Vaccine mandates “have not provided the significant boost to state and local vaccination rates that some experts had hoped for,” according to a report in the New York Times.
Hey Fauci,
If masks and mandates work, why don’t they work?
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) December 23, 2021
The Times employed “many different ways of analyzing the data,” but found no “significant increase in the rate of vaccinations after the mandates, possibly because many of those areas already had relatively high vaccination rates.”
The report, which also found that “at least 49,000 people have left their jobs or have been disciplined at work because they did not comply,” puts paid to the oft-repeated insistence in pro-mandate circles that “vaccines mandates work.”
Dr. Lisa Cooper, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, told the Times that “mandates might help for people who are just finding it inconvenient,” but “are not going to do anything for those” with “strong beliefs against it or who really have significant other struggles.”
Epidemiologist Debra Furr-Holden told the Times “it was possibly too late for employers or the government to compel the unvaccinated with a mandate because vaccine hesitancy and refusal have been reinforced over time.”
“People are thinking, ‘Well, if this vaccine was good, they wouldn’t have to force me to take it’,” she said.
In an article at the Washington Examiner, pro-vaccine journalist Timothy P. Carney explained why mandates are ineffective.
“They actually stoke resistance,” Carney wrote. “People who might be open to getting vaccinated or open to persuasion will bristle at being told they have no choice. That bristling can harden itself into an ideological opposition.”
The Supreme Court is due to hear arguments Jan. 7 in cases dealing with both the OSHA mandate that applies to any business with more than 100 employees and the mandate for healthcare workers at facilities that receive federal funding.
