With the Omicron variant racing across the world and many countries having to reintroduce restrictions in the face of record Covid-19 case numbers, patience with the unvaccinated is wearing thin. The main vaccines may not fully protect against infection but they have been shown to put up a strong defence against serious illness.
The results can be seen consistently in data from hospitals, intensive care units in particular, where the largest share of patients are not vaccinated. Increasingly, at least among those without serious underlying conditions, getting very ill with Covid-19 is almost optional.
If the consequences of risking that option were felt only by unvaccinated individuals themselves, societies might take a more benign view. But because one person’s decision to refuse a vaccine increases the risks for everyone, and the resulting pressure on hospitals forces governments into imposing restrictions on broad sections of society, the cost is borne by everyone.
Hospital Report
Two years into the pandemic, with vaccines now widely available in most rich countries – if not yet, to our universal shame, in the developing world – states are taking a tougher line on the holdouts. France, where President Emmanuel Macron has said his policy aim is to "piss off" the unvaccinated, has just tightened its own rules for bars, restaurants and other public spaces. In Italy, where teachers and health workers must already be jabbed (or test negative) to go to work, the government last week made vaccination compulsory for everyone over 50. Austria has gone further still; from next month vaccination will become compulsory for everyone.
Ireland, like Germany and many other European countries, bans the unvaccinated from entering certain indoor spaces. Amid calls for the Government to go further, the Department of Health is now considering the legal and ethical questions around compulsion.
While public frustration towards the unvaccinated is understandable, however, making vaccines mandatory across the population should be a policy of last resort. Countries that have forced people to get the jab have had much lower vaccination rates than Ireland, where 92 per cent of over-12s are fully immunised. In other words, mandates have been an admission of failure; in Ireland the vaccination campaign has been a remarkable success.
While there may be no persuading conspiracy theorists, their lives are already tightly circumscribed by existing rules – and there may be ways to restrict their access to services further. But making the vaccines mandatory in Ireland would raise real enforcement challenges while likely producing only marginal increases in the overall vaccination rate, which is already one of the highest in the world.