This is bad.
Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to The White House, said he would support a vaccine mandate for passengers on domestic airline flights.
Wow. Just, wow.
I, personally, have been vaccinated and I respect all sides of the argument between those who have and will take the vaccine, and those who refuse. It's a personal choice, to be sure, but I nonetheless remain in the 'Team Vaccine' camp and firmly believe the vaccination is the fastest and most reliable way to eradicate the pandemic.
But forcing it on the flying public? Ethically, scientifically, logistically, financially … on almost every level, this is a bad idea.
Start with the money.
According to the latest numbers updated by the federal government, 54.5 percent of the 330 million people in the United States have been vaccinated. So slightly more than half, let's say.
Using a very crude, rudimentary rubric, and assuming that the anti-vaxxers aren't going to change their minds, is Dr. Fauci ready to put a 50 percent financial hit on the airlines?
The industry has already been through its lowest points last year when air travel dropped off 95 percent of its 2019 capacity as people simply stopped traveling by air. U.S. carriers have seen a comeback since then, buoyed by pent-up demand for travel that has seen airline bookings come back to about 75 percent capacity.
Do we really want to put more aviation companies out of business by mandating that all passengers be vaccinated?
Even the science says otherwise.
Airlines are safe.
As long as masks are being worn, a troublesome proposition as it is, air travel has been one of the safest forms of transportation. Think about it - when we the last time you heard about a plane full of people being a so-called 'superspreader' event for the virus?
Logistically, this would be hard to pull off anyway and create more problems than solutions. As the Washington Post reported, even if they were in favor of an airline vaccination mandate - which they are not - airline CEOs say it's not feasible.
United CEO Scott Kirby said on MSNBC that such a mandate in the United States would be "logistically impractical. "I think it would require government response and government tracking to make that practical, and make it work, and so it's probably unlikely to happen domestically," he said.
On "CBS This Morning," Delta CEO Ed Bastian echoed the same thoughts.
"You also look at the logistical dilemma - we're carrying millions of people a week - of trying to figure out who's been vaccinated, who's not, who qualifies for an exemption," he said. "It would actually bottleneck the domestic travel system."
And as far as ethically, well, wow, I would have a hard time with someone telling me that in a sovereign nation that I can't practice my livelihood and travel by plane because I chose not to vaccinate.
It's not an easy decision. There are many nuances to such dramatic steps.
But to me, there's a big difference between telling people they have to wear a mask over their face for a few hours, and forcing them to be injected against their will just to be able to travel.
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