Government-mandated vaccine passports are a denial of basic human rights. Unlike the ambiguity surrounding abortion, vaccines undoubtedly affect only the individual being injected and therefore should be that person’s choice. Informed consent has historically been a moral principle of the medical field. No cognizant patient undergoes medical treatment without first giving permission for clinicians to provide it and for good reason.
Nearly every pharmaceutical drug or medical intervention approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) either has side effects or adverse risks, some of which can be life threatening. The creation of Thalidomide is a great example. While having many beneficial uses such as treatment of multiple myeloma, graft versus host in transplant patients, HIV, and leprosy, it has many side effects. Mild side effects from Thalidomide include dizziness or rash as well as more serious ones like blood clots and peripheral neuropathy. The drug became infamous in the 1960s, when it was discovered that it caused fetal deformities in pregnant women.
Allowing the state to mandate forced vaccinations sets the precedent for mandating other kinds of nonconsenting medical treatment. It is a contradiction of protections of human rights established by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research following the Tuskegee syphilis study, the Nuremberg Code following the Nazi medical atrocities, and the Declaration of Helsinki, all of which established informed consent.
Vaccines have a proven record of being very safe, but serious side effects and deaths have occurred. According to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program nearly six thousand lawsuits have awarded compensation for adverse reactions to various vaccines. Covid-19 vaccines are no exception. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine was halted for a period due to concerns about Guillain-Barre Syndrome and blood clots. The Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines reportedly caused 789 cases of myocarditis, mostly in young males (median age twenty-four). These cases are extremely rare considering the millions of vaccines that have been administered. However, it is even rarer for a young person in their teens and twenties without any serious underlying conditions to experience anything worse than common flu symptoms after contracting coronavirus.
For others that fall into high-risk categories for becoming critically ill or dying of covid, the benefit gained from taking a vaccine is much higher than the risk of experiencing any serious reaction because of it. Data from the recent outbreak of the delta variant show that is disproportionately unvaccinated patients that are being hospitalized. So why haven’t more of these people received the vaccine? There may be some praxeological reasons to consider.
Perhaps some are reacting to the same authorities that promised just two weeks of lockdowns, which turned into three months or longer and left them unemployed. Maybe they saw others who already took the vaccine in exchange for freedom to walk around in public without a face cover and who said that they could not spread the virus to others, only to see that it was not true. They were skeptical when the federal government declared that the pharmaceutical companies couldn’t be legally liable for the consequences of an experimental vaccine. Those conspiracies about nanobots and chips might just be the churning imagination of those who rationally distrust the tyrannical, dishonest politicians, bureaucrats, and media pushing a broken narrative.
Others may be forgoing the vaccine because they have different values. After all, science provides useful information, but it is not a tool to dictate how we should live. Maybe they desire to let nature take its course, even if it makes them sick, for personal or spiritual reasons. A very old person nearing the end of their life could have reached the point that they want nothing but palliative care. Or the elderly demented that have advanced directives to not escalate care may also reject vaccinations.
Also, political reasons, irrational reasons, or no good reason at all. Does it really matter? The point of freedom and democracy is to allow as much individual liberty as possible, not to impose some cosmopolitan ideal of how the world should work.
