Well, in one sense, the mandate could have been worse. My understanding is they waived certain common sense things like less contagious outside or remote work. I think, though, I'm not aware of the government itself making exceptions for military members and DoD civilian (employees). [And they don't like the appearance of a demoralizing double standard, e.g., IT personnel able to conveniently work from home.] I still have to remember to wear my N95 mask (despite 3 Pfizer shots) when I visit a government installation (or a healthcare clinic). In part, a lot of that has to do with studies finding comparable virus loads in breakthrough cases during the highly contagious current Delta variant.
I think in part this deals with anti-vaxxers complaining about [asymptomatic?] vaccine breakthroughs being comparably contagious. There are assumptions about this that are questionable. Yes, high viral load is thought to be related to transmission of a contagion. But there are few hard data on breakthroughs propagating the virus Structurally breakthroughs are different than the unvaccinated with twice as much asymptomatic cases and a fraction of serious symptoms requiring hospitalization; asymptomatic individuals shed less virus-laden respiratory splatter. Israeli data show less viral load among vaccinated people. And there's some evidence that the virus from vaccinated people may be degraded, e.g., with an antibody coating and/or have issues replicating in a lab setting. Note that I'm not arguing against prudent behavior in the middle of a pandemic; vaccine protections may be more limited or wane over time for older or health-challenged individuals.
It stands to reason if you spend a third or more of your day at work, in the middle of a pandemic you may meet infected co-workers or breathe in air saturated with bioaerosols. I saw one report before vaccine approvals late last year that workers on site were twice as likely to be infected than remote workers.
But there are multiple reasons I don't support Biden's policy although I'm strongly pro-vaccine, have personally had all 3 Pfizer shots (including the booster), and encourage all who don't have health tolerance issues for vaccines to do the same (with Pfizer or an authorized alternative). If you are unvaccinated, you are up to 6 times more likely to get infected and multiple times higher to be hospitalized or die and equally important far more likely to spread the disease to others, including the at risk population of those with serious health problems and those who cannot be vaccinated.
There are political reasons for opposing the mandate, in fact libertarian positions against OSHA meddling in private markets. But going beyond the dubious constitutionality of OSHA itself and the Tenth Amendment argument of health regulation at the state vs. federal level, it's not even clear that Biden has the statutory authority to regulate vaccines, a separate constitutional argument. I have spent my entire adult work history during OSHA's existence, and I've never had an employer ask about my vaccination history, even over so much as my seasonal flu shot. Employers have a vested interest in maintaining employee health; it's a risk to company operations; it can require additional staffing costs and can alienate customers. On site, I rarely worked less than a few feet from others except for certain meetings or in-person trainings (which had remote alternatives). But I've rarely used a sick day. I'm not claiming to be your typical worker. But employers should have flexibility to design their own solutions, not stand in judgment before some government bureaucrat. Maybe they can stagger work schedules on site. I've worked at places where I could load my PC environment on any networked computer, say to an assigned (socially distant) cubicle. You could alternate workdays for people in adjacent cube or focus on placement of unvaccinated employees and/or require them to wear surgical or N95 masks at all times/schedule their lunch breaks, implement compensation incentives for vaccine compliance, etc.
But looking at the mandate in general as a COVID-19 strategy: the civilian noninstitutionalized population includes American residential population 16 or older (with some nuanced carveouts, like the imprisoned), in October, this was 261,908K. The people not in the labor force (the retired, students, homemakers, and others not actively seeking work) includes 100,045K The labor force includes the employed and the unemployed (actively seeking work) Biden's vaccine mandate (for employers with 100 or more workers) covers something like 84M workers out of 161,863K (including 6,896 unemployed). So, first of all, over a third of the labor force isn't covered by the mandate. Second, according to CDC, over 70% of the adult population (181M >=18yo) is fully vaccinated, with another 20M partially vaccinated.
I don't have any statistics on the distribution rate across the 84M workers targeted by Biden, but given existing employer mandates, we can probably assert most of them are likely already vaccinated, and we already know that the percentage of vaccine breakthroughs is low (below 1% in most states tracking statistics), and if/when they happen, only a tiny percentage are hospitalized or die (and most of those are older or immuno-compromised). (In fact, I have not heard of a mass breakout at an employer site since vaccines were universally available; that may be a reflection of limited news coverage.)
But Biden's assertion that the vaccinated are in danger from the unvaccinated is not only absurd on its face, but undermines public confidence in vaccine effectiveness. Let's be clear: the biggest risk is from among the unvaccinated to each other, and employers need to ensure symptomatic individuals stay home and get tested.
But as a strategy to contain the pandemic, economic extortion is not viable. Anti-vaxxers could simply migrate to smaller companies or seek exempt positions (e.g., outdoors or remote work). Tax, healthcare provider or employer incentives would likely more effective policies. Not to mention there's a strong possibility that the courts will rule against the mandate, and enforcing a mandate could have adverse economic or political consequences, e.g., labor disruptions, higher prices on top of the highest inflation rate in decades.
