Suicide bombers are usually “Middle Eastern looking,” Muslim, and foreign. Vaccination refuseniks are usually not “Middle Eastern looking,” not Muslim, and not foreign. Otherwise, suicide bombers and vaccination refuseniks (except those with a precluding medical condition) are virtually indistinguishable.

Suicide bombers and vaccination refuseniks both serve what they view as a higher cause. Suicide bombers give themselves unreservedly to a vision of an Islamic state. Vaccination refuseniks give themselves unreservedly to the view that personal freedom trumps the common good.

Both groups are effective; suicide bombers in immediate and dramatic ways, vaccination refuseniks in a less obvious, slow-drip way.

Both groups cause unlimited suffering and death.

Both groups are destructive of America.

So why does our government stop at nothing to oppose suicide bombers, but relies on mere persuasion to oppose refusniks?

One argument – probably the foremost one – against more forceful government response to vaccination refusal is that it’s government overreach. Just guessing, but I’d say that few of the people making this argument understand restricting a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions as government overreach. Myself, I won’t be taking the “government overreach” argument seriously until its proponents get a little more consistent.

Another argument against vigorous government action, notably mandating vaccination, is that the vaccines are “too new” and therefore fraught with risk and should not be used even voluntarily. I suppose some people do genuinely believe that, even though the vaccines have been exhaustively tested and found to be safe. This view cries out to be ignored.

Another reason is that the vaccine contains something that allows Bill Gates to take over your body. This deserves its very own entry in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Vaccine refusal would be less odious and risible if the refuseniks would own up to the real reason for their refusal: elimination of Covid-19 would make President Biden look good and it would be a step in the direction of progressive democracy. They are right. It would be those things and more. It would reveal once again that Ronald Reagan’s sound-bite dogma that government is the problem not the solution is inaccurate as description and pernicious as belief.

Mandatory Covid vaccinations would be an effective big-government solution to a devastating problem.