There may have been a time, not too long ago, when it was enough simply to exclude the willfully unvaccinated from public spaces. That ship has sailed. The unvaccinated are a threat to public safety wherever they are. Here are a few reasons:
The Delta variant has an R0 of at least 6:
With an R0 of six, delta will be extremely difficult to slow down unless populations reach high levels of vaccination, Wenseleers says. And even then surges in cases will still occur, as is now happening in Iceland and parts of the U.S. The vaccine is less than 90% effective at stopping infections with delta, meaning at least 1 in 10 people could have breakthrough infections. And vaccinated people can still spread the virus. In addition, people who aren't vaccinated have a very high risk of infection, Wenseleers says. "Anyone that chooses not to get vaccinated will in all likelihood get infected by the delta variant over the coming months."
www.npr.org/...
The virus has already become endemic in wildlife, including white tailed deer:
Researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) analyzed blood samples from more than 600 deer in Michigan, Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania over the past decade, and they discovered that 152 wild deer, 40 percent of the deer tested from January through March 2021, had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Another three deer from January 2020 also had antibodies.
www.nationalgeographic.com/...
There’s also evidence that the virus may be circulating in sewer rats:
The data is preliminary and has not been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal. Some outside experts say it’s far too early to raise alarms. But there’s one troubling possibility about where the new sewer mutations are coming from, according to a preprint study published by the researchers on Thursday.
As with other animals, COVID-19 could be infecting dogs and rats, leading to new mutations and an outbreak in New York City’s sewers. While animal-to-human transmission of the virus is exceedingly rare, it has been seen in the U.S. in minks.
www.thecity.nyc/...
Putting them under house arrest won’t even cut it, especially if they happen to live in apartment buildings:
Just nine people got sick from SARS-CoV-2 in Guangzhou, where the apartment building was located, and none died. But there are similarities, says University of Hong Kong mechanical engineer Yuguo Li, who studied both cases. Li’s group—along with teams from the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Guangzhou CDC—describe their new findings this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine. (China CDC mentioned the cases in less detail in a paper published late last month, as first reported by Bloomberg.)
Here’s what is known about the COVID-19 episode: All five members of a family living in a 15th floor apartment tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in late January, after most of them had visited Wuhan, where the pandemic started. A few days later, two middle-aged couples living on the 25th and 27th floors—part of a stack of vertically arranged apartments directly above the flat in question and all sharing the same waste pipes—became ill. They had not traveled or been in close contact with a sick person during China’s lockdown.
Li’s team compiled a range of evidence suggesting the two couples were exposed to fecal aerosols from their neighbors more than 10 floors below through their shared waste pipes. Camera footage from elevators indicated that the families did not cross paths. Among more than 200 air and surface samples collected in the high-rise in mid-February, the only ones testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 came from the 15th floor family’s apartment and a vacant apartment’s bathroom on the 16th floor directly above. Finally, a tracer gas that Li’s team piped into the 15th floor apartment’s drainpipe exited in the 25th and 27th floor apartment bathrooms.
Even if you don’t infect anyone else, the disease is a threat to public safety. For instance, the hallmark symptom, loss of smell, is a known fire safety hazard. This is not simply theoretical:
Bianca Rivera, 19, quickly evacuated her family, who didn't realize the house was on fire after losing their sense of smell due to Covid-19. Rivera, who didn't have the virus, said she was awake early in the morning on Jan. 15 when she smelled burning plastic.
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that fire hazards are everyone’s business.
Even garden variety colds can increase the risk of car accidents. Can you imagine the impact of millions of motorists suffering from brain fog due to Long Covid?
Half measures such as vaccine passports place an undue burden on overworked, underpaid frontline workers to police who is and isn’t vaccinated. Moreover, instruments such as vaccine passports, and the verification theater that’s associated with them are predicated on the idea that there’s a meaningful difference between public and private spaces. The facts outlined above demonstrate that this is no longer the case. You could be holed up in a cabin in South Dakota — and you’re still a threat to public safety if you’re not vaccinated.
Enough already. Vaccination needs to be mandatory, across the board, for everyone.
Specifically, we need to give everyone 30 days to either (1) produce a valid medical excuse from a licensed physician or (2) get vaccinated. Anyone who doesn’t would incur a $15,000 fine. This does not need to be done at the federal level. Cities and states that are so inclined can start doing this right now. Most states (and some cities) already have immunization registries, and can easily check who is and isn’t vaccinated. Fines for not getting vaccinated have ample precedent. The oft-cited Jacobson v. Massachusetts case was about — you guessed it — a fine, albeit a somewhat smaller one ($5, or about $150 in today’s dollars). More recently, in 2019, New York City mandated measles vaccines to everyone in Williamsburg — with a $1,000 penalty for anyone who defied the mandate.
The beauty of fines is that they cross state lines, once they become civil judgments. Once you’re subject to a judgment, you’re on the hook for the fine no matter where you run. The government can seize your assets, freeze your bank account, or garnish your wages — whatever it needs to do to recover the money that it’s owed. And a well enforced fine would be functionally equivalent to a robust “passport” system and could be rolled out in a fraction of the time. If you don’t get vaccinated, your disposable income would simply evaporate.
Fines would not require any additional legislation — they can be implemented by state, local, and tribal health departments, under existing authority (it’s a general misconception that government agencies require additional statutes in order to promulgate regulations; one working definition of “agency” is that it’s a self-contained mini-government with executive, legislative, and judicial functions baked in).
At least one recent poll shows broad support for “blanket” vaccine mandates — as many as 64% nationally, and even majorities in Texas (65%) and Florida (64%). A simple mandate, backed by a fine, would likely appeal to a number of people who would rather “mandate vaccination and be done with it” than spend the next year or so having to ask people whether they’re vaccinated.
Nothing short of fines will suffice. Others have suggested that insurance companies could simply charge higher premiums to people who don’t get vaccinated. The problem with that approach is that insurance companies are regulated almost completely at the state level, thanks to the McCarran-Ferguson Act. States such as Florida would not hesitate to ban insurance companies operating in Florida from “discriminating” against the unvaccinated. This is not theoretical; in 2014, the Florida legislature passed a law barring insurance companies from “discriminating” against gun owners, even though there is ample evidence that gun owners are bad risks for every single insurance line.
Some might say that this would unfairly burden people with lower income. It doesn’t have to. The money collected from fines could be earmarked for mitigating the risk of Covid in other ways: better ventilation, testing, treatments, etc. Indeed, one of the roles of fines to force people to pay for negative externalities created by their socially irresponsible choices.
No more kid gloves. It’s time to get real, and fine the heck out of the anti-vaxxers.