David Shapiro: End the vaccine fight: Get the shot, get tested or stay home

Mandates issued by Gov. David Ige and local companies to force workers to get vaccinated or face dismissal are a necessary step if we’re ever to extricate our community from the grip of COVID-19.

It’s beyond reasonable doubt that vaccines are the best chance to approach herd immunity and regain a semblance of social and economic normalcy.

We can no longer tolerate a tyranny of the minority in which those who refuse to cooperate with sound public health measures make themselves incubators for virulent new COVID-19 variants to grow and spread.

We’re unnecessarily battling our fourth COVID-19 surge with the super-contagious delta variant spreading mostly among the unvaccinated, causing twice as many cases as the record numbers from the original waves.

Mostly because this recalcitrant minority believes itself entitled to its own facts and rules, the immense sacrifices we made during the 2020 lockdowns have been squandered as hospitals are more overwhelmed than ever, younger people are dying and suffering long-term incapacity and we face a new round of restrictions on gatherings.

It’s not only their own health at issue. They’re clogging the health care system, taking beds from others who need care. They’re hosting and perpetuating a virus that if left unchecked will inevitably become immune to our vaccines, putting us back to square one.

People have a right to decide what they put into their bodies, but they don’t have a right to carry a deadly virus into the workplace to expose co-workers, customers, young students and, in health care settings, vulnerable patients.

Ige and other employers provided an out for those who refuse vaccines by allowing them to work if they provide frequent tests proving they are free of COVID-19.

This isn’t too much to ask, and a similar rule at the University of Indiana was upheld last week by a three-judge federal appeals panel made up of two judges appointed by Donald Trump and one by Ronald Reagan.

This and other such rulings are unsurprising given our country’s long legal legacy of allowing mandatory vaccinations to protect against public health threats from polio and smallpox to measles and meningitis.

For most, arguments about the efficacy of vaccines have been settled. We can see that available vaccines work extremely well in protecting against infection and protecting the few who do become infected from serious illness, with few significant side effects.

The latest infections are almost all among the unvaccinated. The states that are most hostile to vaccines are suffering the worst outbreaks.

If the workplace crackdown doesn’t generate cooperation, we might have to go the way of San Francisco and New York and ban the unvaccinated from indoor dining, bars, clubs, gyms, concerts and theaters.

A public health emergency can’t be argued into submission. At some point we must cut the debate and move forward on the course believed correct by leading scientific authorities and a solid majority of the public.

That time is now.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.