Biden announced a sweeping and quite draconian executive order yesterday requiring employers of over 100 people to in turn require their employees to be vaccinated. While the intent is clearly in the public interest that order is a mistake.
Those who are not not yet vaccinated are likely to see this as over-reach which will hurt Democrats in next year's mid-terms. And firms in red states where vaccination resistance is highest may well not enforce the order, setting up an ugly legal fight; that will delay the order's implementation, negating it's effectiveness (and that's assuming it withstands the challenge).
A better approach might be to acknowledge that vaccination is a personal choice, albeit one with implications for the health of others, but internalize the externalities, for example by allowing hospitals to change more for the treatment of unvaccinated patients who contract covid, or allowing them to triage covid patients on the basis of vaccination status without liability. The higher cost of a decision to forego vaccination would be borne by those making that personal choice while protecting their freedom to make bad choices. That increased cost might well be more effective than a mandate.
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