When COVID-19 jabs became widely available to the public last year, conspiracy theories turned into reality as governments all over the world implemented some sort of vaccine mandate or restriction based on vaccine status.
The practical arguments for mandating these experimental shots are weak. They do not do very well to prevent transmission, they do not do a very good job preventing infection, and they exhibit a terrible safety record compared to vaccines for other diseases.
But in all the articles I’ve read and the interviews I’ve watched where proponents of vaccine mandates presented their arguments, one point in particular repeatedly comes up:
We already mandate lots of vaccines. These new mandates aren’t any different.
For a long time, I believed that there was no problem mandating vaccines against certain diseases such as measles. However, over the past year, my stance on this subject has undergone a radical change.
I now believe that it is unethical to force any sort of medical intervention on anyone.
Though there are many practical arguments against certain medical mandates, the ethical stance against all such mandates is one that very few people accept. In certain countries, most people agree that certain vaccines should always be mandated and other medical interventions like masks should be required during an emergency. The existence of this precedent makes it very easy for people to believe future medical mandates are justified whenever the “experts” call for them.
It is critical to attack these existing medical mandates as unethical, even in cases where there may be strong evidence supporting their practicality. Doing so provides a solid defense against future mandates that may be harmful to the overall health of the population.
My arguments here are are directed against the use of coercion to impose unwanted medical interventions on a person. They are not directed against voluntary or contractually obligated medical interventions.
First, some definitions.
By “practical” I mean the method of weighing costs and benefits using data.
By “ethical”, I mean a universal standard of right and wrong necessary for the base functioning of society (e.g. protection of life and private property). Unethical behavior typically involves a direct harm on another person or a breach of justice.
By “moral”, I mean the ethical standard plus the additional set of standards of right and wrong that is not necessary for the base functioning of society, but is widely recognized culturally (e.g. traditional family values). Immoral behavior may or may not constitute a direct harm on another person or a breach of justice.
Bypassing agency
In order to personally develop the skills necessary to survive and thrive, humans need agency. It is a key component of the learning process and vital for long term growth and survival. Coercing a medication on another person violates their agency and deprives that person of exercising an ability that is key to long term survival and prosperity.
Individuals are in the best position to make decisions for themselves because they are the most knowledgeable about their personal situation. Even when a medical intervention could help someone who is ignorant about its effects, that person ought to receive all the relevant information necessary to be persuaded rather than coerced. This ensures that the agency of the person in question is respected.
For a more in depth discussion about the ethics of persuasion and coercion, please refer to one of my previous articles.
The Ethical Dilemma in Protecting the Vulnerable
Some interventions like vaccines or medical masks are put in place to prevent disease spread. Because these preventative measures can never in theory be perfect, their effectiveness theoretically depends on a large percentage of others utilizing the measures.
In the case of vaccines, the goal of any vaccination program is to achieve herd immunity. Herd immunity is the state where enough of a population is immune to a disease so that the rate of disease spread does not increase exponentially.
Some people are immunocompromised and could react poorly to a vaccine. In other cases, such as with measles, young children are not old enough to take a vaccine and are more susceptible to severe disease because of their age and naïve immune systems. In theory, if enough able people are vaccinated, then the chances of the immunocompromised or infants catching the disease drops.
The ethical dilemma centers on whether we should coerce people to get vaccinated in order to protect those who cannot get vaccinated.
In other words, should we force able-bodied people to save or protect weak people?
To help us answer this question, let’s consider a thought experiment posed by philosopher Peter Singer. Imagine a man walks by a large fountain and sees a small child drowning. Should the government coerce the walking man to save the drowning child? Should we put the walking man in jail for being negligent if he decides not to save the drowning child?
Now, to be clear, I hope that everyone reading this would not need much convincing to immediately go save the drowning child. But the question is not whether the man should save the drowning child. That is an obvious yes. The question is whether we should punish the man if he is negligent.
This is not an easy philosophical question, but it is at the root of the medical mandate issue. To address it, we need to define justice and beneficence, as well as determine what society’s role is in delivering justice. Philosopher James Otteson provides an in-depth discussion regarding Singer’s thought experiment in the fourth chapter of The Essential Adam Smith, a short booklet about the famous 18th century philosopher, Adam Smith.
Singer argues that in this case, a negligent man would be acting unjustly. The child clearly needs saving, and any decent person would drop what they were doing to save the child. But even though our moral codes instruct us to help the child, some heartless person may ignore that moral intuition, and the state ought to punish such a person if they fail to act.
Otteson presents an opposing argument from a Smithian perspective. For Adam Smith, justice is a “negative” virtue. That means that for someone to act justly, that person must refrain from harmful action. The basic rules for justice are to guard the life and property of our neighbor, as well as guard that which has been promised to him from others. In order for a society to survive, it must follow these rules of justice and may enforce them through violent means if necessary.
Beneficence on the other hand is a “positive” virtue. In order for someone to act beneficently, that person must engage in action that improves the lives of others. The rules for beneficence are that it must be free for the beneficiary, come at some cost to the benefactor, and may not be forced. People strive to be beneficent not because they fear the threat of force from the state, but because they want to act in a way that garners praise from others, even when no one is around to offer praise.
Smith would probably argue that a negligent man does not need to be punished by force because he did not break one of the three rules of justice. If we punish the negligent man, we are not punishing him due to a change in behavior. Rather, we would be punishing him due to a change in circumstance. If one minute his behavior is perfectly legal, should he be charged as a criminal the next minute just because the circumstances change? This does not mean that the man is free from retribution. Other social and perhaps even biological mechanisms exist to punish the negligent man for failing to act in a beneficent manner.
Singer would argue that Smith’s definition of justice is too thin. However, expanding the definition of justice opens the door to coercing other behavior that could be deemed beneficial for the “public good”. While it may seem obvious to punish the man if he neglects to save the drowning child, other cases may not be so obvious. Should we punish the rich for not giving to the poor? Should we punish healthy people for not providing care for the sick? Should we punish people with homes if they do not shelter the homeless?
Beneficent actions always comprise a cost and a benefit. We might consider certain actions immoral when the perceived benefit to others far outweighs the cost to the individual. In the case of the drowning child, the cost to the man is minimal (wet clothes, a few minutes late to an appointment) while the benefit is incalculable (saving the life of a child). However, at what point do we distinguish between unjust and just behavior? What if the child is drowning in the sea? What if there is a riptide? How much does the man need to sacrifice before we decide that he does not need to be punished for neglecting to save the child? Because every situation is different, and because individual valuations are so variable, it is impossible to fully delineate between punishable acts of omission and blameless acts of omission.
The law delineates behavior which may require correction through violent means and should only target those cases where violence is justified. It does not need to coerce behavior that is for the good of others. Other mechanisms motivate people to do good for their communities. In a society where value is subjective, it is anyways impossible to delineate what is for the collective good without consulting the value judgments of a relative few. Laws must be specific, and it is impossible to be specific with a wide spectrum of collectively “beneficial” actions that are valued differenty by different people.
In short, refusing to act beneficently may be immoral, but punishing by force the omission of such acts is unethical.
Alright, so let’s say we accept the Smithian argument, and we shouldn’t coerce able-bodied people to help or protect the weak. Couldn’t we still say though that in the case of mandatory vaccination, an unvaccinated person can spread disease, thereby actively harming others? This leads us to the issue of externalities.
Externalities
Last year a well-known economist from the Brookings Institute, Justin Wolfers, tweeted a short explanation as to why the government needed to force everyone to get jabbed with an experimental medical product.
Economists such as Wolfers like to define externalities as the unintentional effects of someone’s behavior on a third party. If an effective vaccination becomes available to the general public, my refusal to get jabbed means that I can still spread a virus, which means other people could still catch a disease from me and potentially die. In other words, my refusal to get vaccinated imposes an externality on anyone who catches the disease from me.
Don Boudreaux offers two retorts that cut to the heart of the externalities argument (found here and here).
The core of Boudreaux’s arguments centers on how our society creates property rights. A genuine externality is not just the unintentional effects of someone’s actions on a third party. It is the unintentional effects of someone’s actions on the property rights of a third party.
As social creatures, our actions are constantly affecting others. Property rights emerge out of our reasonable expectations. For instance, we accept that our neighbors can make loud noises during the day while making renovations to their home, but we expect them to not make any noises at night while we are trying to sleep.
Disease has always been and always will be a part of human life. There is a reasonable expectation that going outside and interacting with other people will occasionally result in coming down with an illness, maybe even a life-threatening illness. Though there have unfortunately been times in history when people shamed, blamed, and excluded the diseased, a unique feature of modern society is that people are not held liable (well, at least before 2020) for being potential vectors of disease. Holding others liable for potentially spreading disease would make social interaction impossible. Since we are constantly spreading millions of viruses and bacteria to each other, under such a legal system we would all constantly be subject to liability. We would constantly be suspicious of one another and have to regularly pay each other reparations for transmitting disease.
Private property internalizes the externality. One day out of no fault of my own I may give you a cold, and another day you may unknowingly give me a cold. You have every right to check my vaccination status before I enter your shop, but you have no right to enter the property of an unmasked or unvaccinated individual and then later sue that person for potentially transmitting a disease.
When it comes to the externalities argument, medical mandates are still unethical. In a society where millions of people interact, breath the same air, and use the same public places, there is no established right to not get sick. As long as there is no infringement on private property, individuals should be able to say “no” to any medical intervention offered to them.
New Technologies Argument
Imagine if you will that an inventor created a technology that would save 1000 lives every day. Only the inventor knows how to work it, but he is not sure what the side-effects are. For whatever reason, he withholds the technology from the public.
The government gets wind of the inventor’s technology and demands that he use it. He refuses and is thrown in jail until he changes his mind.
Is the government justified for jailing the inventor? From the inventor’s perspective, it would have been better for him had he never invented the new technology. Why is it that one minute he is a normal person minding his own business, but in the next minute he is a criminal merely because a new technology exists and he possesses the knowledge to use it? This dilemma is similar to the previous example of a man who fails to save a drowning child.
Technology and innovation bring with them new risks and rewards, and new laws may be required to address these risks. However, the new laws need to be consistent in the theoretical absence of these technologies and innovations.
Imagine a more realistic scenario. Prior to the measles vaccine, virtually everyone caught measles as a child. If you caught measles and it spread throughout the community, potentially even killing young children in your neighborhood, you would not be thrown in jail for those deaths even though you were a vector of disease.
Now along comes the measles vaccine, which shows evidence to immunize against measles with minimal risk. Let’s say you have not caught measles yet, but you decide to not get vaccinated and would rather catch the disease naturally. Should the presence of the technology make you a criminal for doing the same thing you would have done in the absence of the technology?
The “new technologies” test is a good way to understand whether laws regarding a particular innovation or technology are just. The law ought to be consistent regardless of whether the technology were available or not. This is critical for our modern society, where technology advances at a rapid pace. If it is not consistent, then it sets a precedent where future people in power can coerce the usage of new technologies onto an unsuspecting populace for personal gain. We have seen much of that over the past two years, as some billionaires have become even wealthier due to vaccine mandates.
Conclusion
Medical mandates are unethical for various reasons. They infringe on the agency of individuals, which weakens the faculties necessary for survival and continued prosperity.
Forcing people to take medical products for the “common good” is a threat of violence against individuals who are best situated to make decisions for their own well being. It sacrifices the well-being of certain individuals for the supposed well-being of the “common good”, something that can never be determined unanimously by a large collective and can only be delineated by individuals in power. Medical mandates for the “common good” are not only unethical but unnecessary, as people will seek the benefit of their communities without the threat of force from the state.
Some proponents contend that medical mandates are necessary to correct a negative externality, but when these supposed externalities do not infringe on anyone’s property rights, they do not require any correction by forceful means. Finally, laws ought to be consistent, even in the absence of a particular technology or innovation. Since medical mandates often involve some technology or innovation, the laws concerning these technologies or innovations ought to be consistent in the absence of such technologies.