A day after President Joe Biden announced sweeping new federal vaccine mandates for millions of Americans, North Texas residents had widely divergent views on the administration’s most aggressive effort yet to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control.
Some see the president’s move as just the latest in a series of bids by government at all levels to curtail individuals’ rights to make medical decisions for themselves and their families. Others say the new federal requirements are a welcome strategy to curtail a disease that continues to spread, with case numbers, fatalities and hospitalizations all soaring in recent weeks.
When the coronavirus vaccines were made widely available earlier this year, J.T. Tracey had doubts about whether he would roll up his sleeve.
Tracey, 27, said he thought his own immune system might be able to fight the coronavirus better than any vaccine could. But that all changed when clients for the medical-supply company he works for mandated that everybody who does business with them be inoculated. He recently got his vaccine.
People like Tracey — initially hesitant about the vaccines, but even more hesitant about the prospect of a lost livelihood — are exactly who President Joe Biden targeted Thursday when he announced that companies with more than 100 employees would be required to mandate shots for their workers, or have them submit to weekly testing.
“We’ve been patient,” Biden said while announcing the sweeping mandate, which could affect nearly 100 million Americans. “But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.” The unvaccinated minority “can cause a lot of damage, and they are,” he said.
Biden’s announcement comes amid a devastating surge driven by the delta variant, filling up hospitals once again with coronavirus patients, the vast majority of them unvaccinated.
Tracey said another factor that led to his decision was hearing from doctors and nurses about the strain hospitals are facing because of the new surge.
“Health care professionals are telling us that this is what we need to do,” he said Friday while standing in the dog park at White Rock Lake.
One of those professionals is Tonya Applewhite, who sat in the dog park with two friends, surrounded by small and boisterous Chihuahuas and cocker spaniels.
Applewhite, who is a nurse at Medical City Dallas Hospital, said the latest surge has left her exhausted.
“He should have done it months ago,” Applewhite said. “I work in a hospital, and I’m sick of it. All of these unvaccinated people are causing these issues.”
A civil liberties issue for some
But for some North Texans, the issue is as much about civil liberties as it is about health.
Friday evening, about 100 people gathered along the road near the Baylor Scott and White hospital campus in McKinney to protest against vaccine mandates.
Some motorists, including the crew in a McKinney Fire Department truck, waved and honked in support of demonstrators. Other motorists could be seen throwing verbal jabs.
Carmen del Castillo, 39, who passed out signs at the protest, said her family moved to Allen from California because of COVID-related mandates.
“We fled California because of the tyranny there,” she said. “They forced vaccine mandates on our children, and they could no longer go to school. We knew this was coming, and we’re just here to alert the masses.”
McKinney resident Paul Smith, 51, also described COVID-19 vaccine mandates as “tyranny.”
“Any time you tell someone ‘You have to do this’ against their will, it’s tyranny,” said Smith, who noted that he does not oppose COVID-19 vaccines themselves. “It’s just wrong. This is really about your freedom.”
Plano resident Gail Seiler, who is in her 50s, attended the protest with her husband, who is a former nurse, and their daughter and three grandchildren. Seiler said that her entire family had contracted COVID-19 but that no one had experienced serious symptoms.
“I think the mandates are creating vaccine hesitancy,” she said. “When they push and they push and they push … people start asking, ‘Why are they trying to force it on me?’”
According to the state of Texas, 1,266,437 people 12 and older in Dallas County — 58.1% of that population group — are fully vaccinated. That just slightly trails the statewide rate of 58.6%
But that still leaves millions of Texans unprotected.
Vaccinated for the sake of her kids
Reyna Rodriquez was already a believer in the vaccine. On Friday, she said Biden’s mandate was a welcome affirmation, noting that when she heard him say “our patience is running thin,” she thought, “I’m with him.”
On Friday, it was time for her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. She headed to a Dallas County clinic in Oak Cliff on Jefferson Boulevard with two of her five children: 17-year-old Rolando and 12-year-old Madeline, both of whom also got their second doses.
Nurse Danae Johnson delicately took out 26-gauge needles and all three were administered shots. Each got a sky blue bandaid. No one flinched.
Rodriguez said the family pediatrician was the biggest motivator to get vaccinated.
“Why haven’t y’all got it? Think about the twins,” she recalled the doctor saying, referring to her youngest children, a pair of 6-year-olds.
“That changed my mind,” she recounted. “I wasn’t sold when it first came out. It wasn’t until my kids started to go to school.”
Other people in Dallas said Friday that while they’re not vaccine-hesitant, they are mandate-resistant.
“I don’t think he should issue mandates and fines,” Joel Brown said as he waited in his truck to get a COVID-19 test on Northwest Highway in Dallas.
Brown said he owns a construction-management company. While he has fewer than 100 employees, the company sometimes contracts with the federal government, meaning his employees would also fall under Biden’s new mandate.
Brown said he doesn’t anticipate telling his employees to get their shots. He feels their vaccine status is none of his business, and worries that asking his employees whether they’ve been vaccinated might violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. (While that law, commonly known as HIPAA, prohibits doctors from disclosing a patient’s medical information, it does not prohibit employers from asking about their workers’ vaccination status or from issuing a vaccine mandate.)
Brown said he isn’t worried about Biden’s promise to fine companies that disobey the mandate.
“There’s a fine for everything,” he said. “It’s one in a list of 10,000 at this point.”
A right — “to a certain point”
Deborah Gibson, who was walking her Aussiedoodle, Dundy, around White Rock Lake, said she thinks the mandate will help protect children younger than 12, who are still ineligible to receive their vaccines.
Gibson said that Biden’s new mandate is no different than other mandates that have been in effect for other diseases for decades, including polio.
“I think vaccines are for the betterment of yourself and everyone around you,” she said.
Emma Contreras said she, too, was initially leery of the vaccines when they first came out. But she overcame that initial hesitation, she said.
“Some people don’t want to get it,” Contreras said while walking her Shiba Inu, Pippa. “It’s their right — but only to a certain point.”
Contreras said it’s “unfortunate that we have to treat people like babies.”
“People say, ‘Oh, I’m worried about what’s in the vaccine,’” Contreras said. “But then they eat Hot Cheetos.”
