By Bonnie Kristian, The Week

The left used to warn about unintended consequences in foreign policy. Maybe it’s time to remember those warnings.

The Omicron variant of COVID-19 has case rates spiking exponentially across the United States, and though hospitalizations and deaths haven’t followed anything like the same pattern, the sheer size of the caseload means those numbers are ticking upward, too. The difference between the two paces is partly due to Omicron’s comparatively mild effects, but widespread immunity from a combination of initial vaccination, boosters, and recovery from previous COVID cases is an obvious factor, too.

That latter point has many escalating calls for broad vaccine mandates, perhaps as a condition of commercial air travel (as my colleague Ryan Cooper has argued) or perhaps copied from somewhere like France, where a law passed Sunday will ban unvaccinated people — including those who have tested negative or have proof of recent recovery — from restaurants, sports venues, theaters, all domestic flights, and some trains.

I’m skeptical such a mandate would be effective here in the States. I anticipate, as Freddie deBoer has put it, that “there would be an absolute deluge of lawsuits the minute any universal mandate was formalized as policy, and it would be years before anybody would be forcibly inoculated.” Moreover, as enthusiastic as I am about vaccines, I can’t get behind injecting things into other people’s bodies at the tip of the sword.

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