US Firms In A Bind Over Vaccine Mandates Amid Misinformation

Companies in the United States are grappling with whether or not to move ahead with vaccine requirements for their employees, following a Supreme Court ruling last week that struck down the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-testing mandate for large businesses.

Charissa Yong

Among their challenges is a conservative blowback to vaccine mandates, fuelled by misinformation that critics say social media giants are not doing enough to curb.

Polls show that significant portions of the American public continue to believe conspiracy theories about the pandemic, and that this belief in such misinformation fuels their reluctance to get inoculated.

On Tuesday, the Starbucks coffee chain announced to employees that it would stop requiring them to be vaccinated or undergo regular testing, following a similar decision by General Electric last Friday.

“I want to emphasise that we continue to believe strongly in the spirit and intent of the mandate,” Starbucks chief operating officer John Culver wrote in a memo to staff.

The 6-3 ruling on Jan 13 by the Supreme Court, along partisan lines, rejected the federal government’s broad vaccine mandate.