Vaccine mandates will backfire. People will resist even more

“…Americans from all walks of life resist being told what to put into their bodies, and many will resent any politician or institution that makes them get vaccinated, creating a crisis of legitimacy for any government, university or business that forces constituents, students or employees to get vaccinated. Indeed, the president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association has already said, “There will be a lot of pushback” from members of his organization against the federal employee mandate.

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing about partisan vaccine resistance — according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll, 29 percent of Republicans say they won’t get vaccinated, compared to 4 percent of Democrats — but that doesn’t tell the whole story. In mid-June, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, when parents of children ages 12 and older (the youngest group authorized for vaccination) were asked by Kaiser Family if they would get their children vaccinated, 18 percent said they would wait and see, 10 percent said they would if required and 25 percent said “definitely not.” As FiveThirtyEight’s Geoffrey Skelley explains, “Unvaccinated Americans tend to be younger” and “more likely to be a person of color. The situation we’re in is not just because of politics but also because of access to the vaccine and broader skepticism of the health care system.”

I got a breakthrough covid infection. The worst part is the conflicting advice.

As Maya Goldenberg, author of “Vaccine Hesitancy: Public Trust, Expertise, and the War on Science” argues in a recent blog post, many of the vaccine-hesitant are well-educated, work in the health-care industry and have questions about how effective the vaccines are at stopping transmission, whether they’re safe to take during pregnancy or if they impact fertility…?