You should get vaccinated in order to make your inevitable COVID infection far more mild — most importantly reducing your odds of hospitalization or death. But the government’s authority to force or coerce you to do something for your own good is far more limited than the government’s authority to restrict you from harming others.
Even before the omicron variant began eluding the vaccine’s sterilization abilities, the CDC’s director admitted that getting vaccinated doesn’t protect other people from COVID.
Rochelle Walensky said back in October, in this video clip recirculating around Twitter this week, that our COVID vaccines cannot prevent transmission of the virus. Again, you should still get vaccinated, because the vaccines continue to show that they are very good at making sure you don’t die or almost die from COVID. But getting vaccinated is for your own good and for the good of the people who rely on you or love you.
“What the vaccines can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.”
CDC Director Walenskypic.twitter.com/s3BjMVBOub
— DrScott (@drscott_atlanta) January 9, 2022
This wasn’t the original argument for the vaccine, but it’s a strong one. But this new argument for the vaccine changes the legitimacy of government efforts to coerce people to get vaccinated.
President Joe Biden issued his unconstitutional vaccine mandate under the auspices of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Congress gave OSHA the authority to regulate workplace safety. It’s plausible, maybe, that OSHA has the authority to require a measles vaccine in the workplace. That’s because a worker unvaccinated against measles risks spreading measles to, say, an immunocompromised colleague.
The measles vaccine and the COVID vaccine are in different categories here. The measles vaccine prevents transmission of measles. You getting vaccinated against measles protects other people. A boss forcing Peter to get vaccinated against measles thus protects Paul. If Walensky is right, forcing Peter to get vaccinated against COVID doesn’t protect Paul.
So, a COVID vaccine, under Walensky’s view of the vaccines, has no plausible connection to workplace safety.
It’s the same with other vaccine requirements popping around. New York City has a “vaccine passport”: You cannot dine in a restaurant without proof of vaccination. Washington, D.C., is planning the same. My county government wants to impose a similar ban on its residents: Unvaccinated people, including previously infected 5-year-olds wearing masks who just tested negative this morning, will be banned from all sorts of public places, including museums, nature centers, and botanical gardens.
County officials pretend that these places will be made safer by the vaccine requirement, but if Walensky is correct, that’s a lie. Vaccinated people spread the virus, too.
So, if you’re not making your libraries or restaurants into COVID-free zones, what justification is there for discriminating against a portion of your population?
The uncharitable interpretation is that the politicians simply hate the people who don’t get vaccinated, want to punish them, and certainly don’t want to be near them.
The more charitable interpretation is that the politicians want to make life very unpleasant for the unvaccinated by denying them access to the amenities that should be their right as members of the public. Making life unpleasant for the unvaccinated might make them get vaccinated, the reasoning goes.
At best, then, Mayor Muriel Bowser and County Executive Marc Elrich want to discriminate in the provision of public accommodations against the people they believe are harming themselves. There’s a logic there, but it’s not the way a free people are governed.
