I have said it before, and I will say it again. The government doesn’t ask. It tells.
And some parts of the government aren’t asking that people get the coronavirus vaccine, they are telling. A number of colleges and universities are requiring students to be vaccinated in order to return next fall. At last check, the UW System is not requiring shots. But the university says it will test any student who doesn’t get vaccinated. So the choice there is a plastic swab up the nose every few days or a shot in the arm.
Milwaukee is trying to push people to get the vaccine as well by extending the city’s mask requirement.
From the JS.
Less than a week before Milwaukee's COVID-19 health order and mask ordinance are set to expire, members of the Common Council questioned the wisdom of the decision in light of lagging vaccination rates, especially among the city's Black residents.
"It, to me, just opens up the floodgates, particularly for the Black community here in Milwaukee," Ald. Milele Coggs said.
Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic, who chairs the Public Safety and Health Committee and led the creation of the mask ordinance last summer, questioned the decision to lift the mask requirement given the lagging vaccination rates among Black residents.
"As the health order is rescinded and there is no mask mandate in place, there are some places that could have people maskless and 80% of those maskless people are unvaccinated," she said.
In Milwaukee County, about 44% of white residents have received at least one dose of vaccine compared to 24% of Black residents and 33% of Hispanic residents, according to data from the state Department of Health Services.
The reality is that people don’t want to get the shot. Just like they don’t get the flu shot.
The CDC reported last fall that in the 2019-2020 flu season just 48.4% of adults got the flu shot. The number is higher for kids, at 68%, but that is because kids are most at risk from the flu particularly at school.
Right now in Wisconsin, about 47% of people have gotten one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. The state says just over 41% have gotten both doses.
But there is this believer that somehow we are going to get to 80% fully vaccinated. That we need to get to 80% fully vaccinated.
We never get close to that for the flu, and the flu is more dangerous to more people.
The insistence on forcing people to get the shot has gone past science and public health, and is crossing-over into something new. Whether it’s the power of bureaucrats, the power of the establishment to shame people into behaving as they want, or it's simply fear, we are no longer dealing with any logical basis for the coronavirus vaccine.
And we need to remember that. The public health ninnies are asking to do something we've never done before, and when the asking doesn’t work out, they will begin to tell us.
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