Despite Protests, 61 Percent of Californians Support Vaccine Mandates

Majorities in many parts of the country increasingly see mandatory vaccination as the only way to stop a virus being primarily promulgated by the unvaccinated. JL 

Adela Suliman and Kendra Nichols report in the Washington Post:

Overall support for vaccine mandates is high in California. 69% of respondents said they supported vaccine mandates for health-care workers and 61% said they support mandates for indoor businesses. The National Institutes of Health director said the country could see an average of 200,000 new infections per day in the next two weeks, a level not seen since the pandemic’s worst days in January and February, with millions of unvaccinated Americans becoming “sitting ducks” for the delta variant.

Tensions over coronavirus restrictions are erupting in the United States as the list of cities, states and private employers mandating vaccinations and masks continues to grow.

In California, protests in Los Angeles turned violent after the City Council voted to require proof of vaccination for anyone entering an indoor public space. In a separate incident in Northern California, school officials banned a parent who, upset over seeing his daughter in a mask, allegedly left a teacher bloodied and bruised on the first day of classes at an elementary school.

But overall support for vaccine mandates is high in California, according to a new CBS-YouGov poll, in which 69 percent of respondents said they supported vaccine mandates for health-care workers and 61 percent said they support mandates for indoor businesses.

More than 620,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the United States, with recent spikes in cases driven by the delta variant. Here are key numbers from the CDC’s assessment of the delta variant.

Here are some significant developments

• New York will become the first big U.S. city to put into effect a vaccine mandate for indoor activities, requiring people to show proof of vaccination on a new app or their paper vaccination card. Incoming governor Kathy Hochul (D) is reportedly considering a statewide mandate, saying Sunday that she is “open to all options.”
• A Texas trial court will hear from counties seeking to impose mask requirements in schools on Monday, after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on such mandates was allowed to stand, at least temporarily, by the Texas Supreme Court.
• The United States could decide within weeks whether to offer extra coronavirus shots to more Americans this fall, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins told the Associated Press on Sunday. The Food and Drug Administration approved extra doses for people with weakened immune systems last week.
• Collins also predicted on “Fox News Sunday” that the country could see an average of 200,000 new infections per day in the next two weeks, a level not seen since the pandemic’s worst days in January and February, with millions of unvaccinated Americans becoming “sitting ducks” for the delta variant.