Thread by @HegKong

Mini guide to forced vaccination policies:

-Mandatory vaccination
-Compulsory vaccination
-Coercive vaccination

Vaccination policies are coercive when penalties are applied for non-vaccination.

Both mandatory and compulsory vaccination are examples of coercive policies but the two terms are often conflated.

Mandatory vaccination is the withholding of valuable social goods or services from people who choose not to vaccinate for non-medical reasons. For example the withholding of social benefits or rebates for childcare expenses.

Compulsory vaccination on the other hand refers to the criminalization of vaccine refusal.

In order to boost vaccine uptake, companies can be encouraged to make vaccination a condition of employment, and vaccination can be made a requirement for traveling (Vaccine passports).

Bars, restaurants, cinemas, sports venues, airlines, employers, and others can all make vaccination a condition of service, and anyone refusing vaccination will have their social lives and mobility completely stunted. A form of personal lockdown.

Regardless of how you call it, these tactics of restricting personal freedom to coerce people into getting vaccinated are blackmail, pure, and simple.

All of these policies violate the right to bodily autonomy and the right to voluntary consent and considering that Covid poses a minuscule risk to the vast majority of the population, the suspension of these rights cannot be justified.

Only in cases of extreme danger to public health, such as the bubonic plague or Ebola, could such rights justifiably be suspended.

References:

Mark Navin and M.A. Largent, ‘Improving nonmedical vaccine exemption policies: three case studies’, Public Health Ethics, 10, 3 (2017): 225–234

References:

Alberto Guibilini, ‘An Argument for Compulsory Vaccination: The Taxation Analogy’ Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 37, No. 3, July 2020 doi: 10.1111/japp.12400 vaccination.