Opinion: Employers’ mandate that workers get vaccinated may be a game-changer in COVID-19 pandemic

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The politicization of basic public health policy is one of the great tragedies of our times. Tens of millions of Americans who grew up getting routine vaccinations without a second thought now somehow see COVID-19 vaccines as part of an unconstitutional scheme to control the public, as one San Diego police officer said at a rally last week protesting the city’s requirement that all city workers without religious or medical exemptions be vaccinated by Dec. 1 or lose their jobs. Given that unvaccinated people put others at risk of dying from a disease that has killed about 775,000 Americans and counting, it is hard to be sympathetic to this group. Mayor Todd Gloria needs to stand his ground on the deadline.

Despite hard talk by critics of vaccine mandates complaining their freedom is being taken away, numbers show the mandates are working. Recent data shows 37 percent of San Diego police officers have not been vaccinated yet, but 84 percent of San Diego firefighters have been. And on Monday, CNN reported that more than 90 percent of the 3.5 million people in the federal workforce had been vaccinated, and that 95 percent were in compliance with vaccine rules established by the Biden White House.

After smart shutdowns and masking to slow the spread of the pandemic, the decision by many employers to make getting vaccinated a condition of employment will restore our freedom. It follows the same logic that led the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in 1905 that smallpox shots could be mandated. People don’t have a right to endanger others. And people who claim this right while ignoring the fact that the unvaccinated are 11 times as likely to die of COVID-19 are the ones keeping us from living freely.