Excellent mini-essay, TAFKAD.
I'll talk law. In Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), the SCOTUS ruled that refusal to be vaccinated (it was for smallpox, IIRC) is not protected by the Constitution.
“Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.”
— Justice John Marshall Harlan, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (7-2 opinion that vaccine mandates were constitutional)
He said "mandating vaccines is on solid ground."
I go back to my previous point, this stuff y'all are bringing up and COVID-19 are not comparable, and I would rather the law not treat them as such. Smallpox, measles, mumps, etc.....these things are matters of life and death. I guess this sounds odd coming from a pro-vax guy, but I can't consider anything with a 99.5% survival rate anywhere in the same category, and I don't want the government having precedent to say "This could affect a few lives here and there. We now have the right to force you to do whatever we say." I'm assuming as a historian you can cite several instances where that kind of thing doesn't go well.
And WHY would you want to mandate something against somebody's will
if the vaccines work? You and Tulip don't want to die from it? Get vaccinated. If you're vax'd and I'm not, I'm no threat to you if the vaccines work. And they do. What reason do you have for taking away one's personal choice in that case? Everyone who is afraid they'll fall outside that 99.5% range or who just doesn't want to deal with a worse case than necessary can vaccinate themselves. There's no justification I see for that to allow those people (and I am one) to tell the others "we will force you to comply." We seem to be laboring under the assumption that if everybody vaccinates then covid will somehow "end." I don't know that there's any estimates that could potentially be the case. Our world has changed, this thing likely isn't going away. And even if it could "end," I have moral reservations about forcing compliance in this case. Point me to the place in history where stripping liberties in the face of crisis helped that society in the long term. I can point to a lot of the opposite.
The ridiculousness of this is illustrated in the flu, which has been with us a long time. An average of 35k - 60k people die from the flu each year in the U.S. Something like (I think) an average of 60% of the population gets the flu vaccine each year. So for years the flu has been annually infecting some 40 million U.S. citizens, hospitalizing some 500k of those, and killing, let's say, 50k. Every year. For like, forever. Who ever heard of mandating flu vaccines nation-wide? Locally? Corporately? I haven't. Nobody is scared of the flu because we've dealt with it forever. The key phrase is "dealt with it." The fact is COVID is new and so it scares people. It drives erratic behavior and there are no shortage of people seeking to take advantage of this. I'm not biting. NOT mandating flu vaccines is better comparison and more recent precedent to consider than the diseases and vaccines you and Mr. Tulip point to.
I say all this as a pro-vax guy, and one who just lost my aunt to covid. She almost certainly would be here today had she been vaccinated. Her and my uncle were like a second set of parents to me during my teenage years, and next month I'll go to her memorial service. I wish more than just about anything she had chosen the vax. I wish my mom would. I wish my grandma would. My aunt's death has hit them pretty hard and I've very gently tried to tell them that our family would rather not go through this with them, and would they like to reconsider getting vaccinated in light of all this? But the answer is they don't want to. And despite my personal feelings on the matter, I still make a hard distinction between what people want for themselves and how I want to force them to do what I want them to do. One is hard, but morally acceptable. One is a solution that makes me happier and makes me feel better, but is not morally acceptable.
Unrelated note: you mentioned your wife, that reminds me: some other people who should really check with their doctor before being vaccinated are people on immuno-suppressant meds. I think in general it's a good idea to check with your doctor first. People almost certainly fall into the category of folks for whom the vaccine is fine. There are a small group of people out there who don't need to do it simply because the gub'ment, the scorn of pop culture, and message-board warriors like me said so.
