher education, around 80 colleges and universities have said they'll require COVID-19 vaccinations, more have announced they won't.
When it comes to verifying adherence to vaccine mandates, more than two-thirds of Americans oppose the idea of having to show proof of full vaccination when entering stores or businesses while more than half oppose such a requirement for attending live sports. By a slim majority, 50 percent to 49 percent, Americans also oppose a standard federal document — some sort of vaccine passport — being used to verify vaccine status.
A review of polls and surveys done over the last several months shows the number of Americans who support vaccine mandates from employers hasn't moved much since an initial jump after emergency approval was granted by federal officials. Last December, a Morning Consult poll showed just 21 percent of Americans thought vaccines should be mandatory. But over the summer, the number of those who support mandated vaccination leveled out and continue to hover around 50 percent.
Meanwhile, the CDC's Wuhan coronavirus dashboard shows that a greater percentage of Americans — 66.9 percent of those 12 and up along with 69.4 percent of those 18 and older and 89.7 percent of those over the age of 65 — have made the individual choice to get vaccinated than support mandated shots.