Get tough with vaccine holdouts

Re “COVID surge is seen as warning to state,” Nov. 22

In the 19th century, California faced smallpox epidemics. In the 20th century, we had polio epidemics. Neither disease has been widespread in California for decades thanks to universal vaccination against these potentially disfiguring, crippling or even fatal sicknesses.

And that is the solution to the current COVID-19 pandemic: universal vaccination.

If the state can’t mandate universal vaccination, it can restrict the public movements of the unvaccinated to protect the rest of the population, including those vaccinated and children younger than 5 who are not yet eligible for vaccination. The parents of children eligible for vaccination who withhold the shots from them should be dealt with under existing child endangerment laws.

Those who find such restrictions unlivable should feel free to move to other states where elected officials appear only to care about the welfare of the “unborn.”

Daniel Fink, MD Beverly Hills

How many articles must we read saying, as if it’s news, that 80% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated, and the continuously high numbers of severely ill unvaccinated patients might break the healthcare system?

Other articles have reported on people with strokes, heart attacks, trauma and other nonCOVID-19 urgent needs being unable to obtain care, with devastating consequences.

We need to take drastic steps to protect hospitals, staff and people who need urgent care. Those unvaccinated by choice must be denied admittance to hospitals to save everyone else. This may also encourage the reluctant to get the shots.

Randall Gellens San Diego