You raise a good point, that abortions are not contagious, yet there are other mandates I am opposed to simply based on the principle that a person should have the right to their own body. For example, once upon a time it was illegal for people to commit sodomy. And homosexuals could face persecution. Being gay or liking certain sexual positions are not contagious, yet peoples' right to their own bodies was violated.

Or, what about AIDS? Did we mandate that people with AIDS could not have sex and enforce this? No, of course not. And AIDS IS contagious AND had a much higher death rate than COVID.

The thing is, even when we had polio going on, we didn't mandate vaccines.

This despite the fatality for polio being much higher... if you look at statistics (yes, I love numbers), according to Worldometers, if you are under 65, your risk of death from Covid is only 0.00086%. In other words, out of 1000 people, less than 1 will die if they get infected. For people over 65, however, the risk is substantially greater. It's over 3% for this group. Of those under 65 who died from COVID, 89% had a pre-existing condition. Therefore, it's obvious that if you are in a high-risk group, you should get vaccinated.

Meanwhile, for polio, the fatality rate was up to 5% in children and up to 30% in adults, according to the CDC. Yet, despite the fatality rate being so much higher with polio, the vaccine was not mandated by the federal government - it WAS however, mandated for public school children.

I am totally fine with private businesses and employers having whatever rules they like. Of course, this will come across as racist, because the group least likely to be vaccinated happens to be young African American males.

So restaurants, meat packing plants, trucking companies and government agencies can all require their employers to get vaccinated to work there. And employers who don't want to get vaccinated can quit or be fired.

I also am fine with public schools mandating vaccines - they already do it, though there are religious and medical exemptions allowed. And parents who don't want to comply can always send their children to private schools or home-school.

What I am not OK with is the government telling adults what they can or cannot do with their own bodies. Additionally, asking for vaccination status is a violation of HIPAA. As someone who is a John Stuart Mill variant of Civil Libertarian, I am very much a proponent of an individual's sovereignty over his or her own body.

thanks for engaging with me in a cogent and civilized fashion. And, no problems if you disagree with me.