Forced Vaccination

Naina Krishnamurthy asks if it's ethical or egregious.

- 

Imagine it is 2021, during the Pandemic. Let's suppose your neighbor is an elderly lady who makes great cookies, and she's akin to a grandmother to you. One day her family alerts you that unfortunately she's in the hospital with COVID, on life support, and her doctors think she likely caught it from an unvaccinated carrier. Guiltily, you remember visiting her last week for some of her cookies. You didn't realize your wish to protect your bodily rights to go unvaccinated could risk her life.

This story illustrates a broader truth: bad vaccination choices can endanger others. A forced vaccination may violate your bodily integrity, but your endangering of others indirectly violates their bodily integrity. So here I want to argue that during times of crisis, it is not merely justifiable but morally necessary. By forced vaccination I don't mean non-compliant citizens being seized from their homes and held down by security guards while some Nurse Ratched-like figure jabs a needle into their arm. This is not merely disturbing; it would constitute assault. When I discuss forced vaccination in this article, I mean requiring proof of vaccination for entry to settings such as hospitals, care homes, schools or concert venues. For some people, depending on their circumstances, this still amounts to compulsion. I would say that in normal times your vaccination choice is your own, but perhaps during a pandemic this kind of compulsion can be justified.