The administration was bluntly telling people that, if they make the bad choice to forego the vaccine, they are exposing themselves to potentially dire consequences. Again, you can question the practical efficacy of the administration’s pro-vaccine message. But one thing we can say about this message is that it’s obviously correct. Conservatives are supposed to be in favor of delivering blunt talk about personal responsibility. Instead, they are whining that the government is stigmatizing people by blaming them for their own terrible decisions.

So the conservative position turns out not to be anti–vaccine mandate, but anti-anything that makes unvaccinated people feel bad.

I have seen this position expressed by Ben Domenech, Tucker Carlson, and two columnists at The Federalist. As Carlson puts it, Biden is treating the unvaccinated as “a kulak class — a group of reviled subhumans that the rest of us are free to hate and mock, and whose deaths we’re allowed to root for.”

This bizarre fantasy in which Biden is mocking the unvaccinated and cheering on their deaths lacks any evidence at all. In fact, Biden is pleading for unvaccinated Americans to protect themselves from death.