Stronger Vaccine Edicts A Must

WITH the delta variant of the coronavirus proving to be the most infectious yet, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state of California an...

WITH the delta variant of the coronavirus proving to be the most infectious yet, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state of California and cities, counties and other states have called on Americans to once again routinely wear masks indoors. With new infections more than quintupling over the past three months, it appears that both the CDC’s May recommendation that mask edicts be dropped and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s June decision to end most pandemic restrictions were premature. Yes, COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations are still far lower than what was seen in the first 11 months of this pandemic. But the U.S. is still in the middle of it.Thing is, masks aren’t our best defense against COVID-19. What’s needed is to get shots in the arms of the 90 million Americans who are eligible for vaccines but who have not yet received them. What’s needed is for the Food and Drug Administration to finally realize that its failure to give full approval to the three vaccines in wide use in the U.S. — which have been administered with enormous success to hundreds of millions of people worldwide — is emboldening anti-vaccination rhetoric when the FDA’s reassurances would fuel many more vaccinations.Refusing to wait, the University of California and California State University systems have now joined hundreds of other colleges — and a growing number of businesses — to require vaccines or frequent testing. Institutions from Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera to Facebook to ours — The San Diego Union-Tribune — are all requiring vaccinations for entrance. With every theater or restaurant that requires vaccinations, the dangerous idea that not getting the vaccine is an affirmation of personal freedom and liberty weakens. Instead, proving you got the vaccine is good for business and health.In fact, requiring vaccines on public health grounds has a history that predates America’s founding. Historian Ron Chernow’s 2010 biography of George Washington noted that in 1777, the general ordered that every member of the Continental Army who had not yet had smallpox be inoculated for the disease. He correctly believed that such a step was crucial to winning the Revolutionary War.And the notion that Americans have a constitutional right to reject vaccinations is simply not supported by history. In 1905, the US Supreme Court upheld the decision of Cambridge, Massachusetts, health officials to fine individuals who did not get a smallpox vaccine $5. Justices held that protecting public health was a reasonable use of state power.Yes, the ruling noted that laws should not be arbitrary or oppressive, in a clear nod to constitutional requirements about individual rights. But it validated laws that have a “real or substantial relation” to their goal, and found preventing the spread of a deadly disease clearly qualified. With more than 600,000 dead and nearly 35 million infected in the U.S., mandating vaccines meets this standard.On Thursday, President Joe Biden asked local and state governments to use the emergency federal funds they had been provided to pay $100 to get the unvaccinated inoculated. Yet carrots only go so far. All institutions should start to require vaccinations.