Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order yesterday banning private enterprises from requiring employees or customers to be vaccinated against Covid-19. He also asked the state’s legislature to create a law to the same effect. This comes in seeming response to President Biden’s actions seeking to require employers with 100 employees or more to require their workforce either be vaccinated or submit weekly negative test results, a requirement that is not yet in effect and would be instituted by OSHA, which, to be fair to Biden, does exist for the stated purpose of making the workplace safe.
We, the politically interested, differ on where the line is when it comes to governmental overreach. For some, requiring employers to require vaccinations crosses that line, especially when it’s the federal government issuing that requirement, and especially when it’s issuing the requirement by way of bureaucracy. This is fair. Rules like these should be given a thorough examination, both in terms of the rule itself and the method of its institution, and it’s fine that we differ on whether or not they’re reasonable in either or both of those categories. But if one believes it’s governmental overreach for the federal government to require employers to require vaccines, it’s hard to see how it’s not also governmental overreach for a state government to require employers to not require vaccines. At least with the federal measure, the goal is safety. With the Texas measure, the goal is ostensibly individual freedom, but it places the burden on a strange side of the scale, effectively forcing individuals who fear the danger of working alongside unvaccinated coworkers to quit their jobs with no reprieve from unemployment insurance. To do this, Governor Abbott infringes on the rights of private businesses, subjecting them to state control.
The coronavirus situation in Texas is not good. More than 200 deaths a day are being attributed to the virus, not far off January’s peak, and the excess death rate in the state suggests the official number may be an undercount. Data from this spring finds the unvaccinated are eleven times more likely to die from the coronavirus than the vaccinated, and Texas is on the low end nationally in vaccination rate, with 52% of the state’s population fully vaccinated compared to 57% nationwide. Abbott himself has encouraged citizens to get vaccinated, receiving his own vaccination on television. Abbott appears familiar with the data. Which makes yesterday’s order all the more troubling.
The political calculus for Abbott on this works as follows: A significant wing of the state’s Republican primary electorate is opposed to either the vaccine, vaccine mandates, or both. This wing is sizable enough that Abbott apparently believes it could sink his reelection chances. Yesterday’s executive order can only be explained in terms of political ideology with the twisting logic we outlined above regarding individual freedom, logic that denies the freedom of private enterprise and strongly incentivizes workers to make a choice they may well view (and may well reasonably view) as dangerous, leaving the impression this is not an ideological move from Abbott, but is instead a political one.
The effect of this anti-mandate mandate is going to be more deaths. How many deaths is unclear, but the fewer people who are vaccinated, the more die from Covid. That’s how this works. That’s the data we’re seeing nationwide. That’s the data we’re seeing worldwide. More vaccinations? Less transmission. Fewer deaths. Fewer vaccinations? More transmission. More deaths. If this order is allowed to stand (and I’m curious what the courts will or will not say, and what effect the order will have even if it’s not allowed to stand, given time is of the essence here), more people will die, which makes the tradeoff, in Greg Abbott’s view, deaths vs. his own reelection.
A charitable view, the most charitable view we can offer Abbott, is that he believes the election of one of his primary opponents, most notably Allen West, firebrand GOP operative who exited the hospital yesterday after his own bout with Covid, could cause more deaths, by Covid or otherwise, and that by seeking reelection he can save more lives than are lost due to things like this anti-mandate mandate. It’s a stretch. It’s a big stretch.
What should happen? What should have happened?
It’s fine for Abbott and others to disagree with Biden’s attempted mandate (which, again, is not yet in effect). Honest, good-faith governance could include Abbott challenging the mandate. I’ll admit to not knowing the legal mechanics surrounding this, but a number of possible paths Abbott could have taken that carry out his purported interest in individual liberty without infringing on private enterprise or the safety of his state’s citizens include:
- Announcing plans to challenge the Biden/OSHA mandate in court, or to support such a challenge from businesses which don’t want to issue the mandate to their employees.
- Announcing plans to challenge the Biden/OSHA mandate in court, or to support such a challenge from employees who don’t want to be subject to the mandate.
- Pushing for unemployment insurance benefits for those who don’t want to be forced to choose between receiving the vaccine and leaving their job.
- Issuing an executive order (this is the one where I have questions on the legal mechanics) stating that only the state government or local governments can require businesses to require vaccines or negative tests.
Abbott took none of these routes. Instead, he issued a heavy-handed, anti-business executive order likely to cost lives. I hope this is some warped miscalculation. I hope no lives or livelihoods are cost. But for those of us who support the freedom of private businesses, it’s troubling to see this come from an ostensibly pro-business, pro-individual freedom, pro-vaccine, pro-life politician. Abbott is, like us, a human being. Unfortunately, it appears the more flawed aspects of that biological reality are asserting themselves here.
The raw transparency of this review is scalding and scathing.