San Diego Needs a Strong Vaccine Mandate Like San Francisco’s
Stop punishing the responsible majority by coddling those who simply can’t be bothered to do the right thing.
By Jim Miller
Last week San Diego County leaders announced a recommendation that all employers in the county require vaccination or weekly testing for their employees.
Noting that we are in the midst of a surge and that “things will get worse before they get better,” officials hoped that the weight of the County’s recommendation would help some employers find the will to implement such a policy and would give “a nudge” to the unvaccinated.
This news was greeted positively by the Chamber of Commerce and some business owners and is clearly a small step in the right direction. That said, given the current circumstances, it is too timid to get the job done.
Perhaps if we were just concerned with rounding up a small portion of vaccine stragglers who were only putting themselves and their fellow unvaccinated neighbors at risk, it might seem reasonable. But that’s not where we are.
While it is true that the vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths are part of a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” with each day we are beginning to see more breakthrough cases in vaccinated individuals due to the Delta variant, and the longer the pandemic festers, the more likely new variants will emerge.
And with schools about to open across the county, a large population of children too young to be vaccinated will become increasingly vulnerable as will the educators who serve them. Add to this the fact that the current outbreak is clear evidence that “recommendations” don’t work. Go into any place of business in San Diego, a ballgame, or a grocery store, and it’s frequently hard to find anyone masking up.
Why? Unvaccinated people are lying and endangering their fellow citizens. After observing public behavior over the last year plus, what honest observer really thinks anyone who is not currently vaccinated simply needs a “nudge”?
It doesn’t pass the laugh test.
What is clear, as the angry crowd of unhinged anti-vaxers at a recent County Board of Supervisors meeting illustrated, is that some of our fellow citizens are quite happy to bring harm to their neighbors with a fraction of the more extreme, ideologically driven anti-mask-and-vaccination folks even willing to assail people for asking them to simply wear a mask or have their kids wear one in school.
In fact, here in the city of San Diego itself, it has recently been reported that some in our local police force are conspiring to resist any vaccine mandate before it even happens. As the San Diego Union Tribune reported last week
“The NAACP San Diego Branch is calling for an FBI investigation after a San Diego police officer purportedly took to an online site to urge fellow officers to take a stand against COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates.”
Apparently, the post in question on a San Diego Police Officers Association online forum claimed there was an effort afoot spurred by the author and another “God fearing Patriot” to form a “coalition of cops” who will never take the vaccine which Mayor Gloria has said he will mandate after FDA approval. Not surprisingly the post ends, according to the SDUT, with the acronym standing for “Where we go one we go all,” commonly recognized as the QAnon motto.
Here is some unsolicited advice for Mayor Gloria: don’t wait for the FDA, impose the mandate, and tell any cop who refuses to actually “protect and serve” the public by having the common decency to obey public health measures that he can look for work in Florida or Texas.
Taking badges and guns away from cops who disregard scientific fact but believe that Trump was fighting a cabal of Satanic pedophiles and were instrumental in storming the Capitol would be a genuine public service to San Diego. In cases like these, “no jab, no job” should be the operative policy, barring any legitimate health or other exceptional circumstances.
The good news is that the vast majority of eligible San Diegans have chosen to be responsible and get a vaccine. So the big question at hand for our leaders is, why punish them by allowing others to consistently put them in harm's way?
By this stage of the pandemic, it’s sadly evident that the reckless behavior of the unvaccinated minority has made herd immunity a false hope and that we are now going to have to wait until Covid-19 becomes endemic before we are truly on the back end of our long collective nightmare.
So if we really want to protect the vulnerable, help small businesses survive, see music and sports flourish safely, and enable the majority of the population to live with less anxiety, we need to move beyond “recommendations” and ensure that not just workplaces, but all other public venues are part of the solution.
Think that’s too difficult? Ponder this: in Las Vegas, Raiders fans, yes Raiders fans, will be required to show proof of vaccination to attend games. If they can pull off that one, anything is possible dear reader.
San Diego should follow the lead of San Francisco and hopefully soon Los Angeles and make it mandatory for indoor operations like bars, restaurants, stores, gyms, and concert venues to require proof of vaccination.
Stop punishing the responsible majority by coddling those who simply can’t be bothered to do the right thing. Nobody has a right to go to a bar, gym, concert, retail outlet, or sporting event and potentially spread a deadly disease. Why not reward those of us who stepped up long ago and protect us from those whose selfishness and ignorance endangers their neighbors?
Leaders in San Francisco and Los Angeles have had the courage to step up, do the right thing, and help expedite the eventual end of the pandemic. When will we see the same in San Diego?
It can’t happen fast enough.