EDITORIAL: Private sector can lead way on vaccinations

Vaccinations remain the answer to ending this pandemic. And as has been proven time and again over the past 18 months, the private sector — not politicians or bureaucrats — is best positioned to provide the solution.

As the country struggles with the contagious delta variant, confirmed COVID cases have soared in Nevada and other states. Breakthrough infections, while still relatively rare, are now more common. Yet while the pace of vaccinations has increased slightly in recent weeks, there remains a devoted class of holdouts who have mistakenly determined that the risks of inoculation outweigh the risks of contracting a serious case of COVID.

This is similar to concluding that the risk of being hurt by a lap belt during an automobile crash exceeds the odds of being seriously injured during an accident when not buckled up.

As a result, COVID hospitalizations and deaths during the current delta surge have been weighted heavily toward the unvaccinated, and confirmed case counts remain high when compared with the spring.

Some of this hesitancy is a result of mixed or muddled messaging from politicians and public health officials on the vaccines and the pandemic. The coronavirus debate has become so bogged down in political assumptions, accusations, ideology and overheated rhetoric that many people have tuned out and dug in.

Calls for government vaccine mandates have grown louder, but that approach would be met with fierce resistance and set a dangerous precedent in all but the most dire of public health emergencies, not to mention almost certainly violate the Constitution. Yet private-sector actors face no such restrictions — and offer the best hope for progress.

In recent weeks, while governments have dithered, more and more companies — the Review-Journal among them — have announced that they will require employees to be vaccinated. Major Strip properties have either mandated shots for workers or are strongly encouraging them and making it easier for employees to sit for the inoculations. Nationally, scores of corporations have announced vaccine mandates of one sort or another, including Google, Microsoft, Lyft, Twitter, Tyson Foods, Ford and United Airlines.

This push has the potential to boost vaccination numbers far in excess of public-sector educational campaigns or government raffles and giveaways.

“Private employers are in a better position to institute mandates and have precedent to do so,” Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Matthew Guido and Amaya Diana wrote for USA Today last month. The authors, from the University of Pennsylvania, added, “The mandates are ethical, providing huge benefits that outweigh risks, and higher immunization rates maximize the vaccine’s benefits in the workplace and community.”

While court challenges are inevitable, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in May issued guidelines stating that private employers would not run afoul of the law if they require workers to get vaccinated as a condition of physically returning to the workplace. In June, a federal judge in Texas struck down a challenge to Houston Methodist Hospital’s vaccine mandate for health care workers.

Throughout the pandemic, the private sector has provided relief to beleaguered Americans where government has failed, offering educational opportunities during school closures and keeping essential goods on the shelves during lockdowns. The development of the COVID vaccinations themselves — an unprecedented feat — is a credit to the ingenuity and innovation of the private pharmaceutical industry.

Shot mandates imposed by private businesses offer a promising alternative to efforts by elected officials and public health professionals to reach the unvaccinated, which have so far produced only tepid results. As is so often the case, our paralyzed political institutions should step aside and let the private sector lead the way.