LA County's Vaccine Mandate Could Cause Distrust in the Vaccine

September 17, 2021 - This week, Los Angeles County health officials announced they would be issuing a new Health Officer Order mandating vaccine verification for individuals wishing to work at or enter bars and wineries. Proof of vaccine or a negative Covid test would be required to attend an outdoor mega event.

They could not have created more distrust in the vaccine if they tried.

Initial damage was done to the vaccine's credibility in mid-July, when health officials ordered masks to be worn indoors by the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. This action told the public that your risk from and danger to others had no correlation to your vaccinated status. You were still in danger of infection and still a risk to infect others, even if you had received both doses of an appropriate vaccine. There appeared no point in getting vaccinated. No freedom from fear nor from restrictive government orders was gained.

Certainly, no upward change was made in vaccination rates after this mandate.

Now, in the name of public health, county officials are doubling down on their increasingly strident message that your double-dose of Covid vaccine will not protect you. You can only protect yourself from Covid by sticking to other vaccinated people, who supposedly would not be carrying Covid germs. Oh, and even then, you'll have to wear masks while you're around these supposedly uninfected people.

That isn't much of a vaccine.

Through this week's vaccine verification mandate, health officials are telling us that the vaccine is weak and ineffective. It cannot protect you from unvaccinated individuals who might have Covid.

The county press release does not cite scientific public health reasons for the vaccine verification mandate nor explain how it will buttress public health. Instead, they tell us it will "align with President Biden." You know, the expert in epidemiology. I always go to my local state senator for health advice rather than a doctor, don't you?

There is precious little rational incentive to get vaccinated under these conditions.

The only reason to do so is for sheer convenience alone. To be able to go to the Dodger game without a big hassle. To be able to wind down at your favorite bar after work. Or to keep your job at the bar. Definitely not in order to protect from disease. Because - according to the LACDPH - vaccines don't work.

Most suspiciously of all, the county does not release the number of fully vaccinated among the daily cases they collect every day. Nor do they release the number of hospitalizations or deaths among the fully vaccinated. If they truly wanted to convince everyone the vaccine was effective, they would be showing these numbers as evidence.

Ironically, the number of cases and deaths in the present surge is about a quarter of the number from the last and biggest surge in January, 2021. Either the vaccine actually is working (together with the natural immunity of the 1,336,917 people who caught Covid and recovered) or this Delta variant is not as dangerous as has been touted.

In any event, the present mandate is nonsensical. It is unnecessary as the case load is precipitously decreasing. No scientific rationale underpins the order.

And it works against proving the vaccine's effectiveness and thus motivating vaccination.