Nearly 80 years old and prone to verbal slips, President Joe Biden isn’t exactly known for being articulate with his words. But it’s one thing to forget things or jumble your words during a campaign stop or public event — hardly the end of the world. On matters of national policy, however, there’s no excuse. Yet, Biden’s new national vaccine mandate is rife with inconsistencies and incoherent arguments that make his verbal mistakes pale in comparison.
The White House announced the mandate on Thursday. The Labor Department will force businesses with more than 100 employees to mandate that all employees get vaccinated or make their unvaccinated workers take weekly COVID-19 tests. (Weekly testing of this sort is expensive and cumbersome.) The order applies to roughly 80 million workers, and businesses face fines of up to $14,000 per violation. Essentially, the White House is trying to go beyond its constitutional authority and strong-arm hesitant people into getting the vaccine if they want to keep their jobs.
It’s a radical move, but Biden argues that it’s necessary to protect people from the unvaccinated.
“This is not about freedom or personal choice,” the president argued. “It’s about protecting yourself and those around you — the people you work with, the people you care about, the people you love.”
“The bottom line: We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers,” Biden said. (Emphasis mine.)
We are going to protect the vaccinated workers from unvaccinated coworkers. pic.twitter.com/QMuEz9ynis
— President Biden (@POTUS) September 10, 2021
“For the vast majority of you who have gotten vaccinated, I understand your anger at those who haven’t gotten vaccinated,” Biden added. “ I understand the anxiety about getting a ‘breakthrough’ case. But as the science makes clear, if you’re fully vaccinated, you’re highly protected from severe illness, even if you get COVID-19.”
What the president says here makes no sense. Biden is claiming that the vaccines are highly effective at preventing serious illness and death (fact check: true). Yet, he is simultaneously arguing that his mandate is necessary to protect the vaccinated from the hazard of unvaccinated coworkers. If the president’s first claim is true — and it is — then the second one must necessarily be false.
Yes, the vaccinated can still get “breakthrough” infections of COVID-19, but these are exceedingly rare. And even these cases are almost certain not to result in hospitalization or death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “More than 99.99 percent of people fully vaccinated against Covid-19 have not had a breakthrough case resulting in hospitalization or death.” The fully vaccinated are statistically more likely to die from a bee sting than COVID-19.
Simply put, the vaccinated have next to nothing to fear from COVID-19 — and, therefore, nothing to fear from the unvaccinated.
At this point, almost all adults have had the opportunity to receive the COVID-19 vaccine if they want it, free of charge. If they choose not to get vaccinated, they are mostly putting risk on themselves, not others. As I’ve previously explained, in a world with safe and effective vaccines, the COVID-19 “externality” no longer really exists.
There are a few exceptions here worth grappling with.
For one, children under 12 still aren’t eligible for the vaccine. So, some would argue that the unvaccinated are endangering children. But, thankfully, children are at no statistically significant risk of death from COVID-19 to begin with. According to Johns Hopkins professor Dr. Marty Makary, COVID-19 has a “mortality rate of zero among children without a preexisting medical condition such as leukemia.” Children are also extremely unlikely to experience COVID-19 symptoms severe enough to warrant hospitalization.
So, there’s not much evidence here justifying a mandate to “protect others,” either.
Some might also cite the small number of people who, for medical reasons, cannot receive the vaccine. Yet, one cannot justify infringing on the fundamental liberty and bodily autonomy of 80 million people with rare exceptions and edge cases. Plus, at-risk individuals are always free to self-isolate, wear N-95 masks, or take other protective measures.
In sum, Biden’s argument that his vaccine mandate is warranted to “protect others” from the unvaccinated is incoherent and nonsensical. If the president thinks the federal government should act as a nanny state and sweep in to make people’s personal choices for them, that citizens are too stupid to decide for themselves, he should, at the very least, admit that’s what he’s doing.
Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and a Washington Examiner contributor. Subscribe to his YouTube channel or email him at [email protected].
