Opinion: The most important way of stopping another Covid surge

Editor’s Note: Jonathan Reiner, MD, is a CNN medical analyst and professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University. Dr. Jonathan Reiner We have tools to blunt the escalation of new cases, but we must act now with a sense of urgency – and that means intensifying efforts to increase vaccination rates in all age groups, using a range of strategies including broad vaccine mandates such as the Biden Administration’s requirement for businesses employing more than 100 workers to have employees get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. Unfortunately, last week the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit affirmed a previous stay of Biden’s new vaccine mandate. Writing for the majority in Jacobson v. Massachusetts in 1905, which upheld the state’s smallpox vaccine requirement, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote, “But, the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint.” Harlan continues, “Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.” Earlier this month a federal judge in Texas upheld United Airlines’ Covid-19 vaccine mandate, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has said that federal anti-discrimination laws don’t prohibit employers from requiring the vaccines for employees. Nonetheless, speaking about the decision by the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans to affirm the stay on Biden’s mandate, Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote, “The mandate is a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer that makes hardly any attempt to account for differences in workplaces.” Using politically charged language, the judge continued, “The public interest is also served by maintaining our constitutional structure and maintaining the liberty of individuals to make intensely personal decisions according to their own convictions – even or perhaps particularly when those decisions frustrate government officials.” Get our weekly newsletter Sign up for CNN Opinion’s new newsletter.