The numbers are clear and overwhelming: millions of deaths caused by the virus; none by vaccines. Nevertheless, about a hundred million Americans continue to refuse the vaccine, for reasons ranging from the spiteful and malicious to the merely stupid. So what do we do now?
In a nutshell, there are three choices:
- Stick with the current program, which isn’t working. That results in countless new deaths. Almost all of these, at first, are unvaccinated people, but sooner or later, our inability to reach herd immunity leads to a new variant that infects vaccinated people, as well.
- Make the incentive program even more attractive to the unvaccinated, and impose mask mandates on the entire population, which primarily means the vaccinated, as the unvaccinated will probably refuse to wear masks. This amounts to punishing the vaccinated to appease the unvaccinated; worse, there is no guarantee it would work, so the new regime would have to go on indefinitely—probably for years.
- Permit state governments and employers to impose vaccine mandates. Strip anyone who refuses the vaccine of all government benefits. In other words, impose sanctions on people who are putting our lives and freedoms at risk.
Is this really a hard choice?