I agree with Dr. Christine Stabell Benn:
I'm not in doubt: It should be voluntary to vaccinate. Anything else goes against UNESCO 6.1... As a vaccine researcher, I strongly oppose mandatory vaccination. The vaccines that are in use were only tested for effects on the vaccine-targeted disease and on side effects in relation to the vaccination. However, there is increasing evidence that vaccines also affect the immune system broadly, reducing or enhancing susceptibility to unrelated diseases. Hence, the vaccine skeptics have a right to point out that we do not know the full effects of vaccines on overall health. It should therefore be a human right to weigh pros, cons and unknowns to make one's own decision.
Und er any emergency circumstance, any limitation on this right must be fully justified, democratically agreed to, restricted to what is absolutely necessary, and temporary.
The state is adept at finding "emergency" reasons that sound socially reasonable to infringe upon core personal freedoms and take further control of our lives: "wars" on drugs, child pornography, terrorism, etc. Under the rubric of a public-health emergency, this American capitalist-imperialist state, in which political institutions and medical agencies are entirely captured and corrupted by for-profit Pharma, has found something that appeals to the liberal sense of rationality and social responsibility, resistance to which they can portray as nothing but stupid and selfish. Because a real public-health emergency may demand exceptional responses.
The issue is whether, in this situation, the state authorities' claims about the emergency and the necessary responses to it are as scientifically justified as they insist. We have no reason just to accept, and in fact every responsibility to start out doubting, their claims--especially when they insist on inaugurating a radical regime of social control. We must insist that the burden of proof is on them, and never be so foolish as to accept the notion that they must--for our own sake, of course--deny us access to expert witnesses they don't like. There's no exception to that when a vaccine comes into evidence.
So, let's think about the process of social choice that brought so many people, including leftists, to endorse a new, permanent, throwing-people-out-of-their-jobs regime of discrimination.
I hope we understand that experts are not there to rule over the public, but to advise. Plato's philosopher kings have no place in, are the enemies of, popular democracy.
Surely, the default is not to accept the decree of some state-approved agency or expert that such a regime is necessary, but to demand the evidence and arguments for it. We should only accept such a regime if it were the result of a people's decision, through their elected representatives as appropriate, after an open, transparent public discussion where all scientific and ethico-political arguments were heard--not one censored and restricted by government agencies, one or another political party, or their allied Overton-window-enforcing media and Silicon-Valley fact-checkers. Did I miss that process of social choice?
What we have instead is precisely rule by decree. Biden's decree is based on very expansive interpretation ("Tests Limits of Presidential Power") of a workplace-safety law that provides for "an emergency temporary standard" in cases where "employees are exposed to grave danger from exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards."
He offered none
of the indispensable compensatory healthcare policies that must accompany any
regime of discrimination supposedly enacted for the sake of the people. And no
one I've noticed has demanded any of that. Must not leftists that support such
a pass-law, segregation regime insist, every time they express that support--indeed,
as a condition of that support--that it be accompanied by a corresponding
regime of single-payer, universal-coverage healthcare-for-all? How about, at
the very least, completely free treatment for any adverse effects from the
vaccinations? Don't passport supporters want to prove to everybody, especially
to themselves, that it's not all about control--social control and
control of everyone's bodies?
At the start, it was: "the most meaningful divide...is between those actively working toward single-payer health care and those unwilling to embrace it." Now, it's: the most meaningful divide is between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
Kid Stuff
Some people cite the mandatory childhood-vaccination program as sufficient justification for the adult mandate and passport regime being proposed now. "I had to get vaccinated to go to school. What's the big deal?" Well, gee, let's look at a couple of the assumptions in that way of thinking, and marvel at how self-demeaning and how unnoticed they are.
1) Treat me like a child. I accept that the American capitalist state, in the person of Joe Biden (protector of workers) and Anthony Fauci (science itself), can treat me like a child. Those who don't are stupid, selfish fascists. (Except it's even worse: Children aren't required to show a vax pass to get into Chuck E. Cheese.)
2) One vaccine is as good as another. 'Cause all vaccines are good. No need to consider exactly how effective or possibly harmful to myself or the public health in general this vaccine might be, 'cause all vaccines are harmless magic bullets. I'll take any one that comes along, because I don't treat them as I would any other complex chemical cocktail someone might want me, a full-grown adult, to ingest, but like mother's milk.
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