Millions of Americans clearly disagree with us, but we believe that getting a COVID-19 vaccine is a no-brainer. Putting aside some pretty rare medical contraindications, we don’t know of anyone who’s eligible to get vaccinated who isn’t better off getting vaccinated. That’s true even if you’re a teenage male at heightened risk of myocarditis and minimal risk of a serious COVID case. It’s true even if you have been infected and recovered and have proof of robust antibodies. We think getting vaccinated is a wise thing to do, period.
But whether COVID vaccine mandates are wise is a much closer call.
The case for COVID vaccine mandates is simple and persuasive. It’s a two-step proposition:
Lots of people who decline to get vaccinated voluntarily roll up their sleeves when they’re told they have to or suffer some unacceptable consequence: losing their job, being kicked out of restaurants and other venues, etc. If the goal is to increase vaccine uptake, mandates work.
Increased vaccine uptake is a worthwhile goal – good for literally everybody: good for the people who reluctantly got vaccinated; good for their family and friends and coworkers and everyone they come into contact with; and good for the society at large. And this isn’t a small good. We’re talking about alleviating the worst public health crisis in a century.
In our judgment this is a strong case – far stronger, for example, than the argument for mandatory flu vaccination of healthcare workers. (We’ve written about that a lot – see for example here and here.)
The case against COVID vaccine mandates is longer and more complex. It consists of a list of arguments. Here are five of the strongest.
Mandatory vaccination is a clear infringement on freedom and bodily integrity. It’s not an unprecedented infringement. But it is an unusual infringement – all the more so if the mandate is imposed by the federal government against nonconsenting adults. “My body myself” and the abortion rights comparison is not perfect, but it’s not completely off-base either.
The actual harm done by voluntarily unvaccinated individuals is mostly to other voluntarily unvaccinated individuals. Individuals who are involuntarily endangered – such as those who are immunocompromised – have not yet been urged to protect themselves, beyond standard social distancing and mask-wearing. For instance, they have not been urged to wear N95 respirators when in close company with people whose vaccine status is unknown. Is it fair to put the burden of protecting the immunocompromised so one-sidedly on the unvaccinated?
When people are coerced into doing something they greatly prefer not to do, the resulting outrage is bad for the society in many ways. Polarization is increased. Morale is undermined. Resentment builds. The collateral damage is likely to last long after the COVID pandemic is history.
The outrage aroused by coercion also tends to increase people’s cognitive opposition to whatever they’re being forced to do. Thus, many people forced to get COVID vaccinations against their will are likely to become far more deeply committed to anti-vaccine views than they were previously. And their opposition may generalize, turning them into opponents of other vaccines, and perhaps of other public health measures as well.
The fact that vaccine uptake is strongly correlated with political views means that most of the people forced to get vaccinated see themselves as being forced by “the other” – by representatives of an ideology they despise and distrust. It’s not just the mandate; it’s the source of the mandate and the company it keeps. For many of the mandate’s “victims,” mandatory vaccination becomes a symptom and an emblem of their oppression.
In our judgment this is a strong case too.
Whichever side of this argument you are on, if you think it’s a no-brainer you’re not in the argument at all. And if you claim to think it’s a no-brainer, you are sacrificing any shot at persuading anyone on the other side.
If you acknowledge that your opponents’ case is strong, some of them just might be open to the argument that your case is even stronger. If you claim they have no case, you have no shot.
We call this “even-though risk communication”:
- “Even though vaccine mandates are a huge blow to personal freedom, what’s more important right now, sadly, is that they are also a huge and essential step toward ending the pandemic.”
- “Even though vaccine mandates are a huge step toward ending the pandemic, what’s more important right now, sadly, is that they are also a huge and unacceptable blow to personal freedom.”
Concede the merits of the other side’s case before you build your argument that on balance – not 100% but on balance – your case is even stronger. And build your argument sadly, not triumphantly, taking full cognizance of the sacrifice you are asking of your opponents.
“Even-though risk communication” is rarer than we wish. Embattled advocates find it hard to concede the merits of the other side’s case, let alone concede it with empathy and respect. They find it hard even to remember that the other side’s case actually has merits.
And advocates on both sides of the mandatory COVID vaccination controversy are certainly embattled. Many on the pro-mandate side are so contemptuous of the unvaccinated that they forget that opposing vaccine mandates doesn’t necessarily mean opposing vaccination. Many on the anti-mandate side are so frightened of the threat to their freedom that they forget to be frightened of COVID’s threat to us all.
We’re no different. When we feel embattled, we often have to remind ourselves, and each other, that two-sided arguments are better than one-sided arguments. Better on three grounds: They’re kinder. They’re truer. And when your audience is on the other side, they are much likelier to work.
Postscript
Two additional points have occurred to me since Jody and I posted this column.
Respecting Deeply Committed Antivaxxers
Some unvaccinated people are deeply committed to their opposition to vaccination – so much so that they will resist a mandate and pay the price. They are vaccine-resistant, not vaccine-hesitant.
Many in this deeply committed group would accept the label “antivaxxers”; they’re as offended by being called vaccine-hesitant as the vaccine-hesitant are offended by being called antivaxxers. The parallelism at the extremes is worth noting: Some vaccine opponents see COVID vaccination as an intentional, deadly, evil conspiracy – pretty much the way some vaccine proponents see opposition to COVID vaccination.
As a longtime vaccination proponent, I find COVID vaccine resistance even more difficult to understand than COVID vaccine hesitancy. As we said in the first paragraph of our column, Jody and I think COVID vaccination is “a wise thing to do, period.” But as we said later in the column, we also think telling your opponents that they are profoundly stupid for believing what they believe is a profoundly poor strategy of argumentation.
Arguments between people with deeply committed views about COVID vaccination or about COVID vaccine mandates are pointless, except insofar as vaccine-hesitant people are listening. (My generic name for this undecided middle group is “attentives.” They pay close attention to how the more extreme combatants are treating each other.) I think deeply committed people on both sides of this or any debate should address each other respectfully when they choose to address each other at all, both because they are fellow human beings and because the attentives (in this case, vaccine-hesitant people) are in fact listening.
When employers implement COVID vaccine mandates, whether on their own initiative or in response to government requirements, they presumably expect to lose the minority of unvaccinated employees whose commitment to remaining unvaccinated trumps their desire to keep their jobs. I think the departure of such people should be seen as a win-win. The employer succeeded in keeping and vaccinating the majority of its workforce, albeit at the cost of losing some good employees. The dissenters succeeded in resisting mandatory vaccination, albeit at the cost of having to seek out other employment. I understand why each side might resent the other side. But I also see grounds for making the divorce as amicable as possible, and for wishing the other side well.
Helping the Vaccine-Hesitant Save Face
Vis-à-vis vaccine-hesitant people, it is worth remembering that many are ensnared in their own prior commitment. They may well have made their initial decisions not to get vaccinated very tentatively, planning to reconsider after seeing how the pandemic evolved and how early adopters fared. But as they repeatedly defended that tentative position, it came to feel less tentative. And now, having rebuffed again and again the entreaties of loved ones to get vaccinated, they would experience unbearable cognitive dissonance if they changed their minds and rolled up their sleeves.
Vaccine mandates are a face-saving way for them to get vaccinated without having to change their minds. You don’t have to tell yourself (or your loved ones) that you were wrong to resist vaccination; you can just tell yourself (and your loved ones) that now you don’t have any choice, you need to comply so you can feed your family.
This is an upside of vaccine mandates that Jody and I should have mentioned. It has a downside we did mention: Complying with a vaccine mandate isn’t likely to lead to pro-vax attitude change. There’s no cognitive dissonance to motivate pro-vax information-seeking; you did it because you had to. Attitude change may well be in the opposite direction: increased anti-vax commitment fostered by resentment at the coercion by the oppressive “Other” (the libtards, the whites, Big Pharma, whatever). But at least you’re vaccinated!
This thinking explains why I see “get vaccinated or get tested” as a wiser sort of mandate than “get vaccinated or get lost.” It’s mandatory enough to be face-saving. But it may offer enough of a choice to enable many previously vaccine-hesitant people to feel like they decided to roll up their sleeves in preference to accepting the hassle of frequent tests. Having made that decision, perhaps they will feel some cognitive dissonance, and therefore start to consider the possibility that COVID vaccination might not be such a bad thing after all. It’s a bit less of a mandate, in other words, and a bit more of a nudge.
Copyright © 2021 by Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard
