Power-Hungry White House Looks to Make COVID-Era Mandates Permanent

If you thought the Biden regime and the federal government were easily going to give up the power they gained during the COVID pandemic – think again.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a federal agency which regulates workplace safety, is working with the White House to make pandemic-era mandates for healthcare facilities become PERMANENT.

In June 2021 OSHA issued a temporary emergency standard for health care facilities which includes strict requirements around screening, ventilation, physical distancing, physical barriers, cleaning and disinfection, and masks.

In December 2021, however, OSHA eventually announced that it would stop enforcing all temporary emergency standard requirements except for a few related to record keeping, since it was impossible to meet a six-month deadline to finalize the standard.

Since then, the agency has been working on a permanent regulatory solution with these policies standards in mind.

In December 2022, OSHA sent a final draft to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the White House Office of Management and Budget for review.

The final draft has yet to be revealed to the public, but earlier drafts include things such as requiring employers to enforce physical distancing, mandates masks in the workplace, grant paid leave for vaccination, and provide medical removal protection for workers who are unable to work due to COVID-19 infection or exposure.

National Nurses United, the largest nursing union in the United States – which is heavily left-leaning – applauded the move, arguing that its members and patients in their care are still under the threat of “new, more immune-evasive” variants of COVID-19.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is not over,” the union claimed. “Nurses, other health care workers, and their patients remain at risk of COVID exposure, infection, illness, and death because their employers continue to fail to fully protect them.”

The union also spelled out specific measures they would like to see made permanent. Their list includes:

• Screening and testing all patients, visitors and workers
• Isolating patients suspected of having COVID-19
• Providing PPE for workers caring for patients suspected of having COVID-19
• Contact tracing and notifications for COVID-19 exposure
• Paid leave for workers exposed to COVID-19

“Many nurses continue to experience the devastating impacts of long COVID,” said Deborah Burger, president of National Nurses United. “This is why we need a permanent standard and why we must continue to maintain multiple measures of infection control.”

Other healthcare organizations are pointing out, however, that establishing a permanent standard would be completely ridiculous given the fact that the CDC seems to frequently change its mind regarding the ‘best’ guidelines

“With the constantly evolving, science-based CDC guidance and recommendations, CMS’ vaccination requirement and existing OSHA general standards, we strongly believe that an inconsistent and overly strict OSHA COVID-19 health care standard is not necessary, would cause confusion and will ultimately lower hospital employees’ morale and worsen unprecedented personnel shortages in hospitals,” the American Hospital Association argued.

The GOP has also called out just how idiotic this attempt is by the federal government to maintain control is, writing a letter to OSHA calling it, “the height of foolishness.”

“Our health care industry is strained enough as it is without the Biden administration demanding additional and burdensome COVID-19 requirements.”