Flyers Will Have To Be Fully Vaccinated; New Rule Will Reduce Spread and Encourage Holdouts
Q2 2021 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
Mandating All Who Want To Fly Internationally To Be Vaccinated
WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 5, 2021) - The White House is planning to mandate that foreign nationals be vaccinated to enter the U.S. once international travel restrictions are lifted, and the President's COVID advisory team will be considering whether to apply the same rule to returning U.S. citizens, and perhaps to domestic flights also, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf.
Banzhaf notes that even if the U.S. does not require vaccinations for its own returning citizens, the major countries to which they will be traveling will almost certainly adopt the same vaccination requirement for their arrival, so anyone who wants to fly internationally will soon have to be vaccinated.
Meanwhile, COVID advisors in the White House and other agencies will be considering whether to apply the same rule to domestic flights, since exactly the same arguments and reasons should be applicable, he argues.
Limiting flights to adults and older children who are eligible would reduce the transmission of the rapidly spreading delta and other variants which may develop, and also provide a strong incentive for holdouts to become vaccinated.
Both effects would help prevent thousands of needless deaths, and many more very expensive hospitalizations.
If only passengers who have been fully vaccinated can fly, it would probably be possible to eliminate the mask requirement, says Banzhaf, who has testified as an expert on diseases caused by airborne particles.
As more and more people are beginning to appreciate, it is unfair to continue to burden the majority of adults who have wisely agreed to be vaccinated - in this case by requiring them to wear masks for hours while flying - because of the minority which refuse this common sense precaution. While now we may have only an "epidemic of the unvaccinated," on airlines vaccinated passengers are being punished for the stubbornness of the holdouts, he suggests.
International Travelers Already Undergo Tests For COVID
He notes that international travelers are already required to undergo expensive and inconvenient tests for COVID just before both arrival and departure. Soon, even for domestic flights, flyers will have to go through the difficult and time-consuming process of obtaining a REAL-ID driver's license. And those who wish to travel abroad have long had to endure the many problems of obtaining (and sometimes renewing) a passport.
Compared to these burdens to which the federal government already subjects those who wish to fly - not to mention the delays, hassles, inconvenience, and invasions of privacy from TSA check points - the burden of getting a free and usually-no-waiting vaccination is minor, and certainly not unreasonable, notes Banzhaf.
The federal government and an ever growing number of employers, colleges, and places of public accommodation are already requiring people to prove that they have been vaccinated, so it's not as if this is a novel or unreasonable requirement, especially given the new wave of unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations.
Moreover, since trying to further refine or clarify the government's messaging on COVID seems to be about as ineffective as the government's messaging during the last century urging people not to smoke, we should do what finally turned the tide and helped prevent millions of unnecessary deaths by persuading tens of millions of American to protect their own health - by restrictions aboard aircraft, and by permitting employers to insist upon it a s a condition of employment, argues the professor.
