It seemed a fair bet that, when Arlington government leaders last year announced a vaccination-mandate policy for its workforce that included a testing option for those who for their own reasons didn’t want the vaccine, the other shoe was going to drop eventually.
And here we are.
This week marked the start of a vaccinate-or-get-fired policy imposed on Arlington’s municipal workforce, which seems to have less to do with public health and more to do with the leadership of the government not wanting to waste the opportunity to impose its dictatorial world view on those who get its paychecks.
We’re hesisant to throw out the “f-word” (fascism or Fauci-ism, take your pick) but the “a-word (authoritarianism) at the very least seems to apply.
We say this as supporters of COVID vaccines, but also as those who recognize that the overemphasis on vaccines as the singular way to fight the pandemic, as clung to by the myopic White House and Democrats down the political slope, has proved ineffective and put stumbling blocks in the way of a multi-layered approach to, as Joe Biden liked to promise before he gained power, “crush the virus.”
As we report this week, county leaders can’t even seem to convince large swaths of the community to go get their booster shots, based on both empirical and anecdotal evidence that is emerging. Many, it seems, have tuned out.
If we want to get out of this pandemic mess, we collectively need a nimble strategy that encourages buy-in rather than intransigence among all of us. A “vaccinate-or-else” policy seems very 2021; it’s now 2022. Let’s do better.
Editorial: Could we take a breather on the authoritarianism?
It seemed a fair bet that, when Arlington government leaders last year announced a vaccination-mandate policy for its workforce that included a testing option for those who for their own reasons didn’t want the vaccine, the other shoe was going to drop eventually.
And here we are.
This week marked the start of a vaccinate-or-get-fired policy imposed on Arlington’s municipal workforce, which seems to have less to do with public health and more to do with the leadership of the government not wanting to waste the opportunity to impose its dictatorial world view on those who get its paychecks.
We’re hesisant to throw out the “f-word” (fascism or Fauci-ism, take your pick) but the “a-word (authoritarianism) at the very least seems to apply.
We say this as supporters of COVID vaccines, but also as those who recognize that the overemphasis on vaccines as the singular way to fight the pandemic, as clung to by the myopic White House and Democrats down the political slope, has proved ineffective and put stumbling blocks in the way of a multi-layered approach to, as Joe Biden liked to promise before he gained power, “crush the virus.”
As we report this week, county leaders can’t even seem to convince large swaths of the community to go get their booster shots, based on both empirical and anecdotal evidence that is emerging. Many, it seems, have tuned out.
If we want to get out of this pandemic mess, we collectively need a nimble strategy that encourages buy-in rather than intransigence among all of us. A “vaccinate-or-else” policy seems very 2021; it’s now 2022. Let’s do better.