Should the public be forced to take vaccines?

This essay by AP295 investigates whether the public should be forced to take vaccines, as it sometimes is in some countries.

Vaccines have saved millions of people from death, disability or permanent disfigurement. Have you also heard that they are safe and effective? One would be hard-pressed to argue otherwise. At the very least it seems that vaccines are generally a net benefit to public health. However public policy must serve the public interest as a whole. The safety and efficacy of a given vaccine is not sufficient prima facie justification of the public's forced patronage of private pharmaceutical companies, less still forced compliance with a series of injected drugs. The essential but unspoken presumption within the mass media's diegesis about covid-19 vaccines was and is vaccines are safe and effective, therefore they may be forced upon the public which is a non-sequitur unless safety and efficacy are the only imperatives under consideration. The second tacit presumption in so much media is public distrust implies public ignorance. This propaganda exploits political tropes in order to contrive a dialog fit for public consumption: The 'left-wing' archetype believes in science, while the 'right-wing' archetype is positioned as a foil, an impotent caricature of dissent. This supposedly "progressive" diegesis is strikingly favorable to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry, a feature that the media rarely if ever draws much attention to. There would certainly be an uncomfortable dissonance if profit motives or conflicts of interest were to be part of the discourse. Loaded talking points such as FDA approval, frivolous disputes over mask-wearing and other prefabricated strawmen factored largely in the mass media's P.R. strategy, which put strong emphasis on the quality of the product itself while taking for granted that safety and efficacy are sufficient grounds to force vaccines upon the public. It is within this grotesque context that vaccine mandates were and continue to be "debated", or more often dismissed as unworthy of debate altogether as the case might be depending on venue.

In the media's discourse, public distrust in private pharmaceutical companies is portrayed as a reflection of ignorance. Neologisms like "vaccine hesitant" imply indecisiveness and are typically attributed to credulity and a lack of knowledge. The media constantly try to impress the public with the idea that liberty is merely an anti-social archaism rather than a fundamental principle that one can and must demand in order to remain free. If a vaccine is effective and safe, and the disease that it prevents a serious enough risk, then most people at risk will take it voluntarily. Yet suppose for the sake of argument that the majority of the public must be forcibly vaccinated, against the will of many. In this case the research, development and manufacture of that vaccine should be public, transparent and non-profit. In that case, the public must have a stake in how this treatment is developed, manufactured and handled and would have every right to demand that the government nationalize private companies for this purpose rather than contracting one or more companies using public money. One must ask why this is never suggested by the media's self-styled 'left-wing' pundits. The government has no right to force drugs upon the public, but the additional takeaway is that these nominally left media personalities and officials expose themselves as frauds in doing so. Labels like "progressive", "liberal" or "neoliberal" further obscure any concrete set of principles that the public might otherwise expect of them. Their republican or "right-wing" counterparts in the media also expose themselves as frauds in making weak counterarguments that draw from the same false assumptions rather than identifying and refuting them.

If anywhere, one would expect reason, open discourse and critical thought to prevail in higher education. Students are hardly an at-risk group for covid-19 complications or mortality in the first place. Nonetheless, many universities required all students to take a covid-19 vaccine, granting only health exemptions (whatever those might be) and religious exemptions. In some cases, students were required to write a statement to argue that their religion prohibits it, or presumably at least that it's de-facto practice not to get vaccines. Is it not contemptible that one could have declined on religious terms but not in protest of corporate profiteering, corruption, conflicts of interest, or even just on more general principles such as liberty and common decency? Why is such a moral stand the prerogative of those who subscribe to a given religion but not the right of others? Perhaps they are required by law, but in that case an organization should accept any reasonable moral argument. Many universities (including mine) did not respect natural immunity. Clearly the object was to vaccinate as many people as possible regardless of need. The abuse of public policy to force pharmaceutical product upon the public is not acceptable. It also debases culture in other minor ways. The standard western greeting, for instance. People don't shake hands as often because they're self-conscious. Having little to do with corporate profiteering, mask wearing was a perennial talking point during the "height of the pandemic", convenient for impressing the idea that dissenters are unreasonable and anti-social. Who wouldn't just wear a mask?, we're meant to wonder. All the same, there's still a small point to be made here; people don't see one another's faces as often. "Lockdowns" were socially harmful for obvious reasons and entirely unnecessary, looking at statistics like mortality by mortality, age, condition, etc. since the old and infirm are typically retired, and also by common sense, and also with the benefit of hindsight and experience. These are trivialities compared to the disturbing and abjectly Orwellian realization that millions of Americans were injected with a foreign substance against their will or excluded from education or their place of employment because they refused.

The principles of liberty and common decency alone are necessary and sufficient grounds to reject such imposition. This is a moral argument, not a medical argument, and I believe it's the argument that should be made by most people. Some time ago I watched a May 2021 interview of cardiologist Peter A. McCullough, around one hour and forty five minutes long, which has since been removed from youtube and presently does not turn up anywhere in a cursory search among the multitude of newer and frankly inferior videos and interviews in which he appears. As a layman I cannot evaluate the medical aspects or details. That said, his observations on the sort of policy and guidelines being recommended at the time by various government agencies are quite interesting, to the extent I can understand them. He makes a compelling argument that many public health officials and agencies issued policy that discouraged, undermined or prohibited early treatment and are therefore malfeasant. Presumably they did this to increase vaccine use, and I note with some interest that the vaccine and its qualities are arguably only incidental to this alleged wrongdoing. In other words, to knowingly impose public policy that prohibits or discourages effective early treatment using medicine other than a given set of vaccines is presumably illegal regardless of how safe or effective those vaccines are. There are many other salient points and keen observations to the interview. Since then he's been given a dressing down via his Wikipedia BLP, which I'm sure violates WP:BLP, and which misrepresents his argument quite blatantly. Hardly reassuring. If his argument was dishonest then why would it need to? If I recall correctly he did not advocate hydroxychloroquine monotherapy, and specifically stated that monotherapy does not typically work well on viral infections. At various points the BLP claims he was "spreading misinformation", which is a facile and dishonest way to characterize dissenting views. Apparently he was a fairly well-respected cardiologist up until that point in his career. The media's tacit presumption if a vaccine is safe and effective it is okay to force it upon the public is what must be rejected by the public. Such presumptions must first be identified and then dismissed on moral grounds, rather than letting them ride and trying to make evidence fit a morally-justified conclusion that would stand on its own. This isn't to say one shouldn't present evidence, nor that the evidence does not favor his standpoint necessarily, but that evidence and expert opinion can so often be bought, sold and/or distorted. An expert witness at a trial is probably going to speak in favor of whoever is paying them. Mass media, politicians and the corporate interests they serve will try to quash dissenting opinions and debase those who advocate them regardless of whether they come from an expert or not. Yet while mass media can impress the false perception of consensus, disseminate propaganda, spread FUD, and misrepresent dissent, it cannot refute a moral argument or tell people that they don't have the expertise to make a moral judgement, as that's one of the essential assumptions that law and the justice system are predicated upon and justified by, at least from any viewpoint that is not entirely cynical. It certainly can't be called 'misinformation'. Trust must be earned and not demanded. To forcibly inject members of the public with a foreign substance, made by an organization that interferes with public policy and harasses or silences dissent regardless of how well-informed is grossly disrespectful and violating. It's unacceptable on grounds of self-respect alone.

McCullough's subsequent videos do not give me the impression of candidness and honesty that I got from the first. There's a rather interesting sequence of events here. Going through the talk page history of McCullough's BLP I see a familiar pattern; dozens of IP editors making entirely reasonable objections and being completely blown off by a few regular users. It can be observed in the archive or history of most talk pages whose articles strain credulity and are obviously one sided or nonsense altogether. McCullough's BLP is obviously in contravention of wikipedia:WP:BLP and there have been dozens if not hundreds of objections on the talk page, apparently without much effect. It's nothing short of a disgrace that anyone's BLP should look like that. An appalling display of hypocrisy, indecency and cynicism. All that said, I have reservations about his newer media. McCullough's website is somewhat commercial and hokey. A whois lookup suggests he made it in December 2021. The original interview had an entirely different character compared with his newer material, which appears across so many media websites. It seems unlikely anyone would give a choked-up yet interview like the first one I watched without having something important to say. I suspect that after he published the first interview I watched, he was coerced and/or cajoled into adopting a somewhat tacky and conspiratorial public image. In the interview he used a lot of good words and phrases: media, malfeasance, chilling effect, threats, civil society, out of proportion, advertised, etc. In other words, it contains a serious critique of authority, media and policy. Much of this critique concerns policy and does not require medical expertise to understand or interpret. Many doctors should be able to corroborate it if it's true. He is also visibly upset as he delivers the interview, clearly disturbed by the trends he sees. I can only figure that he's quite freshly disillusioned at that point. He rightly speaks of accountability and charges like malfeasance. Going by that interview, wouldn't it make the most sense to then build a malfeasance case against those who knowingly prohibited or discouraged early treatment of covid-19? I don't know for certain whether he did or not but I didn't find such a thing in a quick search. His newer interviews are not quite the same. They're almost similar to so much other media, with emphasis on the vaccine and its health effects. Conversely it doesn't seem like he talks so much anymore about these malfeasance allegations, to which the vaccine itself is incidental. Newer material is not quite as direct or materially relevant. And he now has that expression on his face, a bit of a vacant grin instead of a determined look, reminiscent of Orwell's words in Politics and the English Language "... one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine."

Pfizer and presumably other pharmaceutical companies made out quite well. It's purely a business article, falsely categorized "Health and Science". The ideas that vaccine policies are shaped largely by concern for public health is unsustainable. Big pharma spends more money lobbying than any other industry. . This interest group also contributes more to members of congress than commercial banks and crop production. Searching CNN or any major news website yields a profusion of articles that either read like adverts or reinforce the partisan diegesis: "There are a number of reasons why it’s important for people to get the latest Covid-19 vaccine, CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen told CNN. " "“Do it right away,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University. “The bulk of the winter is yet to come, so still protect yourself.” " "“It definitely is OK for you to get multiple vaccines on the same day,” Cohen said. “I would talk to your doctor or nurse practitioner about what’s right for you.”"  "Hotez maintains that vaccinations are the single most impactful thing you can do to keep yourself and others safe, but he points out that many Americans are not aware that there are new vaccines on the market – particularly the Covid-19 vaccine." "In an interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt, Kennedy, an avid opponent of Covid-19 vaccines and public health policies that were intended to reduce the spread of the virus pushed back on the notion that his previous remarks about Covid-19 that mentioned Jewish ancestry and history were antisemitic." "''Fierce opposition to measures like masking and business closures early in the pandemic fueled a mistrust of the CDC and other scientific institutions and often falls along party lines: Last month, a KFF poll found that 84% of Democrats said they were confident in the safety of covid vaccines, compared with 36% of Republicans. It’s a dramatic drop from 2021, when two-thirds of Republicans were vaccinated.''" It all reeks of marketing and propaganda, especially since the 'pandemic' has more or less run its course. One could also cite any number of articles indicating conflicts of interest in government involving the pharmaceutical industry, and that the interests of the industry factor largely into public policy   . What's the point though? Isn't that obvious already since the product is being forced upon us? Isn't it obvious that forced vaccination is a violation of one's person, that living to 75 and dying of the flu isn't the worst way to go, that the media are also complicit with their fearmongering and promotional coverage, that it's not anti-social to refuse an injection of any sort, that part of the solution to this obvious corruption must be non-compliance, that most universities and colleges and employers had no right to give their students and employees a Hobson's choice, that decency and liberty themselves are at stake?