News that the authorities in Quebec plan to tax people who have not been vaccinated for Covid 19 may seem reasonable. The argument is that half of the patients in ICU wards with Covid 19 have not been vaccinated so they have caused expense to the government. Greece is also following the same logic path as is Ikea in not awarding it’s unvaccinated employees full sick pay; just the legal minimum.

You might wonder what the ethical committees who study and promote good practice, make of this change in ethical standards. Presumably, they approve.

Clearly this problem is not going to happen in the USA as government there does not underwrite healthcare demand. If you want health care there, you pay for it with the taxes you haven’t paid into the system for health care. Note to self; don’t get expensively ill.

And if citizens are not being fined for refusing to be vaccinated, more subtle means of coersion are used. Governments are restricting the right to travel or visit public events such as the football in Cameroon at the moment. This is absurd in a country with only 3% of it’s population vaccinated. Africans top the list of vaccine distrusting continents. Is the desire to watch a football match an ethical motive to accept a medical intervention?

The first question has to be why people are refusing to be vaccinated. The Covid vaccines are known to have been produced in far less than the normal times for vaccines. There may be a scientific reason for this but most people cannot be expected to follow this as they are not medically trained. Neither do they understand the RDNA angle. Is that gene editing as in hamburgers? Who really knows?
The pointer we the people might look for, is whether the drug company underwrites their claims to their drug’s safety. In all cases, as far as I am aware, the companies have put in a disclaimer to injury to health or death resulting from vaccination. No doubt this is extended into perpertuity. Why would their lawyers not agree to claims in five, ten or twenty years time?
The vaccinated will have no rights if the vaccines prove over time to be harmful. It’s not that they are known to be harmful but the companies are showing that this is a consideration that they have made regarding the risk. They consider it high enough to need to exonerate themselves from responsibility for their product.
Given these facts, is it still unreasonable for people to be concerned about what the vaccine will do to their health in the short and long term?
The ethical question then is, who will take responsibility for the distribution and encouragement to take the vaccine, if not the progenitors? Is it the governments, the health authorities, the University professors, the doctors and nurses who give the ‘jabs’, the owners of the premises where the vaccinations were allowed to take place, the factory owners who made the vaccine, the distributors, the advertisers?
One thing for certain, it will not be ‘big pharma’ who have made huge profits out of the pandemic. They know that injury to health legal claims can bankrupt drug companies.
In twenty years time, will the vaccinated be the one’s occupying ICU wards and the unvaccinated paying their taxes to cover their medical expenses?
An absurd question you might say, but it’s an angle not considered in the media and that should give concern. What are the unvaccinated saying and should their views be respected or challenged as selfish?
The healthcare system in the United Kingdom promises ‘health care on demand’. No questions are asked whether the injury or disease is self inflicted or caused by poor lifestyle. It’s just, welcome, have a hospital bed and we will fix you.
No blame is brought against the sick and financial penalties inflicted for not preventing it. The moral and ethical stance is ‘you are the state’s responsibility’ whether you are rich or poor.
Those who smoke cigarettes for instance, pay tax on every packet of cigarettes. This tax, certainly in the UK, more or less pays for hospital treatments for disease caused by smoking. It’s an inexact science but ethically the stance is clear. Governments do not like to restrict the free choice of lifestyle of their citizens, certainly not in freedom loving democracies.
So what is happening in Quebec? You have to pay one hundred dollars a week if you wish to have a lifestyle choice that the government does no agree with. Really? Does this go for those practicing extreme sports, astronauts, high risk occupations such as fishing and construction, drug users, alcoholics?
The incorrectness of some governments judging lifestyles is trying to become ‘correct’ in the case of Covid 19 treatment. Will this trend spread to other socially funded healthcare systems and health insurers?
Political correctness usually tries to win by ‘ourtrumping’ common sense and established morality. It points to an extreme situation and says that ‘being safe’ is more important than anything; even freedom to choose one’s lifestyle.
Where before governments have been willing to accept taxes from smokers and drinkers, the political correct argument is that all forms of harmful pleasure or employment, must stop in order to ‘save lives’.
The ‘save lives’ trump card is as if risk does not occurr in anyones life and is no longer the responsibility of the individual.
And when decisions, on whatever issue, are no longer the responsibility of the inividual, citizens are living in an autocracy, a police state.
If the same pattern is followed on future issues, as is emerging for the control of virus transmission, be increasingly on guard for incorrect political-ness.