We can't move on when a substantial part of the population remains unvaccinated. With hospitals in the brink of collapse, there would be no return to normality any time soon.
It's a vanishing minority of crazies. 99.9% of over 65-year olds have had one jab; 80% of those over 12 [1]. Close to a fifth of the population has had their booster.
This debate is over. The people who are left will either be nudged by mandates or self-isolate from areas of dense population or economic activity, which automatically reduces their risk to the public.
[1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-...
Wow, that's amazing. As someone who has followed the covid stuff pretty closely, that's very surprising to me. I would have guessed it would be around 95%.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/current-covid-patients-ic...
But scaling issues should subside over time. The U.S. spends 3.8 trillion a year on healthcare.
Scaling issues five years out? Less acceptable. 20 years out? Unacceptable.
So, in addition to losing loved ones I think mandates do work. Putting it into law, like you suggest is harder, but giving companies green light for mandates is easier and does have some noticeable effect.
cool. but let us not stop there. there are so many more public health hazards that we can solve that way.
People are stressed, people are scared, people are exhausted. Righteous anger makes all of that worse.
I'm fine with jobs requiring vaccination, and I'm fine with government jobs and public schools requiring vaccination, and even businesses (especially ones involving crowds of people, like conference/convention halls and cruise ships) requiring vaccination. It's basically saying, "You don't want to get vaccinated? Fine, then you don't get to participate in our society."
But a law introducing criminal penalties for being unvaxxed? No way.