CON: Vaccines Should Be The Right of Individual
January 25, 2022
There is an immense difference between pro vaccine and pro vaccine mandates. When thinking about mandating vaccines, it may sound like a good plan to eliminate numbers of positive COVID cases in the country. The more thought you put into it the more you begin to realize how morally wrong it really is.
The most obvious reason mandating vaccines is clearly erroneous is because of our rights as an American citizen, our rights of freedom and choice. The Bill of Rights guarantees citizens the right to personal autonomy, which means that an individual’s decisions concerning their personal life are none of the government’s business. A vaccine mandate should never even be considered in America, a country solely based on freedom and choice. There are always alternatives to vaccines. However many vaccines are heavily recommended.
The phrase ‘my body my choice’ is commonly heard in America, this simply means that the government should not have a say about what a person does with their body. Usually this phrase is used for the topic of abortion but it can also be used for vaccine mandates. People tend to be hypocritical and completely forget the phrase when it comes to vaccines. Things like abortion and vaccines should always be an individual’s choice, neither should be deemed legal or illegal.
One of the most commonly brought up topics for people who do not want to get the vaccine is the fact that there is no long term research yet. All we know about the COVID vaccine is that one might feel sick for a few days after injection and if one happens to contract COVID the symptoms will not be as severe for vaccinated people. Nobody knows what will happen with the vaccine in the next 20 years. Maybe the vaccine is completely safe in the long run but that is a chance that many people around the world are not willing to take.
— Piper DeGurse
There is a lengthy list of reasons why people are against vaccination mandates. Anything from freedom of choice to the unknown dangers can be very off putting for people. Just because it worked well for one person does not mean it will for everyone like young people, old people or people with compromised immune systems. At that point the vaccine becomes more dangerous than not getting it and risking the chance of getting COVID, considering the amount of people who have these issues and sadly passed from the vaccine. Numbers from Dec. 2021 show 10,483 reports of deaths related to the COVID-19 vaccine.
At the end of the day vaccines are currently not mandated for every citizen. Vaccines are mandatory for travel to certain countries. Vaccines are also becoming mandatory in some workplaces. Mask and vaccine laws are constantly changing but hopefully it will never get to the point where vaccines are required for everybody eliminating choice on if you want to put the vaccine in your body.
