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4th December 2021, 12:53
#1351
Senior Member
Criticism of vaccine mandates rings hollow
The commentary “Vaccine mandates: a new form of ‘institutional segregation’” by Peter Doshi and Aditi Bhargava will do more harm than good.
The authors state that there are no restrictions on people who have received an exemption from childhood vaccinations, unlike employer requirements for masks/testing for those without COVID vaccination. This is not accurate. When we experienced measles outbreaks, officials issued orders prohibiting unvaccinated individuals from entering enclosed public spaces. Health care workers with exemptions from flu vaccination are required to mask up during flu season. If we were facing spread of another disease that childhood vaccines protect against, officials would impose similar restrictions. Contrary to the authors’ assertion that once an exemption is granted, we no longer care about the unvaccinated status, public health professionals care and work to increase vaccination and provide other protections.
The authors also suggest that people unwilling to get the COVID vaccine should be heard. Anyone working in public health or schools considering restrictions has heard from vaccine opponents. These community members have been given a lot of airtime — in public hearings, on mainstream and social media. Just because public health officials, governors, legislators, school boards and employers have imposed, or are considering imposing, vaccine mandates does not mean they have not been listening. Rather, they are also listening to others and, importantly, to science.
The authors refer to science and suggest a valid basis for not being vaccinated is immunity from having been infected with COVID. Yet the authors fail to note that the study concludes that vaccination in addition to natural immunity increases protections. This is not an either/or proposition. The vaccine offers additional protections for those who have had COVID and those who have not. The authors mention the possibility of myocarditis caused by vaccination. Such an outcome rare, and most patients recover readily. Further, an American Academy of Pediatrics study revealed children under 16 were 37 times more likely to develop myocarditis if COVID infected than if not. It is fair — and even ethically required — to mention risks, but the incredibly low possibility of an extreme negative outcome from the vaccine, especially as compared to infection, has been used to prop up otherwise unfounded opposition to the vaccine.
Finally, the authors’ attempt to describe the impact of vaccine mandates as segregation and against our “historical norm of equal opportunity” falls flat. The choice to decline free vaccination and be subject to mask/testing is not analogous to race, sex or ethnicity. I suspect many of my civil rights focused colleagues could eviscerate the authors’ attempt to paint vaccine resistance as a civil rights issue akin to our history of segregation and discrimination and the continuing impact of the same. As a public health lawyer, I’ll leave that to my colleagues.
Kathleen Hoke
The writer is a professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, director of the Network for Public Health Law Eastern Region (funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) and director of the Legal Resource Center for Public Health Policy (funded by the Maryland Department of Health). The views expressed her own, and not of her employer or funders.
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4th December 2021, 13:03
#1352