Since 2009, the Obama administrations have supported a “no excuses” approach to vaccination. The new Trump administration has been taking on this policy and is focused on upholding it. They are going to enforce mandatory vaccinations of travelers who come from countries with high rates of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella or polio.
The “vaccine mandate deadline” is the day that the Biden Administration will enforce a new law requiring all children to be vaccinated before they can attend public school. This law has been in effect for a while, but now it’s about to become much more strict. If you’re planning on traveling soon, make sure your child is fully vaccinated.
The Biden Administration Is About To Make Traveling Unvaccinated Families’ Lives More Difficult
on October 27, 2021 by Gary Leff
There are new requirements for unvaccinated Americans returning to the United States, in addition to accepting foreign tourists from previously-banned nations and putting a new vaccination requirement on non-residents entering the United States by air (with exceptions).
- Vaccinated Americans must still provide a negative Covid-19 test within three days of flight. The testing requirement does not apply to children of vaccinated Americans.
- Those who have had a recent previous infection (a positive COVID-19 test within the last 90 days and a statement from a healthcare physician stating that they are safe to travel) are excluded. It seems to be the only area in the United States where previous infection is acknowledged by the medical profession. It’s also considered to be superior than immunization for this reason.
- Unvaccinated Americans, on the other hand, will just have to test one day before leaving.
- Vaccination is not required for children under the age of 18. They are required to test. When they are required to test is determined on their parents’ vaccination status.
- Children aged 2 to 17 who are traveling with an unvaccinated adult must test within one day of departure. Within three days of travel, children traveling with a vaccinated adult may test.
Many testing centers will not conduct tests on children under the age of 5, or even under the age of three. Even with the Delta form, children are less likely than adults to get and spread the virus. In any event, an antigen test three days before departure gives you very little about the present infectious situation on the day of travel (let alone about carrying the virus but not yet being infectious).
Antigen testing may be used to detect current infectiousness, while PCR tests can be used to determine the viral load in the body (including both pre- and post-infectiousness). Antigen testing are permitted for travel because of the following reasons:
- They’re more efficient and convenient.
- Since of the approved tests and because the introduction of slightly more persons with the virus does not influence the trajectory of the pandemic at this time, the testing requirement does not safeguard the United States from viral transmission (especially given the levels of immunity in the United States, even though it may not have ultimately mattered given U.S. strategy earlier on).
- It also doesn’t safeguard against the introduction of new varieties; land border crossings aren’t subject to the same regulations, and Delta was introduced in Australia. In any event, the virus continues to change in a similar manner over the globe as long as it is highly contagious.
The necessity for youngsters traveling with unvaccinated adults to be tested closer in is definitely punitive. For example, the anticipated OSHA regulation for big businesses (announced September 9th, yet not released, but deemed “urgent”) It’s designed to make life more difficult for folks who haven’t been vaccinated in order to encourage them to become vaccinated.
‘However, a youngster traveling with someone who has not been vaccinated is more likely to be infectious on the day of travel than they would be three days before to flight,’ others may argue. However, this isn’t mathematically sound, and it’s absolutely not founded on any acceptable public health idea about saving lives and avoiding hospital overcrowding.
Vaccines have my whole support. I’ve been vaccinated and had my booster injection. The success of the mRNA vaccines, in particular, is simply amazing. However, the policies enacted have little to do with science.
Otherwise, if the US is going to recognize two doses of Sinovac’s Coronavac vaccine, which was claimed to be 51 percent effective against symptomatic disease pre-Delta and which the World Health Organization says has no evidence of reduced infection or transmission, it should recognize immunity from prior infection and a single dose of an mRNA vaccine, as is commonly recommended in Europe. Unvaccinated Russians and Peruvians who tested negative under the Biden administration were alright, but as case loads in the US diminish, individuals who had the Sputnik vaccination aren’t welcome a single J&J dosage counts (when many experts on FDA and CDC advisory panels were reluctant to approve a second J&J dose rather than an mRNA booster even).
If you want to argue that life should be made more difficult for the unvaccinated using whatever few levers the Administration has at its disposal, go ahead and do so, but don’t try to pass off US policy as science-based.
Wanting to see more people get vaccinated is clearly a good thing, but recall this administration’s enormous error in March when I wrote about how the stimulus plan should have attached $1400 payments to vaccination, but they believed they could win votes by giving out no-strings checks. They’re left with sticks instead of carrots now, but you’d think they’d enable individuals who have been completely vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine within the last 6 months, or who have been boosted, to bypass testing in the same manner that those who have recently recovered may.
More From the Wing’s Perspective
The “religious exemption for covid vaccine” is a new policy that the Biden Administration is about to make life hard for unvaccinated families who travel. The policy will not allow parents to exempt their children from vaccines based on religious beliefs.
Related Tags
- vaccine mandates by state
- covid vaccine mandates by state
- can a company mandate covid vaccine