White House Finally Ends Inexcusable COVID-19 Vaccination Requirement for International Travelers
The White House has just announced (May 1st) that it is ending the COVID-19 vaccination requirement for “federal employees, contractors, international travelers, Head Start educators, and CMS-certified facilities.” This means that “at the end of the day on May 11th,” the vaccination requirement will be dropped for everyone who enters the United States. Many people will be scratching their heads and wondering why the White House waited so very long to drop this requirement, being an international outlier in its travel restrictions. However, it will come as a huge relief for those with strong family or work connections with the United States, who have had to stay off American soil just because their health choices did not align with the priorities of the Biden Administration.
*If you enjoy this post, consider upgrading to a paid subscription*
In an attempt to retrospectively justify the vaccination requirement, the White House announcement reads, “we…put in place vaccination requirements for certain international travelers to slow the spread of new variants entering the country.” This is, of course, nonsense, as there is no evidence that the Covid-19 vaccines reduced the spread of new variants and quite a bit of evidence to suggest that they allowed infections to move around just as freely as before (and who knows, maybe even more?)
Three important bodies of evidence showing the utter futility of Covid vaccine mandates and passport schemes at stopping the spread of the disease are
(i) the fact that Covid infections went through the roof in regimes with very high vaccination rates, like Israel;
(ii) the fact that official test data as early as January 2022 from places like the United Kingdom and Denmark did not show any protective effect in vaccinees against Covid infections, as I set out in this post on January 26th, 2022; and
(iii) the well documented fact that the Covid vaccines provide short-term, transient protection at best (which might explain why vaccination status does not predict for infection levels).
Now, a defender of vaccine mandates might object that the Covid vaccines were reducing the incidence of severe disease and hospitalisation. This is actually very difficult to prove, since it is not enough to monitor Covid-related hospitalisations. You would have to monitor all hospitalisations based on vaccination status, so as to capture any potential secondary harms of the vaccines (e.g. from myocarditis). But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the Covid vaccines did protect against severe disease, but not against infection and transmission. In that case, the US was imposing a medication on travelers based on the notion that it would protect each of them individually, not the wider public.
The problem is, even this logic is deeply flawed, because the level of protection provided by the vaccines, assuming they did indeed provide protection against disease, would have to vary enormously depending on the age and health status of the traveler. Hospitalisation data show that the overwhelming majority of Covid hospitalisations involved patients with underlying health issues, skewed heavily toward the elderly. So what the United States was doing was indiscriminately requiring healthy travelers to take a medication, purportedly for their own good, that many of them simply did not need or had very little to gain from healthwise.
What makes the White House’s vaccination policies not only arbitrary from a public health perspective, but also profoundly unethical, is the fact that the vaccines they were compelling travelers to receive - and not just tourists, but also people who had family or work responsibilities in the United States - had recognised risks, including myocarditis, that can be debilitating or even fatal.
By imposing these indiscriminate vaccination requirements, the United States government was effectively preventing incoming travellers from undertaking an individualised risk-benefit assessment before receiving a novel medication with significant known risks. To apply pressure on travelers to renounce their autonomy as patients and surrender their right to weigh the risks and benefits of a medication carrying significant health risks, was cruel and reckless.
So when the White House and vaccine advocates try to whitewash vaccine coercion as a policy that was necessary for the common weal, let’s not forget that it was an inexcusable, immoral, and reckless policy that had little to do with helping people improve their health, and a lot to do with the exertion of arbitrary power that propped up Big Pharma profits.
You can find me on Youtube, Twitter, and Telegram. By subscribing to my social media platforms, you help amplify my voice.
My blog and video work costs time and money. You can help me out with my costs, and access subscriber-exclusive content, by upgrading to a paid subscription.
White House Finally Ends Inexcusable COVID-19 Vaccination Requirement for International Travelers
I think that news will please many people, but never forgive, never forget .
Thanks David. Chances of me visiting USA are slim to nil. But nice to know I could now. Proudly uninjected!