| > benefit is still tangible and real in that it confers better outcomes to those that do contract the disease The thing is that a treatment having real and tangible benefits is not an adequate justification for the state imposing that treatment by force. And yes, laws requiring vaccine passports for participation in public life are a use of state force. If the police stop you doing something, that means the state is using force to stop you doing that thing. If the state mandates that businesses require papers under the threat of fines or losing their business license, that's also an application of force on the part of the state. Informed consent has been the bedrock of medical ethics for the past 70 years and it would be unwise to throw away this principle just to impose a preventative treatment that might be mildly good for people. People are right to point out that the push for vaccine passports --- because the vaccines are merely preventative individual therapies --- is a gravely concerning break with nearly a century of tradition and law. In general, we don't mandate things merely because they're good for people, and it would be extremely dangerous to start doing that in general. Look: elsewhere, people have suggested that I'm claiming that because the vaccines can't stop the spread, they have no benefit. That's not true. They do seem beneficial. Lots of things are beneficial. Vitamin D deficiency, for example, is common and vitamin D supplementation would benefit most people. Do we require that people present evidence of vitamin D supplementation to eat at restaurants? No, of course not! That's an individual medical decision. The whole point of mandating traditional vaccines is that eradicating a disease has huge positive externalities, ones large enough to justify public health measures --- like vaccine requirements for admission into schools --- that would ordinarily fail on civil liberties grounds. COVID vaccines simply do not have the same large positive externalities. Yes, they might be good for you, but this fact alone does not justify coercive state action. COVID vaccines are not like the vaccines that have been mandated for a long time in public schools and at border crossings. COVID vaccines are non-sterilizing. The previous vaccines were sterilizing. These are two completely different categories of medical tools, and pointing out that we've done thing X with previous vaccines is not an argument that we should do thing X with respect to COVID vaccines. |
Do you have examples of the use of force?
> we don't mandate things merely because they're good for people
Vaccinations were already mandated for all sorts of things, from crossing borders to attending schools.