24 Jan 2022
Before we start: I'm not anti-vax, I don't support anti-vax groups, I am vaccinated.
As the title doesn't imply but frankly says, vaccine mandates are dumb. Not because they won't stop the spread of COVID or that it infringes on muh freedom.
It's because anti-vaxxers aren't going to follow them. No matter how many times we slap the anti-vaxxers to move and get vaccinated, they aren't going to do it.
This is because vaccine mandates aren't teaching anti-vaxxers that vaccines are safe and help to stop COVID. Forcing vaccines teaches anti-vaxxers that big business, governments and the world are all out to get them.
If we're just teaching anti-vaxxers that we're evil and they're the good guys, they'll feel like modern day Robin Hoods as we say "Get vaccinated! Get vaccinated!". We need to properly teach anti-vaxxers the science, the data and the facts behind how effective the vaccine is.
Vaccine mandates also hurt those who are unable to take the vaccine. They may not be eligble or even worse, they may have a bad reaction to the vaccine (by bad, I don't mean the traditional headache but stuff like heart attacks). You can't possibly force someone who had a life-threatening reaction to a vaccine to go get a vaccine because that's like going up to someone with a peanut allergy and say "Eat this Snickers and enjoy it".
Vaccine mandates are impossible to actually enforce because of people's unwillingness to actually get the vaccine. What if the only person who can do a specific task in your organisation is an anti-vaxxer? Are you really going to fire someone and hobble your company because they don't want to get a vaccine?
Do we do the same thing with flu vaccines?