if they don't want to get vaccinated then it still won't affect vaccinated folks.

This is actually not true, since enough people being unvaccinated can prevent herd immunity from protecting everyone.

Herd immunity is an indirect protection from an infectious disease that occurs when enough of a population has immunity (either from vaccination or prior infection). When enough people are immune, infections are unable to spread and outbreaks naturally end. This protects people within the population who don’t have immunity (unable to be vaccinated for medical reasons, vaccinated but didn’t get complete immunity, too young for the vaccine, immunocompromised, etc). It also protects those with some immunity who might still have a less severe infection.

The vaccination rate required for herd immunity depends on how infectious a particular disease is. Measles is particularly infectious, and a 95% vaccination rate is considered necessary for herd immunity. Many parts of the US have rates lower than that, which is why measles outbreaks are becoming common after the disease had basically been eradicated for decades.

So a question to everyone in favour of mandatory vaccinations: Are you happy with RFK Jr mandating you inject yourself with whatever he says?

I'm in favour of vaccines. I think everyone who can get them, should get them.

However, we can't overlook the fact that many governments have overlooked human safety and rights in favour of political plays. If injecting bleach into people to cure autism gets votes, what makes you assume that that won't fall under the same mandatory vaccine rules?

And even if you do trust the government to act properly, not everyone is able to receive vaccines. Sure you can be exempt from them if you show proof, but can the government bureaucracy fairly, accurately and quickly roll out a program for that?

Because some people have certain conditions preventing them to vaccines. For example, babies are too young for many vaccines. We still want herd immunity to protect those people. Vaccine effectiveness isn't 100%, so vaccinated people can still get affected by those irresponsible anti-vaxxers.

Antivax people don't just die, they overload hospitals. The more virus is spread, the more variants are created.

I think mandatory vaccines won’t work. Especially in the US.

…But organizations should be allowed to discriminate against antivaxxers.

For example, want to fly? The airlines should be allowed (if not mandated) to screen for vaccines in a pandemic, and aggressively kick violators off.

Restaurants want proof, to protect their staff and avoid infecting customers? Great. Give them the legal right to discriminate. Perhaps grocery stores should segment certain hours for antivaxxers.

Look, people do things for all sorts of reasons and that’s fine. But anti vaxxers can either have their cake, or eat it. They aren’t some special protected class that gets to put others at risk. They don’t get to dictate other people’s lives if they don’t want to be dictated to.

And all this would be just fine with the immunocompromised and their caregivers, I think.

If Ebola ever gained the infectious profile of Covid, and we had a functioning vaccine, yes it should be mandatory. And anyone that didn't like it could go live in Antarctica.