Abbott’s office hasn’t yet commented on what it plans to do now. But he finds himself in a position familiar to many other Republican vaccine-mandate opponents. Lots of them stressed the emergency-use status of the previous authorization while speaking out against vaccine mandates; now the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine has an approval status similar to many other vaccines that schools and governments across the country do indeed require.
These Republicans now must decide whether their opposition was truly to mandating an emergency-use vaccine or to mandating all coronavirus vaccines, which large portions of the Republican Party base oppose.
Why did they emphasize the emergency-use aspect? And why might they oppose a mandate of a fully approved coronavirus vaccine when the government mandates many other fully approved vaccines?
Other states have also instituted such bans that applied only to emergency-use authorizations.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R), the day before signing a bill banning vaccine mandates for public schools and colleges last month, offered a plea for full authorization that might suggest he would be more open to them in that case. But DeWine said Monday, “We’ve made it very clear: The state of Ohio will not be mandating that people get vaccinated. This is an individual decision that people will have to make, and government should not be involved in mandating it.”
Apart from Abbott, some other top GOP critics of vaccine mandates have also keyed in on the emergency-use authorization.
A spokesperson for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) this month responded to counties that were bucking the governor on vaccine mandates by stressing that status.
State legislators and allies have also fought vaccine mandates for health-care workers by citing the EUA, including in Wisconsin and North Carolina.
And interestingly, even shortly after the FDA announcement Monday morning, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) celebrated litigation over school vaccine mandates by again emphasizing the EUA.
“The law states that ‘receiving a COVID-19 vaccine under an emergency use authorization is always voluntary in Texas and will never be mandated by the government.’ ” Paxton said in a statement. “I will always fight to support the rule of law.”
So what about now (or really, even when Paxton sent out the statement), when that no longer applies to the Pfizer vaccine?
Some vaccine-mandate opponents have expanded their criticisms — and their proposals — beyond the EUAs, apparently knowing this day would come rather soon. They include Abbott’s and Paxton’s Texas colleague, Sen. Ted Cruz (R). He joined with Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) recently to propose legislation that would not just ban federal vaccine mandates when the vaccines were under EUAs, but would also ban mandates for any vaccine that had ever been under an EUA — even after it gained full approval.
A very logical question from there is: Why draw the line at mandating vaccines that were once under an EUA but allow mandates for other vaccines receiving the same full approval — but that weren’t needed so urgently as to involve an EUA?
But at least they drew the line in a place that’s easier to account for politically right now. A whole lot of Republicans need to decide whether their opposition to vaccine mandates was truly about emergency-use authorizations, as they emphasized, or about all coronavirus vaccine mandates, and they just decided not to say so at the time.
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Analysis | The GOP fought mandates by emphasizing the vaccines' emergency status. Now what? - The Washington Post
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