Ilya Shapiro is the Director of Constitutional Studies with the Cato Institute.
https://twitter.com/ishapiro/status/1333625567007150080
I am not an anti-Vaxxer. I want to make that clear.
I think a person is allowed to be more skeptical about a vaccine rushed through on a novel virus compared to a vaccine that has decades worth of clinical history.
I can understand why people are reticent about a vaccine with nasty side effects.
Once upon a time, libertarians would have fought tooth and nail to protect your rights not to be mandated to take an experimental vaccine.
Modern libertarians want you to submit to mandatory vaccination unless you are a hermit.
Reading through his later responses (and those of Cato/Reason’s senior editor) . . . the inconsistencies and mental gymnastics Mr. Shapiro went through to justify his position would make Simone Biles jealous.
Don’t mistake Cato for a libertarian organization, any more than the ACLU is a civil rights organization.
Disappointing.
From a logical standpoint, no one in favor of vaccines should care if another person refuses to be vaccinated. If I were to get vaccinated for Covid, then the people who don’t get vaccinated don’t pose a threat to me, they are only putting their own health at risk. That’s how vaccines work.
Unless you are Democrat and/or believe people like Dr. Fauci. Then if you refuse, you’re somehow a threat to the people who are already vaccinated and won’t catch the virus, and are also probably a racist, xenophobic, science denying, anti-choice, Christian monster who likes firearms and supports the NRA. Did I cover everything?
I never understood that one, either. If I don’t vaccinate myself or my kids, but you do, how are me and mine a “threat” to you and yours?
Seems to me, if we choose not to vaccinate, it’s on us if we get sick. If you choose to vaccinate, you’re immune, so you’re unaffected whether we get sick or not. That’s what vaccines are for!
Unless, of course, vaccines aren’t as effective as advertised (some studies show the varicella/chickenpox vaccine has an abysmally-low success rate, as low as 35%, and some years’ flu vaccines aren’t any better), in which case there’s a stronger case for NOT vaccinating, given the possibility of adverse reactions.
(OK, I could kind-of see the argument of a medically-fragile patient who cannot receive vaccines themselves needing you to be vaccinated. But I’d counter that if that hypothetical person is so immune-compromised as to need everyone else vaccinated, why the Hell are they going outside!?)
Like I said below, I support the freedom to read the literature and make your own decision based on your knowledge, family/medical history, and doctor’s advice. YMMV, and that’s OK.
Shucks, now I have to THINK ABOUT IT?
Archer, given that the smallpox vaccine enabled the complete elimination of smallpox from the world, the notion that it’s only 35% effective doesn’t pass the laugh test.
Remember that some “medical research” is published by quacks, just as some research in other academic fields (the vast majority of it, in some of those fields) is garbage.
The chickenpox vaccine has a stupidly-low efficacy rate, not the smallpox vaccine.
And this is another reason I don’t consider myself anti-vaxx. Vaccines have their place in the world, including enabling humanity to eradicate actual deadly or crippling diseases. Smallpox is considered extinct (but still occasionally pops up, usually when a lab’s sample is accidentally let out), and polio is effectively gone from America. I recognize those as net positives, which were made possible because of vaccines.
That said, the medical community’s push to vaccinate for All The Things doesn’t square with the extremely low morbidity rate for most of the pathogens we’re expected to vaccinate for. Using varicella as an example again, it’s 1 in 60,000, better than 99.998% survivability. Even last year’s influenza, a “moderate” season for flu, was ~99.94% survivable [CDC numbers: 22,000 deaths from 38 million cases].
Those flu numbers are roughly comparable to the COVID morbidity numbers, and arguably worse given the padded COVID stats.
And yet the flu vaccine is merely recommended, while the varicella vaccine is required for a child’s participation in public school or athletics. Some universities are talking about requiring students to carry a doctor-signed card attesting to a negative COVID test or — when available — a COVID vaccine. It doesn’t get much more “required” than that.
Why is the vaccine for the arguably-more-lethal virus “recommended”, while the low-risk ones are required? Something’s not adding up.
One more personal example: The Hepatitis-B is routinely given to newborns in hospital or birth center, despite having an extremely low morbidity rate (less than 0.45 in 100,000) AND an extremely low transmission rate; as an STI, the mother would have to be Hep-B positive. If she’s not, there’s more risk from the extra poke in that environment than there is from the virus.
But you’d be amazed at the flak you get from hospital staff — up to and including threats to call Child Services — for refusing the vaccine for an infant born to a tested-Hep-B-negative, monogamous couple, which is as close to zero risk as you’ll find.
When I brought that up, the staff actually had the nerve to ask if I really trusted my wife’s fidelity that much. Seriously. A nurse almost got slapped that day.
Again, when the risks are so low, why push it so hard?
I am not pro-all-vaccines. I don’t consider myself anti-vaccine, either, though you might, depending on your definition.
I am pro-parental-choice and pro-informed-consent. In a nutshell, that means I think a parent/patient has the right to review the medical literature and their own medical and family histories (including genetic history), weigh the risks vs. the benefits, and make their own decision whether to vaccinate, and which vaccines (if any) to get.
It boils down to this: With vaccines, as with anything else, YMMV, and that’s OK (which is why I don’t consider myself an anti-vaxxer).
But not being 100% gung-ho “get all the shots” is enough for many people to label us as “anti-vaxxers”.
The new COVID vaccine is a different style of vaccine that what you’d usually find available. It doesn’t use weakened or dead virii with an adjuvent (think: “immuno-irritant”, usually aluminum) to trigger your immune system into making antibodies. Instead, it re-codes the genetic structure of your immune system to make it start producing COVID antibodies without being exposed to the virus.
Apart from the sci-fi/dystopian questions and unintended (or intended but undisclosed) consequences of re-writing DNA (you’ve all seen Jurassic Park and The Fly, and remember how the Reavers came to be in Serenity, right?), I have serious issues with taking that route.
First among them, and not nearly as sensational as the movie references: If your immune system becomes hard-coded to produce antibodies for a virus it’s never seen, how will that affect its ability to produce antibodies for everything else it encounters “in the wild”?
Will we as a nation soon see a resurgence in other “dead” pathogens, or fall victim to other, novel viruses that we could have fought off naturally if our immune systems hadn’t been “updated”? Or will the “non-updated” parts of your immune system see the “updated” parts’ altered genes as foreign entities and attack itself?
And is the FDA even looking at — let alone testing — any of that, in their “warp speed” operation to approve the new COVID vaccines? Is nobody else asking these questions?
So, no, I haven’t the slightest interest in rushing out and getting jabbed with the experimental COVID vaccine (besides, we’re pretty sure our family has already contracted the virus and recovered), and I oppose any action to make it mandatory to get it (under penalty of law) and/or require documentation that you’ve had it (under penalty of social ostracization) to be out in public. That tends to end in an entirely different movie reference: Schindler’s List.
“Papiers, bitte?”
I lost my vaccination card in a boating accident…
Claiming to be a libertarian doesn’t make you one.
Neil Smith defines it well: https://ncc-1776.org/whoislib.html
Heinlein’s quote about two kinds of people, those who want to tell others what to do and those who have no such desire, provides a similar and good definition as well.
I grew up in the 60’s. I remember Thalidamide babies with flippers. I have also beta tested a few video games in my day. Big glitches. I also never get the first model year of a new car.
NEVER be the beta tester.
I’ll take a hard pass until I see whether people start having heart problems or lung problems or “other” fun stuff from an RNA altering vaccine! It’s kind of funny to hear pro-vaccine people talking about how they won’t eat GMO foods.
True libertarians – free market anarchists and self-governors – DO fight for your right to make your own choices. On vaccines and everything else. Cato’s people long ago abandoned all but a pretense (if that) of libertarianism, no matter how minarchist they want us to believe them to be.