Ready for vaccine mandates long ago

The vaccine dominoes are falling, and quickly.

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Unified School District ordered all eligible students to be fully vaccinated by January, becoming the first large public school system in the country to implement such a mandate. The same day, President Biden announced federal rules that could affect roughly 100 million people: U.S. government employees and contractors are now required to be fully vaccinated within three months, and workers at companies with at least 100 employees must get their COVID-19 shots or undergo regular testing.

The language Biden used was, for him, blunt and undiplomatic: “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.” Our readers, however, began directing their anger at the willfully unvaccinated the moment it became clear we were in yet another surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths, thanks not only to the Delta variant but also the high rate of vaccine refusal or hesitancy.

To our readers, the recent actions by Biden and L.A. Unified are overdue and may not go far enough.

— Paul Thornton, letters editor

In 2020 and 2021, monotheism in America slid back to pagan polytheism.

Certain politicians and evangelical sophists, in complicity with elements of our business class, have been secretly practicing human sacrifice. Their sacrificial rites first took many of the elderly and then many of the working class, including healthcare workers, food workers and, more recently, teachers.

Now the pagans have turned on their own children and the children of neighbors.

The ancients asked a few willing ones to pay the ultimate price in order to obtain power. Today’s version of the sacrifice purchases total individual freedom bordering on anarchy for our new sect of anti-vaccine heathens. The sacrifice is potentially hundreds of thousands of others. Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross, Utah

During the pandemic, my feelings have gone from fear to grief to impatience to anger. Biden is right: Our patience is wearing thin.

Those of us who did the right thing and got vaccinated as soon as the shots were available are still not comfortable going out and doing the things we love to do. Yes, I blame the unvaccinated, who keep the virus replicating and mutating.

If everyone had taken advantage of the opportunity to get vaccinated as soon as possible, these mandates would not even be necessary now. Can we just go back to the “yelling fire in a crowded theater” analogy?

Your personal freedom ends at the point where everyone else’s health and safety begins. Encouraging, coddling and persuading didn’t work; time for mandates. Laurie Jacobs

San Clemente

Enough is enough. People who refuse vaccination are a risk to all of us.

It’s time to criminalize refusal. If you’re not masked despite a requirement to do so, you should be arrested. A vaccine refuser who infects others should be charged with assault.

We should take the same approach as Texas with its new abortion law and allow any citizen to sue an antivaxxer for $10,000 plus legal fees.

The country is needlessly suffering, and it’s got to stop now. No one has the freedom to harm or kill someone else. Refusing the shot is not only moronic, it also makes that person the possessor of a biological weapon of mass destruction.

This time, stupidity ought to be a crime. S.R. Fischer

Westwood

L.A. Unified is implementing a student vaccine mandate. About time.

My only question: What’s the rationale for waiting until January? How many students, teachers and families will be sickened by then?

The vaccines are widely available. This is a public health emergency, a crisis. One month would appear to be sufficient time to implement this.

Daniel Fink, MD Beverly Hills

I have only one reaction to those who say they have the “right” not to vaccinate or wear masks.

What gives you the “right” potentially to kill your children or grandchildren, or those of other people, by spreading the virus? Meg Quinn Coulter

Los Angeles

During the debate over “Obamacare” in 2009, former vice presidential candidate and tea party favorite Sarah Palin warned us about the implementation of “death panels,” which would select patients worthy of care, and condemn to death those who were old and infirm.

It turns out she was right. Idaho recently implemented “crisis standards of care” in parts of the state, a move that “allows hospitals to allot scarce resources ... to patients most likely to survive.”

Ironically, the implementation of these standards is not due to the Affordable Care Act, but rather years of lies and unfounded conspiracies that have culminated in the refusal of so many people to wear a mask or get vaccinated.

We have tolerated this far-right lunacy for too long. It’s time to mandate simple and safe protection measures against COVID-19 everywhere, especially masks and vaccines. And may God grant peace and comfort to any healthcare provider in Idaho who is forced to decide who gets lifesaving care and who doesn’t.

Loring Davies Brea

Anti-vaxxers have been busy demonstrating around the country.

One person was observed carrying a placard that read, “My body, my choice, includes vaccines too.” That person should be thankful their parents, without giving them a choice, had them vaccinated against various diseases.

Another placard stated, “COVID-19 is a scam.” With that line of reasoning, smallpox, polio, measles, rubella, chicken pox and other diseases are also scams. David M. Keranen

Bakersfield

Instead of suing Biden for overreach, perhaps Republicans should spend quality time at the cemeteries where people are buried because they needlessly died — being unvaccinated. Benni Korzen

Los Angeles