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Danger to Society: Vaccine Passports

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PLC (@Humble_Analysis) September 14, 2021


Body Politic

I despise and despair of the "political" framework that is taking hold in the United States, and the way this issue is being captured within it.

Vaccine mandates and passports will be supported and opposed by people on the right and the left, because there are scientific questions involved that are irreducible to any political position. We can be sure, however, and are already seeing, that the political and ideological apparatuses in the United States today will try to force them into the ridiculous categories of American partisan-culture wars. There's an attempt to create virtually a species distinction between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, as another divisive "wedge" issue. That's how pernicious and divisive the American "political" system, and its embedded "scientific" bureaucracy, is.

I reject, and plead for all to reject, all such attempts. That way lies not only the destruction of politics--which is already well advanced--but also the destruction of science.

Advocating masks or social distancing is not "communism," and skepticism about vaccines or resistance to vaccine passports does not make one a "right-wing anti-vaxxer." All leftists understand how ridiculous the first assertion is, though too many--probably most--are comfortable with the equally ridiculous latter. (And that unfortunately includes radical, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist leftists, not just MSNBAOC "progressives").

First of all, "anti-vaxxer" is an epithet like "conspiracy theorist" or "Assaadist," whose purpose is to insult people who only have the same critical skepticism toward vaccines as toward any other product of the for-profit pharmaceutical industry--i.e., who are not vaccine exceptionalists--and to prevent and evade discussion with them. Like those terms, it says something far more problematic about the person using it than the people to whom it is directed.

As a recent MIT study points out, skeptics of one-size-fits-everybody novel drugs are "highly informed, scientifically literate, and sophisticated in the use of data." Indeed, I would contend, a lot of them know much more about the subject than most people who accept the establishment line. Per the study, it would be best "if the Left [or anybody else] would refrain from their sickening condescension toward those with serious, legitimate questions."

The absurd attempts to make certain positions on complex scientific questions (and even specific drugs!) into right-wing phenomena should be embarrassing to those trying to pull it off. Opposing the radical, permanent abrogation of bodily integrity and informed consent from medical treatments no more makes one a Republican libertarian than does advocating for abortion rights, no matter how many libertarians agree with me on either. Let me not hear leftists accusing us who oppose vaccine passports of being rightist by association. Nobody's vetted the politics of everyone--let alone every scientist--they agree with on this issue. Nor must they. Those who stand with likes of Bill Gates, David Frum, Tony Blair, and Alan Dershowitz best keep that stone in their pocket.

Nor should anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist socialists and marxists disdain "personal freedom." Our positions on abortion rights, surveillance, stop-and-frisk (isn't gun violence presented as a "public-health" issue?), etc., are about protecting personal freedoms. Our goal, I hope, is to organize society in a way that will protect and expand personal rights and freedom--which we value as the hard-won fruits of social and historical struggle--better than does capitalist society, not to denigrate them. "My Body, My Choice" is precisely about personal choice.

Sometimes, we support movements for important personal rights even when they adopt unfortunate rhetorical frameworks from the ideological atmosphere we live in--like the conservative, disingenuous, and politically-weakening "Pro-Choice" slogan that the abortion-rights movement decided to brand itself with. Does any leftist want to argue that we should withhold our support of the fight for that important personal freedom until the movement purges itself of all individualist, property-rights-based ideology and all the people who support abortion rights because Ayn Rand did, or whatever?

Leftists who insist that the government not interfere in a woman's free personal choice and the doctor-patient relationship when it comes to terminating a pregnancy may want to think twice about applauding the government eliminating choice, and permanently replacing the doctor-patient relationship with its own orders, when it comes to injecting complex pharmaceuticals into one's own bloodstream. Are the same people who want to excoriate and sue bakers who don't want to make a gay wedding cake really going to cheer on doctors who refuse to treat sick people who have chosen not to take a particular drug? I suspect that logic will come back to bite them.

Of course, in any polity, and there are going to be instances in which social necessity infringes upon even what are considered important individual personal freedoms, but that is not a trivial matter, and all cats are not the same libertarian or collectivist gray. Stopping at red lights is another order of rights-infringement than military conscription. The specific circumstances must always be considered, and not waived away with straw-manning invocation of general principles. Neither right-wing libertarians nor left-wing socialists have a formula that automatically generates the correct answer in all of these situations.

We must, and already have agreed that the right of informed consent for medical procedures is a fundamental right, a historical achievement to be centrally valued. It is as important as--is really the general instance of--the right of personal bodily autonomy we value and defend with a woman's body. It is a protection against another Tuskegee and against another Thalidomide, Vioxx, or Swine Flu vaccine. Nobody--certainly nobody of the political left--should in any way minimize its importance. It is, for good reason, encoded in domestic and international laws, the Nuremberg Code and the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, which states:

"preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be express and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice."

The value of this right can not be set to zero and ignored every time something purporting to be an effective drug comes along.

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Jim Kavanagh Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter Page       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Former college professor, native and denizen of New York City. Blogging at www.thepolemicist.net, from a left-socialist perspective. Also publishing on Counterpunch, The Greanville Post, Medium, Dandelion Salad, and other sites around the net. (more...)
 

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