{"id":3129,"date":"2020-12-14T16:32:40","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T16:32:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/?p=3129"},"modified":"2020-12-14T16:32:40","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T16:32:40","slug":"when-covid-19-vaccine-is-readily-available-will-there-be-a-mandate-to-take-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/?p=3129","title":{"rendered":"When COVID-19 Vaccine is Readily Available, will there be a Mandate to take it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

President-elect Joe Biden has said he will start tackling the pandemic on Day One by issuing\u00a0a federal mask mandate\u00a0and\u00a0rejoining the World Health Organization. He\u2019s even expected to announce a coronavirus task force next week, months before his inauguration,\u00a0according\u00a0to\u00a0reports.<\/p>\n

But despite his pledge to get the pandemic under control, there\u2019s one key lever the Biden won\u2019t be able to pull: A vaccine mandate.<\/p>\n

The US president has never been able to impose a federal mandate of vaccines across the country, and that won\u2019t change anytime soon. \u201cIt goes back to the fact that the federal government is one of limited power,\u201d says Dorit Reiss, a professor specializing in healthcare law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.<\/p>\n

First, presidents don\u2019t create laws; Congress does. The president signs bills into law (or vetoes them) after the House of Representatives and Senate go through a lengthy back and forth. The president\u00a0could\u00a0<\/i>issue an executive order that covers people who work for or with government agencies, but Congress would still be able to write up another bill to supersede it. Of course, the president could also veto that bill\u2014but the whole scenario is highly unlikely.<\/p>\n

Largely, matters of public health fall onto states\u2019 shoulders. The tenth amendment of the constitution says that any law the constitution doesn\u2019t cover goes to the states\u2014and \u201cthe constitution doesn\u2019t mention the words \u2018public health,\u2019\u201d Reiss says.<\/p>\n

What it does mention are things like collecting taxes, declaring war, and regulating interstate business. If the federal government really wanted to find a way to enforce vaccines, it could look for a way to do so by exercising one of those powers. Congress could pass laws to limit disease spread across state borders, like requiring that all Amtrak passengers be vaccinated, says Reiss. But the US Supreme Court might not let such a law stand, if the justices determined that Congress was overreaching.<\/p>\n

States, on the other hand, can mandate vaccines. In the 1905 case\u00a0Jacobson vs. Massachusetts,\u00a0<\/i>the Supreme Court\u00a0ruled<\/a>\u00a0that states have the power to enforce vaccinations when they\u2019re \u201cnecessary for the public health or the public safety.\u201d Back then, the country was worried about smallpox; today, the precedent could let state governors mandate a Covid-19 vaccine.<\/p>\n

Not that they\u2019ll use that power, necessarily. For one thing, states can only mandate vaccines that have been recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ACIP would have to recommend the vaccine for all adults and children based on ample evidence that it is safe and effective, beyond the FDA\u2019s approval or emergency authorization of a Covid-19 vaccine.<\/p>\n

And even with ACIP\u2019s blessing, there\u2019s still a lot of debate about what\u2019s \u201cnecessary\u201d for public health, per the language in the\u00a0Jacobson\u00a0<\/i>ruling. For example, even though Gretchen Whitmer, the current governor of Michigan,\u00a0mandated masks and limited gatherings\u00a0in executive orders as the state saw spikes in Covid-19 cases, the state\u2019s supreme court overthrew that order. Currently, the Michigan Department of Health is trying to uphold these mandates instead.<\/p>\n

This is likely why states don\u2019t mandate vaccines across the board; instead they require that certain populations get them. Childhood vaccines, for example, are required to attend school (they do allow\u00a0various exceptions, however, depending on the state). Parents who don\u2019t want to vaccinate their children\u00a0often have to homeschool them instead.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear whether states would deploy the same strategy for Covid-19 vaccine requirements. There\u2019s just not enough history to go on. \u201cWe\u2019ve never had a universal adult mandate in the US,\u201d says Reiss, even at the state level.<\/p>\n

So how might the federal government legally get states to require the Covid-19 vaccine? Two words: ample incentives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the path of least resistance would be for the federal government to establish guidelines for the states,\u201d says Margaret Riley, a professor of law at the University of Virginia. Although the federal government wouldn\u2019t\u00a0force\u00a0<\/i>states to enforce vaccination, it could dangle a nice carrot, like it did in 1984 by\u00a0holding federal highway funding\u00a0over states\u2019 heads if they didn\u2019t raise the drinking age to 21. (It still took four years for every state to get around to it.)<\/p>\n

Once a Covid-19 vaccine becomes widely available, however, the commander in chief will probably have to consider all the options on the table to increase confidence in vaccine adherence. When asked during the last presidential debate what he would do to encourage vaccines, Joe Biden said he\u2019d ensure that all the data behind the approved vaccines would be completely transparent to help people make their decisions.<\/p>\n

At the moment, none of the hundreds of Covid-19 vaccines in the research pipeline are ready for primetime. A handful, like those from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Sinovac, are in late-stage clinical trials that could wrap up within the next few months. Vaccines will undoubtedly play a role in the way that the pandemic comes to an end, but they\u2019ll only work if they reach everyone who needs them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President-elect Joe Biden has said he will start tackling the pandemic on Day One by issuing\u00a0a federal mask…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3130,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhen COVID-19 Vaccine is Readily Available, will there be a Mandate to take it? - Lansing Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/?p=3129\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When COVID-19 Vaccine is Readily Available, will there be a Mandate to take it? - Lansing Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"President-elect Joe Biden has said he will start tackling the pandemic on Day One by issuing\u00a0a federal mask…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/?p=3129\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lansing Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-12-14T16:32:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/115783184_85a936ac-26bc-4d3d-bf8f-9307e7bb7f3d.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"976\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"549\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Theona Miller\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/\",\"name\":\"Lansing Report\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/?p=3129#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/115783184_85a936ac-26bc-4d3d-bf8f-9307e7bb7f3d.jpg\",\"width\":976,\"height\":549},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/?p=3129#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/?p=3129\",\"name\":\"When COVID-19 Vaccine is Readily Available, will there be a Mandate to take it? - Lansing Report\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/?p=3129#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-12-14T16:32:40+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-12-14T16:32:40+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/#\/schema\/person\/6888a5f573aaec6c17a232d2cf444ab4\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/?p=3129\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/#\/schema\/person\/6888a5f573aaec6c17a232d2cf444ab4\",\"name\":\"Theona Miller\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3129"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3131,"href":"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3129\/revisions\/3131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoriamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}