If it doesn't make a lot of sense to you that the President has required teleworking employees to receive injections to keep their coworkers safe, that's probably because the goal of the mandate has less to do with the safety of the workforce than it does to move the needle on the number of Americans (i.e. citizens) who are "vaccinated."
Just look at the the White House website. He is bluntly using every tool at his disposal to make American citizens get vaccinated. His Safer Federal Workforce Task Force and agency heads barely even try to come up with reasons to justify a policy that has no nooks or crannies except for those "as required by law." But why should they?
He has already telegraphed that this is just part of the plan to get Americans vaccinated. Of course, the problem with this is that the President is not supposed to use the pretense of workplace safety in order to commandeer the bodies of his workforce to achieve his goals that are unrelated to workplace safety.
The President announced vaccination requirements for the federal government in July and called on the private sector to do more to encourage vaccination as well. Since that time, employers, schools, nursing homes, restaurants, hospitals, and cities in all 50 states have announced new vaccination requirements. Since July, the share of job postings that require vaccination are up 90%. And we know these requirements work. At the beginning of August, when Tyson Foods announced its requirement—only 45% of its workforce had gotten a shot. Today, it stands at 72%, meaning half of Tyson’s unvaccinated workers have now gotten a shot—well ahead of the company’s November 1st deadline. After United Airlines announced its vaccination requirement, more than half of its unvaccinated employees went out and got vaccinated with weeks left to go before the deadline. In Washington State, the weekly vaccination rate jumped 34% after the Governor announced requirements for state workers.
All told, these efforts—and countless other Administration initiatives and policies—have resulted in over 175 million fully vaccinated Americans. But there are still nearly 80 million Americans eligible to be vaccinated who have not yet gotten their first shot.
The President’s plan will reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans by using regulatory powers and other actions to substantially increase the number of Americans covered by vaccination requirements—these requirements will become dominant in the workplace. In addition, the plan will provide paid time off for vaccination for most workers in the country.