We’ve all witnessed people who claim their right to choose or to refuse their own medical care for infectious viral diseases. They believe their rights over-ride any responsibility to public health. There are others who take this a step further. They publicly call for others to refuse vaccination.
Is this similar to motorcycle riders who refuse to wear a helmet? Not really. Obviously, the rider who won’t wear a helmet puts himself in danger. It’s also not a stretch to argue that medical care costs would be greater for everyone, if enough motorcycle riders wrecked while helmet-less.
Is vaccine refusal similar to shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater? This would endanger more people than a helmet-less motorcycle rider. But endangering a theater full of people still doesn’t come close to calling for others to refuse vaccination during a pandemic. Do individuals also have the right to spread a highly infectious disease? I say, the danger they create is much greater than shouting ‘fire’ in a theater.
If these analogies, a helmet-less motorcycle rider or shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, don’t quite fit, what does?
If your house was burning, and you refused access to the fire department, you might endanger only yourself as well as your property. If you lived in a town or city, your burning house would certainly be a hazard to other neighboring houses. If that fire spread to enough other houses, it could become a large fire, capable spreading beyond one neighborhood. This comes a lot closer to the danger from an unchecked pandemic. However, an unchecked viral pandemic spreads faster, and is a much greater danger, than any large city fire.
Let’s carry this analogy to an extreme. What if you threatened fire fighters with a gun, preventing them from fighting the fire, as it spread to other houses? I maintain that political efforts to prevent anti-pandemic measures, such as vaccination, wearing masks, or denying that the corona virus pandemic is real, is equivalent to threatening fire fighters as they do their job.
And this brings me to my final point. Cities, states, and the federal government do have the right to mandate vaccination or wearing masks to check a viral pandemic. This has been done in the past, is supported by local laws and court systems, and has been legally reviewed and supported three times by US Supreme Court decisions. Refusing vaccination, or advocating that others refuse vaccination during a public health crisis, is not a right that individuals have. It’s like setting a city-wide fire while threatening fire fighters with a gun.
@Auditor55 – You have posted known falsehoods about mRNA vaccines, repeatedly. Yet, you come back again and again. And now you've brought along a wingman,
@Huey645 . Stop it, both of you. Moderators, take note.
