Nearly half (46 percent) of Americans “believe the facts on vaccines are up for debate and that it’s damaging to mandate shots.”  Furthermore, almost half (49 percent) of Republicans “say the return of vaccine-preventable diseases is a price worth paying for the ability to refuse shots.”[1]  Are Republicans serious about this position?  If so, they themselves never had any of a bunch of vaccine-preventable childhood diseases.[2] 

            Yes and No, probably.  First, No.  A recent poll showed that 67 percent of Republicans “support the use of vaccines to prevent disease.”[3]  On the one hand, that means that a full third of Republicans don’t “support the use of vaccines to prevent disease.”  On the other hand, 67 percent favor vaccines, while 49 percent oppose mandated vaccines.  Apparently (67 – 49 = 18 percent) of Republicans accept mandated vaccines, while 49 – 33 = 16 percent) are opposed to mandates rather than vaccines.  If it wasn’t mandated, then of course they’d get the shots.    

            Second, Yes.  The figures above still leave 33 percent of Republicans, 28 percent of Independents, and 7 percent of Democrats who don’t believe in vaccines.  Odd, no?    

            How did the mandate part of the vaccination issue come to be so contested?  One possible answer goes back to the Affordable Care Act.  A lot of people didn’t have health insurance.  Some were young and healthy, so they didn’t want to spend the money.  Some were a range of ages, unhealthy, and poor.  They wanted health insurance, but either it wasn’t provided through their work or they didn’t make enough to pay for insurance.  What to do?  The answer was to require everyone to have health insurance and require insurance companies to insure everyone.  The ones who didn’t need the insurance would bulk up insurance company earnings and cover those who did need it, but couldn’t pay. 

This began as a Republican idea, then was taken over by the Democrats.  So it was the Democrats who caught Hell for it.  Never before had the federal government required that people buy something that they didn’t want.  The mandate could be compared to “compelled speech.”  The Supreme Court had already held that compelled speech violates the First Amendment.[4]  Schools can’t make students recite the Pledge of Allegiance and states can’t compel anti-abortion “crisis centers” to post notices of abortion services.  What’s the difference? 

            In some minds, the insurance mandate may have seemed wrong in its own right, and an entering wedge precedent for a huge extension of government power over individual lives.  What else might follow in time?  The revolt against vaccines may have amounted to a Libertarian response to an arrogant government.  Not many Libertarians among the Democrats. 

[1] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 24 April 2026, p. 17.  The figures come from a Politico/Public First poll. 

[2] I have.  Came down with chicken-pox during the rehearsal for the Christmas concert of my elementary school.  Vomited all over the back of the white shirt of the kid in front of me.  Then there was the girl who walked with leg braces and crutches because she had been hit by polio.  This was long before the Americans with Disabilities Act, so I still remember her laboring up the steps from the front door. 

[3] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 19 September 2026, p. 17.  The figures for Independents were 72 percent, and for Democrats 93 percent.  That means that 28 percent of Independents and 7 percent of Democrats don’t “support the use of vaccines to prevent disease.” 

[4] Later, in “Janus v. AFSCME,” the Court held that “the First Amendment does not permit the government to compel a person to pay for another party’s speech just because the government thinks that the speech furthers the interests of the person who does not want to pay.”