When Joe Biden issued his sweeping vaccination mandate on Thursday, he made it clear that he was “running out of patience” with people who have not yet rolled up their sleeves. He proposed fixing that by threatening the jobs of tens of millions of people unless they comply, either by directly firing federal employees or getting private sector employers to do the dirty work for him. But as the New York Post pointed out yesterday, there was a significant exception to the rules that wasn’t initially mentioned. Employees of the U.S. Postal Service are apparently exempt from the mandate. Nor will they be required to submit negative test results. Instead, they are simply being “encouraged” to get vaccinated.

Neither rain, nor sleet … nor presidential proclamation.

President Biden on Thursday mandated COVID-19 vaccines for about 100 million US workers, but the more than 600,000 letter-carriers and administrative staff of the US Postal Service reportedly won’t have to get a shot.

A White House official confirmed the exemption to Washington Post postal reporter Jacob Bogage, adding that “we strongly encourage them to comply with these standards” anyhow.

So let’s see if we have this straight. The mandate will apply to all federal employees and to private-sector workers at businesses with more than 100 employees. That part was pretty straightforward, I think.

Let’s take this one bite at a time. Are USPS workers federal employees? The answer seems to be an unambiguous “yes.”

Postal employees are federal employees. The word “civilian” is used to distinguish that federal service from military service.

So how about the size of the “company” they work for. I don’t suppose they have more than 100 employees, do they?

Also known as the U.S. Mail, United States Postal Service employed some 496,000 people in 2020. The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government.

So how is it that these workers, many of whom visit hundreds of strangers’ homes six days per week while others handle countless packages of unknown origin, are somehow at so much less risk than the rest of us that they don’t need to be vaccinated? And how is okay to simply “encourage” unvaccinated postal workers when everyone else is being threatened with a pink slip?

If you’re smelling the telltale signs of a labor union being involved, you’re not alone. Most of these workers are represented by the American Postal Workers Union, which is an affiliate of the AFL-CIO. And in July, the APWU put out a statement saying, “While the APWU leadership continues to encourage postal workers to voluntarily get vaccinated, it is not the role of the federal government to mandate vaccinations for the employees we represent.”

And I’m sure this is just a coincidence, but last year the APWU donated well over a million dollars to candidates and nearly every bit of it went to Democrats, including Joe Biden.

So apparently, if you sling enough money around in the direction of the Democrats, the “health and safety of the nation” isn’t really such an issue anymore. After all, unvaccinated postal workers couldn’t possibly infect any other people or wind up taking up space in crowded hospital ICU rooms, right? They have some sort of magical protection ensuring that can’t happen, I suppose.

These vaccination mandates are pure politics in action and here’s the proof of it right in front of your eyes. What a pile of hot garbage.