Why We Should Introduce Mandatory Vaccination

The continuing spread of the Delta variant in the United States is prompting more and more companies and institutions to consider restricting access of unvaccinated people to all types of activities, whether the workplace or leisure and social events.

Many technology companies, which throughout the pandemic have been the quickest to react and set trends, have begun to require vaccination not only for their employees, but anyone who wants to enter their buildings, even if it is a supplier or a visitor. In other sectors, companies and organizations are headed the same way: Disney, Walmart, food processing companies like Tyson, hospitals, university campuses… now, even the mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, has just made it mandatory to require proof of a vaccination for access to restaurants, gyms, cinemas or theaters.

U.S. President Joe Biden says people who refuse a vaccine must expect an increasing number of inconveniences in their daily lives, from not being able to go to work to not being able to carry out an increasingly significant number of activities. In Spain, some regional governments are backtracking on this type of requirement for fear of the reactions of certain employers’ associations or of court rulings to the contrary, while other countries are increasingly determined to confront the pandemic and preventing the appearance of new variants in the only way that makes epidemiological sense: by preventing the appearance of reservoirs.

Mandatory vaccination appears the only reasonable solution if we want to leave the pandemic in the rear-view mirror. The idea of requiring vaccination should not sound so worrying: there are countries that require certain vaccines to enter their territory, many educational institutions require it as a requirement for student enrollment, and in general, it has been these types of policies that have made it possible for many diseases to be largely eradicated. China took the step of requiring vaccination for many activities some time ago, France has made them mandatory for some groups, and in general, as some U.S. historians have shown, requiring vaccination should not be seen as curtailing our liberties: those who claim that resistance to vaccines is somehow an expression of freedom haven’t learnt the lessons of the past.

A growing number of authoritative voices are calling for mandatory vaccination against COVID-19, and for an expanded requirement for proof of vaccination for access to more activities. When a technology such as messenger RNA emerges and becomes the way to effectively combat a disease — not just COVID-19, but malaria or even cancer — we need to ask if this technology could increase adoption quickly, efficiently and without exceptions, especially if, in addition, we are in the midst of a pandemic. One person’s freedom to refuse a vaccine cannot be the freedom to help spread a disease. All freedoms have a limit, and in the case of vaccines, that limit is abundantly clear. The only reason to refuse a vaccine should be the presence of serious side effects. Vaccination against a dangerous virus in order to stop its spread is the price we have to pay to live in society.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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