The number of people who 1) think he should HAVE to reveal his vaccine status and 2) think his decline to tell is an admission of being unvaccinated is highly disturbing.
There are many plausible scenarios where he might be vaccinated and not want to disclose. Might have a mege-anti-vax relative he doesn't want to deal with. Might be afraid of some stigma of weakness in his friend circle. Might legitimately just not want to tell these leering jerks.
Also, smallpox, polio, measles, these things are and were far more deadly and/or debilitatingly harmful than covid (though measles isn't much worse I guess). I generally support mandatory vaccinations for children and adults when it comes to diseases that, if unchecked, will be more harmful than the apparatus of enforcement it takes to implement mandatory vaccines. Same for other things, drugs, guns, etc.
The remergence of yellow fever, for example, would definitely be worse than the whatever negative consequences that would occurr as a result of its enforcement.
Same for keeping heroine illegal. It's worth the enforcement.
Is it worth having a massive police state and 23% of the world's imprisoned population to keep marijuana illegal? I don't think so. Is it worth making covid vaccinations absolutely mandatory (taking into consideration its comparatively low death rate, the widespread skepticism of the vaccine within the public, and, thus, the drastic implications of what enforcement would look like)?
I just don't think so.
Don't get me wrong. I definitely think people should get vaccinated. But I don't believe covid represents a greater threat on its own than its enforcement would be.
I'm also not particularly eager to shame people in person (or in the court of public opinion like in Dak's case) for being wary of relatively untested stuff. I think they should get vaccinated, but I just don't have it in me to chastise those folks forcefully.
Another example. I'm pro-life. Not because I have any interest in "controlling women's bodies" (because that entire argument is a strawman and no one actually wants that) but because it just seems like any reasonable moral measurement should not disqualify unborn humans from the acknowledgement of their humanity. Consequently, I believe we should do everything we can to promote adoption and resources for vulnerable mothers and anything else that might reduce abortions (things those on the right often seem reluctant to endorse).
That said (though I go back and forth on this one) I don't support making abortions fully and entirely illegal, though I don't particularly object to making them difficult to get.
The fact of the matter is that well over 50% of Americans (including the women who would be the exclusive targets of enforcement) are pro-choice.
It wouldn't be a clean matter of just changing the law and ending abortions. It would require an enormous policing and enforcement influx targeting a majority of people who will fight back tooth and nail.
I literally think killing an unborn child is killing a person. To beat around the bush about that would be to equivocate on the issue.
However, would outlawing abortions in a population that supports them result in net positive consequences or even necessarily fewer abortions? An enormous underground market would immediately materialize to fill the demand. Babies would still die by the thousands in the womb but there would also be enormously powerful wings of the police state jailing doctors, women, anyone complicit in the process which, again, might be the majority of Americans.
Articles like this one that pretend mandatory vaccines would be a clean, easy process are not factoring in the substantial numbers of people who are skeptical of the vaccine or straight up bogged down in conspiracy theories. A huge chunk of the population would fight back tooth and nail and the enforcement would not be pretty at all.
Maybe the Delta variant death rate is still more threatening than the prospect of enormous pushback from a substantial portion of the population. But I really doubt it.
