Getting their vax up: America’s vaccine mandates
The Intelligence from The Economist
The Economist
4.5 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2021
⏱️ ? minutes
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Summary
President Joe Biden’s requirements for employers to insist on vaccinations are a bold move amid flatlining inoculation rates. But will they work? For decades the world’s cities seemed invincible, but the pandemic has hastened and hardened a shift in urban demographics and economics. And an ancient Finnish burial site scrambles notions of gender roles in the distant past.
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. |
| 0:08.9 | Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:17.7 | Major urban centers worldwide were reduced to ghost towns in the midst of last year's |
| 0:22.7 | lockdowns. That was assumed to be temporary. But as the world tentatively reopens for business, |
| 0:29.2 | a more permanent change to cities seems to be settling in. And an ancient burial site in |
| 0:35.1 | Finland threw up a mystery in 1968. Did the remains belong to a man or a woman? A new study |
| 0:42.4 | complicates the answer to that question and some entrenched ideas about gender roles in the deep past. |
| 0:48.2 | But first, one after another, America's Republican governors are speaking out against the vaccination |
| 1:05.9 | mandates put in place by President Joe Biden last week. Florida's governor, Ronda Santos, |
| 1:11.5 | reckons it's a legislative end run. When you have a president like Biden issuing unconstitutional |
| 1:18.6 | edicts against the American people, we have a responsibility to stand up for the Constitution |
| 1:24.0 | and to fight back. And we are doing that in the state of Florida. |
| 1:27.6 | South Dakota's Kristi Nome agrees. This is not a power that is delegated to the federal government. |
| 1:32.6 | This is a power for states to decide in South Dakota we're going to be free and we're going to |
| 1:37.5 | make sure that we don't overstep our authority. The mandates will affect 100 million Americans, |
| 1:43.0 | about a third of whom have had no jobs at all. Demographic that Mr. Biden has singled out. |
| 1:48.5 | My message to unvaccinated Americans is this. What more is there to wait for? What more do you need to see? |
| 1:59.5 | We've been patient, but our patience is wearing thin and the refusal has cost all of us. |
| 2:06.5 | America has just fallen into last place among the G7 countries in terms of vaccination rates. |
| 2:13.4 | Even with local hospitals, particularly in the South, nearing capacity, the will to get jabbed |
| 2:19.2 | isn't increasing. And there seems to be plenty of will to fight Mr. Biden on his mandates. |
| 2:24.8 | I think the fact is that President Biden has felt the tide of the pandemic hasn't turned, |
... |
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