I was just talking to a very smart relative who works in the healthcare industry, and we agreed that it is really bizarre that the CDC lifted mask mandates. Why? It shows in essence a disrespect and disregard for the health of unvaccinated people.
Now they run around without masks infecting each other. Not only could this create variants for the rest of us, it also shows a basic failure of public policy to care about the health of unvaccinated people.
Just plain weird, and to me, inexplicable as public health policy.
Instead, we should have vaccine passports, and require people who are not vaccinated to wear masks. Period.
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Essentially, we are conceding our public health policy to the madness that this is a question of civil liberties and not a question of public health in a pandemic.
We are allowing their ignorance and disconnection from the reality of the disease and how it operates to run our policy.
Vaccine passports are not a perfect solution, but right now we are requiring NOTHING of unvaccinated people, we just don’t realize it because they never shut up with their whining about literally nothing.
Their selfishness is putting the elderly, people with cancer etc. in tremendous jeopardy since some of them CANNOT be vaccinated.
I believe that the government has an obligation to make free, convenient, safe and effective COVID vaccination available to every American who wants it. In particular, the government has an obligation to go to extreme lengths to make COVID vaccination available to people of color, undocumented Americans, and those at the very bottom of our wealth distribution.
The freedom to believe bizarre delusions and act on them in stupid and self-destructive ways is as American as apple pie — it is a vital and unavoidable consequence of our Constitutional liberties. Many would suggest that the very idea that an invisible deity who manifests itself in three separate forms (one material), and whose anger is sated by a weekly ritual cannibalistic sacrifice of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the murdered material manifestation is itself a “bizarre delusion” — yet hundreds of millions of Americans embrace that “delusion” in one form or another.
I therefore see the mask mandate that you propose as a flagrant infringement on the fundamental rights and liberties of those who oppose vaccination. The motivation for mask mandates was always and correctly driven by the best scientific guidance of the time. That time has passed — vaccination is orders of magnitude more effective than any mask, mandated or not.
I enthusiastically agree with you about vaccine passports. I also believe that we should make COVID vaccination mandatory, just like our other mandatory vaccines. I believe that a valid vaccine passport should be required in order to board an airplane or train, enter a restaurant, or otherwise participate in public life — just as a valid travel passport is needed to legally entire the country.
There have always been religious traditions that eschew modern medicine. While our government correctly demands that their children receive mandatory vaccines (such as measles and polio vaccines), we have long held that a consenting adult can make their own choice about such matters.
We have far more important matters to attend to than attempting to impose intrusive, ineffective, and ultimately purely cosmetic (in comparison to vaccination) measures like masking and social distancing.
In my view, those who choose to compete for a monthly Darwin Award should be allowed to do so.
BTW, I agree that mandatory COVID vaccination regulations should include exemptions for medical unsuitability, religious beliefs, and so on — these already exist for the several other mandatory vaccines.
I think there should be no exceptions for vaccine passport restrictions, however. I want to have a reasonable expectation that while I’m riding an Amtrak train, each and every one of my fellow passengers is vaccinated.
Absolutely not. At this point vaccines are available to all age 12+ We’re finally doing what I have wished all along, which is let people decide to protect themselves. I do think that requiring employees and students to be vaccinated is reasonable, just as it is with other diseases, but if the whole point of masking is to keep you from spreading to others why should you still mask if you have been vaccinated? Also, if I am vaccinated why should I care if someone near me is both unmasked and unvaccinated (not that I really saw that much risk to begin with)?
Donald Trump could perform a great service to the country right now. Very often on social media when vaccines come up, especially good news about progress on that front, his supporters bring up Operation Warp Speed and claim he should get the lion’s share of the credit for that progress. Trump loves taking credit for things so he should very publicly tout Warp Speed and the “great, beautiful vaccine” (as he’s likely to call it) it produced and encourage his supporters to get their shots. They are the ones who seem most hesitant on ideological grounds, but they will trip over themselves to get it if Dear Leader says they should. Yes, we will cringe and roll our eyes at the credit hogging on his part, but I for one am willing to live with that if it means more people will get their shots. I see it as a win-win.
“Donald Trump could perform a great service ,. . ” I’ve never finished a sentence that started with those words. Sorry, Christopher.
I don’t know of any other examples either, but I stand by this one.