State should lead on vaccine mandates
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has at long last fully approved what was the most exhaustively tested treatment ever to await its unconditional endorsement, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Officials hope more people will now stop sitting on the fence separating them and the country from easily obtainable protection against a deadly disease.
While hope has been said to be a thing with feathers, when it comes to getting shots in arms, tooth and claw work better. That’s why Gov. Gavin Newsom should seize the opportunity to lead the nation in imposing a statewide vaccine mandate.
With hundreds of millions of doses administered across the country yielding scant side effects and showing remarkable efficacy even against coronavirus variants, the FDA’s glacial process took federal inertia to a new level. Its conclusion should reassure even the most dedicated stickler for scientific bureaucracy and, more important, leave one less ground for legal challenges to vaccination requirements. The Supreme Court upheld state and local vaccine mandates in precedents
that have stood for more than a century.
That’s why full approval of the shot, previously administered under emergency use authorization, was closely followed by mandates affecting state and local government workers, educational staff, employees of large companies such as CVS and Chevron, and 1.4 million active-duty military personnel. San Francisco’s forward-looking mandate affecting 35,000 city employees, which Mayor London Breed’s administration announced back in June, was also contingent on FDA approval.
Newsom’s administration has, to its credit, required vaccination or testing of state employees, school staff and health care employees. The governor should follow San Francisco’s lead in requiring it for bars, restaurants, gyms and other risky indoor activities. He should also phase out the testing option and impose mandates for eligible students, who already face a host of appropriate vaccination requirements.
While the federal government’s authority to mandate vaccination is more limited than that of states and cities, the Biden administration should also look for opportunities to require the precaution for activities under its jurisdiction, such as air travel.
Astonishingly, while no state has imposed a vaccine mandate as sweeping
as San Francisco’s, nearly a dozen have enacted backward laws against such requirements. By not only allowing but imposing such sensible precautions, California can lead the country in the right direction.