Facebook is the latest employer to require vaccine boosters for all in-person workers

The parent company of Facebook, Meta Platforms, has announced that it will be delaying its employees’ return to the office from January 31 to March 28 and that those who return to the office will be required to have their COVID-19 booster shots.

Only fully vaccinated and boosted employees will be allowed to enter their offices when they reopen at Facebook and the other Meta-owned companies such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus. A company spokesperson stated that the evidence of booster effectiveness was behind the move; they previously enforced a mandate that saw all in-person employees required to have at least two doses of a Covid vaccine.

Employees are being given until March 14 to decide if they want to return to the office, request the ability to work remotely full-time, or ask to work from home temporarily. Employees who are not vaccinated for religious or medical reasons may request remote work, while those who take no action could face disciplinary measures such as termination.

A spokesperson for Facebook told Fox Business: “We let employees know that those who don’t choose to request to work full-time remotely or temporarily continue working from home will begin working from our US offices on March 28, 2022, and that boosters are required.”

Although the CDC has not yet changed the definition of fully vaccinated to include getting a booster, it has encouraged Americans to stay “up-to-date” when it comes to their vaccines. They still consider anyone who has gotten two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines or a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to be fully vaccinated, while strongly recommending those who got their initial vaccines more than six months ago get a booster.

Not surprisingly, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said in an interview that changing the definition of fully vaccinated to exclude those who have not received a booster shot is “on the table and open for discussion.” The Pentagon has already indicated that it may make boosters mandatory for soldiers.

Booster mandates growing more common

Many colleges and universities have been requiring students, faculty and staff to have booster shots when school resumes following the holiday break. These include Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, MIT, Northwestern, Emory, Amherst and Dartmouth.

This week, the New York State Health Council approved an emergency edict from Governor Kathy Hochul requiring all healthcare workers to get booster shots. The move came despite complaints from nursing home officials that the mandate will only serve to exacerbate the severe staffing shortages being seen at many facilities.

Employees at both nursing homes and hospitals will be required to get boosted within two weeks of eligibility based on when they received their first round of vaccines. This means that many of them would need to get it immediately because healthcare workers were among the first to receive vaccines when they became available.

There have been significant concerns about the staffing problems booster mandates could cause at a time when many healthcare establishments are already short-staffed due to Covid infections.

Facebook’s move is not surprising, coming from a company that has gone out of its way to censor those who dare to question the safety of vaccines or speak out about vaccine injuries. Unfortunately, many other businesses are adopting a similar stance, and countless American workers who complied with the original vaccine mandates are now finding that it simply wasn’t enough to hold onto their jobs and that they must now take on the risks of yet another jab.

Sources for this article include:

RT.com

FoxBusiness.com

Edition.CNN.com