Say, I wonder if The New Yorker mandates all their employees get the vaccine?
Should the Government Impose a National Vaccination Mandate?
Earlier this month, a parent asked a question on the community-discussion listserv for the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school district where my teen-ager will start high school this fall. Since the state routinely requires students to have certain vaccinations for enrolling in public school, would it also require vaccination against covid-19, once the F.D.A. moved the authorization status from “emergency use†to full approval? Other parents replied that they supported a requirement, predictably invoking science, public health, and communal values. But the vehemence of their opponents, in highly vaccinated Cambridge, took me by surprise. There were recriminations about interference with personal choice and references to Nazi Germany. One participant accused another of bullying and threatened to consult an attorney.
On Monday, the F.D.A. did grant full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for people sixteen and older, and a decision on the Moderna vaccine is likely to follow in weeks, raising the question of how far and wide the government will now push covid-vaccine mandates. In July, the Department of Veterans Affairs became the first federal agency to require some of its employees to get the vaccine or face possible termination. President Biden recently ordered all federal workers to attest that they are vaccinated or else wear masks and get tested weekly. Within hours of the F.D.A.’s full approval of the Pfizer vaccine, the Defense Department announced that it would mandate that all 1.4 million active-duty military members be vaccinated. On the same day, public university systems in New York, Minnesota, and Louisiana rolled out similar requirements for students. Such mandates may be met with intense resistance: the Pentagon’s pre-F.D.A.-approval vaccination efforts, for example, were highly divisive, and more than a third of service members are, at present, not fully vaccinated.
Jeannie Suk Gerse then dives into much of the same information from the article I posted from CNN yesterday. Surely there’s no coordination between news outlets in pushing this, right?
Strong resistance to government-mandated vaccination isn’t new. In 1853, Britain imposed the first mandatory vaccinations, requiring parents to inoculate infant children against smallpox or face heavy fines.
The U.S. is not Britain, and we have a Bill of Rights and state Bills of Rights. Oh, and the smallpox vaccine is virtually 100% effective.
The Court, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, disagreed, reciting the principle that individual liberty is not absolute in the face of “the common good,†and that “real liberty for all†depends on restraining individual exercises of liberty that harm others. …
But, not taking the vaccine only harms you. People with the vaccine can still get COVID, and even be non-symptomatic. If the non-vaxxed want to take the chance on getting much, much sicker than those who took the vaccine, that’s on them. The NY Times is currently reported on breakthrough COVID cases, which are “Uncommon and Often Mild, but Not Always”.
No city or state has yet issued a straight-up requirement that all private citizens be vaccinated against covid-19, along the lines of the Massachusetts smallpox-vaccination law upheld in Jacobson, but some have edged toward it. The closest so far is New York City’s requirement of proof of having received at least one dose for access to certain activities, including indoor dining, gyms, and performances. Various states have also ordered certain subsets of their populations, including health-care and nursing-home workers, school teachers, and state employees, to be vaccinated or face regular testing. The F.D.A.’s full approval of the vaccine this week makes it more likely that cities and states will impose general mandates on residents. If they do, they can feel confident that such requirements will be upheld by the courts, so long as they include medical and religious exemptions.
Yeah, well, we’ll see if suits are filed.
Alternatively, Congress could rely on the Spending Clause to pass new laws that condition the transfer of federal funds to a state upon its establishing a vaccination mandate. Congress could also use the Commerce Clause to institute a national requirement as a regulation of interstate commerce. But those sweepingly ambitious federal routes are guaranteed to become mired in tremendous political pushback that could ultimately increase public resistance to vaccination, not to mention constitutional challenges claiming federal overreach. Short of those methods, the federal government still has myriad ways that it may yet push states, institutions, and citizens to do more than they otherwise would, with an arsenal of inducements, pressures, conditions, and threats. Depending on how things progress with the coronavirus variants, a national vaccination mandate may remain possible as a last resort.
They really, really do want to find a way to force people to get the vaccines. That might work if the effective rate was at least 95%, but, we’re finding that they are well below that.
Read: New Yorker Wonders If Government Should Introduce A COVID Vaccine Mandate »