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A New York Times report says as the coronavirus swept across the U.S., more than 1 million children, many of them in poor neighborhoods, failed to show up for public school classes, either online or in person. The steepest decline the report said was among kindergarten students.
The newspaper said more than 340,000 kindergarten children did not show up for instruction.
“In the country’s poorest neighborhoods, tens of thousands of 6-year-olds will begin first grade having missed out on a traditional kindergarten experience.” The Times said. Kindergarten is where many youngsters receive their first exposure to numbers and letters and where they can be screened for disabilities and learning challenges.
Analysis of the data, The Times said, shows that the pandemic has already set back “some of the most vulnerable students before they spent even one day in a classroom.”
India’s Health Ministry said Sunday that it had recorded more than 39,000 new COVID-19 cases in the previous 24-hour period, while Russia reported nearly 23,000 new cases.
More than 230,000 people marched Saturday in cities across France to protest measures meant to counter the spread of the coronavirus, including vaccines for health care workers and a health pass needed for many public indoor activities.

This fourth week of protests was also the largest, and included marches in Paris, Nice, Montpellier and Lyon, where police used teargas on protesters who threw objects at police. The measures have brought together France’s hard-left anarchists and hard-right militants, according to Reuters.
Health care workers have until September 15 to get their shots or face suspension.
“I’d rather not be paid than be forced to have the vaccine,” hospital psychiatrist Diane Hekking told Reuters as she protested in Paris.
The health pass shows proof of vaccination, a recent negative COVID-19 test or recovery from COVID-19. One will be needed starting Monday to enter cafes and restaurants, to travel on intercity trains and access to nonemergency care at hospitals. The pass was already needed for cinemas, concert halls, sports arenas and theme parks that hold more than 50 people, according to the Associated Press.
Most people in France support the heath pass, according to recent polls.
Since President Emmanuel Macron introduced plans for the pass July 12, vaccination rates have jumped. About 54% of the population is fully vaccinated and at least 7 million have gotten their first shot.
“We’re not against the vaccine. We’re against having to run checks on our patrons,” bar manager Laurent Zannier said Saturday in the town of Cambrai, where nearly every restaurant and cafe was closed in protest.

In the past month, France has reported nearly 469,000 cases of coronavirus and nearly 900 deaths. Since the pandemic began, it leads Europe with more than 6.3 million cases and 112,000 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
France isn’t the only European country to turn to health passes.
Italy’s Green Pass took effect Friday. Denmark pioneered vaccine passes with little resistance. In Austria, the pass is needed to enter restaurants, theaters, hotels, sports facilities and hairdressers, the AP said.
In Poland, though, thousands marched Saturday in protest as the government debated whether to place restrictions on unvaccinated people, Reuters reported.
In the past month, Poland has reported nearly 3,300 new cases of coronavirus and 167 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Sunday more than 202.2 million global COVID infections. The university said over 4.4 billion vaccine doses had been administered.

Source: Voice of America

BLANTYRE – Malawi has received its first consignment of Johnson & Johnson vaccines – a donation made by the United States under COVAX, a campaign to provide equitable access to COVID-19 shots worldwide.
The arrival of 302,000 doses comes a few weeks after Malawi announced it will start inoculating its citizens with several COVID-19 vaccines in an effort to protect more of its population amid growing infections.
Health Minister Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda said the move aims to fill the gap created by the scarcity of the Britain-made AstraZeneca vaccines the country has been using.
Speaking to reporters in Lilongwe, Chiponda sought to offer reassurances that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is safe.
“And most of the countries in Europe, in America and indeed in Africa, have used Johnson & Johnson vaccine. And it is proven that it is indeed providing much needed immunity [against COVID-19],” said Chiponda.
Besides vaccines manufactured in the West, Malawi has also used vaccines produced in China and Russia.
This brings the number of vaccine doses the Malawi has received so far through COVAX to more than 850,000.
Jeremy Neitzke is chargé d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Malawi.
He said the recent donation is part of the U.S. government’s global vaccine-sharing strategy, which aims to provide at least 80 million doses to countries most affected by the pandemic, including at least 25 million to African countries.
“The first tranche of U.S. government commitment to Africa is 15 million doses, of which these 300,000 are arriving today. We are working with our partners here in Malawi, the Ministry of Health, and across the continent with the African Union and the African CDC to deliver vaccines,” he said.
Health Minister Chiponda said the vaccine has given Malawi hope of reaching its target of vaccinating 60 percent of its people by December 2022.
As of now the country has only vaccinated 0.2 percent of the targeted 11 million people.
Malawi has recently faced continuous vaccine shortages largely because of huge demand as infections rise. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus.
The Ministry of Health has said that since Saturday, Malawi has confirmed 481 cases with 29 deaths. The U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the global pandemic, says Malawi currently has about 55,700 cases and 1,805 deaths.
Chiponda said Malawians should not panic as more vaccines are coming.
“Of course, we will be receiving AstraZeneca in two weeks – about 200,000 doses. And also we have in the pipeline Pfizer [372,000 doses] as well.  So between now and September, we are very sure we are going to get about a million doses of different vaccines,” said Chiponda.
Separately, Chiponda said Malawi is planning to purchase 1.8 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine.
The government is advising people who received one jab of the AstraZeneca vaccine not to combine it with the Johnson & Johnson shot, which is a single-dose vaccine.

Source: Voice of America

TOKYO – The official price tag for the Tokyo Olympics in $15.4 billion, which a University of Oxford study says is the most expensive on record. What else could those billions buy?
The ballpark figure for building a 300-bed hospital in Japan is $55 million. So you could put up almost 300 of these.
The average elementary school in Japan costs about $13 million. For that price, you get 1,200 schools.
A quick search finds a Boeing 747 is priced at roughly $400 million. Voila: 38 jumbo jets for the cost of the Tokyo Olympics.
The point is that Olympic Games are costly and may bump aside other priorities. In fact, several Japanese government audits say the real outlay for the Tokyo Games is even more than the official figure, perhaps twice as much. All but $6.7 billion comes from public money from Japanese taxpayers. According to the latest budget, the IOC’s contribution is $1.3 billion. It also chipped in several hundred million more after the pandemic.
Olympic costs have been dissected in a study by the University of Oxford, which found that all Games since 1960 have had cost overruns averaging 172%. Tokyo’s cost overrun is 111% or 244%, depending on which cost figure you select.
Embarrassment
“The IOC and host cities have no interest in tracking costs, because tracking tends to reveal cost overruns, which have increasingly become an embarrassment to the IOC and host cities,” Oxford author Bent Flyvberg said in an email. Flyvberg also pointed out that costs would be reduced if the IOC picked up more of the bills rather than opening organizers’ wallets.
Following costs is a tedious exercise, dotted with arguments about what are — and what are not — Olympic expenses. Flyvberg explained that numbers from different games can be “opaque and noncomparable” and require sorting and tracking.
“The problem is disentangling what is Olympics cost and what is just general infrastructure spending that would have happened anyways but was sped up for the Olympics,” Victor Matheson, who studies sports economics at College of the Holy Cross, wrote in an email.
For example: The 1964 Tokyo Games, he says, “were either one of the cheapest or one of the most expensive Games depending on how much of the preparation costs count as the Olympics.”
The 2008 Beijing Olympics, usually listed as costing more than $40 billion, and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, priced at $51 billion, are often singled out incorrectly as the most expensive.
“The numbers for Beijing and Sochi likely include wider infrastructure costs: roads, rail, airports, hotels, etc. Our numbers do not,” Flyvberg wrote in an email.
The blur around costs — and who pays — allows the IOC to pitch the Olympics as a global party that brings the world together and promotes world peace. Everybody is seen to benefit, and the financial interests of the not-for-profit IOC are hidden behind national flags, pomp and ceremony, and heart-tugging stories about athletes winning gold and beating the pandemic.
Tokyo, of course, saw costs soar with the postponement. Officials say the delay added $2.8 billion to the final total. The postponement and a subsequent ban on fans also wiped out virtually all ticket sales income, which was budgeted at $800 million. That shortfall will have to be picked up by Japanese government entities — likely the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
Sponsors’ complaint
Tokyo organizers raised a record $3.3 billion from domestic sponsors, driven by giant Japanese advertising company Dentsu Inc. But many sponsors complained openly in the run-up to the Games that their investment was wasted without fans. Toyota, one of the IOC’s top 15 sponsors, pulled its Games-related advertising off television in Japan because of public discontent about holding the Olympics in the middle of a pandemic.
The big winner appears to be the Switzerland-based International Olympic Committee, which by holding the Olympics — even without fans — assured broadcast rights income of $3 billion to $4 billion. The IOC is essentially a sports and entertainment business, and almost 75% of its income is from selling broadcast rights, with another 18% from sponsors.
The IOC was able to drive the Games forward, partly because the terms in the so-called Host City Agreement favor the IOC and not the Japanese hosts.
In an interview last week, President Thomas Bach said financial interests were not at the center of the IOC’s decision to postpone instead of cancel.
“We could have canceled the Games 15 months ago,” Bach said. “Financially, it would have been the easiest solution for the IOC. But we decided at the time not to cancel the Games, not to draw on the insurance we had at the time.”
The IOC has never said how much insurance coverage it has for such eventualities, nor what is covered.
So why did Tokyo want the Olympics? Why does any city? German sports economist Wolfgang Maennig said the Olympics offer little economic boost. So any value must be elsewhere. He has often likened the Olympics to throwing a big party for your friends and overspending, hoping they go away happy and remember you fondly.
“After three decades of empirical research, economists agree that the Olympics do not generate any significant positive effect on national (or even regional) income, employment, tax income, tourism etc.,” Maennig, a 1988 Olympic gold medalist in rowing, wrote in a email.
Good for the home team
He said any benefits were elsewhere and include home-field advantage and more medals for home athletes, new sporting facilities, enhanced international awareness and fast-track decision-making around urban regeneration. Japan’s Olympic performance has been in line with that; it has won more gold medals and overall medals than ever before.
Much of the Olympic benefit goes to construction companies and contractors. Tokyo built eight new venues. The two most expensive were the National Stadium, which cost $1.43 billion, and the new aquatic center, priced at $520 million. The next two Olympic organizers — Paris in 2024 and Los Angeles in 2028 — say they are cutting back drastically on new construction.
Though Tokyo probably suffered short-term economic losses from the pandemic and absence of fans, any losses are relatively small for a country with a $5 trillion economy.
In another study of Olympic costs by Robert Baade and Victor Matheson, “Going for Gold: The Economics of the Olympics,” they point out that Olympic investment is risky and only a few reap the benefits.
“The goal should be that the costs of hosting are matched by benefits that are shared in a way to include ordinary citizens who fund the event through their tax dollars,” they wrote. “In the current arrangement, it is often far easier for the athletes to achieve gold than it is for the hosts.”

Source: Voice of America

The U.S. averaged more than 107,000 new COVID-19 cases a day for the first week of August, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center on Saturday.
For comparison, on June 7, the U.S. reported just more than 10,000 new COVID-19 cases, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The increase in coronavirus infections comes as the highly contagious delta variant continues to spread quickly throughout the United States.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in an interview with CNN earlier this week that government data shows infections in the U.S. “could be up to several hundred thousand cases a day, similar to our surge in early January.”
After peaking at nearly 250,000 infections per day in early January, cases bottomed out in June, but began ramping up even as U.S. adults were being vaccinated. More than 70% of all U.S. adults have been at least partially vaccinated, AP reported.
The seven-day average for daily fatalities in the U.S. increased from about 270 a day to almost 500 a day over the past week as of Friday, according to Johns Hopkins.

More than 166.2 million people, or 50.6% of the population, have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins’ vaccine tracker.
The southeast U.S. has some of the lowest vaccinations rates in the country, such as Alabama and Mississippi, in which fewer than 35% of residents are vaccinated, AP reported. The region also has seen the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients increase 50%, to a daily average of 17,600 over the past week from 11,600 the previous week, according to the CDC, as reported by AP.
Florida, which last week was called the national epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic by the CDC, broke another record for the number of COVID-19 cases on Saturday.
The CDC said the state reported 23,903 new infections in a 24-hour period ending Friday. The figure is the largest single-day number of cases in Florida since the pandemic began more than a year ago.
A week before, on July 30, the state had set a record with 21,683 new cases.
The delta variant of the coronavirus is fueling the rise in cases in Florida and across the U.S.
In Houston, health officials are warning that COVID-19 cases are on the rise.
Texas health officials are concerned, chief state epidemiologist Jennifer Shuford told Houston Public Media.
“We’ve been living this pandemic now for a year and a half,” she told the news organization. “We thought we had seen the worst of it with those first two pandemic waves that we experienced. This third wave that we’re having right now in Texas is showing a very steep increase in cases and hospitalizations, as great or even steeper than what we were seeing with those first two waves.”

Coronavirus-related hospitalizations in Harris County, where Houston is located, have increased nearly 262% over the past month, the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council reported on Thursday, according to Houston Public Media.
On Friday, there were 8,522 people in Texas hospitals with COVID-19, the most since February 11, the AP reported. In Harris County, the state’s largest with more than 4.5 million residents, nearly 1,700 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, according to the Houston Public Media report.
Dr. David Persse, who is serving as the chief medical officer for the city of Houston, spoke to the AP about the latest increase in COVID-19 cases.
“The health care system right now is nearly at a breaking point. … For the next three weeks or so, I see no relief on what’s happening in emergency departments,” he said.
Persse said some ambulances were waiting hours to offload patients at Houston area hospitals because no beds were available. He told AP that he feared this would lead to prolonged respond times to 911 medical calls.
In the U.S. Midwest, more than 98% of all new COVID-19 cases are from the delta variant, according to the CDC.
The Omaha Board of Education, which oversees the largest school district in Nebraska with 52,000 students, will discuss on Monday whether to require face coverings inside school and district buildings.
The Omaha Education Association, a union that represents teachers and staff, is concerned by the rise in delta variant cases and the state’s middling vaccination rate. The group had called on the district to require masks, according to an Omaha World-Herald report.
Of the state’s nearly 2 million residents, roughly half (49.9%) are fully vaccinated, similar to the U.S. figure of 50.6% announced, according to Johns Hopkins.
As of midday Saturday, there were more than 202 million infections and nearly 4.3 million deaths worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins. The U.S. continued to lead the world in cases, with more than 35.7 million, and fatalities, with more than 616,000, according to Johns Hopkins.

Source: Voice of America

Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 has had positive results in South Africa, the co-head of a trial, Glenda Gray, told reporters Friday.
A research study conducted from mid-February to May with upwards of 470,000 health workers showed positive results in those inoculated, and the country’s health regulator approved the single-shot J&J vaccine in Apri. It is being used in addition to Pfizer’s.
The study showed 91% to 96.2% protection against death, Gray said, and 67% efficacy against infection when the beta coronavirus dominated and 71% when the delta variant did.
As of Thursday, more than 8.3 million people had been vaccinated in South Africa.
Worldwide, about 4.3 billion people have been vaccinated.
Despite the introduction of new COVID-19 vaccines in recent months, however, the virus continues to spread across all parts of the world, primarily the highly contagious Delta variant, infecting a growing number of people and triggering a new round of strict social restrictions and lockdowns.
More than 20 months after the first cases were detected in Wuhan, China, the COVID-19 global pandemic has far surpassed 200 million total confirmed infections, including 4.2 million fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center data released Friday.
The United States tops the list with more than 35 million cases, including at least 600,000 deaths, followed by India, Brazil, France and Russia.
Meanwhile, in Tokyo, Olympics organizers report 29 new Games-related coronavirus cases.

Information from the Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report.

Source: Voice of America

U.S. employers added more than 940,000 jobs in July, the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday, beating analyst expectations and providing the latest sign the job market may be recovering from steep losses sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 943,000 jobs added last month topped the 850,000 from the previous month, despite a shortage of available workers.
July’s unemployment rate dropped to 5.4% from 5.9% the month before.
“While it is doubtless we will have ups and downs along the way as we continue to battle the delta surge of COVID, what is indisputable now is this: The Biden plan is working, the Biden plan is producing results and the Biden plan is moving the country forward,” said President Joe Biden at the White House Friday.
The president said his administration is the first in U.S. history to oversee an economy that added jobs “every single month in our first six months in office” and noted that “economic growth is the fastest in 40 years.”
The rollout of the coronavirus vaccine encouraged restaurants and other businesses to reopen after being forced to close for months after the pandemic began. But Biden warned there was more to be done not just on the economy, but also on fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
“Because of our success with the vaccination effort, this new delta variant wave of COVID-19 will be very different to deal with than the one that was underway when I took office,” Biden warned. “Yes, cases are going to go up before they come back down. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
The prospects of a strong monthly jobs report were bolstered Thursday when the Labor Department reported that 385,000 jobless workers filed for compensation, down 14,000 from the revised figure of the week before.
The U.S. said a week ago that the economy expanded at a 6.5% annual rate of growth from April through June, a slightly faster pace than in the first three months of the year.
The size of the U.S. economy – nearly $23 trillion – now exceeds its pre-pandemic level as it recovers faster than many economists had predicted during the worst of the business closings more than a year ago.
But the surging delta variant of the coronavirus is threatening to impair business activity in some regions of the U.S. and, as a result, analysts say the economy could cool somewhat in coming months.

The second quarter growth was fueled by widespread business reopenings, vaccinations for millions of people and trillions of dollars of government pandemic aid that was sent to all but the wealthiest American families. Some economists and many Republican lawmakers have warned of inflation risks sparked by record-high government stimulus.

“Inflation is skyrocketing & Americans are paying higher prices after Dems’ wild spending spree earlier this year,” Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota tweeted earlier this week.
The number of weekly unemployment benefit claims has tracked unevenly in recent weeks, but overall has fallen by more than 40% since early April, while remaining well above the pre-pandemic levels.
About 9.5 million people remain unemployed in the U.S. and are looking for work. There also are 9.2 million job openings, the government says, although the skill sets of the jobless do not necessarily match the needs of employers.
Some employers are offering cash bonuses to new hires.
State governors and municipal officials across the U.S. have been ending coronavirus restrictions, in many cases allowing businesses for the first time in a year to completely reopen to customers. That could lead to more hiring of workers.
But the number of new coronavirus infections recorded each day has increased by tens of thousands in recent weeks and is still growing, especially in parts of the U.S. where millions of people have, for one reason or another, resisted getting vaccination shots.
The number of new vaccinations had been falling in the U.S. but now is increasing again as more people see others in their communities hospitalized from the virus and their lives endangered.
More than 60% of U.S. adults have now been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Source: Voice of America

The White House has confirmed that it is considering requiring foreign visitors to show proof of vaccination to potentially restart international travel.
Jeff Zients, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, told the Reuters news agency that multiple federal agencies are looking into the possibility.
The United States still has no timetable for resuming international travel given the spread of the delta variant of the coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease.
The U.S. first imposed travel restrictions on China in January 2020. Since then, several other countries, including India and many in Europe, have faced similar restrictions.
Two issues facing a proof-of-vaccination plan are what would be considered proof and whether the U.S. would accept documentation from people who have been vaccinated with products that have not been approved in the U.S.
In contrast, at the U.S.-Mexico border, which is still seeing record numbers of migrants attempting to cross, proof of vaccine is not required before migrants are released into the U.S.

During the last week of July, about 7,000 migrants were released in the border town of McAllen, Texas, with 1,500 testing positive for COVID, according to the Washington Examiner.
The Biden administration is reportedly drawing up plans to vaccinate migrants, The Washington Post reported.

Source: Voice of America

Australia continued Thursday to struggle against the delta variant of the coronavirus, with its largest city, Sydney, reporting a record daily number of new cases and the state of Victoria announcing a one-week lockdown.
Sydney, which is near the seventh week of a nine-week lockdown, reported 262 cases and five deaths in the past 24 hours.
So far, the country as a whole has seen relatively few cases and deaths, but vaccination rates are low, with only about 20% of people over 16 fully vaccinated.
Victoria’s lockdown was triggered by eight new cases.
“Nothing about this is optional. This is a lockdown. It will be enforced, for the best of reasons and the best purposes, to bring these case numbers down, under control so we can once again be open,” Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters in Melbourne.
All three of Australia’s biggest cities – Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane – are currently locked down.
Some health officials told Reuters they expected more lockdowns until the country reached a higher vaccination rate.
Some feared the measures could force the country into its second recession in two years, because many are unable to work with so many businesses closed.

Source: Voice of America

Computer giant Microsoft became the latest large employer to require workers to provide proof of a coronavirus vaccination before entering its offices in the United States.
The Seattle Times reported the Redmond, Washington, company sent an email to its employees Tuesday, saying it would have a process to accommodate those employees who have medical conditions or other reasons that might prevent them from getting vaccinated.
The company also said it was pushing back the return of employees to the office by nearly a month, to October. 4. It said caregivers of people who are immunosuppressed or parents of children who are too young to receive vaccines could work from home until January. Microsoft has about 100,000 U.S. employees.
Microsoft is following the lead of other major U.S. employers requiring vaccinations for their employees. Tuesday, Tyson Foods, the biggest U.S. food company, said it was requiring all its employees to be fully vaccinated.
The federal government said in May it was legal for employers to require their workers to get vaccinated.

Source: Voice of America

WASHINGTON – The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing proponents of America’s libertarian movement to question just what their philosophy demands of them.
Many libertarians, who champion individual freedom and are generally skeptical of government authority, have been outspoken in denouncing vaccine mandates and social distancing measures as an unwarranted intrusion on personal liberty.
But others are just as voluble in defending the measures, arguing that libertarian principles prohibit reckless behavior – such as going maskless in a crowded room – that puts innocent others at risk.
“There’s been a real split among libertarians about how to respond to the pandemic,” said Matt Zwolinski, a philosophy professor at the University of San Diego who runs the “Bleeding Heart Libertarians” blog.
“Some libertarians supported lockdowns, some libertarians supported face mask requirements, and some libertarians now are supporting vaccine mandates,” he said. “On the other hand, there are also a lot of libertarians who opposed in very strong terms all of those things.”
With large swaths of Americans declining to get vaccinated, the debate has real-world implications. While many anti-vaxxers question the safety and efficacy of vaccines, opposition to vaccination is often couched in libertarian terms: It’s my body, my choice.
“Governors say things like, ‘We expect citizens to be responsible and make their own choices, and it’s not the role of government to tell people what to do,’ ” said Justin Bernstein, a philosophy professor at Florida Atlantic University who has advised the Centers for Disease Control on vaccine allocation and distribution.
This is a view that is widely shared by many card-carrying libertarians. One of the staunchest critics of government-mandated vaccination is Dave Smith, a comedian and a rising figure in the Libertarian Party. Although he doesn’t question the effectiveness of vaccines, Smith, who is mulling a presidential run as a Libertarian Party candidate in 2024, sees vaccine mandates as an infringement on individual liberty.
“On a purely principled level, I believe you own yourself, and once you concede that you don’t own yourself, on the practical level, you’re going to get a lot of really bad outcomes from that, and egregiously immoral ones,” Smith told the libertarian “Reason TV” last week.
Yet as important as the right to “bodily autonomy” is to libertarianism, other libertarians say it doesn’t justify exposing others to the virus. These libertarians defend mandatory vaccination not by reason of promoting public good but on the ground that vaccine refusal puts others, including those who can’t get vaccinated for medical reasons, at risk.
Libertarian philosopher Jessica Flanigan has likened vaccine refusal to firing a gun into the air on Independence Day, inadvertently injuring innocent bystanders.
“Citizens do not have the right to turn themselves into biological weapons that expose innocent bystanders to undue risks of harm.” Flanigan wrote in a 2014 journal article, “ADefense of Compulsory Vaccination.” “Mandatory vaccination policies are therefore justifiable in most cases because citizens do not have a right to remain unvaccinated.”
Other libertarian academics have advanced similar arguments in defense of measures that require vaccination as a condition for admission into public buildings or events.
“Libertarians have the view that we have limits to how much risk of harm we can impose upon other people,” said Jason Brennan, a libertarian philosopher at Georgetown University who made the “libertarian case for mandatory vaccination” in a 2016 journal article.
“The real complicated question is: At what point do we think other people are imposing a sufficiently high risk of harm onto third-party bystanders that the people imposing that risk can be interfered with as a way of protecting others?” Brennan said in an interview.
With COVID vaccines widely available, however, the case for a COVID-19 vaccine mandate has grown weaker, Brennan said. Vaccine resisters, Brennan said, voluntarily put themselves at risk.
“Part of the complication is the people who want to be immune are mostly immune and the people who aren’t immune, most of them aren’t really a high risk,” Brennan said, noting that the virus has been found to be less dangerous for children than adults – an assertion the delta variant is putting to the test.
The debate over vaccines comes as a growing number of colleges, universities and businesses around the country have announced vaccine mandates. Although the federal government’s authority to impose a national vaccine mandate is in question, the U.S. military is considering requiring military personnel to get vaccinated.
Last month, eight Indiana University students sued the school over its vaccine mandate, claiming it violated their constitutional rights. While rejecting “blind deference to the government” on matters of public health, a federal judge later dismissed the lawsuit, delivering vaccine advocates a major victory.
Some libertarians hailed the judge’s relatively narrow ruling.
“If you’re a libertarian, you take individual liberty really seriously, and so even if you think that we can restrict liberty by forcing people to get vaccines, you want to use as gentle a hand as you can in that mandate,” Zwolinski said.

Zwolinski said the rift among libertarians over vaccine mandates reflects a similar divide over social distancing measures during the pandemic.
“You find basically the same people on the same side of the debate no matter what the specific restriction is,” Zwolinski said.
While academic libertarians are generally supportive of vaccine mandates and other restrictions, “popular movement-based libertarians” such as activists and members of Congress tend to oppose them, Zwolinski said.
But libertarian support for vaccine mandates doesn’t appear to be limited to academic circles. A recent Reddit thread titled “Where do libertarians stand on vaccine mandates?” prompted hundreds of comments, the responses in equal measure critical and supportive.
“It is the right of an individual to make the choice for themselves. If they want to die, they are free to do so,” one commentator wrote.
Another wrote, “I don’t view vaccine mandates as too much of an infringement on liberty. It’s got zero cost to the individual and there are obvious externalities to not being vaccinated.”

Source: Voice of America