G.O.P. Seethes at Biden Mandate, Even in States Requiring Other Vaccines - The New York Times

But the governors fighting President Biden’s Covid-19 requirements impose mandates of their own.

WASHINGTON — Like other Republican governors around the country, Tate Reeves of Mississippi reacted angrily to the coronavirus vaccine mandates President Biden imposed on private businesses.

Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.

Biden also imposed vaccine mandates on federal workers and many health care workers.

Mississippi, which has one of the lowest coronavirus vaccination rates in the nation, has consistently led the United States in childhood vaccinations — a point of pride for its health officials and many of its lawmakers.

Experts in public health law agree that Mr.

Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University, said of Mr.

“The only people being hypocritical are President Biden and his administration, who for months have said they would not mandate the vaccine,” she said in an email, adding that Mr.

“What the president does is he creates political cover for Republican leaders, who will scream loudly because it’s politically expedient,” he said.

Biden have said much the same.

Biden: “It’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks” for the deadly coronavirus surge, she said recently.

Biden is pointing to childhood vaccine mandates to make his case.

Because public health powers are reserved to the states under the Constitution, he said, the Supreme Court would almost certainly strike down a national mandate.

Biden did not impose a national mandate.

The mandates he announced — for the federal work force and federal contractors, for employees of health care facilities and Head Start programs that accept federal funding, and for large businesses — are grounded in powers that Congress has granted to the president, including the authority to ensure a safe workplace under the law that established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

When vaccines for diseases like pertussis, polio and measles became widely available in the 1940s and ’50s, the American public, inclined to have faith in science and government, voluntarily accepted them, said David Rosner, a Columbia University historian who specializes in the intersection of politics and public health.

One Republican governor, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, drew a distinction between Covid-19 shots and childhood vaccines, insisting in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” that childhood vaccine mandates do not violate personal freedoms because parents have had “a long history” with them.

Of Covid-19 shots, he said, “This is a process that’s going to take time to bring people along, and that’s why it should be a personal choice.”.

But public health experts say the safety of the community supersedes personal liberty when everyone is at risk from a communicable disease.

“It’s always a little noisy and uncomfortable” when vaccine requirements are first imposed, said Dr.

Eleven states, including Arizona, Florida and Texas, have already expressly banned Covid-19 vaccine mandates, either through legislation or a governor’s order, and questions are bound to emerge over whether the president’s mandates will trump those state policies or laws

Marcus Plescia, the chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, warned in an interview last month that the backlash against Covid-19 vaccine mandates could prompt state legislatures to “also tinker with the idea that maybe all of these childhood vaccines are an overreach of government.”

Biden’s mandates are inciting outrage, the Delta variant is making the case for him