Should the Government Impose a National Vaccination Mandate? – By Jeannie Suk Gersen (The New Yorker) / Aug 26 2021
Despite claims to the contrary, there are many routes to legally requiring COVID inoculation.
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.
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. Violent riots broke out, fueling a national anti-vaccination movement that supported political candidates solely based on their stance on vaccination. In the late eighteen-nineties, some penalties were eliminated and conscientious objectors were allowed exemptions. But, by the mid-twentieth century, too many people—nearly half the population in some areas—were claiming exemptions, and the vaccination mandate was repealed altogether. Britain then dealt with outbreaks by other means, such as compulsory examination.
