| What country do you live in? Can you criticize the leader without going to jail? Do union representatives get murdered? Are police there to help you or to extort you? I live in an actually authoritarian country. Only the most privileged people here don't get vaccinated, and among them it's a very small group, and mostly foreigners. No one is forced to, and no one is being forced to do anything else with their body. I find this jump to tyranny argument disgusting. How on Earth would that work? In a country where one man can order the military to kill its own citizens there is no logical connection between vaccinations and smoking or obesity. Americans (and a lot of other nationalities in the West, but mostly Americans) need to gain some perspective on the difference between tyranny and responsibility. I got vaccinated (with a Chinese vaccine, the horror!) because I consider it my duty to my family, my adopted country, and the world. And guess what? Vaccination has been stupendously effective and our country is almost back to normal. And still the government is not locking up smokers or fat people. |
You're right, we do. I for one am happy to take an experimental RNA therapy in hopes a new and better cure can be developed from the results. But it has to be my choice. If the government has the right to shoot me with a novel serum for the sake of public health, what's to stop them from forcing me to expose myself to the virus itself in the next pandemic? Or shooting me with something more permanent if they decide my thought harbours the next dangerous viral pandemic?
You've my sympathies for the state of your country, but I honestly believe if more of your fellow citizens had drawn a bright line around abstract concepts like bodily autonomy, the authoritarians who took it over would have, at the very least, had a much harder time when they were starting out. That's its own kind of responsibility for those of us who don't live in a genuinely authoritarian country yet