The public debate around the COVID-19 vaccines has really fallen apart. One side claims that anyone who is vaccinated is a fearful, controlled agent of the state while the other side accuses the unvaccinated of being science deniers and super spreaders. This verbal fist-fight, as ridiculous and counter-productive as it is, pales in importance to the vaccine mandate debate.
To be clear, I believe that individuals should have the right to choose whether or not they get a COVID-19 vaccine, and that no one should be shamed for that choice (see Moralized Hazard). I also believe that forcing a one-size-fits-all approach to medicine is unscientific, unconstitutional, and completely unwarranted.
Here’s a short list of some reasons why we should not have vaccine mandates:
1. “The science” and the logic behind vaccine mandates are shaky.
While coronavirus and mRNA vaccines have undergone years of R&D, there’s a reason why they didn’t hit the market until now. For one, mRNA vaccines are tricky to manufacture, store, and distribute because they tend to be more temperamental than other kinds of vaccines. Also, cold and flu viruses (COVID-19 is the latter) cannot be eradicated through vaccinations because there are several strains that mutate.
None of the COVID-19 vaccines have received full FDA approval (recently the FDA approved the extension of the emergency use authorization for Pfzier’s vaccine, not the vaccine itself), and we aren’t even sure how many doses of the vaccine people need. It’s clear that the Biden Administration based its booster recommendation more on politics than science.
Also, on the one hand, if the vaccines are effective, the vaccinated should be fully protected from the unvaccinated, so the vaccinated shouldn’t care about the status of anyone else. On the other hand, if the vaccinated are not as protected as we were led to believe (remember, when they rolled out the vaccines were said to be over 90% effective), why would vaccine mandates be necessary?
We already know that the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike can contract and spread the virus, and that the vaccinated occupy almost up to a third of ICU patients with COVID in some hospitals (based on insider intel from reliable sources). And in a hospital in Ireland, the vaccinated make up over 50% of COVID patients in the ICU! We also know that the vaccinated are still dying from COVID. In heavily vaccinated Israel, the vaccinated accounted for almost 40% of its COVID deaths in one week.
But we don’t know the long-term effects of mRNA vaccines. It seems like based on what we know (and what we don’t), full vaccination of all Americans won’t be out ticket to a normal life. Just look at Israel and its almost 70% vaccination rate and its spike in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths despite its aggressive vaccination efforts.
2. The lack of exemptions is troubling, as is the career-ending ramifications of refusing to be vaccinated.
One of the most glaring medical issues with a vaccine mandate is that it does not exempt those who already have had COVID-19 and have natural immunity, which can be up to 27 times more effective than vaccinated immunity. And peer-reviewed studies demonstrate that while after more than 3 months after infection there aren’t antibodies active in a person’s bloodstream, there are memory B and T cells in the plasma of that person’s bone marrow that can create new antibodies if need be (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3881728) (See also Medicine with Dr. Moran’s video titled “COVID Antibodies: How Long Do They Last?” on YouTube). Researchers estimate this immunity to be anywhere from 4.7 to 17 years based on SARS-CoV-2 immunity.
There are also valid, long-standing religious concerns because some of the COVID vaccines were developed by testing on aborted fetal tissue (see this, this, and this). As we know, most Christians and Catholics are pro-life and even opposed the use of embryonic stem-cells in scientific research. It seems to me that if some people have moral objections to buying beauty products tested on animals, religious pro-lifers should be able to refrain from taking vaccines that used aborted fetal tissue during their development.
It’s also troubling that scores of people are now out of work and denied unemployment because they refuse to get vaccinated. And it’s only going to get worse if the budget reconciliation bill passes because that bill would fine businesses over 100 employees up to $700,000 per unvaccinated employee.
What’s intriguing is that thousands of these fired, unvaccinated ex-workers are health care professionals who worked on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that they would rather get fired than comply with these mandates should be a big red flag for the rest of us. In the very least, we should all hear why they made that choice. After all, we’re supposed to listen to the experts, even those who defect. Maybe we should take dissenting experts with everything to lose more seriously than those making these policies.
3. Your rights are not contingent on your medical record.
Apparently, those running the show have quite the God complex since “… we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution does it say that the government gets to decide that those who comply with its edicts (see What Do Your Rights Have to Do with it? below)
One of the most horrific aspects of these vaccine mandates is that elected officials and unelected experts are determining who is able to exercise their rights based on their vaccine status. Never mind that the survival rate for COVID-19 is over 99% for most age groups or that the vaccinated can still spread the virus and die from it. Of course, this is not to say that it’s not tragic when a loved one dies from COVID-19. My family and I are sadly living that devastating reality (see Life After a COVID Death below)
In any case, we are still responsible for how we exercise those rights and must accept the consequences to our health, among other things. Relegating that responsibility to a state that silences dissenting scientists (see Can We Handle the Truth? below),
permits abortions during a pandemic but not cancer treatments, and shuts down churches while elected officials violate their own edicts (see Systemic Hypocrisy below)
doesn’t seem like the solution. No level of state control can stop a virus. Just look at China. What’s more, history tells us that a state rarely gives the people back their rights after the crisis justifying the retraction of rights has ended without significant conflict.
Closing Thoughts
I think the most significant problem of having vaccine mandates is that they are mandates, not womandates or persondates. The very concept of a “mandate” reeks of the oppressive patriarchy controlling our bodies and medical decisions. Now that too many American men have been emasculated by post-modern feminism, the government has assumed the role of the masculine head of the household to tell us how to live.
While I’m joking about word “mandate” (See What’s in a Gendered Name? below),
I’m certainly not kidding about the rest. Do any of us want to live in a country where some people have to choose between their right to make their own medical decisions and their livelihood? If you think this doesn’t matter because you support the vaccine, just know one day the state will ask you to compromise your values if this continues. This isn’t just about a shot, and our shots at securing our freedom from an increasingly tyrannical state are few.
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