The Twilight of Covid Mandates in Europe - WSJ Editorial - 2.2.22
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— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) February 9, 2022
The Twilight of Covid Mandates in Europe
The U.K. ditches a diktat for health staff as other leaders rethink how to live with the virus.
Customers queue outside Porterford Butchers at lunchtime in the City of London, Jan. 27.
PHOTO: LUKE MACGREGOR/BLOOMBERG NEWSThe Biden Administration isn’t the only government rethinking Covid vaccine mandates. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration quietly dropped its mandate after a rebuke from the Supreme Court, and some leaders in Europe are also finally getting serious about learning to live with the virus.
United Kingdom Health Secretary Sajid Javid on Monday scrapped a requirement for employees of the National Health Service (NHS) to be vaccinated by April. Doctors, nurses and other staff would have had to receive their first shots this week to be fully vaccinated in time and it became clear tens of thousands were holding out, amounting to more than 5% of the NHS work force. This amid chronic staff shortages.
A separate mandate for nursing-home staff took effect in November and the havoc it wreaked no doubt contributed to Mr. Javid’s decision to avoid the same chaos in the NHS. Estimates vary, but thousands of staff seem to have left their jobs owing to the mandate as a staffing shortage sets into that industry. A major concern is that those workers will have found other jobs in Britain’s tight labor market and might never return to their old posts.
Denmark’s government Tuesday lifted all remaining Covid-related restrictions, and officials suggested they’ll now focus more on hospitalizations from Covid rather than total cases. Norway and Ireland also have lifted many restrictions.
This enlightenment isn’t universal, but other governments seem to be paying a political price for tougher pandemic measures. Italy recently imposed a vaccine mandate for people over age 50, but the move stirred vigorous opposition within Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s fragile coalition government. Austria has imposed the Continent’s most stringent mandate, applying to all adults, while also lifting lockdown rules that had applied to the unvaccinated. Street protests are becoming a regular occurrence.
Vaccines can be life-saving and millions of people have concluded it makes good sense to receive the shots. But governments in Europe increasingly must decide if Covid remains a big enough danger to warrant its dominating role in policy debates.
Britain’s government determined that a staffing shortage in hospitals would be a bigger emergency than Covid. Other governments might come to ask whether the social division stoked by vaccine mandates is worth the marginal health benefit. That kind of tradeoff is what “learning to live with Covid” will mean for politics.
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