The opinion below is that of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Collegian staff.
As I sat in the Kinlaw study room glancing over my hardly legible whiteboard scribbles, I debated giving up. I hate this topic.
I danced through various ideas to communicate this opinion without getting assassinated in the middle of the night. The very fact that I am scared to have a voice about this topic speaks to the problem with the stigmatized issue of vaccine mandates.
After pacing back and forth so much that I wore down the poor carpet, I decided to say that vaccines should not be mandated, as not now. Here’s why.
Health choices should be up to the individual. Now, I’m not outwardly proclaiming the “my body, my choice” mantra, but I do believe to the extent that a medical decision of any kind should be dictated by the person receiving the treatment.
If vaccine mandates were a prominent aspect of our country, we would already have influenza or Hepatitis vaccine mandates, but those are strictly optional.
A medical mandate has never been woven into the picture, so why start now?
Also, so many negative external factors have been integrated into the notion of vaccines, the mandate would only tear the country apart further.
Whether you like it or not, vaccines have been politicized. With politicization comes opposition and stigmatization towards any societal issue.
In Eugene Robinson’s column, “Republicans refusing to get Vaccinated are Owning no one but Themselves,” the glorious opening sentence is, “What used to be the conservative movement in this country is becoming a death cult.”
Robinson has just successfully turned off multitudes of people from getting the vaccine with that very statement. He affiliated the vaccine rejection with a specific political party and berated and placed blame on an entire segment of the population.
Take another societal issue, global warming, for example. The notion of environmental care was spun throughout various belief systems and exhaustingly politicized when really, it should just be basic humanity that desires to take care of the environment.
I’ve heard someone say, “They care about the environment? They must be a liberal.”
Being eco-friendly is not a political statement. Being in favor of the vaccine, or opposing it, does not illuminate one side of the political spectrum.
This idea that a vaccine carrying as much political ammo as an M67 grenade could be mandated after being fueled with so much negativity will easily be set off in response to the instruction and produce destructive results.
President Joe Biden has done a beautiful job in separating the two sides by claiming, “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.” It doesn’t take affiliation with political moderates or adhering to a Switzerland standpoint to deduce that people will not respond well to that statement.
If the current state of the pandemic truly lies with the unvaccinated, why are vaccinated people so adamant on a nationwide vaccine mandate? Biden’s speech is filled with contradictory statements, and the basis of his argument just doesn’t track.
Unvaccinated people are a state of the pandemic. Vaccinated people can be affected by COVID-19. Unvaccinated individuals are the main spreaders of the coronavirus. Vaccinated people can still be carriers of the virus. Is anyone else confused?
Apparently, coronavirus is now transferable through surfaces and physical human contact, which was not the case when the pandemic started. The coronavirus is getting smarter. Someone needs to teach it how to hook up my XBOX to the TV next; that’d be extremely helpful.
Information is never reliable, facts are never solidified and differing opinions seem never to be plausible.
With the terrible government response tactic of, “Oh, you’re not going to do what we say? Well then, we’ll make you do it,” I am, for the sake of the country’s well-being, pretty nervous about a vaccine mandate.
I am burdened by the notion that a fatalistic separation between the two opposing sides will result in a drastic outburst of some kind. The amount of aggression, narrow-mindedness, and irrationality is easily setting up a framework for a form of activism inciting a movement on either side of the spectrum.
So, to keep things from getting out of hand, I firmly believe that letting people make choices for themselves is the safest route. Suppose society could get to a point where there would be a lack of pressure and a more straightforward, informative method of communication. In that case, I think vaccinations would even happen organically.
Who knows, some people may believe my opinionated outbursts are a bit too risqué, while others may classify it as political poetry. Either way, for right now, the freedom of personal choice still rests in your hands, so do with that what you will.
