This was written earlier but then stuff happened and it didn’t get published the day it was written.
There’s an old adage that I’m about to butcher about only really smart people can make certain really stupid mistakes. Which is true – smart people come in the same size human as everyone else but not everyone can be a rocket scientist so most of us will never have to explain a million dollar mistake caused by a misplaced decimal point and a cranky rocket engine.
And to be fair, we all make seriously dumb mistakes sometimes no matter how smart we are. I’m seriously regretting leaving my knitting by the chair – I knew full well that was where my cat likes to sleep. And let’s not discuss the other idiotic stuff I’ve done – well, let’s not talk about it.
You get the picture – no one is perfect and it’s not fair to expect perfection from others. That said, it’s still hysterical when otherwise intelligent people say moronic things.
Which gets me to the point. I saw an interview this evening with a libertarian discussing the vaccine mandates. As conversations are wont to do, they got way out in the weeds. The libertarian gave a hypothetical example of an employer, absent any government intervention, mandating vaccination for his employees. Ignore that the horse is already out of the barn, his contention was that conservatives are hypocritical when they say government is wrong to mandate vaccines but the employer is also wrong when he (supposedly) exercises his First Amendment right to free association.
This is so stupid on so many levels – but none of the panelists realized it even though they mostly disagreed. So let’s go through it.
Freedom of association is violated by the 1964 Civil Rights Act – that’s the one that makes it illegal for public entities and certain private businesses (hotels, restaurants – it’s been expanded a lot since the Sixties) to deny service based on race, gender or creed. Personally, I think it’s past time to repeal the Civil Rights Act – any business stupid enough to refuse service to blacks deserves the resultant bankruptcy – but that isn’t the critical problem. Notice he says ’employees’ – not customers. Vaccinating the staff but allowing sick customers in does nothing to prevent the spread of disease to other unvaccinated individuals in the business (assuming perfect efficacy which is not realistic). This really is hypocritical – and useless.
His premise is that property rights should be preeminent. Let’s accept that for the sake of argument. He had also stated earlier that people owned their own bodies – in other, fancier words, people have proprietary rights to their own bodies. But somehow the employer’s freedom of association trumps the employee’s proprietary rights to his or her own body. Anyone else see a big problem here? If property rights are preeminent, then the employee’s right not to be assaulted with a needle takes precedence over the employer’s right to only associate with vaccinated people.
And yes, we’re ignoring the impossibility of that last bit.
For the record, the freedom of association does not include the right to place another person under duress – like saying ‘get vaccinated or lose your job’. One of the multitude of things we need to fix as a nation is the moronic way we structure employment. Unions or at will – neither is a substitute for a good, enforceable contract – but I digress.
Here’s the reason I find this premise incredibly stupid – vaccines are no different from any other drug. They have failure rates and adverse reactions. In some people, those adverse reactions can be fatal. Mandates – with either the force of government or the duress of circumstance – become randomized executions. Sure, only a very few (assuming a safe and effective vaccine) will actually be harmed or killed. Certainly some of them would have been in a voluntary immunization program as well. But a voluntary program is just that – voluntary. And it comes with this ‘informed consent’ thing that says the person has to be made aware of the risks and alternatives before they make their decision.
Without informed consent, we end up hurting, even killing, more people than we would have had they understood the risks. The majority of people will chose vaccination – and those that are fearful of it for whatever reason shouldn’t be forced into it. That’s immoral. Since the majority will chose vaccination the risk of epidemic or even significant spread is much reduced – with an effective vaccine, of course. With an ineffective vaccine, there’s literally no point to the mandate and any casualties are victims.
Sure, we require vaccination in most school districts – but those laws are tailored to allow for the exceptions both on medical and religious reasons. Since the law does not require proof that the person has either medical or religious reason and informed consent is required (although it’s parental consent with minor children) no one is forced to do something they – or their parents – believe is against their best interests.
Frankly, those laws should be repealed as well. If immunization is truly the best policy – and for most people, I believe it is – then it’s perfectly possible to convince most people. We pay for very expensive research every time we pay for a prescription so I don’t see a reason we can’t use that research to show people that the vaccines really do what we’re told they do and are really as safe as is humanly possible to make them. If we can’t prove that to most people, by what right do we force those people to take potentially harmful drugs?
As for the employer in the example, the only way he can enjoy his right to only associate with vaccinated people is to stay home. In the real world, life is a collision of competing rights. His right to free association ends at the shoulder of the guy who doesn’t want the shot.
