© Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters President Biden speaks to reporters outside the White House on Friday. On Thursday, Biden announced that civilian federal workers must be vaccinated or submit to regular coronavirus testing. Studies have found that mandates can provoke anger rather than encourage resisters to get vaccinated. That type of approach, with better messaging and less coercion, ought to be sustained and prioritized rather than slowly driving toward mandates. Instead of “normalizing” the jab, it risks creating a permanent and hardened segment of our society, primed to oppose government efforts to deal with covid or other public health crises on the horizon.
