You know how I’ve spent years calling Sean Penn a giant ham-faced dumpster fire? Well, I still believe that. He is absolutely trash. But… he is sentient trash and sometimes he does one or two things right. A broken clock, etc. All I know is that this is the second story in a row where I totally understand why Sean Penn is saying these words. Last month, Penn refused to go back to work on his miniseries Gaslit until everyone (below-the-line and above) got vaccinated. Which I agreed with, the idea that the studios and producers needed to mandate vaccines on TV and film sets. Now Penn says that more businesses, studios and basically everyone in charge need to start mandating vaccinations across the board. I agree.

On vaccinations: “This is one of those things that should be mandatory.” The actor and filmmaker also likens vaccine mandates to driver’s licenses, calling them “no different than having everybody being able to drive 100 miles an hour in a car.”

He’ll only make exceptions for people with underlying health conditions: While he’s a vocal proponent of mandatory vaccinations, Penn does make allowances for those individuals who are unable to receive any of the COVID vaccinations currently on the market due to underlying health conditions.

He has no time for “vaccine hesitancy” though: He admits that he’s “frustrated” with the resistance he’s seen among America’s unvaccinated population who are able to receive a vaccine but have been hesitant to schedule their first dose. “There’s different kinds of hesitancies, and so I don’t think that there’s much excuse to not know the informational available anymore…That’s part of why I think it should be mandatory. A resistance that’s just based on a certain kind of… lack of imagination and understanding of anything that’s helpful to the human race, I’ve become very frustrated by that. But I can only work within my own bounds and say that, for me, it should be mandatory.”

Businesses need to step into the vaccine mandate vacuum: In the current absence of a federal vaccine mandate, Penn believes it’s up to private individuals and companies to take the necessary steps to increase America’s vaccinated population at a crucial time in the arc of the pandemic. “I think that the movie business [and] all business need to take the lead and to be not so timid.”

[From Yahoo]

Yeah. He’s right. I understand why President Biden and Dr. Fauci haven’t ordered a federal mandate, because all that would do is agitate the “libertarians” on both sides and we’d have some giant, stupid argument about “government overreach” and God knows, it would end up going to the Supreme Court and Brett F–king Kavanuagh would have to cast the deciding vote on whether people should believe science. Biden and Fauci are making a calculated risk that they’ll get more flies with honey, that it’s better for states and businesses to take the lead on vaccine mandates, and they’re probably right. So is Penn – it’s August and we’re 18 months into the pandemic and too few businesses have mandates.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.