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Covid Vaccine Mandates: For Whose Benefit?
As the calls for mandating Covid vaccinations grow, especially with formal FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine, I ask the same question I have asked about mask mandates – who do the mandates protect that justify the intrusion on personal autonomy?
If the Covid vaccines work to protect the person who has received the vaccine, it matters not to the vaccinated person whether other people are vaccinated.
If people who have had Covid have protection similar to the protection provided by the Covid vaccine, forcing those who have had Covid to get the Covid vaccine is overkill. According to some reports (I have no idea how reliable), vaccinating the naturally protected may be counterproductive (in that the vaccine may degrade the already present natural protection).
Vaccine mandates do force people with “vaccine hesitancy” to do what’s “for their own good,” regardless of the person’s own personal risk assessment about the vaccine versus the virus. If that’s true, then we are taking another large step away from being a free people. The Covid vaccines are very new, unlike other vaccines that have become routine. Hesitance on injecting something very new is not irrational, especially since many people may calculate that they have a very low probability risk from the virus itself. Other vaccines that are now mandated (measles, polio, etc.) had much longer track records before the mandates were instituted.
Can people who have been vaccinated spread the virus to others? There have been many claims that vaccinated people can still spread the virus (that’s the justification given for why everyone should wear masks forever). If so, then vaccine mandates don’t do anything to reduce the spread of the virus.
Requiring everyone to be vaccinated doesn’t add to the protection of those who have chosen to be vaccinated, and may not reduce the spread of the virus. So far, the only purpose of vaccine mandates seems to be to force conformity.
Published in Domestic Policy
What if . . . and I’m just thinking out lout here . . . what if this whole thing was run by the Zero Population Growth cult as a means to reduce the planet’s population?
What if the goal was never to prevent COVID but rather to make sure it killed off millions?
It’s a crazy thought, I know, but . . . is it really that crazy?
Doctors want people to get vaccinated so they don’t die.
Doctors want people to get vaccinated so they don’t leave kids parentless.
Doctors want people to get vaccinated so they don’t get blood clots, kidney failure, heart disease, overwhelming maladaptive inflammatory responses, or brain fog.
This doctor remains baffled as to how people are so sure that COVID won’t come for them, especially those who have people counting on them.
Yes, and doctors have been frustrated by the inability to prescribe drugs that work. They were in fact instructed not to treat, but to send people home until they had trouble breathing. Ask yourself why. This is unprecedented.
Nobody is certain covid won’t come for them or won’t come in a serious way, but we do have numbers. There are two CDC charts that tell the story in numbers. Total covid cases by age group and total deaths by age group. Ages 18-64 account for 73.9% of cases but only 20.5% of deaths. On the other hand those aged 65+ account for only 13.1% of cases but a whopping 79.4% of deaths. In my bracket (40-49), only 0.3% of cases result in death.
Considering this, if I were under 50 (and I am) then I would want to wait on the vaccine until it’s better vetted. If I were over 65, though, I would be beating down the door for a vaccine and any boosters I could get.
Age Group Percent of cases Count of cases Percent of US population
Age Group Percentage of deaths Count of deaths Percent of US population
They also claim that unvaccinated people cause variants. That the virus mutates more often and efficiently in unvaccinated people. But the counterclaim is that in fact the vaccination regime causes variants to evolve by putting pressure on the virus. I hear both but I don’t know which is correct.
Here is Dr. McCullough’s argument. He says that mass vaccination has put evolutionary pressure on the virus. Keep in mind that he is in favor of vaccines generally. He thinks we should only have vaccinated those at high risk.https://www.americaoutloud.com/by-pushing-mass-vaccination-governments-have-created-evolutionary-pressures-on-sars-cov-2/
I think both are theoretically possible, but neither has be definitively proven to be the cause of any current mutation. Viruses mutate, it is just what they do, so it is possible that neither actually had any more impact then would be expected from the natural evolution of the virus.
What makes the vaccine caused the mutation claim highly problematic, is that all the currently named variants existed before we were vaccinating anyone. Delta (in all the news now) was first discovered in India months before any country was vaccinating people.
Neither causes variants. They might create opportunities for variants to emerge, though.
And the concept of pressure seems a little shaky in this context. I presume they’re talking about the ability of a variant to out-reproduce the ‘original’ when the original is doing fine. Or maybe the ability to overcome some founder effect.
I’m not sure. But nothing beats the opportunity for variants to evolve than a lot of reproduction, and you get a lot of that where there are no vaccines to slow it down.
Viruses mutate. Virology 101.
Does he put his argument in writing, with the mathematical model he uses as the basis for his argument, and submit it for review? Or is he another of these ChiCom-funded fakes?
So the question remains: how does one justify forcing someone else to receive a specific medical treatment or to act in a specific way or to refrain from acting in a specific way? I assume most conservatives’ default position is that we shouldn’t force any of those things and that there must be sufficient reason to do so.
Let’s set some boundaries. Ebola has a 90% fatality rate. If ebola were as transmissible as covid then I assume most of us would think that extraordinary measures to be justified as an exception to the default rule. On the other side of the question we have things which would NOT justify exception to the rule because the connection between the target and any negative effect is tenuous/indirect/indeterminate, the supposed effect is not severe enough, and moral hazard of enabling authoritarian command of personal decisions.
James seems to think that the potential risk of employee absenteeism is sufficient to depart from the default position. I think Vince is correct that existing employment law disagrees, but aside from employment law I think I’d oppose it anyway. An employer is right to take action in the face of actual absenteeism, but an employer would be wrong morally to control someone else’s tangential decisions just in case. Drug testing is different in that it is testing current/immediate ability to work safely, not as a general lifestyle choice that might have some potential impact.
In regards covid – I’ve laid out the CDC numbers. They don’t justify, IMO, departure from the default, they do not justify forcing/coercing action or treatment on others.
I certainly didn’t read that into his statement.
The OP posited that “So far, the only purpose of vaccine mandates seems to be to force conformity.”
I took James to be responding to that when he said: “An employer might want to keep illness-related absenteeism from crimping operations. If you’re down to one night-shift cashier, and you don’t want to have to close early because they’re sick and you haven’t anyone else to fill the slot, or you don’t want to do the shift yourself because you have to open the store at 6 AM, then you might insist that the employee get the shots.”
This could just be thinking out loud, but the way it’s presented it sounds more like advocacy. Otherwise there is an infinite number things an employer might have an interest in which still do not justify increasing control over employees’ non-job-related activities. Why not force employees to wear a hat and button their coat when they go outside in the cold? Why not forbid employees going to the bar or club on work nights?
Maybe. I thought he was just answering the question about who the vaccines protect.
Yes, this is side of the coin that gets rubbed out.
I don’t know about his “model.” He is a professor at Texas A&M and highly published. The editor of two journals. I don’t think the Chinese would like his writings nor benefit from them. He has been yelling about the WHO and the CDC for some time.
Nobel prize winning scientist Luc Montagnier also believes the vaccines are creating the variants. He says epidemiologists know this and are silent. Montagnier got his prize for discovering HIV. He also said very early on that the virus was engineered in the lab.
https://rairfoundation.com/bombshell-nobel-prize-winner-reveals-covid-vaccine-is-creating-variants/
The doctor’s position is theoretically possible moving forward but does not explain the existence of the multitude of named variants, like delta, which existed before a vaccine existed.
Other position the Dr. Montagnier has advocated
He may be right about things, but his track record following his discovery of HIV is not really comforting.
I’m pretty sure we had variants long before we had vaccines.
Your link article had this:
It almost sucked me in. Which is it? “Read” or “video”?
Are you not concerned about side effects? We have millions of previously healthy people reporting major life-altering side-effects – not to mention death – immediately following injection. Surely this warrants doctors being cautious of recommending an experimental injection to healthy individuals.
https://opslens.com/american-conversations-with-vaccine-injured-episode-1-interview-with-dr-danice-hertz/
https://opslens.com/american-conversations-with-vaccine-injured-episode-2-interview-with-skylar-bush/
https://creativedestructionmedia.com/video/2021/08/25/conversations-with-vaccine-injured-episode-3-interview-with-ken-ruettgers/
Both.
Fair enough. So I went to read it and found this:
Good. So those people got it wrong when they claim he’s saying the coronavirus vaccine is the cause of the variants. Where did they get the idea he said that, I wonder? Maybe the people citing him aren’t watching his interviews, after all?
And there is this:
Since it’s the same mRNA that comes with sars-cov-2, I guess we’ll have disastrous consequences either way. So what’s his solution? That we each go live in a hermetically sealed bubble, isolated from everyone else?
I would suggest that I do have some concerns about side effects.
I would also suggest that I have some concerns about extraordinary claims like “we have millions of people reporting major life-altering side effects- not to mention death”
That would seem to be an extraordinary claim. I would think it would need a great deal of proof. If this were the case we would all know someone who’s life was ended or destroyed by the vaccine.
At what point did we on the Right decided that all doctors are evil and don’t care about our health. If there were millions of life-altering events and deaths, an awful lot of doctors would be sounding the alarm (there actually are real conservative or politically neutral doctors) they would not be recommending it. This would be so big that it would be found everywhere not just on obscure websites.
Oh somewhere around here:
And here.
Our hospitals are overwhelmed! Stay home! We’re so overwhelmed that we . . . (checks notes) . . . spend our time at work choreographing and dancing on Tik Tok videos and marching with Black Lives Matter.
Also, it’s not fair to say “all doctors are evil,” but if they wonder why people are losing trust in them, maybe they need to look at crap like the above and start policing their own.
That would make sense if this were Ebola. It is not. There are drugs that take care of it quite well if used early on and there are good protocols for late treatment, too. That they are not being widely used in this country is a tragedy in my opinion. We haven’t even promoted simple prophylactics. Where is encouragement even just to take vitamin D or lose weight?
Jager, we didn’t decide that all doctors are evil and don’t care about our health. However, all institutions have become politicized to the point of dangerous failure. That includes the medical profession. In a conversation with my general practitioner doctor regarding the vaccines I raised the point of long term effects and side effects. He responded that the vaccines have been tested sufficiently (this was back in June when all were still only emergency use authorization). I tried to expound since I obviously didn’t articulate my point clearly, but he didn’t come off of his point. Not only did he insist that the vaccines are fully tested, he never even acknowledged my point about long term/side effects. I can understand making a case that the vaccines are worth it despite the unknowns about long term effects, but he didn’t do that. So now I can’t trust his judgement because he’s unable or unwilling to address something as fundamental as long term effects.
My experience is just a microcosm of what’s been happening. It’s not that people are suddenly evil; it’s complex. Some are just condescending and authoritarian (and have always been that way), believing that I am too stupid to hear his wisdom and weigh the relative risks so they will get me to think and act the right way by any means. Others themselves aren’t as smart as we thought they were. Others still are more political than professional. Others still are too naive, believing that the traditional institutions have not slid as far as they really have so therefore don’t question as much as they should. Others simply won’t or can’t distinguish between data and subjective analysis based on that data.
Not to mention the medical associations and individual doctors recommending we de-gender medical language like breastfeeding. Supporting the identity regime that says men can menstruate and women can have penises.
Your mention of Ebola gets to an issue that has been present throughout the Covid experience, and seems to be a factor with vaccine mandates – too many people are treating Covid as though it had a much higher fatality rate than it actually has. Putting in place many costly extraordinary measures way out of proportion to the risks posed by the disease.
This argument by you and EdG is one that I can fully understand and accept.