Socialisation of Compliance...
...with "public health measures" is a power trip of the Big Pharma cartel and the bureaucrats big and small, on the back of our health and our rights.
As the “mandate” part of the Covid “vaccination” charade seems to be going rapidly into the sunset in most Western countries, we should not relax and become complacent. As it has served the goals much loftier than simply jabbing as many times as possible as many people as possible “against Covid”. Rather, the even more important part of the play has been taking away from us the liberties we all took for granted. Including our bodily autonomy and our say in the medical decisions regarding ourselves and our loved ones, including our minor children. With best intentions, of course. We all know where best intentions usually lead:
Lest it ever repeats (and it has all intentions to), we must keep our powder dry and don’t allow this totalitarian nonsense to be passed for a moral virtue ever again. As we surely failed to stop it in its tracks this time.
To be more specific, I am talking about the “protecting others”, “doing your part”, and “it would’ve been so much worse” kind of rhetoric, to back up the mandatory vaxx policies:
The immediate conclusion being: do as you are told, or else we can do ANYTHING to you, in the name of public health and safety. And who are you to endanger public health and safety - a lowly uneducated anti-vaxxer at best, a dangerous fringe extremist more likely. And all this insult for what - for trying to exercise your right to informed consent? Right…
A new great study, “Covid-19 vaccine boosters for young adults: A risk-benefit assessment and five ethical arguments against mandates at universities” (SSRN, 2022.09.12) attacks these “ethical” arguments head on, in the context of vaccination mandates in universities. I have found their retort highly instructive and want to share it here:
Objections: possible rationales for mandates
Despite the considerations above, proponents of university Covid-19 (booster) mandates might argue that such policies are justified (even if some individuals experience uncompensated harms) because they: (i) help normalize compliance with vaccination as a social duty (thereby promoting solidarity or pro-vaccine attitudes that undermine anti-vaccination sentiment) and/or (ii) help to increase the safety of the university environment or wider society.
Mandates may help some people "feel better," knowing that everyone in a crowd, dorm, or classroom is vaccinated, that they are among peers that have "done the right thing" and "care about the safety of others." For instance, some faculty and staff may "feel protected" by the new booster mandate introduced at Western University in Ontario, Canada, on August 22, 2022. From this perspective, if a majority of university policymakers (whether clinical advisory group members, administrators and/or professors) or students believe that vaccination should be socialised to promote solidarity, counteract anti-vaccination sentiment, or create a safe environment, then such beliefs (and values) should guide policy. However, even if many people hold such beliefs and even if such goals are valuable, policy must be responsive to facts. Risk-benefit assessments should remain objective and avoid the use of some people feeling better or safer to justify behavioural rules with sanctions for non-compliance in the absence of rational justification. While many vaccines do improve group safety by reducing transmission, the current generation of Covid-19 vaccines do not provide significant lasting effects of this kind, and repeated doses appear to provide diminishing benefits (in terms of reduced infection) per dose, especially among young adults." It therefore makes little sense to claim that Covid-19 vaccination is a pro-social act (or that the unvaccinated are a disproportionate threat to others). Moreover, it is unclear whether mandating Covid-19 boosters will produce a net positive effect on pro-vaccine sentiment in society—in fact, booster mandates appear to be associated with an increase in anti-vaccination beliefs and reduced uptake of other (non-coronavirus) vaccines. As highlighted above, there are also wider social harms of policies that purport to reduce transmission of a ubiquitous virus: such policies may create a fear of infection among young healthy people (out of proportion to the actual risks) and contribute to worsening mental health which predated the pandemic."
Moreover, the claim that the socialisation of compliance with public health measures can justify those measures is problematic for three other reasons:
First, such an argument is circular: compliance is not an end itself; policy must be justified by the expectation of public health benefit.
Second, people may have different attitudes to compliance depending on their values (e.g., the views regarding the importance of individual liberty) and experiences (e.g., those with low baseline levels of trust in public health due to negative experiences of health professionals or government agencies). Policies that require people to comply against their values and preferences require ethical justification, especially where voluntary compliance is likely to be lower among those who are disempowered (e.g., students) or marginalised for other reasons, for example those from social groups which have been mistreated by government agencies or by the medical system in the past, including in the context of research."
Third, the socialisation argument is based, in part, on concepts of civic duty and responsibility to others. Pushing for boosters even when these will not contribute to overall risk reduction runs counter to the responsible use of public resources. Policies that encourage waste of valuable health care resources, to make some feel better, are sending a distorted message about important societal obligations.
The proclivity for university vaccine mandates may also reflect harmful trends toward intolerance in university bureaucracies that value compliance over individual freedoms. Mandates, by their nature, encourage conformity and acquiescence to authority, and exclude those with different views or values. Though universities might take pride in being places that permit the free exchange of ideas, mandates reduce the scope for reasoned debate regarding scientific uncertainties or conflicts of ethical values.
On top of holding everyone responsible for the current debacle individually and collectively accountable for their actions, the best we can do for the future is to save the receipts from the current Covid “vaccination” fallout, and the next time these “moral” and “ethical” arguments are being brought to bear on our individual rights, stick these receipts on the perpetrators’ faces.
Any other recommendations, dear reader?
P.S. 2022.10.07 Julie Ponnese, the Canadian human rights hero in fight against Covid mandates, has her take on the quoted study in “The real reason mandates are wrong“:
…with all its strengths, I worry that the paper misses the larger point about why vaccine mandates are wrong. It’s still playing at the collectivist cost-benefit game, a morally flawed game with rules that normatively privilege the group over the individual and assign no absolute value to the right of self-governance.
Playing skillfully at the collectivist’s game is just another form of defeat.
Enthusiasts often say that mandates are justified because they prevent actual harm to others while posing either no harm to the individual or only a small risk of harm (from possible side effects, which they take to be negligible by comparison). Weighing the risk of harm against actual harm always yields a net benefit, and therefore obligation, to vaccinate.
But this isn’t true. Being vaccinated under duress or due to coercion constitutes not just a risk of harm but actual harm to one’s bodily autonomy and therefore to personhood.
…The person who is vaccinated against her better judgment doesn’t just risk the harm of side effects; she suffers actual and enduring harm to the capacities that make human life possible. Why don’t mandate enthusiasts see this? Because the only measure of integrity we understand in our science-obsessed culture is physical integrity: the functional unity of our physical bodies. Our culture understands how viruses wreak havoc in the body but not how moral injury wreaks havoc in the soul. And so we leave no room for the assignment of disvalue to assaults on personal autonomy and integrity.
Vaccine mandates are wrong not because they fail to generate a net benefit or because the risks to vaccinated persons outweigh public health benefits (though both are true).
They are wrong because they trample on the very thing the noblest version of a liberal democratic society should be trying to create. If our society is to be great, it must aspire to more than safety or, more accurately, the perception of safety. Its starting point must be an absolute commitment to creating the largest sphere possible for each person to live with bodily and mental integrity.
We don’t owe our lives to reduce others’ risks or perceived risks. Because the cost is always too great. The cost is our humanity.
Making people feel comfortable is not a societal benefit. When the comfort is with respect to mental illness, doubly so. When the mental illness was induced by those same authorities, triple.
Certainly the death and injury rate for younger people was not a "social good" out of this. Myocarditis was never on anyone's lips before this.
My own kids have avoided community college due to asinine mandates. The supposed most accessible place for learning turned into bureaucratic hoops to jump thru, only to have the religious exemption cancelled just before classes were to start. Everything was "inclusive" until it wasn't.