Ben Shapiro once supported vaccine mandates. Now he's opposed.

Ben Shapiro was an enthusiastic supporter of vaccine mandates – before the COVID-19 pandemic

Written by Jason Campbell

Published

In a 2015 Townhall article, Ben Shapiro criticized “anti-vaccine fanatics” who are opposed to vaccine mandates. Shapiro wrote:

The point of mandatory vaccinations is not merely to protect those who are vaccinated. When it comes to measles, mumps and rubella, for example, children cannot be vaccinated until 1 year of age. The only way to prevent them from getting diseases is to ensure that those who surround them do not have those diseases. The same is true for children with diseases like leukemia, as well as pregnant women. Herd immunity is designed to protect third parties.

But Americans have short memories and enormous confidence in junk science. Parents will ignore vaccinations but ensure that their kids are stocked up with the latest homeopathic remedies, Kabbalah bracelets and crystals. St. John's wort, red string and crystals all existed before 1962. They didn't stop the measles. Vaccination did.

Shapiro went on:

When it comes to measles and mumps and rubella and polio, your right to be free of vaccination -- and your right to be a dope with the health of your child because you believe Jenny McCarthy's idiocy -- ends where my child's right to live begins.

With the delta variant scorching through the country and hesitancy to the COVID-19 vaccine dangerously high (especially among right-wing audiences), Shapiro has a different position. Though he deserves credit for encouraging people to take the vaccine (a stark difference between him and his Daily Wire employee Candace Owens), Shapiro has been harshly critical of any mandate for the COVID-19 vaccines, whether they be applied by private businesses or the government.

On August 6, Shapiro argued that “vaccine passports” (a commonly hyped fear in conservative media) would lead to more spread of COVID-19. He went on to say that if private businesses required proof of vaccination, a “social credit system” where businesses would be “carding you for a wide variety of social sins” would follow.

From the August 6, 2021, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show

BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): It's getting even worse. Now, the Democrats have decided they're going to full-scale embrace vaccine passports. In fact, MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle, objective journalisming, getting that hot sticky journalism all over the place, she says, I don't even understand the argument against vaccine passports. Don't you, though? Like, I can explain it really, really quickly to you. It turns out that if you tell everybody who's vaccinated they get to go to all the special places and everybody else, who's unvaccinated, has to hang out together, you're going to get a faster spread. Do you understand? I did it in small words and short sentences so that you can understand.

...

SHAPIRO: Oh my God, these are the exact same people that say that's it's racism to make you show your ID to vote. So, let's just get this straight. It's racism to make you show your ID to vote because Black people, apparently, are incapable of getting a voter ID. But it's not racism to make people show their vaccine card if they are unvaccinated. Disproportionally Black people are unvaccinated in this country, particularly in major cities. You'll notice that there is a heavy cross-over between Black population in the United States and unvaccinated areas. There are two large groups of people in the U.S. who are not getting vaccinated at the same rates as everyone else. One is rural conservatives and the other is inner-city minorities. Those are the two unvaccinated groups in the United States. Unvaccinated for wildly variant reasons, except that there is a common distrust of the government that runs through both. Pretty astonishing stuff.

Meanwhile, Biden's COVID advisor Jeffrey Zients, he says that Yelp is going to start letting businesses list their vaccination policies. This is -- I've said before, I think this is a predicate to what comes next which is the sort of social credit system where businesses are going to start, basically, carding you for a wide variety of social sins. This is just the beginning.

On August 10, Shapiro said that in a “free country,” everyone has the right to make “individual decisions” about receiving a vaccination. And unlike his 2015 commentary, Shapiro now claims that “you would not care as a vaccinated person about the unvaccinated person who lives near you except the public health official is using the unvaccinated person's very presence as a rationale for shutting down your life.”

From the August 10, 2021, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show

BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): The police are just walking up and down the street and they're literally just checking people's papers. I mean, I find that disquieting, don't you? That doesn't seem great. Especially because, again, in a free country people should not be checking your papers to determine whether or not you've gotten a shot in your arm. This is madness at this point. 

...

The problem here is not the unvaccinated. Listen, I disagree with many of the people who are not vaccinated. I think that they are making a poor public health decision and a poor decision for themselves. But, this is a free country and you get to make those sorts of individual decisions because, again, it is a free country. The real problem in the big cities is that we have become accustomed to political actors turning one segment of the population against another segment of the population for purposes of control. You would not care as a vaccinated person about the unvaccinated person who lives near you except the public health official is using the unvaccinated person's very presence as a rationale for shutting down your life. 

A clear majority of Americans currently support mandated vaccination against COVID-19.

Now, with over 600,000 Americans dead from COVID-19 and 93 million Americans who are able but refuse to get vaccinated, Shapiro should apply his earlier logic to today’s crisis.