Starbucks, the UK, Czechia, and Israeli health experts now regret their vaccine mandates and passports
Four makes a trend. Starbucks, the U.K., Czechia, and Israel are all running away from vaccine passports. This makes perfect sense. The primary rationale for a vaccine passport is that it keeps a place safe from COVID-19 spread. This is why schools require measles vaccines, for instance.
While the COVID-19 vaccines have proven effective at preventing hospitalization and death (plus making mild cases milder), they have fallen short of their promise of stopping the spread. The omicron variant has shredded the argument for vaccine mandates. A South African
study has shown boosters don’t prevent omicron infection.
The strongest
argument for vaccine mandates or passports is they will make workplaces or public accommodations safer by limiting the spread. Defenders of these requirements today are forced to run to a far weaker and more meandering argument:
- Vaccines reduce hospitalizations (true!).
- Mandates and passports drive up vaccine uptake (true in some circumstances, but not all, and maybe not true today in most places in the United States).
- Hospitalizations for COVID-19 impose costs on the hospital system that have externalities, such as overcrowding some hospitals (leading to loss of care for other patients) and driving public spending on healthcare.
- Therefore, the government has a strong enough interest in increasing vaccine uptake to overcome the rights of privacy and self-determination.
Yes, there’s a logic there, but it’s a double bank shot: Locking the unvaccinated out of museums may increase the odds the unvaccinated will get vaccinated, and getting vaccinated decreases the odds you will get hospitalized, which in turn decreases the odds the hospitals will be overwhelmed.