No matter the effectiveness of vaccines or their at-times harmful downside, the argument that forced vaccinations is a "personal rights issue" is a GOOD one that even progressives should recognize.  We create governments to protect our personal rights.  Forcing people to give up their personal rights violates the government's duty to us, that too many forget (or never learned). 

Would anyone be so disdainful of the unvaccinated if there were also a VACCINE PERIL?  What if there were a known, severe downside to mandates. a known casualty rate from forced vaccinations.  Would we accept government officials' commands to vaccinate?

What if 2 of every hundred younger American adults DIED  from vaccination? Add another 3 of every hundred maimed, blinded, or sterilized from vaccination?  This would be a 5% casualty rate - one young adult around you would be living a diminished existence or not living at all.  

All for a good cause, but do YOU want to be part of that cause with a 1-in-20 risk?

These single-digit percentages mimic the casualties from our drafted men in the Vietnam war - 2% killed and 3% permanently wounded.  50 years ago, many Americans rightly called the draft unjust.  Some including former Secretary of State John Kerry termed it dying "for a mistake".

Elites have commanded other deadly mistakes.  

From what we know thus far, the injured-by-Covid vaccine rate is exceptionally low.  But there is a lot we DON'T know.  Authorities had far more time to assess syphilis in African American men, Thalidomide in babies, Vioxx in elders, frontal Lobotomies in hyperactive patients, and swine flu vaccines that our government scared many into taking in the 1970s.  The authorities had more study time, yet still deadly mistakes.

Today's vaccines were rushed into operation.  Spurred by a political frenzy, and hordes of government money, four firms rushed to create, test, and distribute similar vaccines.   Three yielded deaths among recipients testing the vaccine, and at least one has caused death post-approval.  Yes, it's right to question their efficacy.  It's right and dutiful to question a government attempting to skirt federal law to mandate vaccine use.

Those in authority still make deadly mistakes.  When minorities are resisting elites' authority because it COULD have dangerous side-effects, it's not for us to condemn them.  

If vaccines are effective, we who take the vaccine should have no complaint (theoretically, we're impervious).  If their effectiveness is dubious, we who have taken the vaccine cannot call the unvaccinated "wrong".  And if the effectiveness is balanced by unknown-but-likely side effects, we should applaud those who are waiting for more evidence.  They could become the heroes who rescue the rest of us if our doses and boosters prove debilitating.  

Mark Stewart Greenstein

Farmington CT

860-666-5550

The writer is an educator and was a Connecticut governor candidate in  2018.

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