Let me start by pointing out -that contrary to what you might read elsewhere, libertarianism isn't necessarily opposed to vaccine mandates. True, we do believe in the autonomy of the individual, including the right to do things risky to oneself (e.g., injecting steroids or illicit drugs). But we have other principles, like the non-aggression principle: you don't have the right to impose yourself on the natural rights of others. Your decisions can impact others; for example, if I caught COVID-19 through public exposure, it's one thing. I could/should do the responsible thing of quarantining myself, not propagating the contagion to others. Others include (but are not restricted) the immuno-compromised, those who are physically intolerant of vaccines, babies with immature immune systems, and the elderly, those who are unduly at risk from potential exposure and are somewhat dependent on herd immunity.
Another example of what economists call negative externalities is when the costs of your unduly risky behavior affects others. Say, for example, you as an unvaccinated COVID-19 patient occupy one of a limited local resource of hospital ICU beds, now operating at full capacity. Others in a critical condition may not survive a delay in procuring alternative long-distance accommodation. By not taking one or 2 jabs, of relatively minor cost and inconvenience, you are taking risks multiple-fold higher of getting COVID-19 and much higher of hospitalization and death.
Bob Levy addresses this as follows:
Here’s the controversy: If the vaccine causes no appreciable injury, can you still refuse to be injected, notwithstanding that you might be visiting significant risks on others? ...Occasionally, however, advocates of limited government will condone directives to engage in benign activities (even when not cost-free) if failure to do so might cause injury to innocent bystanders. Safety requirements for nuclear power plants would be one example, or obligatory pollution controls.... It’s more complicated when government compels conduct that might minimize or alleviate future harm...When rights theory doesn’t provide adequate guidance, defenders of liberty often look to utilitarian, cost-benefit tradeoffs....[W]e are in the midst of a health emergency, which means that suitably modified, narrowly-tailored, time-limited rules may be justified.
Again, to quote others:
[O]ther libertarians say it doesn’t justify exposing others to the virus. These libertarians defend mandatory vaccination not by reason of promoting public good but on the ground that vaccine refusal puts others, including those who can’t get vaccinated for medical reasons, at risk.
Libertarian philosopher Jessica Flanigan has likened vaccine refusal to firing a gun into the air on Independence Day, inadvertently injuring innocent bystanders.
“Citizens do not have the right to turn themselves into biological weapons that expose innocent bystanders to undue risks of harm.” Flanigan wrote in a 2014 journal article, "A Defense of Compulsory Vaccination.”
“Libertarians have the view that we have limits to how much risk of harm we can impose upon other people,” said Jason Brennan, a libertarian philosopher at Georgetown University who made the “libertarian case for mandatory vaccination” in a 2016 journal article.
“The real complicated question is: At what point do we think other people are imposing a sufficiently high risk of harm onto third-party bystanders that the people imposing that risk can be interfered with as a way of protecting others?” Brennan said in an interview.
Ilya Somin, one of my favorite pro-liberty legal scholars (e.g., from Volokh Conspiracy), applies a cost benefit approach in the clip below. (Note that the progressive moderator tries to get him to agree to extend the mandate to face mask wearing, and Somin refuses. I've made a related argument that face mask policies are mostly Kabuki dances, with conventional/cloth masks not filtering well in either direction against bioaerosols, maybe some virus-laden respiratory splatter from sneezing, coughing, yelling or talking loudly, singing, etc. If you're going to mask, use more effective surgical masks or N95 respirators.
Tom Woods, like his frequent guest comedian Dave Smith (quoted in the above-cited Farivar post), Ron Paul and other populist "bodily autonomy" libertarians, is a staunch COVID-19 policy opponent. Listeners to his daily podcast (and I have mentioned this in past posts) know that Woods himself caught COVID-19 probably on a recent trip to Vegas, including the complications of COVID pneumonia that knocked him off his podcast for over a week. Tom, for unclear reasons, has been hostile to taking a COVID vaccine from the get-go and basically said, post-infection, that he refuses categorically a follow-up jab, despite compelling evidence from Israel and the CDC of superior protection with an additional jab, insisting, like Rand Paul, Tom Massie and other pro-liberty celebrities who have also been infected, that natural immunity is sufficient. Don't quote these figures, but the data I've seen show reinfection or vaccine breakthroughs at up to 2%, much lower than for never-infected, unvaccinated. By getting a jab, Woods could lower those risks somewhat, although the net benefit is lower than if he had not been infected. So, yes, he is also less likely to transmit the virus. Personally, in his circumstances, I would take the jab.
Tom just completely ignores the contagion effect; he'll tell you vaccination for kids is ludicrous because of low risk, but viruses can spread across kids, including those with high health risks, and kids can spread it to those in higher risk categories like parents, grandparents, and others. (I know: my oldest nephew and his wife caught it from their school-age kids, and unlike Woods, they have subsequently been vaccinated). I know: I think I caught all the usual childhood diseases like mumps, the measles and chicken pox, not from my nuclear family, but as the first-born going to school. Today, some of these diseases are preventable, like the measles. Fundamentally, I don't think Woods understands the science behind vaccinations and infectious diseases, and his dismissive attitude is counterproductive in the midst of a pandemic.
But Tom has been fighting "unreasonable" vaccine mandates for presumably public sector employees and for schools and universities. To him, proactively protecting yourself and others from spreading a deadly contagion is an unthinkable transgression against liberty. People are quitting or getting fired from jobs or college over a jab or two. He recently did a podcast providing a college alternative offering mandate-resisting college students a partial scholarship. And heaven help you if you promote, gasp, vaccine passports (travel or public accommodations). Never mind the libertarian concept of voluntary association. Maybe I don't want to have Woods and his fellow self-serving, creepy anti-vaxxers imposing their disease on other people, including my relatives and friends.
There are other casualties of this pandemic, of what Bastiat famously called the unseen, opportunity costs of these pandemics. I personally haven't seen my personal physician in over a year over the duration of the pandemic. Many people have gone without medical visits and treatments because of how this disease has hampered hospitals, clinics and doctor offices. How many people have undiagnosed serious health issues that are more difficult to treat in later stages? Anti-vaxxers have contributed to prolonging this pandemic and delaying achievement of herd immunity. Scientifically illiterate clowns like Tom Woods are part of the problem, not the solution.
