Every human resources department in corporate America got the memo and started the implementation, cutting many people who had reservations about the vaccine out of a job. At first, it did not matter as much for many because people were still working at home. But as people started coming back to the office, the corporate mandates got tighter and tighter, and the mask mandates alongside them. Sometimes there were exemptions for people who agreed to be constantly tested but even those started to dissipate over time.
The frenzy for mandates became extreme by year’s end. New York City shut down all its public accommodations to the unvaccinated. You could not go to a restaurant, even for fast food, without proof of vaccination. You could not have a beer in a bar. You could not go to the library or theater. Concert tickets required them and so did comedy clubs. The idea was that this would help business because it would make people feel safe. The opposite happened as the unvaccinated ended up avoiding the city entirely.
With New York City as the pioneering example, other cities got on board. The idea of medical segregation spread to Boston, Chicago, Washington, New Orleans, and Seattle. Those who declined to get the untested shots, either because they feared side effects or simply believed that they did not need them, were limited in their travel options. They were the great excluded.
These mandates disproportionately harmed minority populations. The lowest uptake of the vaccines was among the black community, which distrusted them based on a long and egregious history of medical experimentation. Major media took it upon themselves to claim that the refuseniks were disproportionately living in red states, failing to mention that within these states, it was the blue voters who refused them the most.
Many people in these cities found it easiest to forget a piece of paper since the venues did not really care anyway, and only vaguely looked as a formality. We still have no idea just how many fake IDs were issued. Was it 20 percent, 50 percent, or more? We’ll probably never know but the Biden administration did in fact prosecute people for fake IDs, so using one came with some risks. And one would never upload a fake card to any digital media source for purposes of travel or otherwise.
Finally, the legal challenges started taking hold. On Jan. 13, 2022, the Supreme Court ruled against OSHA’s mandate on private business and contractors but kept in place the mandate on health care workers, who were more likely than others to have natural immunity from exposure. In any case, the businesses that had already imposed them were unfazed by this decision and were slow to let them go, simply because so many had already made enormous sacrifices to comply.
At some point during the closure of New York City, I needed to be in town to meet a possible donor for a nonprofit. The people I was meeting found a restaurant that would allow us in even without showing proof of vaccination. We came in the back way and sat at a table near the back to avoid possible detection from the police, who were going venue to venue to enforce the rules. Many restaurants were forced to decide between compliance and profitability.
All of this came following a year in which closures had deeply harmed the bottom line. When businesses reopened, it was only at half-capacity and many had to build outdoor sections because it was widely believed at the time that the virus lived indoors but not in outdoor areas. The mask mandates also applied to all servers while the customers could sit maskless while eating. None of it made any sense, but it all happened anyway.
While all of this virus chasing was going on, complete with the segregation and mask enforcement, basic functions of government like protecting the border were sidelined. This led to a migrant crisis in major cities and towns all over the country. That is still going on today, as there is no willingness on the part of those in charge to deport the millions who took advantage of the COVID-19 chaos to hop over the border (with no checks on their vaccine status).
As we look back, it seems almost hard to believe that any of this happened, but it did. And to top it off, it had become increasingly clear even from the spring of 2021 that the vaccine was not protective against infection nor transmission. It had long been known that healthy adults and children were not at medically significant risk from the virus but even among those who were, the shot did not provide the kinds of protection traditionally associated with vaccines.
None of this information deterred those who pushed the mandates. People living abroad, even family members of U.S. citizens, were simply not allowed into the country without proof of vaccination. That mandate survived for years.
This mad rush to force the shot on everyone stems from a long history of belief that vaccines can only control a disease if everyone gets them. That was true of smallpox and perhaps polio and measles. But that perception entirely hinges on the efficacy of the vaccines themselves, which these new shots certainly did not have. As a result, there was no basis for the mandates at all. If ever there were living proof of a madness pushing a population toward the irrational use of force, this was it.
We still have no firm numbers on the number of people who lost their jobs or gave them up and otherwise experienced professional displacement as a result of these mandates. But certainly the numbers are in the millions. As vaccine injury reports began to pour in, it became clear that this was, at least in terms of reported adverse outcomes, the most dangerous pharmaceutical product called a vaccine issued in our lifetimes. But the companies themselves had been granted full protection from liability from harm, which is to say that there was nothing that the victims could do.
This week witnesses the third anniversary of the executive order that unleashed this whole divisive and destructive campaign. A painful anniversary it is. For many people, and for a whole generation, this was the equivalent of the conscription mandates in the Vietnam War, a move against the civilian population that fundamentally disrupted the social contract and shattered the trust we once had in official institutions. It will never be forgotten by those who lived through it.
And yet even now, we wonder what lessons have been learned, if any.
