Unvaccinated People Need to Bear the Burden
Beyond limiting the coronavirus’s flow from hot spots to the rest of the country, allowing only vaccinated people on domestic flights will change minds, too.https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/unvaccinated-flight-vaccine-tsa-mandate/619643/
About the author: Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary for homeland security under President Barack Obama, is the faculty chair of the homeland-security program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
When you go to the airport, you see two kinds of security rules. Some apply equally to everyone; no one can carry weapons through the TSA checkpoint. But other protocols divide passengers into categories according to how much of a threat the government thinks they pose. If you submit to heightened scrutiny in advance, TSA PreCheck lets you go through security without taking off your shoes; a no-fly list keeps certain people off the plane entirely. Not everyone poses an equal threat. Rifling through the bags of every business traveller and patting down every pre-schooler and octogenarian would waste the TSA’s time and needlessly burden many passengers. The same principle applies to limiting the spread of the coronavirus. The number of COVID-19 cases keeps growing, even though remarkably safe, effective vaccines are widely available, at least to adults. Many public agencies are responding by re-imposing masking rules on everyone. But at this stage of the pandemic, tougher universal restrictions are not the solution to continuing viral spread. While flying, vaccinated people should no longer carry the burden for unvaccinated people.
The White House has rejected a nationwide vaccine mandate—a sweeping suggestion that the Biden administration could not easily enact if it wanted to—but a no-fly list for unvaccinated adults is an obvious step that the federal government should take. It will help limit the risk of transmission at destinations where unvaccinated people travel—and, by setting norms that restrict certain privileges to vaccinated people, will also help raise the stagnant vaccination rates that are keeping both the economy and society from fully recovering. Flying is not a right, and the case for restricting it to vaccinated people is straightforward: The federal government is the sole entity that can regulate the terms and conditions of airline safety. And although air-filtration systems and mask requirements make transmission of the coronavirus unlikely during any given passenger flight, infected people can spread it when they leave the airport and take off their mask. The whole point of international-travel bans is to curb infections in the destination country; to protect itself, the United States still has many such restrictions in place. Beyond limiting the virus’s flow from hot spots to the rest of the country, allowing only vaccinated people on domestic flights will change minds, too.
Polls suggest that vaccine holdouts have a variety of motivations: genuine concerns about side effects; scepticism of shots not yet fully approved by the FDA; a general aversion to vaccines; a desire to stick it to the libs; a reluctance to decide—even now. In a recent New York Times and Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 46 percent of unvaccinated people who consider themselves in the “wait and see” category disclosed that they would stop waiting if they could get a shot from their personal physician. Forty-four percent agreed that the FDA’s full approval of the vaccines would motivate them. And 41 percent said that a prohibition on airline travel would get them closer to their shots. Tellingly, 11 percent of those adamantly opposed to vaccination would also be motivated by a travel ban—a larger effect for these respondents than full FDA approval or the ability to get vaccinated at their doctor’s office would have. More than another recitation of statistics about vaccines’ benefits or yet another appeal to the common good, the deprivation of movement will win over doubters. Some unvaccinated Americans in areas where vaccination seekers face scorn among their peer group may even be happy to have an excuse to protect themselves.
The public debate about making vaccination a precondition for travel, employment, and other activities has described this approach as vaccine mandates, a term that, to conservative critics, suggests that unvaccinated people are being ordered around arbitrarily. What is actually going on, mostly, is that institutions are shifting burdens to unvaccinated people—denying them access to certain spaces, requiring them to take regular COVID-19 tests, charging them for the cost of that testing—rather than imposing greater burdens on everyone. Americans still have a choice to go unvaccinated, but that means giving up on certain societal benefits. Nobody has a constitutional right to attend The Lion King on Broadway or work at Disney or Walmart. Employers and entertainment venues are realizing that they can operate more easily without the hassle of planning around unvaccinated employees and customers. Amid a global health crisis, people who defy public-health guidance are not, and do not deserve to be, a protected class. For the privilege of flying, Americans already give up a lot: We disclose our personal information, toss our water bottles, extinguish our cigarette butts, and lock our guns in checked luggage. For vaccinated people, having to show proof of vaccination when flying would be a minor inconvenience.
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Put willfully unvaxed in empty stores in palliative care.
These anti vaxers should not be allowed in hospital carw, taking up precious space & resources that might very well be needed to care for vaxed accident victims, heart attacks, strokes, etc.
Infuriating, imo!
Why in the hell are hospitas admitting them? 
I hope you will be ok until you can get your surgery!
Our county case numbers were going down nicely. Things were opening up. But I saw a report last week that only 46% of residents are fully vaccinated - and now the case numbers are rising and our hospitals are slammed.
I can survive without the surgery for a while. But it took some work to get over my anxiety about the procedure. And now this.
Thanks for your concern.
I agree. Here in Memphis, daily cases were between low 20s to low 40s. It has exploded so much, one article said increase is 600 and some percent. NYT did an article on it. No subscription here, so no link, but I saw headline.
I'll bet your anger and anxiety about your procedure are through the roof! 
This whole slam the hospitals with anti vaxers is yet another example of my #1 pet peeve.
I realize this might not be a popular perspective here on DU, but why the hell are people living normal lives, abiding by the laws consistently bombarded with bs trying to make misfits behave?
Slammed hospitals & exhausted medical providers is a really serious example of this.
A less serious example are the jerks drag racing in Memphis & burbs.
Now they are installing very sharp speed bumps in streets to try to control the drag racers.
Rather than destroy law abiding people's cars, why don't they throw these jerks in jail for a year ir two, mandatory upon conviction? That would stop the BS right now.
This past week, a grown man was caught drag racing in Memphis for 100 spectators. Guy looked to be about 40 years old.
No doubt a little gentle tap on the wrist for him.
Meanwhile, let's install speed bumps in roadways. 
I could give you numerous additional examples, but I'm sure you get the point.
I hope this situation is rectified soon so that you can get your surgery!
Race has nothing to do with what I said above.
Every adult in America has had and still has the opportunity to get free covid vaccines.
Everyone has a choice & even not making a choice has consequences.
If push comes to shove, should accident victims, heart attack, stroke or others presenting to ER be turned away to cater to the willfully unvaxed?
Not imo. Never!
And that would be very unfortunate.
But everyone that is 18+ has a choice to make.
12+ parents' choice in most states.
My lowly LBN thread yesterday - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142779741
