The triumph of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the development of safe, effective vaccines in mere months. Vaccines are costly and slow to develop, and yet we had two, from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, available within about eight months of the arrival of Covid-19 in the US, each with more than 90% efficacy. That is a remarkable technical achievement and represents the culmination of years of investment in the development of mRNA as a viable vaccine delivery platform. The rollout of vaccines at the beginning of 2021 was met with deserved enthusiasm, and predictions of a “summer of freedom” when sufficient numbers of people would be vaccinated to have essentially curtailed the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
And yet, once vaccines were made widely available, uptake was far slower than had been generally anticipated in the euphoria. While a substantial proportion of Americans rushed to get vaccines—and we were among that group—the number of people willing to get vaccinated soon stalled, with more than a third of Americans hesitating or downright refusing. This, reasonably enough, occasioned its fair share of public consternation and discussion about how best to increase the proportion of Americans vaccinated.
This conversation inevitably turned to mandating vaccines for adults, recognizing that that would create the conditions for a more rapid return to “normal” functioning. Many workplaces did indeed mandate vaccination, leaning on their prerogative to create safe workplaces. This was initially a phenomenon of private workplaces, but soon extended to public sector employers such as fire departments and schoolteachers. The question then of course extended to whether we can, or should, mandate vaccines for all adults.
Read the full post at The Turning Point.