Full transcript of “Why You Can Be Forced To Get The Covid Vaccine”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 [Music] record numbers of americans are getting vaccinated against the coronavirus the us the most vaccinated large nation in the world dozens of countries are now working to vaccinate their populations in an effort to end the global pandemic president biden says that by the end of his first 100 days the united states is aiming to have administered 200 million doses and by may 2021 every american adult who wants one will be eligible to get in line for a shot that said 30 percent of u.s adults still don't want to get the covet vaccine but they may not have much of a choice the federal government can can require vaccination and things like that for coming in and out of the country both the state and city can have vaccine laws based on their legislative authority requiring a
0:46 vaccine is a health and safety work rule an employers can do that bonnie jacobson knows us all too well the brooklyn resident was recently let go from her job after refusing to get inoculated i was sitting at home and i all of a sudden just opened an email sitting on my couch and it said basically while we respect your decision at this time your employment has been terminated so can you actually be forced to take the coveted vaccine against your will in the united states [Music] to be clear the white house's chief medical advisor has already said that he doesn't think the federal government will ever make the colvin vaccine mandatory however powers at the city and state level not to mention the legal rights granted to employers under u.s labor law
1:33 may make it pretty difficult for some americans to evade inoculation against the coronavirus this isn't as unprecedented as you might think there are a lot of required inoculations which are easy to take for granted just take the chickenpox all 50 states and the district of columbia have laws requiring children entering child care or public schools to have some sort of provable protection against the disease whether that's a vaccine or evidence of immunity in fact schools from preschool through university typically require a battery of inoculations before you can step foot on campus when i was a health commissioner in washington d.c we had passed laws that required anyone who went to a school to be vaccinated against certain preventable diseases there are religious medical and
2:20 philosophical exemptions that vary state by state but for around 170 years america's schools have done a pretty thorough job controlling vaccine preventable disease in the u.s the very first school vaccination mandate was in massachusetts back in the 1850s it was to protect against smallpox transmission by the start of the 20th century almost half of all states required students to be vaccinated before matriculating in the early 1970s schools with a measles vaccine mandate had incidence rates that were up to 51 percent lower than states without the laws and from there school vaccine mandates expanded over the next few decades [Music] the while schools had been requiring vaccines since the mid-19th century states didn't explicitly have that same
3:06 power to roll out universal inoculation rules for all residents for another 50 years in 1905 the supreme court case of jacobson versus massachusetts set the legal precedent which now allows states to require vaccines the supreme court said yes you can limit individual rights to protect the public health and one way you can do it in that case is require vaccination we've seen states exercise this authority to varying degrees in the year since take for example the 2019 measles outbreak in new york new york imposed the mandate it imposed an mmr mandate but it limited it to the neighborhoods where the measles cases were high and it was accompanied by a one thousand dollar fine for those who did not have mmr legal experts say that narrowing the vaccine mandate to particular zip codes made it
3:53 easier to justify in court rather than a statewide mandate but critics warn that these types of targeted requirements may lead to discriminatory practices in general these things are done at the state level but big cities for example also have vaccine laws when i was the city health commissioner in washington dc although that certainly functions as a state we also have vaccine laws in the in washington d.c so far no cities or states have made the covid vaccine mandatory though some places have started the conversation in november 2020 the new york state bar association recommended making the shot mandatory for all residents except those with a medical exemption and then of course there's the biggest rule maker of them all the federal government which in this case actually has pretty limited powers expressly spelled out in the
4:38 constitution there isn't in the constitution the power to protect the public health well the federal government doesn't mandate vaccines um what they do is they make recommendations there are however software powers at the federal level that have been used before to incentivize mass inoculation the federal government has acted in the public health in the past using other parts such as its commerce parts so it could for example mandate vaccines before you travel in the interstate channels or before you engage in interstate commerce if you're a truck driver that drives across state maybe the federal government can mandate that you'll be vaccinated the power of the purse is another key tool in washington's arsenal it can pass a law saying states will give you three million dollars if you mandate the vaccine
5:24 but that's up to a limit it can't do it to the degree that's cursive the federal government could also theoretically impose it as a condition of getting a passport so states and cities can require vaccines and the federal government has a lot of influence as well but the big question is whether the government will actually go through with rolling out a universal mandate the first challenge is we won't have enough vaccine doses for people who want them you can't require vaccines that's not available that people can't get another major factor to consider none of the three coveted vaccines in circulation here in the u.s are fully licensed by the fda instead they are all cleared under something known as an emergency use authorization or an eua until they are officially approved mandates seem to be off the table and then there's the even bigger
6:09 question of enforcement mandates to some degree this depend on pretty widespread compliance you can't enforce a mandate if 40 of your population is fighting back if the problem is widespread mistrust mandate won't fix it you need communication you need education you need to earn the people's trust by by transparently showing them that the vaccine is safe and effective by explaining to them the process of approving it and so forth and keep in mind if any city or state did implement a mandate the kinds of repercussions we're talking about are relatively tame no one is floating the idea of jail time or coming to your house and holding you down while they administer a shot refusal would probably just mean a fine or maybe some sort of other tax or penalty experts say it may also mean you are barred from entry to concerts or can't
6:55 book a seat on certain airlines in israel for example they use the green passport to allow access to businesses like hotels and restaurants to those who have been vaccinated against the virus or have already had kobit 19. implementation though might be tough here in the u.s so how will this actually play out experts tell me the most likely scenario is a repeat of what we've seen in the past once the copit vaccines are fully approved by the fda a vaccine may eventually be a requirement for school-age children in both public and private institutions starting at daycare and extending to universities let's say the city where you live decides against requiring the covet vaccine does that mean you're free from mandatory covet inoculation not necessarily your employer may not be
7:42 willing to take no for an answer jacobson was a waitress in brooklyn and served patrons all through the pandemic she told nbc new york that while she isn't an anti-vaxxer she did have concerns about getting the shot because she's trying to get pregnant my general manager has told me multiple times it wasn't going to be mandatory when her former employer red hook tavern asked if she planned to get the vaccine now that it's available for restaurant workers she shared those worries over the last couple months i had just heard a few things about how it can affect fertility and pregnancy and i just wanted to have a better understanding of that and do a little more research i said that once i had more information i would definitely be willing to change my mind on getting the vaccine i expressed that you know i understand why
8:27 they're important i think that the vaccine's a good thing i'm not against them within a few days she received an email from her employer saying that they respected her decision but they would be terminating her employment because of their new policy to maintain a safe working environment you know i've made it clear to my lawyer that i want to go in whatever direction i think will help the most amount of people have this same situation not happen to them cnbc reached out to red hook tavern for comment and we didn't hear back as of the date of publication jacob's inspiring appears to be totally legal here in the us i spoke with lawyers across the country and they all say that their clients are reaching out to them in record numbers to ask what they should do about the vaccine clients of mine that are most interested in making a mandatory vaccine a
9:12 condition of employment are brick and mortar operations that have a lot of foot traffic from their customers they view it as a selling point look you can come to our business location and it's safe because all employees have been vaccinated that's particularly important for restaurants bars gyms and salons and so my clients in that segment of service industry are particularly looking hard at making it mandatory as a sales point to their customers while this is in part a pr tactic it's also totally within an employer's rights to roll out this kind of requirement legal experts say private businesses have pretty extensive rights requiring a vaccine is a health and safety work rule employers like some
9:58 hospitals already require employees to get the annual influenza vaccine so there's precedent that under the law an employer can force an employee to get vaccinated and if they don't fire them there are a few ways that employees could apply to be exempt from a blanket requirement if a workforce is unionized the collective bargaining agreement may require negotiating with the union before mandating a vaccine anti-discrimination laws also provide some protections now other employers think that incentives are the better route to widespread inoculation in the workplace that could mean that if you get the vaccine you don't have to wear the same level of ppe in the office or have your temperature taken every day there's also talk of offering financial perks many of my clients who are struggling with this issue have said well while we think it's a
10:45 good idea to make it mandatory we are going to make it voluntary but we're going to try to offer economic incentives bonuses as well as paying for the vaccination and offering optionally if the family wants to have the vaccination to pay for that too also because an eua is not a license there is a legal question as to whether you can mandate an emergency authorization well they're not a fully licensed product so the ability to to require your employees to be vaccinated will be highly controversial in fact i would argue that an employer cannot require you to be vaccinated with anything other than a fully licensed product mandatory vaccination protocols therefore may have to wait until the fda completes the entire approval process for the coveted
11:31 vaccines ultimately a big part of whether the u.s achieves herd immunity against the coronavirus comes down to whether the population buys into the science pfizer and moderna built their coven vaccines with a new kind of technology that's never before been licensed in the u.s mrna vaccines are pretty revolutionary in the world of medicine but they also signify a natural progression of science so far it does seem that a concerted effort to educate the general public about covid vaccine safety and efficacy is working a 2021 pew research survey published in march showed that 69 of us adults have either already gotten the vaccine or they intend to dr fauci says that if 75 to 80 of americans are vaccinated then by the end of the summer of 2021 we may be able to achieve herd immunity
12:17 if this polling bears out over the coming months we'd certainly be trending in that direction and mandates may not even be necessary
