To the editor:

The guest opinion in The Enterprise entitled “Without vaccination, dangers remain” by Rich Shapiro on July 24 is right on target. Everything he said about vaccinations being safe and effective is correct. He encourages vaccine holdouts to reconsider and get vaccinated. He quotes CDC Director Rochelle Walensky: “This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

But I would go a step, or perhaps several steps, further. It is time for mandates. As Dr.Jerome Adams, surgeon general under Trump, stated recently on Cuomo Prime Time: “This freedom argument (for not getting vaccinated) is bunk. We are losing freedoms because people are unvaccinated.” Unfortunately, the Delta variant has changed the pandemic. Fully vaccinated people are now getting coronavirus infections so the problem is no longer “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

Children under 12 who are ineligible for vaccination and people who are immunocompromised — 3.6% of the population — are being unnecessarily put at risk by the unvaccinated (“What does immunocompromised mean, and what should people at risk for coronavirus do?”, The Sacramento Bee, March 20, 2020). I applaud the decisions of President Biden, Govs. Cuomo and Newsome, New York City Mayor William De Blasio and other political leaders as well as several major health care institutions to require vaccinations of their employees. There is and will continue to be strong opposition to these mandates, but it’s time for “Vax or Ax.”

Michael C. Sinclair, MD,

Vermontville