My view on the legality of this would be the same if Trump had been in the White House, and had issued executive orders requiring that the same people not be vaccinated. The BBC story on this mentions a similar decision in LA about schools requiring vaccinations - you'll notice that this is legally totally separate from Biden's announcement, as education is provided at a local level and therefore not subject to federal authority. The federal government has wide ranging powers, both where people and companies work for it, and over inter-state trade where it's national remit allows it to impose policy across the states.
I think you may be letting your views of Biden, and of this policy, interfere with your view of what the American constitution actually says and does, and what the case law has settled. It wasn’t an unreasonable prospect to keep being careful and hope for herd immunity to cause a natural tail-off, but it now seems this simply isn’t going to happen.Ĭlick to expand.You mean unlike the wall, or the ban on Muslims entering the country? Biden is a lot less monarchical in style than his predecessor. I think the way Covid has now become completely endemic will have tipped the balance a bit for some for sure. You could certainly curse the unvaccinated for that situation, but should it justify whether you accept a lockdown or not?
If you’re saying that you wouldn’t tolerate a lockdown because of ICU being filled up with unvaccinated people, does that mean you *would* tolerate one if ICUs were filling up with vaccinated people? Either way, the ICUs would be filled up. The colleague concerned has now taken the vaccine, but only after a period of “wait & see”. She’s pretty balanced in her outlook on things, and didn’t want to be vaccinated early on - “I don’t want Boris sticking some substance in me, this time last year he was boasting about marching into hospitals and shaking hands with Covid patients, so if he thinks I’m going to take the vaccine on his say-so then he has another think coming”. The same young people who are “idiots” for being hesitant, or lambasted because they “can’t be bothered to get vaccinated”.Ī colleague at work summed it up. I’m not so sure it’s about long-term “effects”, but surely none of us can deny that there exists the possibility for an unintended consequence to present itself some way down the line, especially with the way Covid has generally behaved in a way which has tended to surprise the scientific fraternity.īut it doesn’t have to be a long-term thing, we’ve already seen the Oxford vaccine barred to younger people due to concerns.