Proof of COVID vaccination should never be required for any purpose by either the government or any private entity.

THESIS: Proof of COVID vaccination should never be required for any purpose by either the government or any private entity.

The subject of this debate is public policy, whether govt and private entities can require proof of vaccine compliance. The subject is not, or at least according to the debate description ought not to be, whether the COVID vaccine is safe or effective.

Only PRO#2 is really on point but pretty weak. PRO argues First Amendment: privacy, freedom of religion/expression although many states and no private entities guarantee such rights. PRO dismisses the responsibilities of public and private entities to protect those who can't be vaccinated, children under 12 at present, for example

PRO#1 is non-sequitur to thesis. Whether or not a public or private entity mandates a vaccine is entirely separate from the question of whether a public or private entity has the authority to require proof of vaccination circumstantially. Most democracies don't mandate most vaccines but nevertheless require proof of vaccination as a prerequisite to a whole host of venues- MMR before elementary school admission, for example . Private companies can't be compelled by the state to absorb more risk on behalf of those who do not wish to be vaccinated. In non-democracies, individual rights never supersede the state.

PRO#3 and #4 are speculations defenses of PRO#1- the vaccines could have unforeseen harms, the disease itself could have unforeseen benefits. The potentially unforeseen does serve as evidence of anything and all of PRO's sources are absolute trash.

CON should be able to make quick work of PRO's argument but dithers instead.

CON#1 claims BoP is PRO's but CON accepted the debate set at "Burdens are equal" and his argument is not good- unreasonably conflaing the subject "Proof of vaccination" with "Proof of thesis"

CON#2 uses some off-point definitions of vaccine and spurious interpretation to argue PRO cannot predict the future (fine) and a harmful vaccine is no vaccine at all (sematic goo).

CON#3 argues COVID vaccines are effective which PRO never denied but gives a very effective example of a private entity (hospitals) that have a real duty to separate the vaccinated from the unvaccinated and justifiably demand proof in pursuit of that obligation.
CON sources are better than the mere opinions presented by PRO but really only repeat the line that vaccines are effective without much hard science.
CON dropped PRO's only decent argument (self-determination)

R2, PRO demonstrates his understanding of thesis to counter CON#1 effectively but fails to explain why 3 of his arguments don't address Proof of vaccination.

PRO argues that CON#3 only argues against re-infection and goes on about the rarity of such cases but CON's example seems to be arguing against infection generally, a primary duty of a doctor in a hospital.

PRO correctly notes that CON dropped PRO's only relevant ARG.

CON strangely comes back with a new example, valid but rare- that Vaccine producers who want to survey the vaccinated for effectiveness must require proof of vaccination to ensure valid data. Valid data ensures improved vaccine quality to the benefit of all. Best argument of the debate and refutes PRO#2 - there is at least one circumstance where a private entity has a duty to require proof of vaccination beyond any concern for individual autonomy.

CON rebuts autonomy arguing that the right to life supersedes more minor or speculative concerns, which this VOTER finds convincing.

CON goes down PRO's garden path with "re-infection." CON argues a bit roundaboutly that vaccines saves lives which I wish he had connected closely to both public and private duty but it's a valid enough point.

PRO's rebuttal argues that CON R1 contradicts CON's R2 - vaccines work vs we don't know if vaccines work but CON never argued that we don't know if vaccines work.

PRO entirely misses the point of CON's hypothetical vaccine manufacturer surve
This VOTER agrees with PRO that CON left PRO#3 and PRO#4 unargued for the most part but neither argument forwarded PRO's case. PRO should have done a better job of dismissing both as irrelevent.

CON clarifies his CON#2 a bit but this VOTER sets it all aside as semantics.

Ultimately PRO never demonstrated that individual autonomy must always supersede public and private entities' obligations to charges. Both PRO and CON offered a lot tangents and poorly substantiated claims but CON did give some convincing examples of circumstances (hospital, vaccine testing) where the need establish immunity supersedes any individual autonomy. Arguments to CON.

I really hated PRO's sources but CON never challenged their validity and his own sources were overly general so I set aside any consideration of sources.

Trying my best to separate this from my own debate with FT.

A lot of this really comes down to what's left on the table. Pro has a lot of arguments that Con just doesn't address about fundamental rights, potential and actual harms of vaccination, and the potential gains of getting the virus. Pro doesn't do a whole lot to amp these points up in later rounds, instead just referring back to them and saying they were dropped, but Con just doesn't give me any meaningful responses to any of these points beyond statements regarding the efficacy of these vaccines and the relatively mild side effects they cause on the whole. However, even these responses are undercut by a lack of direct refutation. Pro makes the point that efficacy actually functions against Con since it provides adequate protection for those who choose to get vaccinated and those who choose not to have, essentially, made their own bed. It doesn't mean you can't save lives, but it does mean that those who get infected are choosing to remain vulnerable, which forces me to question the value of saving those lives vs. preserving their fundamental rights. I don't really get a means to weigh that preservation against lost lives from either side, but that just leaves me seeing these largely as a wash. As for side effects, I'm getting a lot of support for other important effects from Pro, all of which are summarized neatly and none of which Con addresses directly. Con's own arguments regarding side effects are a list of sources with barely any analysis, which leads me to favor Pro's more incisive approach.

That just leaves Con's points. His analysis of the resolution leaves a lot on the table, focusing on the definition of vaccine and asserting that it implies effectiveness that was largely granted anyway, only to turn around in R2 and argue that this kind of proof is necessary to establish effectiveness via clinical trials. As Pro points out, though, the notion that this requires proof of vaccination is a mischaracterization of how clinical trials work. As Pro puts it, they're randomized studies where the participants almost universally do not know if they received the vaccine until they are unblinded. Participants present ID, but only those running the study (unless they're double-blinded, in which case even they don't know for the duration of the study) are the only ones with information regarding who was vaccinated and who wasn't. Proof of vaccination during a study is likely to lead to more problems, actually, since it can alter behaviors among those who received the vaccine and those who received the placebo. It's a valid point that that information must be somewhere, but it is not presented by the individuals being vaccinated. And then there's the hospital point, which, in a vacuum, would probably be enough to net a vote for Con. It's an example of where things could go wrong in the absence of more vaccination. Con's case supports more vaccination. Simple enough, right? Trouble is that Con doesn't do nearly as much as he should to explain why this matters. He talks about reinfection as a problem, but provides minimal impact to it apart from saying that people can get sick again. He provides statistics on the harm caused by the virus, but not the harms caused by reinfection, specifically. There's a point in there about the ability to spread more broadly than this within a hospital, which could have been interesting if it had been fleshed out and impacted more, but as it stands, this argument is pretty weak.

And this is where all those dropped points from Pro come back in. There's simply too much here, and while each of these points could use more impact analysis and direct comparison with Con's arguments, even if I'm being extremely charitable to Con, these simply overwhelm his points. There's too much here about effects of the vaccine and virus to ignore, and so much of it either mitigates Con's case or outright turns his impacts that I can't really do much else but award the debate to Pro.