Washington, DC – Republican lawmakers picked politics over science once again, as nearly all Republican senators and representatives signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Supreme Court to block OSHA’s vaccine or test employer rule. OSHA’s standard is an essential component of America’s strategy to end the COVID-19 pandemic by requiring more than 84 million private-sector workers to become fully vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. Yet Republicans have launched a highly-partisan legal attack on these safety measures, threatening America’s strategy to end the COVID-19 pandemic.
The brief comes as Republican governors are filing their own anti-vaccine lawsuits and downplaying vaccines while simultaneously asking the federal government for aid with the Omicron variant tearing through their states. Meanwhile, their colleagues in Congress are just as determined to make this pandemic last as long as possible, putting millions of lives at risk.
“The science is clear: vaccines save lives,” said Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach. “We need these requirements to improve vaccination rates, help the economy, and finally put an end to this pandemic. Once again, Republicans show that they don’t care about science, safety, or facts as long as they can score political points and get their sound bytes played on Fox News.”
THE FACTS ARE CLEAR: VACCINE REQUIREMENTS SAVE LIVES
- Requirements Improve Vaccination Rates And Save Lives. In a recent filing, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote the OSHA vaccine or test requirement would “save over 6,500 worker lives and prevent over 250,000 hospitalizations over the course of six months.” Vaccine requirements are an extremely effective tool to increase vaccination rates, in the private sector and among health care systems. Aftering issuing a vaccine requirement, United Airlines reported that 99.7 percent of its 67,000 member workforce complied and is vaccinated. HHS Secretary Bercerra has “cited examples of health care systems that had adopted vaccination requirements with 99.5%, 99%, and 95% compliance.”
- Experts Agree, Vaccination Requirements Are Needed To End Pandemic. An amicus brief filed by former HHS Secretaries and CMS administrators described broad support from medical and public health experts for the CMS rule, stating “53 organizations—that together represent essentially the entire health care profession in the United States—have reached the same conclusion. They ‘advocate that all health care and long-term care employers require their workers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.’” More than a dozen medical groups, 30 deans of leading academic programs, and 104 leading public health and health policy scholars have signed amicus briefs or publicly supported vaccination requirements for private sector workers.
- Americans Support Vaccination Requirements. There is overwhelming support for the CMS and OSHA vaccination rules. A December poll from Hart Research found 64 percent of Americans support the OSHA vaccine or test rule and 66 percent back the CMS vaccination requirement.