Traffic permit and licensing laws meet a high standard for which there is significant legal precedent. Your statement does not have a legal basis in the US or under Common Law. While we have had health tests to ender the country, we have not had them to go to a public place. We have never required the flu shot to got to a bar or nightclub. I too am not antivax, but I don't think you have the right to require those around you in public places to take a new vaccine that has not even undergone the normal rigors of FDA approval.

>but I don't think you have the right to require those around you in public places to take a new vaccine that has not even undergone the normal rigors of FDA approval.

Under the NYC "mandate", No one is required to be vaccinated. I'll say that again: no one is being required to be vaccinated.

While I disagree with the DeBlasio administration's new policy (WRT bars, gyms, etc.), both because it will be almost impossible to enforce and because the benefits (via increased vaccinations) will likely be marginal at best, no one is forcing anyone to do anything.

I'd much prefer (as an increasing number of restaurants, theaters and other venues and businesses are doing) that requiring patrons and staff to be vaccinated be a decision taken by the specific business involved.

Those businesses that only allow vaccinated people in their establishments will gain some folks and lose others -- and vice versa.

Regardless, and I'll say it one more time: the "mandate" from the NYC government doesn't force anyone to get vaccinated, nor does it restrict anyone from public spaces.

NYers aren't stupid (or at least not in any greater amount than anywhere else) and most will (and have) take appropriate precautions.

That said, the new requirements won't be all that effective because they're essentially unenforceable unless the business' owners are fully on board -- if they are, then they'll (as many have already done) require their staff and patrons to be vaccinated.

If a business' owners aren't on board with this, they won't require it, whether it's mandated or not.

But if you’re vaccinated then you’re not at risk? I say as a vaccinated person.

What about the immunocompromised? Those who can’t have the vaccine. To say nothing of breakthrough infections and the fact that the mutation rate is tied to the number of infections, and therefore a vaccinated person’s immunity could indeed be impacted by large contingents of unvaccinated persons being infected. And how about the financial cost of COVID? Perhaps we should make it so that if one gets severe COVID and has no proof of vaccination, all coverage of medical costs by insurance are voided. You can’t make a reasonable argument that society should be on the hook for paying for your life saving medical treatment when you intentionally deny free, effective preventative measures.

This focus on the immunocompromised is so strange to me. Bad flu season? Nobody really cared about them. Bad cold season? Again, nobody really cared about them. Yet covid comes around, the vaccines are produced, and suddenly everyone keeps talking about the immunocompromised. At some point, we have to just tell those who are immunocompromised that we're going to reopen society, and they have to be responsible for managing their own risk.

There simply isn't enough of them to justify the counter-measures.

If you're vaccinated you're at less risk, not zero risk.

So you don't have the right to drive a car, right?

I'm not sure what point you're making.

Exercising your right to drive a car endangers my life and the lives of my family. Just as you said. Should you not be allowed to do not?

So is using spermicidal lube considered killing children?

A ball of cells and flesh that cannot survive outside of another human does not and should not have human rights. Otherwise we gotta start considering the human rights of cancerous growths.

As far as many of us are concerned, fetuses do not have human status, so the argument is absolutely irrelevant for most as a comparison.

A fetus is by definition a human. In fact it is the third stage of human development. This is why people argue against personhood. The claim is you can be a human fetus but not have personhood yet.

Do unborn children occasionally pop out of women's bodies, enter other people's bodies, and reproduce uncontrollably to a point where they stop those other people from breathing?

If so, we can apply the same logic to coronavirus and pregnancy. If not, you're just drawing a false parallel.

"The needs of society can override the individual's right to bodily self-determination". This is the thesis you need to tear down. Whence goes the vaccine, so goes abortion.

>Whence goes the vaccine, so goes abortion.

We've had mandatory vaccinations for over a century, certainly since Roe V. Wade, and yet abortion is still legal.

Half the US believes abortion is murder and a sin against God and yet as far as I know, never has anyone tried to use the existence of vaccination laws as a pretext for making abortion illegal. That wouldn't even make sense.

The point is the comparison between the life of others vs the "right to bodily self-determination".