Mandatory or Compulsory...You Choose!

Let me be clear, I am not an anti-vaxxer and this blog has nothing to do with the outrageous claims made by many in that space. This post is about personal prudence and how government is seeking to influence your personal judgment.

Once again, the trojan horse is Covid -19.

This week, the Prime Minister pre-ordered millions of doses of a 'vaccine' that isn't even proven to be safe or effective yet. That is a prudent move from the government as if the vaccine does succeed at trials, Australia will have a supply available.

However, the PM made a major blunder when he said the vaccine would be compulsory or mandatory. Despite the spin doctoring by government figures as they backed away from those statements, for most people those words are interchangeable and mean you will be forced to do something.

This is where I begin my objections to the government plans and it has nothing to do with vaccines per se. My objection is the rush to introduce this vaccine and impose it on the populace.  

We know that there has never been an effective vaccine developed against a Coronavirus before. We also know that vaccines usually take many years of development and testing before being approved for widespread human use. That is prudent because some previous programs have had  debilitating results leading to death and long term negative effects.

In the past, some people actually  developed polio from some polio vaccines. The swine-flu vaccine of 1976 led to cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome. The first vaccine to prevent Rotavirus was released in 1998 and withdrawn in 1999 because it caused bowel problems in some children. There are still recalls of influenza vaccines due to unintended effects.

These are just some examples of problems even where a full testing regime had been conducted prior to release. None of the examples above change my mind about the importance and benefits of vaccination but they do suggest that even when the most rigorous testing takes place, errors can still be made.

Now, despite protestations to the contrary,  we are expected to be force-fed a new vaccine, that will be rushed into production, to prevent a type of virus that no vaccine has been successfully found for  before. That doesn't sound prudent to me.

Of course, some will object to my use of the term 'force-fed'. Even if we ignore the PMs use of the terms mandatory and compulsory, the governments intentions are very clear.  They will withhold liberties if you don't comply.

One government minister suggested was you could be denied travel permits or re-entry into Australia if you didn't have the vaccine. What makes that statement even more extraordinary is they are already working to fly foreign students into the country in a bid to prop up the economy they have destroyed!

Now we know most cases of this virus in Australia have been brought in from overseas so why would they even be considering importing a potential further problem now? It's not like we can rely on the state governments quarantine procedures after all (think Victoria).

Employers too are already getting in on the act. Some are demanding the right to sack workers who don't get vaccinated against Covid-19. They are being backed by the unions.

All this for a virus that has a proven mortality rate akin to influenza and largely impacts the obese, the sick and the aged (just like the flu does).

A lot about this entire pandemic doesn't sit right with me and it hasn't from the very beginning. Now this next phase makes me even more uncomfortable. It looks like we will be expected to participate in a vaccination program that will have been through the least rigorous public use process in modern history.

That might not be a problem....or it could be a huge problem.

However, one thing my time in government taught me was that every time the state rushed into a course of action to fix one problem they often created a much larger one. We've already seen that with the response to the Covid-19 pandemic and this latest decision may be a further step in the wrong direction.