The moment we’ve all been anticipating is finally here: the arrival of a coronavirus vaccine. With it, however, comes a plethora of questions: how does this vaccine work? What side effects should we expect? Will we be required to take it?
The possibility of a federal requirement for the coronavirus vaccine has made people unusually nervous. Regardless, a mandate is imperative in order to curb the enormous infection and death rates in the U.S. as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The word “mandate” may conjure up images of a dystopian world where citizens are forcefully injected by government officials, but the reality is far from that. Current vaccine mandates in the U.S. take a variety of forms. For instance, public schools in all 50 states require students to take multiple vaccinations prior to enrolling.
Medical contraindications are always a valid exemption from immunization, and religious or philosophical objections are recognized in the majority of cases. Hence, a federal coronavirus vaccine requirement would be far from the oppressive measure its opponents make it out to be. Rather, it’s a measure to ensure the majority of the population is immunized. And that’s the point: we need a vaccine requirement to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Almost all scientists and organizations agree a vaccine mandate is necessary to achieve herd immunity. When a significant proportion of the population is vaccinated, the disease is no longer able to infect high numbers of people. It dies off, becoming far less of a threat to the population.
However, having a vaccine is fruitless if the majority of the population doesn’t take it. A federal mandate would ensure that citizens in states that have taken a more lax approach to containing the virus are accounted for.
What’s more, requiring the vaccine has economic benefits. The short-term costs of paying for vaccine distribution are far fewer than the long-term costs of leaving the coronavirus to spread unchecked. This past year has shown us that if the pandemic persists at its current rate, the economy will continue to suffer great losses.
Ultimately, Confucius got it right: “Study the past, if you would divine the future.” Going back in history shows us what vaccine mandates have accomplished, hinting at what a coronavirus vaccine mandate would allow us to achieve.
Take smallpox — a disease that killed about 30% of those infected and left most with severe scars. Organized vaccination movements were met with resistance, leading to the Jacobson vs. Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in 1905. The Court ruled that states have the power to order residents to vaccinate in an epidemic to ensure the public’s safety.
Today, global smallpox eradication — the direct result of countless vaccination campaigns and mandates — is still lauded as one of history’s greatest public health achievements.
Ultimately, mandating a vaccine on the federal level wouldn’t be necessary if everyone would take it willingly, but that’s sadly not the case. Anti-vaccination movements have gained traction in the last few decades, thanks to social media and the propagation of false information.
In 2019, the World Health Organization named hesitancy to vaccinate as one of the ten largest threats to global health. To ensure enough people are vaccinated to eliminate the coronavirus, a federal vaccine requirement is a necessary measure.
-Sabahat Rahman ’21
On December 11, the Food and Drug Administration approved Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, authorizing the first shipment of vaccines to high-risk individuals. If the U.S. federal government pursues the implementation of a coronavirus vaccine mandate, they will be endangering the American people from a public health and political standpoint.
The first issue with imposing a coronavirus vaccine mandate is that it strips people of their ability to autonomously assess the risks of the vaccine.
For instance, it is predicted that people may experience mild to severe coronavirus symptoms for a few days following an injection (of which they will receive two). And, because the vaccine was created so quickly, clinical researchers currently don’t know if there are any long-term side effects.
What’s more, it typically takes about ten years to fully produce and approve a vaccine, according to the World Economic Forum. The regulatory review and approval process generally takes one to two years; this step alone would take more time under standard conditions than did the entire production and implementation of the coronavirus vaccine, which occurred over a nine-month period.
In addition, the experts who created the vaccine are not entirely sure if it is effective in fully preventing the spread of the coronavirus. According to Medscape, “[Scientists involved in Operation Warp Speed] noted that the studies haven’t shown whether the product can prevent the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
There’s also a major issue concerning the practicality of enforcing a coronavirus vaccine mandate. According to the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci, “We don’t want to be mandating from the federal government to the general population. It would be unenforceable and not appropriate.”
To that end, according to a November Gallup poll, 42% of Americans reported that they would refuse a government-approved vaccine. While we don’t know how many of those people would seek to evade the vaccine if it were mandated, if the number were substantial, it could cause significant enforcement problems.
Another question that needs to be addressed is: what qualifies as a reasonable cause for exemption? Is a religious reason a viable excuse? Will pregnant women be required to get the vaccine? According to the National Public Radio, pregnant women were not included in clinical trials.
Finally, a federally-enforced coronavirus mandate would indicate an overstepping of bounds by the federal government. The tenth amendment of the United States Constitution outlines that powers not given to the federal government in the Constitution are granted to states. Public health falls under this qualification, exemplified by the fact that previous public health issues have all been dealt with on state and local levels.
This is why governors are often in charge of implementing masking and social distancing policies as opposed to the federal government. Therefore, while a state-enforced vaccine mandate may be constitutional, a federal mandate would surely be outside the purview of the higher government.
While we do not know what the future holds for the coronavirus vaccine, a federal coronavirus vaccine mandate would be unconstitutional, and it could have unpredictable consequences for the American people.
-Michael Korvyakov ’23
