This measure, in addition to being politically divisive, is bad public policy. First, I’ll address briefly the legal argument. Advocates for vaccination mandates on the part of government tend to pin their legal reasoning on a US Supreme Court case from 1905, “Jacobson v. Massachusetts”. The assertion that this precedent applies 116 years later in a very different health and legal environment, however, is highly questionable at best. The history and context of that case should be recalled. Massachusetts was at the time dealing a major active outbreak of smallpox, the mortality rate for which was close to 20%, and both of these factors played a key role in the court’s reasoning. That is a very far cry from the situation we are faced with today, when infection rates in Virginia are quite low and with a number of medical studies showing that, although COVID is very infectious, the mortality rate is very low – with several showing it to be somewhere in the range of 0.12 and 0.2%.
Beyond the fact that the Jacobson court was facing at a very different set of circumstances than that which we face today, there is good reason to question whether this 116-year-old case is still good law. Since the time it was decided, well known cases such as Griswald v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade have firmly established a fundamental right to privacy and bodily autonomy in our Constitutional jurisprudence that was not part of the consideration of the Jacobson court. A court today in the context of the widespread support for privacy and bodily autonomy that are established in such precedents would be very likely to decide this very differently than did the Jacobson court. A large number of lawsuits challenging mandates on these grounds are working their way through the court system, and are already forcing some jurisdictions to roll back their mandates.
Regarding the efficacy of the vaccine, the authors of a study on Sweden, which included a lead researcher from Harvard's Center for Population and Development Studies, found that: “The sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences needs to be re-examined, especially considering the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant and the likelihood of future variants.” (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.20.21254636v1)
Another recent study, authored by a Harvard researcher and published in the European Journal of Epidemiology, examined 68 countries and nearly 3,000 US counties - it found no statistical evidence that vaccination rates had any correlation to reducing COVID infection rates. In fact, it found marginal evidence that the contrary was the case. The author writes:
“Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days. The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated.
“Of the top 5 [US] counties that have the highest percentage of population fully vaccinated (99.9–84.3%), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identifies 4 of them as "High" Transmission counties. Conversely, of the 57 counties that have been classified as "low" transmission counties by the CDC, 26.3% (15) have percentage of population fully vaccinated below 20%.”
A July study of Israel perfectly embodies the lack of efficacy from the vaccine, especially in recent months. In a study published in a European CDC journal, Israeli researchers studied a serious outbreak among a group of patients and staff in one Israeli hospital, 96% of whom had been vaccinated. Forty two patients and staff contracted COVID from a vaccinated dialysis patient. The study noted that, “Of the 42 cases diagnosed in this outbreak, 38 were fully vaccinated with two doses of the Comirnaty vaccine, one was recovered with one vaccination and three were unvaccinated.” All patients and family members wore surgical masks and all staff wore N-95s with face shields and gloves. “Among the patients, eight became severely ill, six critically ill and five of the critically ill died.” Every one of the cases among the unvaccinated were as mild, despite the fact that one of them was in his 80s.
Numerous other studies question both the dominant narrative regarding the mortality of COVID, as well as that regarding the efficacy of the vaccines. Just two: Studies undertaken by Stanford University and the University of Southern California indicate the mortality rate to be far lower than others have previously asserted – between 0.12% and 0.2%. Those studies have been criticized by some scientists who assert the mortality rate to be higher than that and those assertions are in turn criticized by significant scientific figures as well. The bottom line is that the scientific evidence and data is not early as uniform and monolithic as some, specifically those who are attempting to exert great control over an increasing proportion of our lives under the guise of health concerns, would have us believe.
And recently, a whistleblower from the CDC has come forward in a sworn declaration under penalty of perjury and sworn that 45,000 individuals who had received the vaccine within the previous 72 hours have died and that yet those numbers are being suppressed by the CDC. Additionally, big technology companies such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Google all immediately censor anyone who writes, for example, about a family member or neighbor who received the vaccine and who the suffered a major, and in many cases catastrophic, health emergency, even in any cases death. The combination of government coercion and big tech censor is profoundly antidemocratic, and is resulting in a growing backlash that is further dividing and polarizing an already deeply divided and politically polarized society.
Philosophically, such mandates are deeply patronizing. It communicates that citizens are unable to make the most responsible decisions regarding their own health and welfare, and that the government is best suited to do so. The aphorism “my body, my choice” has controlled the political and legal narrative on other issues for decades, and it is difficult to understand why one side of this debate refuses to acknowledge that this principle applies here. As Dr. Ron Paul has said: “When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies.”