“Somehow Los Angeles County is reacting to Delta by trying to re-impose a county-wide mask mandate but hasn’t mandated vaccination for its own sheriff’s department. In D.C., we’re hand-wringing about schools in the fall but we’re not mandating vaccination for teachers or kids over 12. [We should also] Offer people some money and some time off to get their shots… For all the talk right now, we’re really barely doing the minimum to encourage vaccination.”
Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring

“Private businesses should require proof of vaccination (or a medical note explaining why someone can't get it) to use their services. A bunch of conservative states have actually passed laws forbidding businesses from doing this, but this is almost certainly an unconstitutional infringement of property rights…

“Health-care workers are another obvious category of people who have no excuse to not get their shot, since they are routinely interacting with the public in a medical setting. Some private and public hospitals have required vaccination, and others are reportedly mulling the idea. Similarly, as Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall argues, any objection about personal choice is even weaker with regard to cops, since part of their job is forcing people to interact with them. The NYPD, for example, has a pathetic 43 percent vaccination rate… In general, every government employee of any kind should be required to be vaccinated to come to work.”
Ryan Cooper, The Week

“Tougher restrictions will inevitably lead to cries that constitutionally guaranteed rights are being violated, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says that private businesses and employers are within their rights to mandate vaccines. And there is also solid legal precedent for sweeping government vaccine mandates. In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that smallpox mandates issued by Boston and Cambridge during a 1901 outbreak were a reasonable infringement on personal freedom.”
Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times

Those in favor of a mask mandate argue that “the simplest solution is to require those who are unvaccinated to wear masks, and several states have adopted this policy… But that bifurcated approach doesn’t work well if unvaccinated individuals are unlikely to follow mask requirements when the vaccinated no longer need to wear masks…

“Given mask resistance, a universal requirement may be the only effective approach. When everyone is required to wear a mask, businesses, government offices and employers do not need to worry about vaccine verification and unvaccinated people cannot easily avoid masking. It may feel unfair that individuals shunning the vaccine and masks could cause us all to have to mask up again. But until vaccinations are more broadly required, policies like the federal rule that everyone wear masks on planes, trains and buses is the most viable option.”
Peter K. Enns and Jake Rothschild, Los Angeles Times