Yeah, I'm at least on the edge of that camp. I want people to get vaccinated. I consider the arguments against to mostly be ridiculous. But I don't want the Federal government to tear up the Constitution to force people to get the vaccine.
Foolish me, I expect the Federal government to operate within the limits of the US Constitution. I see it already beyond those, and I resent and oppose every additional step it tries to take further outside those limits.
But maybe I'm just rationalizing the difference...
> Foolish me, I expect the Federal government to operate within the limits of the US Constitution.
Now agreed, it’s different from the school mandate(s), but I still don’t yet understand this derisive leap to claims of unconstitutionality. OSHA legislation is broad in the responsibilities of employers, and one can make an argument (the quality of which I won’t inflate) that executive orders can be used to enforce that in this way. Certainly it seems to track with the frankly enormous executive power that the last 4 presidents, current included, have made ample use of. At least that executive power is mostly time-limited, given term limits.
And at least in theory, questions of bodily autonomy seem to have been side-stepped with the “or test weekly” provision, however impractical that may be for many.
Leaving that debate aside however, I think it’s important to recognize that the US is built on federalism. It is less of a unified monolithic nation and more of a diverse set of nations that share a small set of common services like the military. Over time the federal government has become bloated and powerful, and has been erasing the locality of choice that state and local jurisdictions are supposed to provide. This leads to situations like the national vaccine mandate, where a narrow majority can implement a tyranny over the rest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority), when the system is meant to allow greater local liberty and independence over such choices. If this type of governance continues I expect as some point the US will break up.