August 17, 2021
Coercive Vaccine Mandates for Those Under 25 Resemble a Military Draft
By
Dominic A. Rascona, MD
“Of the more than 107,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations, fewer than 1,200 were in fully vaccinated patients (1.1%). That means that 98.9% of the hospitalizations occurred in unvaccinated persons. Vaccination is highly effective at preventing infection and if breakthrough infection does occur, vaccination uncouples infection from hospitalization and death.”
This is from an internal memo to employees of a hospital in which I work, July 2021. It's available upon request with permission of the hospital system.
These undeniably impressive facts appear to make a clear-cut case for COVID vaccination – one that is apparently so clear it has been conferred into moral and existential imperative along with simultaneous disdain for the decision to (and increasingly, the people who) decline its benefits. The president and others are calling COVID vaccination patriotic duty and obligation to humanity, and on August 3 the president issued additional highly coercive mandates to federal employees and “anyone else who wants to do business with the government.”
I do not oppose vaccination. However, this rhetoric is dangerously overstated, and as such very highly disturbing. While encouragement for vaccination is reasonable for populations at risk, coercive mandates, especially for young persons at minimal risk for long-term disability from the disease are unfounded scientifically. The facts and concepts I shall succinctly present here should compel significant pause for all fair and clear-minded Americans concerned not just about government overreach, but the use of selective information to foster a narrative that is reasonable, but by no means certain. Coercion under these circumstances is improper.
The imposition of an unwanted medical treatment obviously contradicts the arguably sacrosanct notion of patient autonomy. Society ethically accepts breaches of autonomy - this most civilized and respectful of notions - only when “clearly” necessary. In the modern age, arguments for such necessity may be well scrutinized when relevant facts and justifications are honestly disclosed and discussed. Such is sadly not the current situation with COVID-19, but that disappointment is not the subject of this essay. Rather I wish to succinctly summarize why COVID-19 differs from other infectious diseases for which mandatory vaccination is well justified. In the process of doing so, an apt analogy with the military draft for a specific cohort of young healthy Americans is presented.
The imposition of mandatory vaccination and quarantine are well accepted for many infectious diseases, predicated upon the natures of those entities (for example childhood polio, smallpox, and measles). Coercive arguments are less sound for COVID-19, in particular for the special cohort of young, healthy, non-obese college students at near-zero risk of long-term disability or death from the disease.
Unlike COVID, meningococcal disease
does primarily affect young healthy college students. Yet there are generally no mandates for this particular vaccine. Students are highly encouraged to receive the meningococcal vaccinations, but not subjected to social shaming or other coercion. A similar policy should be applied to COVID-19. However, vaccination for the latter has been all but mandated by coercive tactics imposed by school administrators and government officials and an absolute mandate has been threatened by at least some elected officials (e.g., New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio). See
The Problem with the Early Coronavirus Vaccine Mandates in National Review.
