The war on the war on covid intensifies: an attack on vaccine mandates
Yesterday Donald Boudreaux published a letter to the Wall Street Journal about the Zywicki lawsuit against George Mason University that I posted about here. Let’s take a look at classical liberalism in action:
Today’s edition contains three letters critical of my colleague Todd Zywicki’s defense, in your pages, of his lawsuit against George Mason University’s vaccination requirement. Each letter-writer, alas, misses a point that’s central to the broader case against vaccination mandates – and, indeed, against all Covid restrictions: Because vaccination is indeed quite effective at protecting each vaccinated person against suffering serious consequences from Covid, there’s no good reason to require anyone to be vaccinated. Each individual has easy ability to acquire such a high degree of protection that we can stop tyrannizing each other in the name of fighting Covid.
Note that Boudreaux is arguing against all vaccine mandates. Zywicki was merely arguing that he should be exempt from the GMU mandate because he has natural immunity to covid. In addition, as we have previously discussed, we might want to pressure people to get vaccinated for their own good. Yes, this is paternalism, but given the power of misinformation and simple procrastination, some degree of paternalism may be justified here. I have yet to read any news reports of people celebrating their decision to remain unvaccinated while choking to death in an ICU. I note in passing that most liberals (e.g., Hayek, Friedman, Mill) accept that paternalism is at least sometimes justified. Let’s continue:
Furthermore, evidence from amply vaccinated countries, including Israel, Iceland, and the U.K., reveals that vaccination doesn’t stop disease spread. It provides a personal benefit – reduced disease severity upon infection – but little public benefit.
Huh? Vaccination does reduce disease spread. People who are vaccinated are less likely to get covid, and thus less likely to transmit the disease. It seems that vaccinated people are more likely to have breakthrough infections with the delta variant than with covid classic, but this does not mean there is no disease prevention benefit from vaccination.
Furthermore, there are potentially large social costs to remaining unvaccinated in a university setting (and in many other settings as well). In addition to the obvious risk of infecting someone else, an outbreak of covid at GMU could easily lead to the university cancelling in-person classes, which would be quite costly and disruptive.
The predictable response is that vaccination isn’t 100 percent effective even for the vaccinated. True. But whatever additional benefits might be gained from vaccine mandates and other Covid restrictions must be weighed against the costs of these intrusions – costs that include solidifying an ominous precedent for until-now unprecedented authoritarian intrusions into Americans’ private affairs.
The cost of getting vaccinated is trivial (GMU has exemptions for people with health conditions or religious objections). Furthermore, there is plenty of precedent for mandatory vaccination. Boudreaux may not like the precedent, but that’s no excuse for misrepresenting basic facts.
Now, Boudreaux believes that the costs of lockdown policies exceed the benefits. Let’s assume he is right about this (he might not be). He might believe that resisting vaccine mandates or having the courts rule them unconstitutional will somehow prevent lockdowns. But this is an empirical claim that is far from obviously true. If anything, getting people vaccinated may help get restrictions lifted.
Contrary to each letter-writer’s supposition, establishing the case for vaccination mandates requires more than pointing out the trivial reality that an unvaccinated person might impose more risks on nonconsenting others than does a vaccinated person. Other questions must be asked and correctly answered – chief among these are ‘How much more risk?’ (answer: not much), and ‘At what cost?’ (answer: immense).
Let’s recap. Boudreaux tries to claim that the costs of mandatory vaccination exceed the benefits, but as we have seen his arguments are half-baked and misleading (i.e., getting vaccinated may not “stop” disease spread, but it very likely reduces the spread of covid considerably, and requiring people to get vaccinated may help GMU avoid a costly return to remote instruction). Boudreaux seems to suggest (“ominous precedent” for “authoritarian intrusions”) that mandatory vaccination will somehow put us on the road to actual totalitarianism. That sounds like crazy talk to me, but if Boudreaux has evidence for this claim he should trot it out and we can have a discussion. Finally, Boudreaux may simply believe that any vaccine mandate is “tyranny” because freedom or something. He can certainly make this argument (it’s a free country!), and he may believe it, but he will lose this debate, which I suspect is why he muddies the water with his other claims that sound like they are based on the kinds of costs and benefits that most people actually care about.
Note that insisting on exemption from a rule based on special circumstances is a bogus argument in a civilized society. An exact analogy would be violating sanitary vegetation import rules because your nursery has much better parasite control than average. The fact that you and others can make a case for exemption, if allowed, would overwhelm the protective regulatory regime, and impose huge costs on government (i.e., all of us).
Read this: ” Because vaccination is indeed quite effective at protecting each vaccinated person against suffering serious consequences from Covid, there’s no good reason to require anyone to be vaccinated. Each individual has easy ability to acquire such a high degree of protection that we can stop tyrannizing each other in the name of fighting Covid.”
My little pea brain went !!!!KLANG!!!
Babies at birth are being vaccinated. I am alway last to the party but I can’t find any confirmation. There are many folks in the world who don’t have the super genius Cognitive abilities of Donald Boudreaux.
Babies at birth are not being vaccinated with currently unlicensed vaccines requiring increased dosages within months of inoculation, however.
Eric;
“The EUA amendment for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine was issued to Pfizer Inc. The issuance of an EUA is not an FDA approval (licensure) of a vaccine. The EUA will be effective until the declaration that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of the emergency use of drugs and biologics for prevention and treatment of COVID-19 is terminated, and may be revised or revoked if it is determined the EUA no longer meets the statutory criteria for issuance or to protect public health or safety.
FDA Evaluation of Available Safety Data
The available safety data to support the EUA in adolescents down to 12 years of age, include 2,260 participants ages 12 through 15 years old enrolled in an ongoing randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial in the United States. Of these, 1,131 adolescent participants received the vaccine and 1,129 received a saline placebo. More than half of the participants were followed for safety for at least two months following the second dose.
The most commonly reported side effects in the adolescent clinical trial participants, which typically lasted 1-3 days, were pain at the injection site, tiredness, headache, chills, muscle pain, fever and joint pain. With the exception of pain at the injection site, more adolescents reported these side effects after the second dose than after the first dose, so it is important for vaccination providers and recipients to expect that there may be some side effects after either dose, but even more so after the second dose. The side effects in adolescents were consistent with those reported in clinical trial participants 16 years of age and older. It is important to note that as a general matter, while some individuals experience side effects following any vaccination, not every individual’s experience will be the same and some people may not experience side effects.”
You can read the rest here: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Authorizes Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for Emergency Use in Adolescents in Another Important Action in Fight Against Pandemic | FDA
Everything you state starting with the word “requiring” is a non sequitur to the main topic.
Go ask if what they are giving to babies is supported by an emergency use authorization only and if the think they’ll do it again at a 6 month or 8 month wellness visit. The current COVID vaccine situation is not analogous to what newborns get at all. DD can bring it into the conversation if he or she wants to, but it’s nonsense.
Eric:
I am not your librarian.
“Go ask if what they are giving to babies is supported by an emergency use authorization only and if the think they’ll do it again at a 6 month or 8 month wellness visit.”
If you have a citation of something related to a Covid vaccine being given to babies (12 years of age, please state it. Are we discussing a Covid vaccine for that age group?
Why is it that I understood Dilbert’s point while discussing babies being vaccinated (but not for Covid). Why is it I can make the connection between dilbert’s pointing out that babies being vaccinated as a common practice with vaccines approved for them and adults, etc. and others can be vaccinated with vaccines approved for them too so as to attend schools, etc. and you can not make the connection? Why is it that we are seeing outbreaks of various diseases amongst children and others when there are proven and safe vaccines to prevent such or lessen the severity of them. Perhaps, some are denying vaccines work on the later point?
Are your rights and liberties so sacrosanct as to allow you to impinge upon and threaten the liberties of others? I dare say no they are not. Your life is not being threatened by vaccination; but by not becoming vaccinated, your argument and others resistance to vaccinating are threatening the lives of others and in particular the lives of those who are less than majority age who you are constantly babbling about protecting them.
You are vaccinated. Why? You must believe it works. Otherwise, why would you vaccinate? Afraid to test the theory?
You argue just to argue. Do not waste our time.
It should be noted that nobody is forcing the plaintiff to get vaccinated. Some people are just saying they don’t want him mingling among them if he is not vaccinated. These are very different things.
I think plaintiff’s arguments are bogus. I think Kramer’s arguments miss the point, but are dangerous if they are taken to justify forcing anyone to get vaccinated.
shapiro
Boudreaux is not a vegetable. If the government enforces “sanitary regulations” against your business, it is not an invasion of your body.
If you are complaining about the cost to government (i.e. all of us) of some person’s objection to forced vaccination, you are teling me “it’s all about the money,” for which I have exactly the same respect as I have when the insane right claim that taxation and all government regulation is a crime against free enterprise.
Considering that this blog deals with the dismal science, I am surprised to see a commenter express horror that limitation of resources is significant. Governance in both government and private entities needs to deal with it.
Shapiro
of course resources are limited. but complaining that saving the lives of people “not like us” costs us money is so Right Wing I am sorry to see it coming from my Leftist friends.
??? Read. I was, of course, referring to the cost of fine-tuning a benign and necessary regulation so that anyone who has a plausible reason for not obeying is excused.
Shapiro
it has become evident that people have a hard time understanding each other on this topic. so try to be patient.
the issue here is who gets to decide what is a “plausible excuse.” i certainly would not give that right (power) to you. you should not give it to me…or to my elected representatives. surely you have seen by now that your elected representatives can’t be trusted. we still need government “of course” but so far we have managed to limit our government’s “right” to make decisions that we reserve to ourselves.
i happen to think mask mandates and social distancing mandates and taxes involve trivial limits on our rights. i think forcing vaccinations on people is not trivial, I don’t have much hope that people will agree with me…either way… but i have been alarmed to see the Left…otherwise so tender of people’s lives and feelings…run to the other side of the ship as soon as they think their own lives might be endangered by someone trying to protect himself …and worse, as soon as they think that someone’s very personal decision might cost them money, or even inconvenience.
https://www.governing.com/now/the-long-history-of-mandated-vaccines-in-the-united-states
The Long History of Mandated Vaccines in the United States
Vaccines against smallpox during the Revolutionary War may have saved the Continental Army from defeat. It’s one example of how mandates have protected the health of Americans for more than two centuries.
August 5, 2021 •
Lindsay Chervinsky
Last week, President Biden issued a new order requiring all federal employees, as well as all employees at the Veterans Administration, to receive the COVID-19 vaccine or undergo a strict testing and masking program. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York have issued similar orders for their states. While these mandates are the first vaccine requirements for COVID-19, the United States has a long history of protecting the nation’s health through vaccines.
It began with George Washington in 1777, less than one year after the U.S. declared independence from Great Britain. During the Revolutionary War, smallpox was the biggest threat to the Continental Army, threatening to inflict far more damage on the troops than the British forces. While 18th-century Americans didn’t fully understand the science behind smallpox, they knew that it seemed to break out in crowded areas — like big cities or military camps — and killed one-third of all who contracted the disease.
Doctors in Massachusetts first deployed a crude vaccine in the 1720s, and leading figures, including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Martha Washington, received the inoculation. To administer the vaccine, doctors lanced a pustule of an infected patient and then sliced the same knife under the skin of a healthy individual. The vaccinated patient usually contracted a milder case of smallpox, rendering them immunized against potentially deadlier strains in the future. Despite the life-saving benefits of the vaccine, many officials distrusted the science and blamed the inoculation for spreading the disease. Under this assumption, the Continental Congress had banned inoculations in 1776…
Ron:
Are you looking to become entangled in this tar baby? There are complex realities of adult life which some refuse to recognize. This happens to be one of them.
Run,
No and agreed. Covid-19 may be novel, but the circumstances are not.
However, a positive note (he said darkly) is that those that chose freedom over safety are now getting to watch their children die as they go back to school. Covid-19 delta variant is a harsh mistress, something that even a Libertarian can understand.
[More from that link above that did not end with reference to George Washington, but rather had hardly even begun there.]
“…A more effective and less gruesome smallpox vaccine was invented in 1796 and since then, American soldiers received the vaccine from the War of 1812 to World War II. Starting in World War I, the Army added vaccines against typhoid. During World War II, vaccines for influenza, tetanus, cholera, diphtheria, plague and yellow fever were also required. By 2006, soldiers in the armed forces received 13 different vaccines, with additional doses depending on location and regional conditions.
But soldiers weren’t the only Americans required to receive a vaccine. In 1902, Massachusetts was once again at the forefront of the vaccine charge and once again, the focus was smallpox. As an outbreak spread across the state, the Board of Health in Cambridge issued a regulation ordering the vaccination of all residents. Pastor Henning Jacobson refused the vaccination, on the grounds that his childhood inoculation had gone badly back in Sweden. He pursued the legal case all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that the law was a violation of his personal liberty and “unreasonable, arbitrary and oppressive.”
In 1905, the Court declared that the Massachusetts law did not violate the Constitution and affirmed that “in every well-ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint.” They also determined that mandatory vaccinations were neither arbitrary nor oppressive if they do not exceed what is “reasonably required for the safety of the public.”
To this day, most schools and universities require a series of vaccines for students to enroll. For example, for a child to enter kindergarten, the Florida Department of Health requires four doses of Diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP), four doses of polio (IPV), two doses of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), two doses of chickenpox, Hepatitis B, and pneumococcal conjugate (PCV13), and haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib). When attending college, I had to show proof of vaccination for the same vaccines. Similarly, health-care and child-care workers are often required to show proof of vaccination for Hepatitis B, influenza, measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, pneumococcal disease and varicella….”
Ron
i am aware of Washington’s mandate. I am also aware that vaccinations in those days were not sterile and they did sometimes result in death, often from some disease other than smallpox.
There are some complexities in life that some people do not recognize, in spite of thinking they are the only adults in the room.
Washington also hanged a dog for not understanding his property rights. He liked to hang people too, as an example to others. Even some who had volunteered to help in his fight for freedom. And I believe he might have owned slaves. Some people think that because Washington did it ,that makes it right. These people do not handle complexities well, but they tend to think they are the chosen ones who are entitled to make life and death decisions for people who do not agree with them.
Coberly,
Yes, and some think that there is nothing new (novel) under the sun. Covid-19 delta variant puts a clever twist on “The Cost of Freedom.”
Crosby Stills Nash and Young – Find the Cost of Freedom
Nothing is older than time, nothing is more final than death, and nothing is wiser than the inevitable.
For many here in central VA the deaths of over six hundred thousand Americans from Covid-19 lacks the same gravitas as the deaths of two children under age 12 in their own school district. Whatever it takes.
Message to all the unvaccinated that are eligible.
You Don’t Have To Go Home (But You Can’t Stay Here)
Perhaps I missed it in the comments but I don’t think anyone pointed out one societal benefit of vaccination: preservation of capacity in ICU’s and ER’s. That is already a serious issue in various southern states. There is also the societal cost of treating those who become ill.
Welcome back
Thanks; forgot where you folks hang out.
Ron
thanks. i enjoyed the music. the words were suggestive and ambiguous enough to inspire thinking, like all good art. but for most people inspired thinking means “thinking i have been right all along.”
we get nowhere. in case i forget to mention it in my next comment” run et all don’t even know what i am trying to say, but they know it is despicable nonsense. for the record: i have no objection to the vaccines. my point is and always has been that forcing people to take the vaccine is going to backfire politically, and lead us into the land of frank Facism: rule by force.
i also think it is worthwhile trying to point out the thought-lapses of people avocating force…and claiming to be experts when even the real experts say “we are still learning about this disease.”
of course it is not worth while if what i hope to achieve is changing their minds. the best i can do is hope to provide aid and comfort to others who might share my doubts.
and also:
there is a difference between mask and distancing requirements (vs pFreedom uber alley) and forcing vaccinations. and there is a difference between forcing vaccinations and requiring vaccination for admission to places where other people object to your lack of vaccination.
this may require some complexity of thought that some people regard beneath contempt because their idea of complexity is to say that “the science is complex so you should do what we say.”
“we” being the new master race…the people who are smarter than you, and have a perfect right to force you to do what they say is good for you and good for the rest of us..so we will not die, or not have to wear masks or social distance or pay taxes or endure shutdowns of super spreader events and businesses.
Coberly said –
“…there is a difference between forcing vaccinations and requiring vaccination for admission to places where other people object to your lack of vaccination…”
[So I ask, then who exactly does the former? The problem on the Left that I have seen is that they did not even want to do the latter because that would be seen as a form of discrimination. Vaccine mandates by employers are legal in VA and constitute the latter, not the former. They don’t have to go home, but they can’t stay on the job. Those that would literally force vaccination on people are too insignificant to count. OTOH, we have had mothers with school age kids in VA that were fighting against mandatory masking in schools as well as many people opposed to employer mandates for vaccinations. Fortunately these fools were on the wrong side of history and now that kids under 12 years old have started dying here from Covid-19, they are no longer even news worthy.]
Ron said
” those that chose freedom over safety are now getting to watch their children die as they go back to school.”
maybe they shoud have chosen freedom not to send their kids to a school where they were likely to catch covid, which we might be beginning to learn they can catch even from the vaccinated.
you have seen cases skyrocket since the CDC in a political, not medical, decision declared masks and distancing were no longer necessary because the vaccine… even though many, many were as yet unvaccinated.
Ron
so far as I know, no one is (yet) doing the former. but people right here on AB have been advocating the former…forcing vaccination.
you seem to undertand the distinction i have been trying to make, but not quite understanding that i have been trying to make it.
as for “news worthy,” i would think the death of schoolchildren was newsworthy. it might inspire parents to get vaccinated. or if they are afraid of that…or of vaccinating their children…at least wear masks and socially distance.. say, at or from schools.
they probably won’t, because the Left is not tender enough of their feelings to avoid the language of contempt and force, feeding them into the tender lying hands of the Right.
Coberly,
Yes, dead kids under 12 years old pushed the mandate protestors right out of the news cycle.
Coberly,
Also I would not worry too much about what we say here at AB or what is said in other similar demographics. One may be one of the smart people OR one may be one of a politically significant and socially relevant demographic, BUT one cannot be both, at least in these United States.
Some choices are necessary and some choices are discretionary. Some consequences are avoidable and some consequences are unavoidable. It is easier to say than to know which is which. One may be uncertain or confused. The one certain thing is that privilege is the freedom to make discretionary choices for which the avoidable consequences will be borne by others.
unfortunately, it is not given to man to know when the avoidable costs should be avoided and in what way.
we could certainly avoid the costs of feeding the poor, but we wouldn’t know what the costs of avoiding the costs would be, even to us. ask any republican: if they are poor it is their own fault.
the more extreme R’s call them losers. the more extreme progressives call them stupid white men.
and they blame statues of Robert E Lee.
First time I noticed the”smart ones” fallacy I was about 14 and I stopped to talk to an old black guy leaning on a shovel watching a couple of other guys digging a ditch. in a few minutes he convinced me that he was one of the smart ones, and I was not.
years later, i read some books by Harvard graduates and Harvard professors and convinced myself they were not as smart as advertised.
working in the borderlands between manual labor and college professor i think i concluded that the percent of smart people among laborers was about the same as the percent of smart people among college professors.
Coberly,
Agreed all around. Life can be difficult and choices can be hard, but privilege relieves many of the onerous circumstances to both.
I was not born into privilege and despite being good relative to my unimportant station in life still achieved much from the chance of dumb luck. No problem, I will happily take it anyway. I would rather be lucky than good.
Ron
re your history of vaccinations and the Supreme Court.
The SC has always shown a readiness to find high sounding excuses for hurting people in the name of pblic benefit or even their private seances to learn the intent of the founding fathers.
i am thinking they may not be so ready to anger 80 million “fools” who vote mostly for their (the SC’s) friends.
meanwhile my own lonely crusade to warn “liberals” about their inner fascist is turning into a pathetic defense of me personally. so i will try to disengage and smile as the sun sets in the west.
last word hopefully: be careful what you do unto others. it may get to be fashionable.
Ron
I am superstitious enough to distrust luck, both good and bad. I even distrust “good.”
Most of my bad luck has been self induced. And most of it turned out better for me than good luck might have.
As for “good” without regard for luck. Well, besides self deception as to what is good… i have seen people fail entirely to live life, so afraid they were of doing bad. And of course really bad people get elected to the Senate or appointed to the Supreme Court.
that said, i am also a great believer in dumb luck. (and not overfond of consistency).
of course the best dumb luck is to be born healthy and with a normal brain (i am not convinced that there are great differences between “normal” and “superior.”)
after that,,, i think of it this way. if you flipped a coin and it came up heads (or tails) three times in a row, you would notice it. if it came up heads five times in a row, you might begin to think something was up. and ten times you might begin to think you had a special talent. but the thing is this kind of thing happens often enough with flipping a coin that no statistician would be unduly alarmed. but when a relatively short run of good luck, or bad luck, produces great differences in fame or fortune we usually congratulate ourselves on our superior talent and blame others for their lack of character.
in my life i have had far better luck than i deserved, and learned not to despise people who have had worse luck..even though there is nothing i can do to help them…beyond arguing for laws and policies that don’t crush them utterly by adding severe punishments to their bad luck.
unfortunately the great weight of human behavior since we stopped living in tribes has been for the winners to despise, punish, and prey on the losers.
even right here in river city.