Mandates work.

That’s the story this week. Fewer than 1% of United Airlines employees refused to get vaccinated when told they needed to get the jab to keep their jobs. That’s right, out of 67,000 employees, only 593 refused to get the shot. Two months ago, only 70% of the airline’s employees were vaccinated, now only 1% are not.

But it’s not only United. Tyson Foods reported that 91% of its employees are now vaccinated, and the deadline has not yet arrived. As for the New York health system, it went from 75% to 92% today. Many individual hospitals are even higher. St. Barnabas in the Bronx went from 80% to 97%. Mohawk Valley went from 70% to 95.6%. https://wapo.st/3uyvp0p

What drove the increase? Economics!

“Of Vaccine Mandates and Facing Reality”: https://nyti.ms/2Yo3a8V

“The point is that most vaccine resistance isn’t about deep concerns, but it often involves assertions of the right to give (misguided perceptions of) self-interest priority over the public interest. So, luckily, many resisters fold as soon as the calculus of self-interest reverses, and refusing to take their shots has immediate, tangible financial costs.”

Turns out when it comes to money, people will bite the bullet, get the shot. You read about people sacrificing their jobs, but they’re a distinct minority.

As for the mentality of the true believers, you must read this article in “Vox”: 

“Why people who don’t trust vaccines are embracing unproven drugs – Inside the upside-down world where Covid-19 vaccines are dangerous and ivermectin is saving lives”: https://bit.ly/3FfVaay

“‘People listen to people “from their group” and whom they think they can trust,’ David Dunning, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, told me. ‘People really don’t know what science is, and so do you feel you can trust the person giving you advice, rather than appraising their expertise, becomes the thing.'”

It’s about cults. You always twist the facts to support your position. The doomsday cult waits for the world to end, and then when it doesn’t they’re joyous, because of their belief the rest of the world was saved!

“In communities of hardened vaccine skeptics, new information isn’t necessarily treated as an opportunity to reassess their beliefs. Instead, new facts are seen either as affirmation of what this community already believes or as a distraction that should be dismissed because it doesn’t neatly sort into their anti-vaccine narrative.”

And:

“That theory holds that, within the American right, the concepts of loyalty and betrayal are more influential to their worldview than on the American left. Staying true to your group is a powerful pull for conservatives.

‘For these folks, facts mean nothing; membership and identity, everything,’ Bernstein said over email. ‘Groupishness, in-/out-group differentiation … is much stronger on the right.'”

In other words, there’s no chance of convincing these hard core deniers with logic, it just won’t work, they’re invested in their position, facts don’t matter.

But money does.

As does the ability to function in a society. If you make life hard enough, people will get the shot. You can’t smoke in a theatre, in almost any public place, and you shouldn’t be allowed inside one if you’re not vaccinated. Turns out most people want vaccine mandates, it’s just that politicians lack the will.

And then we have the strange case of California…

The Republicans thought they would dethrone Newsom and turn the Golden State into a Covid-19 free-for-all like Florida or Texas. But their efforts resulted in a debacle, Newsom won almost three-quarters of the vote. And thus emboldened, he declared that all students must be vaccinated. Elections have consequences, the people spoke and it turns out the Republicans are in an even worse position in California, whose inoculation rate is so high and Covid prevention laws so tough that the state’s infection and death rate are consistently amongst the lowest in the nation.

We need more politicians to do what is right as opposed to what is wrong because they’re afraid of a minority of their constituents.

We need more vaccine mandates.

We need to make life so hard for the unvaccinated that they decide to get the shot to their benefit.

Mandates work, we need more!