425 - The Supreme Court, COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates, and OSHA's Charge to Keep Worker's Safe
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2022
⏱️ 16 minutes
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Summary
The Supreme Court recently dealt a blow to vaccine mandates for larger employers, saying OSHA had overstepped in requiring employees to be vaccinated or tested weekly in order to work. So how can the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, uphold its core responsibility to keep workers safe? David Michaels, former OSHA Assistant Secretary under Obama, talks with Stephanie Desmon about where OSHA can continue to step up safety in light of COVID-19 and how a lack of vaccine mandates underscores the importance of implementing other measures to help keep workers safe from all airborne infectious diseases.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 5 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.9 | I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, |
| 0:19.0 | and a former health commissioner here in Baltimore, |
| 0:21.4 | Maryland. Our goal with this podcast is to bring scientific evidence and experience to shed |
| 0:27.0 | light on critical health issues. If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email |
| 0:32.6 | to public health question at jhhhu.edu. That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:42.7 | Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of Public Health on Call. Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to |
| 0:48.2 | Dr. David Michaels, who ran the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, during the Obama administration. |
| 0:56.0 | They discussed the recent Supreme Court ruling on vaccine mandates and how OSHA can step up to |
| 1:01.5 | protect worker safety in spite of it. Let's listen. |
| 1:05.5 | David Michaels, thanks so much for joining me. |
| 1:07.8 | Well, it's great to be with you. Thanks for inviting me. |
| 1:10.3 | So the Supreme Court |
| 1:11.9 | recently dealt a blow to vaccine mandates for large employers in the United States for COVID. |
| 1:18.1 | But that doesn't mean the end of mandates, does it? I don't think it does. And also, you know, |
| 1:23.2 | the OSHA requirement wasn't strictly a vaccine mandate. |
| 1:28.6 | It was really a workplace safety rule that said if a worker is not vaccinated, then they |
| 1:36.0 | have to wear a mask to protect other workers and they have to be tested weekly so that workers |
| 1:43.2 | who are infectious are more likely to stay home. |
| 1:46.1 | So while it was stopped by the Supreme Court, it was stayed officially. |
| 1:52.8 | It's dead, as far as I can tell. |
| 1:55.2 | But requirements at workplaces around vaccinations are not dead. |
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