Mandatory Vaccination — A Question of Bodily Autonomy
The matter of vaccination is becoming one of the most polarising subjects in society, and while it is a topic of great contention, there is a severe lack of actual debate. But if we want to ameliorate the situation, debate is exactly what we need. So let’s start at the fundamental aspect; bodily autonomy.
Should we force people to get vaccinated?
A point of agreement most of us can have is that we decide what we do with our own body. This is the set point, and we make exceptions from here, in order to avoid people hurting each other. It is illegal for me to use my body to hurt others, but i can live off junk food if i want to, since it only hurts myself. There are other exceptions, but overall we want to maximise and guarantee bodily autonomy wherever it doesn’t directly hurt others.
One could make the argument that me living off McDonald’s will cause others to bear the burden of my hospital bill via universal healthcare, yet this would much sooner serve as an argument against universal healthcare than it would banning McDonald’s.
When it comes to vaccines the question is somewhat simple:
Should we force people to get vaccinated?
This is the relevant question, because this is what is contested. I have not seen anyone argue for banning vaccines, and thus i will ignore this possibility.
Fundamentally, forcing another person to get vaccinated is quite clearly a significant encroachment on their bodily autonomy. We would in effect be forcing this person to be injected with a substance, through a needle, against their will.
Regardless of whether we believe to have proven the vaccine to be safe, the procedure nonetheless necessitates a serious breach of a persons bodily autonomy. This means that the burden of proving its necessity must both rest on those who wish to enforce it and must weigh more heavily than the encroachment of rights that it presupposes.
Simply put, if you want to force people to do something unwanted, you need to prove the absolute necessity of doing so.
The Current Virus
Moving on to the elephant in the room, we now face the question of whether people should be forced in to taking a vaccine for the current virus. Some leaders have denounced the idea of forcing vaccination in public statements, but legislation is being enacted in many countries allowing for this. Nevertheless, the more politically viable solution will come in the form of indirect pressure in the form of social, economic, and geographical exclusion.
No vaccine — no travelling, school, work, cafés, concerts, etc.
This solution is an attempt to avoid the hard question we are currently discussing, but will de facto lead to the same outcome. It is essentially the difference between forcing someone to do something directly or introducing heavy consequences if they don’t comply.
In other words we make an offer that can’t be refused.
Both of these options for enforcement carry the same weight in practice, one is just more subtle. This means that whichever one is chosen, we still face the same fundamental question; should people be forced?
The virus has been around for over a year now, and there is little reason to doubt it’s actual existence. Pretty much every projection of deaths has proven to be immensely overestimated, with the virus barely impacting most of those who contract it. Nonetheless, most governments have maintained lockdowns or mask/distancing-policies for almost a year, with a seemingly constant promise that things are just about to get worse.
Understandably many of us have been in fear of this virus, yet it is hard to deny that it has overall proven to be about as deadly as a common flu. This is to some extent recognised by most governments, though only as a result of harsh virus-policies working.
In this regard, Sweden has from the beginning been criticised for its less invasive approach, more so encouraging people to keep distance etc., and has often been considered a failure for having a higher amount of deaths than its neighbouring countries. What is interesting though, is how the same critics will avoid comparing Sweden more globally and with countries that had similar entries to the pandemic.
For one, it can be mentioned that Sweden’s winter holidays were a week or two later than its neighbouring countries, leading to a higher number of people traveling home when the virus was spreading more rapidly.
And more generally, when we compare Sweden to other countries we don’t see any real positive effects from harsher policies. Comparing Sweden with countries such as Spain, France, Belgium, and even the UK, which have all had some of the most strict policies, these countries are either doing similarly well to Sweden or even worse.
It seems that not only are the many factors that remain unaccounted for, that explain the spread of the virus, but also that the virus seems to spread regardless of our chosen policies.
Are Vaccines The Answer?
The policy that is currently being enacted is vaccination, but again here it seems to be futile. Looking at the last decade of vaccines, they seem to have been given false credit for being the necessary solution, as shown in the 2010 CDC study, Guyer et al. 2000 Pediatrics 106(6):1307.
The study compares the reduction virus-spread with the introductions of vaccines, and the results indicate that many other factors seem to be of much more importance.
Ultimately the study concludes:
“Thus vaccination does not account for the impressive declines in mortality seen in the first half of the century”
It seems that we are misplacing our efforts of amelioration on the prospects of both social control and vaccination. From the perspective that we have been taught from the government, this doesn’t make much sense. The normalised idea is that a virus sometimes just mutates and becomes dangerous to people, and that the only way to save ourselves is through vaccines.
And while the study does certainly recognise the effects of vaccines on the specific virus they are created for, this fails to account for both the reality of equally potent viruses mutating in conjunction with vaccination, and furthermore that the vaccines can have effects on a persons immunity towards different viruses. In other words, it matters little whether a vaccine is effective against a single strain of a virus, if we simply see a resistant mutation spread thereafter with similar potency, or if it in our overall health ends up doing more harm than good via secondary/unintended effects on the body.
Thus, we have an extremely reductive understanding of the virome and our relationship to it. The virome, the collective amount of viruses in our world, is not only something we have always lived along side with, but is also essential to our survival. There are 10^31 viruses in the air we breathe.
That’s 10, with 31 zeroes. An incomprehensibly large amount.
This viruses constantly enter our body and help our cells become more resilient, healthy, and adaptive. The viruses are literally necessary for our survival. That we build strong immune-systems through exposure is a point that makes sense intuitively, in a similar way to how training our muscles, where we break them down, makes them grow even stronger.
The question then, is why some of them seem to have become dangerous to us. The approach to answering this question is usually answered in a very limited manner; a virus is suddenly dangerous to some part of the population, and we have to brace ourselves until a vaccine is developed. Pretty much the last 12 months.
Now i call this understanding limited, because there is no mention of the circumstances that created the situation in the first place.
A Century of Destruction
A few hundred years ago, the plague decimated Europe, and as horrific as it was, when we look at the circumstances of its spread, it doesn’t seem surprising at all. With the construction of villages and cities we had quite rapidly shifted the setting of our daily lives, and with widespread poverty, hunger, terrible sanitation structures, we had created the perfect cauldron for our own demise. The combination of terrible hygiene, close confinement, and close contact with other animals, ruined our immunity and made us prone for disease.
Therefore, it was in the way that we misaligned ourselves with the natural world, that we created our own decimation.
The same applies to the viruses we’ve seen in the last century, as we, in spite of our medical progress, have misaligned ourselves with nature in the most destructive way of history. During the time of WW1, we began to see the large scale usage of chemical warfare, an example of which is mustard-gas, especially decimating Europe. A few years later, we saw the spread of the Spanish flu. We poured thousands of tons of chemicals onto the planet, and didn’t think that there would be any consequences beyond the immediate deaths that they caused. Combine this with millions living in now bombed and destroyed cities, and it almost seems obvious that something like it would happen.
We had yet to understand the destructive effect that these chemicals have on our innate immune system.
As decades went on, chemical technology was developed much further and their producers managed to create horrors like the VX nerve gas and Agent Orange. Companies like Monsanto and Bayer had been able to sell their chemicals throughout the Vietnam war, but with increasing pressure to abandon chemical warfare, they needed a new use for their chemicals. They thus managed to convince us that the best place to use these chemicals was, well, everywhere.
Most household items started being created through the use of dangerous chemicals, but arguably the biggest mistake was to use it for our food.
A vigorous campaign was launched to convince us all that the future of farming, and the only way to feed increasing populations, was through chemical farming and genetically modified crops. Even Bill Gates, who owns a large part of Monsanto, has been an advocate for spreading this practice, and it has managed to become the norm for most of the planet’s area. The results, despite being hushed, are overwhelmingly terrible. Modern farming practices strip the earth of its nutrients and minerals, leaving it barren. The genetic modifications lead to much less nutritious foods, while the spraying of glyphosate and roundup destroys our internal micro-biome.
Combining this with other elements of modern life such as deforestation, the holocaust that is the factory farming of animals, the widespread destruction of biodiversity, the overmedication of people, it is clear we have set ourselves up for catastrophe.
Looking at all of this, the current virus pales in comparison of the danger, yet has nonetheless received more attention than any other of the above mentioned problems. Furthermore, even vaccines themselves have shown themselves to be part of the problem. As mentioned earlier, there is an astronomical amount of viruses, and they are constantly evolving and adapting, just like we are, and thus it seems that a vaccine that only focuses on one strain of a virus can quickly be overcome.
A recent example of this was i 2020, a week after the WHO declared polio to be eradicated in Africa, where a new strain of vaccine-derived polio spread in Sudan. A false victory, based on the premise that all it would take to better the situation was to target the virus directly. Yet, without changing the circumstances of malnourishment and lacking sanitation, the root cause was still there leading to the virus simply mutating slightly and continuing to be a threat.
Vaccines seem to be an attempt to treat symptoms, instead of addressing the root cause, which would involve a more holistic understanding of human health and wellbeing, instead of trying to win an imagined war with nature.
Can we justify forcing vaccinations?
As mentioned in the beginning of this discussion, forcing someone to be injected with any substance is a significant encroachment of their bodily autonomy. Generally speaking, limiting bodily autonomy through legislation is done to prevent people from directly harming each other, like the example of attacking another person. But can we classify not choosing to be vaccinated as directly harming others? Well, this would have to be answered in the positive if we would want to enforce vaccination, but can we really give that answer?
For most of us it would mean that we are harming others simply be existing, as we inevitably spread bacteria and virus to each other constantly by being in a close proximity. We would essentially be accepting the premise that we are, in our mere existence, a danger to each other, which would mean that the only way to gain closeness to others, a basic human need, would have to come at the cost of a jab.
One could argue that this is only the case in exceptional times, such as the last 12 months, but following this logic would essentially mean that we could qualify ourselves as a constant danger to each other. This is because, on the whole, the current virus has not proven to be significantly more deadly than a regular flu. This is not to equate the diseases in their character, but specifically in how many people die with/because of the virus. This means that we would be accepting that even a virus that is cause of a “normal” amount of deaths, justifies that we consider our own bodies a danger to others.
Furthermore, with the increased amount of people living with chronic illness, due to the earlier mentioned ways in which we are destroying the environment and our own health, it stands to reason that we have not seen the last of pandemics. Even the focus of the current virus is now switching to its presumably inevitable mutations.
A reminder of both the evolving nature of viruses and how fighting them is a mostly futile symptom treatment.
It seems that a revaluation of our approach is needed.
For how long will we continue like this? If the last 12 months have proven anything, it is that we are on a slippery slope towards authoritarianism and dystopia, fuelled by our fear. In a similar way to the time after the 9/11-attacks, we are consenting to further relinquishing our civil liberties, all in the name of safety.
Safety, being the go-to excuse for any authoritarian grasp of power.
And the thing is, that we simply can’t keep going on the current course. The vaccine schedules for children have increased several fold in the last few decades, and are increasing still, and as we realise the magnitude of the virome, we realise that we would have to keep taking more and more vaccines to keep going the way we are now.
So what if we switched our approach, and instead of trying to fight against the virome, we sought to find alignment with it? This would mean that we, instead of seeing the virus as a danger, and instead as an indicator that the way we are living is flawed.
This would mean taking an honest look at what our current way of living is creating of positives and negatives. Doing this we see that we are still seeing rises in chronic diseases of all sorts both, physically and mentally. We see that the modern way of agriculture is actively destroying the ecosystems of the planet, and thereby directly harming us. We see that much of our lives is lived in an attempt to avoid dealing with the problematic way we have structured our society, and how instead of solving these issues, simply keep medicating ourselves.
We realise that most aspects of our life need reinvention. We need to get back in touch with nature and the larger biome and virome, so that we can strengthen and maintain our immune-system. We need to evolve away from the chemical farming and factory farming of animals that is decimating our soils, waters, air, and move towards localised growing of foods.
We need to reclaim our potential for health, without having to force others to comply to our band-aid solutions.
With this broadened understanding it becomes very hard to make the argument for vaccine-enforcement, as it would amount to taking away the bodily autonomy from others only to supply us with a momentary attempt at preventing deaths, without dealing with the root cause of the problem.
So should we force others to get vaccinated?
My answer is no.
I would call it a major mistake, that would not only result in a massive loss of personal freedom in the form of bodily autonomy, all in a futile effort to fight a problem that is created by our own misalignment with nature.
Let us instead focus on strengthening our immune system and our health in general, while taking care of the elderly etc., allowing them to get the vaccine if they want to.
This is a choice that will bring about not only true health for us individually, but also the transformation that is needed when it comes to both our food-systems and how we relate ourselves to each other and to nature.
In the end we will all have to make a choice in the matter, and we will have to make it in the coming months.
So what is your choice?
Thank you for reading this essay!
If you want to learn more about the virome and biome, I recommend starting with Dr. Zach Bush (https://zachbushmd.com/),
and more generally the news site The Defender (https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/welcome-to-the-defender/)
