No state has mandatory vaccination as far as I’m aware of. There’s certain requirements for going to schools, but even then the law usually allows for some bs medical exemptions.
fyp.
You know, I might get butthurt about a cake or something…
IIRC, Cali is one of the main hotspots for measles outbreaks because idiot anti-vaxx communities. I don’t know that we’ve ever really had a situation where there are so many morons that a vaccine might not work.
We have in other places too. The conservative Jewish communities in NY really fucked things up wrt measles decades less than two years ago.
I thought we don’t do slippery slopes here.
Also while these numbers are discouraging, seeing more people get vaccines and do well will increase uptake. Initially a lot of our staff were very hesitant to get vaccinated, but we won them over. Got to believe the same thing can happen in the general public.
The nice thing here is that you don’t have to win this argument forevermore. You only have to win this argument and get the shot in on a random Tuesday. A brief win is all you need.
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Making someone pay more for health insurance or denying them coverage for this reason isn’t quite the same as forced vaccination. At least for most people.
It’s adjacent, but not quite the same.
FYP
Most of the case law concerning mandatory vaccination are related to smallpox. And such vaccination was definitely mandatory in parts of the US and Europe. Such measures ended up no longer being required when smallpox was eradicated, but there’s a reason why we have a 19th century anti-vaccination movement to look upon and help us understand the people of today.
California is an example of a state that got rid of religious exemptions, but still allows medical exemptions. There’s evidence that anti-vaxxers have found doctors willing to give them medical exemptions, given the rise in such exemptions after religious ones were no longer allowed.
I think it’s a category error to defer to medical ethics here. As between doctors and their patients, doctors have an ethical obligation to respect the autonomy of their patients. But the nation at large is under no obligation to respect the autonomy of individuals, and there are many, many ways that individual liberty is infringed upon politically. To take the most extreme example, in living memory people were rounded up and sent off to fight in Vietnam against their will. People are sent to jail for drug use all the time.
As I think I’ve mentioned before, the draft is actually a good template here. If you’re 4F, then you’re excused. If you’re a conscientious objector, then you can do 6 months of service in a medical facility. Otherwise, take the shot when it’s your turn or you can do your 6 months in jail.
Obviously we will never, ever go to a mandatory vaccination policy, but the reason isn’t that it’s a bad idea or that it’s unconstitutional, it’s that there’s no political will to get serious about fighting this disease. Good Matt Yglesias on this from a few weeks ago:
The minority of libertarians who aren’t deeply invested in being Covid denialists would like you to believe that the fussbudget FDA is standing between you and the AstraZeneca vaccine. But it’s clear that the American people are absolutely not prepared to let public health experts tell them what they can and can’t do. If people were clamoring for faster approvals, we’d get them. But there’s no Covid Era version of ActUp demanding access. If public health bureaucracies ask people to change, a large share of the population declines to do it. If they try to force people to change, you get significant resistance. But if they block change, then the public is fine with that.
…
The public wants to see the government stabilize the economy but generally prefers politicians who avoid big controversial change. Promising to be bipartisan polls really well, then informed people get angry that these promises amount to a promise to not do very much, but that just goes to show that voters like the idea of a politician who’s not doing very much.
After all, look at the best-polling governors in America — are they hard-chargers who fuse ideological zeal with technical competence to drive forward a rapid pace of change that becomes a model for the country? Of course not. They’re moderate Republicans in northeastern states who serve as checks on the excesses of the state legislature but don’t push contentious right-wing ideas. Andrew Cuomo, whose critics keep pointing out that he’s a kind of fake progressive who keeps deliberately trying to sabotage Democratic control of the state legislature, is also well-liked by his constituents, who don’t mind this idea. These are White Guys In Suits who sort of perform governance without actually rocking the boat too much.
And that’s what the voters want.
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I think there are a few other states like Cali. But in the vast majority of states, you can get an exemption for religious or philosophical reasons.
Gotta say, lumping me into a category of not caring about the pandemic enough is not remotely fair. Doubt anyone itt outside of Wil has seen anything remotely close to what I’ve seen.
Like for fucks sake I spent two hours today in a very complex resuscitation of a sick covid patient that will probably die, but fuck me if I think medical autonomy is sacred I just don’t care about the pandemic enough.
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Everyone seems to agree with the whole “your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins” thing. I really don’t understand why it’s difficult to transition to “your right to refuse the vaccine ends where it causes Sklansky deaths.”
I certainly didn’t intend to lump you in with people who don’t care, and I apologize if I wrote so unclearly that I gave that impression.
EDIT: It makes sense to me that doctors would have opinions that are systematically different from everyone else’s due to their specialized training and acculturation. What I think needs explanation is why the vast majority of people, who aren’t doctors and don’t care at all about medical ethics, are also completely uninterested in mandatory vaccination. Those people I think are a mix of not caring (ITT, likely not many) and looking for a way to avoid looking too hard at the fact that forcing people to take vaccines for a disease like this is a no-brainer and yet it will never even be seriously considered.
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no. i don’t think we should. we should just give unused doses to POC communities and be done with it.
Imagine a deadly contagious disease where the only vaccine science could come up with could keep you from spreading it, but not from getting sick. I think you’d pretty much have to mandate vaccines at that point.
True freedom is the ability to do things that have bad outcomes. It’s very easy to be in favor of freedom for things we approve of. It’s a lot harder to be in favor of things that we disapprove of and think are bad for society. We generally agree that me punching you in the face is a direct line from action to bad outcome that should not be allowed.
People become less willing to agree to curtail freedom as the bad outcome becomes less direct. People don’t want to wear masks unless you can prove that specifically them not wearing a mask will cause the death of specifically this other person. They just can’t think abstractly and consider probabilistic harm. People don’t think they should be required to get a vaccine for the same reason.
It’s basically the same as poker players who think in terms of their hand against specific hands and not in terms of equity vs a range.
People are dumb. Math is hard for them. Representative democracy is a heuristic that is meant to save dumb people from having to think too much about things they don’t understand.
Imagine a deadly contagious disease where the only vaccine science could come up with requires you to take it as an adult and spend five years being celibate. I think you’d pretty much have to mandate celibacy, but damn are people going to be whiny bitches about it.
POC vaccine rejection may well higher than mid-40s. Vaccine outreach program is going to need a lot of work. It is likely a multi-year process to get to 70-80 percent acceptance.