Are you willing to get the Covid vaccine when offered?

I’ll admit I’ve posted more than a few “Covid denying anti-vaxxer dies of Covid” articles
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Recent months have seen a rising number of ideas for making life unpleasant for the unvaccinated. Vaccine mandates, of course, but why not also jack up their premiums for health or life insurance?

Hell, charge them for the cost of treatment if they catch covid-19. And while you’re at it, maybe push them to the back of the triage line.


I won’t try to argue that this is cruel or medically unethical; the authors of these proposals will simply retort that spreading covid-19 is also cruel and medically unethical.

So instead, let’s ask whether such policies are justifiable and, if so, whether they actually work.


In some cases, yes, there are clearly valid reasons to treat the unvaccinated differently from the vaccinated, and possibly effective ways to do so.

When unvaccinated people impose substantial, direct and unnecessary costs on others, it’s fair to impose rules that limit the damage or recoup those costs……

But such policies have to be proportionate to actual risk, not merely punitive. And let’s be honest: Many vaccinated folks are feeling pretty punitive. They’d like to change minds, or failing that, at least change behavior.

But they’ll settle for making anti-vaxxers pay for their pigheaded refusal to protect others or themselves. Hence the popularity of anecdotes in which anti-vaxxers catch covid-19 and then die in the horrified realization that they did this to themselves. Blue America loves to share these morality tales with sanctimonious sorrow — so sad! (So satisfying!)


The best defense of the punitive instinct is that more people might get jabbed if we make it sufficiently costly not to resist.

But at this point we’ve reached a hard core of refusers who are not merely a little hesitant, but apparently happy to risk their lives rather than take a shot.

If the possibility of dying doesn’t faze them, how likely are they to respond to lesser threats? And if the answer is “not very,” can we really justify punishing them anyway?…..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ccine-resistance-lets-leave-punishment-aside/