This Week’s Highlights:

Volume Six: Air Date 12.6.21. “A New York Mandate”

This morning, Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced a sweeping new vaccine mandate that will apply to all of NYC’s 184,000 private employers. The first of its kind in this country, the NY mandate will take effect on December 27; by then, employees must have had at least one vaccine does. While medical or religious exemptions will be available, there is no testing alternative. Remote workers do not have to get the vaccine.

In addition, the mandate requires that children aged 5-11 have received at least one does, and adults, two doses of the vaccine prior to being admitted to theaters or restaurants.

The Mayor expressed full confidence that the new legislation will hold up against any state or federal legal challenges. The goal of this new mandate is to try to get ahead of the new, reportedly highly contagious Omicron variant, and prevent NYC from being an epicenter of new infections, which are rising in the region. Depending on its implementation, this NYC mandate may become a template for other cities and states that may follow suit in the wake of the stymied OSHA and CMS federal mandates.

Volume Seven: Air Date 12.8.21. “The Ethics of Mandates”

As we have been hearing, the question of whether vaccine mandates are legal is being considered in the courts. However, the question is also raised whether mandatory vaccinations are ethical. The Association of Bioethics Program Directors has debated the ethical issues and has concluded that broad vaccine mandates for COVID -19 are ethically justified, with a provision for the rare medical exemptions.

To address personal liberty objections, they say that when one person’s choice might harm others, it can be ethical for that choice to be limited. They cite instances of traffic laws, smoking on airplanes and other types of restrictions for the good of the whole. Limiting personal freedom when it is necessary to prevent harm to others is widely agreed to be ethical under a variety of secular and religious worldviews and traditions.

The ethicists believe that, at this point, only vaccines are capable of halting viral transmission to the degree of stopping COVID-19 from continuing as a pandemic-level threat. Because autonomy is a very important value, authorities should use the least restrictive means possible to achieve the goal of minimizing the harms of COVID-19. While voluntary vaccination is preferable because of this, education and incentives have not worked to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates. Mandatory vaccination, therefore, is now the least restrictive way to minimize the virus’s damage.

Most mandates from employers are legally required to allow exemptions for people with “sincerely held” religious objections to vaccination. The US Supreme Court has ruled that a sincerely held religious belief can seem illogical or unreasonable to others, it can even be entirely false, and does not have to be tied to a major religion, but it cannot solely be a cover for political or social beliefs. From an ethical standpoint, even if a religious belief against vaccination is sincerely held, it does not create the right to place other people in harm’s way. All major religions, including those that emphasize faith-healing, permit vaccination under at least some circumstances. During the pandemic, religious leaders of the major faiths have openly encouraged members to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Unfortunately, public debate and voluntary means have not been enough. When education, encouragement, prodding, and even incentivization have failed, and when harms from outbreaks are ongoing, then coercion in the form of mandates is ethically justifiable according to this august group of bioethicists.