Vaccine Mandates and the Death of Personal Choice

The arrival of Omicron is causing COVID déjà vu in the U.S. With cases surging, many political leaders are considering lockdowns right before the holidays. In New York, the Rockettes have announced the closing of their Christmas Spectacular, and the fate of NYC’s annual New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square is in question. 

Meanwhile, existing vaccines against COVID seem to have no effect on the spread of this variant — and even the New York Times admits it. Pfizer is already indicating that it will use the occasion to urge a “fourth dose” of the vaccine. In New York City, where 90.6% of adults are vaccinated, officials have announced that the City has broken its COVID case record two days in a row.  An Atlantic article reporting on the case-rate in NYC has the simple headline, “No, like, everyone has COVID right now.”

But even though the fear-mongering is out in full force, and extremely restrictive lockdowns are going into effect in many European countries, the news is not actually all bad. The best information we have about the Omicron variant comes from South Africa, where the strain was originally identified. Doctors there have reported that, despite being extremely contagious, Omicron almost always presents with mild symptoms and that only 1.7% of reported cases have led to hospitalization. Even better, Bloomberg News reports “the number of hospitalizations in this wave is also being inflated by the fact that milder patients are being admitted because there is room to accommodate them.” 

Says Waasila Jassat, a researcher with South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Disease, “We have seen a decrease in a proportion of people who need to be on oxygen. They are at very low levels.” [sic]. And that’s true in a country with a “full vaccination” rate hovering around 26%. The U.S., with a full vaccination rate closer to 62%, should see even lower hospitalization rates. 

So, we know that Omicron travels very fast and seems to be the most contagious version of COVID yet, but also that symptoms tend to be milder than prior variants and Omicron is so far requiring far less hospitalization.  I’d say that altogether there is reason to be optimistic — after all, almost everyone catches a cold in the winter.

And furthermore, if vaccines slowed the spread, surely we wouldn’t be seeing record case numbers in NYC with every passing day. Per the most recent (December 20) CDC guidelines: “CDC expects that anyone with Omicron infection can spread the virus to others, even if they are vaccinated or don’t have symptoms.” Lacking evidence that vaccination lowers the rate of spread of infection, and thus lacking evidence that people need to get vaccinated to protect others, you might think political leaders would reconsider their stance on vaccine mandates. Instead, they’re doubling down.

Here’s a statement from the White House that could be satire and unfortunately isn’t: “For the unvaccinated, you’re looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.”

My personal instagram feed always gives me good insight into the way the mainstream Left is thinking. As COVID cases rise, my feed has once again become home to plentiful pro-vaccine propaganda and lots of hate towards the unvaccinated and the vaccine-hesitant. This is despite the fact that we know Omicron is infecting both the vaccinated and unvaccinated in record numbers.

My peers are virulent and dogmatic about COVID vaccination, even though they are in the 25-45 age range and therefore not in a high-risk group for ill-effects of COVID. The prevailing view among them is that getting the vaccine is about fulfilling our responsibility to others, and that not getting the Covid vaccine marks one as a selfish, careless — practically violent — member of society: someone who thoughtlessly spreads disease and death to the most vulnerable among us.

My belief is that the government pushes vaccine mandates because without them it’s hard to think of a good reason for a young person with no comorbidities to get vaccinated. That person’s risk from the disease is already low enough that the vaccine may not have much effect against it. And so, the narrative about protecting others persists, even though the only coherent argument in favor of vaccination – even before Omicron – was to protect yourself from the worst effects of the disease.

But even as the Omicron variant continues to undermine the necessity of getting vaccinated, there is unwavering insistence that vaccination is the key to ending the pandemic and that to remain unvaccinated is a burden on society. As an example of the most recent argument in favor of this idea, here is a post from one of my Instagram friends. It is a quote taken from a New York Times opinion piece:

I did not engage this friend in a conversation about her post (as I have with other friends in the past) but if I had, the first thing I would ask is: Since our choices might always have consequences that affect others, do we have a right to any personal choice at all?  Why stop at vaccination? 

If the unvaccinated are a strain on the healthcare system, then obesity is significantly more of a burden. Should the government control what people can and cannot eat, and what the portion size is? Does the government have the right to mandate exercise? If the unvaccinated stress our emergency care resources, then drug and alcohol addicts do so tenfold. Does that mean the government can — or should — force-prevent substance use?

Many of my progressive friends fail to see the contradiction between freedom and subordination that exists within their own views. The same friends who promote vaccination as a moral obligation for the “greater good” will un-ironically follow it up with a post in support of the “fat positivity” movement.  These are the same friends who have grown up in the aftermath of the failed war on drugs. They have likely been smoking pot since they were in high school, and they have certainly lent their voices to the drug legalization movement. 

How can they not see that those movements are dependent on a belief in individual freedom and the right to personal autonomy — even when those choices have negative consequences for other people? In their pro-vaccine zeal, they don’t see that there’s a slippery slope in saying that “your” choices – any of your choices – can become “our” choices if there’s a compelling enough reason.

Of course, seemingly unbeknownst to them, that truth was always buried inside the proposition of “healthcare for all.” Maybe COVID will help expose it. Individual choices are a liability when resources are scarce and must be shared. The people overseeing the supply of healthcare resources will have to be able to draw lines and pull plugs. Those who make what are deemed to be “bad decisions” will get the first cut.

I wonder if my friends who think “healthcare for all” simply means “make it so that I don’t have to pay” — the same ones who insist that coverage should include sex changes and abortions, among other voluntary treatments — will catch on to that before the die is cast.