Fauci doesn't want unvaccinated Americans to fly

Reason’s Matt Welch writes, “On Monday morning, Anthony Fauci, the chief White House medical adviser, re-floated the trial balloon of imposing a federal vaccine requirement for domestic air travel.

Vaccine passports for domestic flights would require the creation of a national medical database, which holds ominous civil libertarian implications. All for a policy that would likely have a marginal public health impact. So yeah, it'll probably happen. https://t.co/sWPa64SHOm

— Matt Welch (@MattWelch) December 28, 2021

‘That is just another one of the requirements that I think is reasonable to consider,’ Fauci told MSNBC, while refusing to divulge whether he has made that recommendation to President Joe Biden. ‘You know, there's requirements that you might want to get if you want to get into college, or you want to go to a university, or you want to work in certain places. When you make vaccination a requirement, that's another incentive to get more people vaccinated. If you want to do that with domestic flights, I think that's something that seriously should be considered…’

The positive health impact of barring the 70 million or so non-fully-vaccinated Americans ages 5 and older from air travel is likely to be closer to marginal than overwhelming. Airplane trips thus far during the pandemic have been almost preternaturally safe from COVID spread. Existing vaccine mandates, meanwhile, have failed to move the needle on vaccination rates.”

Read the entire column.