Thread by @BartenderHemry

It's bizarre that the "I'm pro-vax, but anti-mandate" position has any cultural/intellectual purchase whatsoever. It makes no sense through any lens of analysis and it's screamingly obviously in bad faith.

Like even if you take these people at their word you can plainly see that they're just using it to reframe the debate from a concrete one about people getting sick and dying to an abstract one about "my freedoms" to score political points, at the cost of real lives. Monstrous.

From a practical standpoint, the "pro-vax, anti-mandate" stance makes no sense because you're directly endorsing the idea that hospitals should crash during a pandemic even when we have the means to avoid that.

From a purely theoretical standpoint, being "pro-vax, anti-mandate" requires you to accept that either the state has no authority to mandate vaccines *specifically related to COVID* or *entirely*. But either position rests entirely on complete misinformation.

Furthermore, the position excludes a qualitative analysis of the nature of the "mandate."

No one is going to jail. No one is having a gun held to their head. The proposal is simply that having the vaccine is a qualification for certain activities.

Basically what I'm saying is literally nothing about the "pro-vax, anti-mandate" position stands up to even the slightest scrutiny, it's either more cynical or more evil than just being straightforwardly vocally anti-vax and it's silly to pretend otherwise.

Relatedly, I always cringe in frustration when left voices are like "the right says 'my body my choice' about vaccines, but attacks abortion rights." Like, how dare you accept that framing. It makes no damn sense. Abortion doesn't make your grandma have a miscarriage.

Anyway, vaccine mandates are great and it's an indictment of our entire culture that there's an enormous amount of assumed legitimacy to the contrary position, late night rant over, god bless