Vaccination as Social Responsibility

Due to COVID we have been living through lots of measures that block our lives, destroy the economy and - together with it - limitless number of individual lives.

We cannot really see through the exact, last reasons of defining these measures and putting them into place: how much these decisions are made out of actual care for the well-being of the society and how much for political gain. How much knowledge, expertise or the lack of it is involved in them.

Measures are necessary to save lives

I’m following the local numbers of infections, patients in hospitals, on ventilators. What I see is that intensive care departments (in reality, ventilators) were working on close to full capacity only a couple of days ago. 

This means to me that – should the number of infections grow further – patients would need to be left on corridors or in their homes to die. This is the situation that must be every government’s nightmare: you cannot let the nation get into such condition, where people die because there is lack of capacity in the healthcare that we pay so dearly for. 

So, they do what they can: they introduce measures and try to force the individual members of society to behave as they should behave anyway, if they had the slightest empathy for the good of the society. So far, the measures have included shutting certain branches of industry, services and schools down, making mask-wearing mandatory and limiting the free movement of individuals.

New measure: vaccination

 Now governments need to face a new, equally alerting and important question: under which circumstances they should make vaccination mandatory for their citizens, or what kinds of forces they should use to get the most individuals vaccinated. (N.B. the current intention of European governments is to keep COVID vaccination voluntary)

 Mandatory vs voluntary vaccination is an extremely complex question and the choice should be based on scientists’ expertise. The subject is, however, open for discussion to the wide public, so I will attempt to phrase an opinion too, or rather, raise some questions that everyone should answer before making a choice.

 What’s at stake

 What we can see clearly now is that the virus that causes the COVID sickness will return, unless x% of the population gets vaccinated. If it returns, we will get into the same situation as we did this winter, when all non-essential shops, restaurants, services are closed, children are sitting at home desperately trying to keep up with school online, tourism has been non-existing for a year now. Those entrepreneurs and employees, who live from the suffering industries, lose their income and the safety of their living gets in danger. The others, who benefit from these services will “only” suffer from depression and other different psychological effects if it continues the long term. We cannot even estimate what would be the socialization effect on this generation of children, students.

It would be so simple and logical to say, “Let’s all get vaccinated and live happily ever after”.

Unfortunately, it never is that simple. I don’t even want to talk about the crowds who are so susceptible to conspiracy theories and rejoice in the limitless ideas of injecting 5G chips together with the vaccine.

We don’t need these extraterrestrial conspiracies, because the mere facts (or rather the lack of them) about the vaccinations are worrying enough in themselves.

Limits of Science

I haven’t started to dig for the precise, scientific descriptions of the vaccines, but I do trust science. I trust that scientists and research labs do their best to provide us with the safest and most efficient vaccine that they can in such short time under the available circumstances. I also trust that responsible authorities of the individual countries and those of the EU analyze thoroughly what they allow for their governments to vaccinate with. 

I equally believe in the responsibility of the pharmaceutical companies. They are responsible for their products (hence the several pages description of potential side effects even for the most harmless products). I also believe in their overwhelming economic interest for the wealth of their shareholders – if a vaccine of any pharmaceutical company shows serious issues, that company will go down the economic drain, and this is the worst thing that can happen in their sphere of existence.

I therefore believe they give us the very best current science can offer, and science today is on a level that we could have never imagined 20 or 30 years ago. 

There is, however, one thing that we can state without any doubt: nobody has seen or can testify for any long-term effects of any of these vaccines. 

Individual Responsibility

It is unnecessary to argue, who is responsible if anything goes wrong: the producer, the registration agency, who professionally certified and allowed, the governments, who push on speeding the vaccine delivery or the doctors who inject them into us. 

It does not really matter - at the end we are responsible for ourselves and – please, hear this - for the society that we are living in. 

The question that arises is where we put our priority. 

We live in organizations called society. The society was originally set up by individuals to assure the protection and the good of the community of individuals. In order to do that, society also needs to control and regulate the same individual members.

As members of the society we vote for governments, trusting that they will work in the best interest of the community. Somewhere, on the way, however, many governments lost their reason of existence and started to abuse their power for all kinds of political and economic interests.

We, as individuals, on the other hand, are already excellent in protecting our own, individual interests, without giving a second thought about others (I’ve already written here shortly about nobody wearing masks, thus putting others’ health and lives into risk)

Why is the COVID vaccine more dangerous than everything else?

We hear so many voices, protests against vaccinations, on the basis of what kinds of side effects they might ever have. One view that I found funny: “you eat sausage all your life and you’re worried about the vaccine?” We rarely really know what is in our daily food, a major part of the population eats measureless painkillers, anti-fever pills - only to mention the most common medications - without as much as looking into the description of potential side effects. Should they do so once, they would be surprised. True, we know these medications for decades and have seen the side effects during time. 

Sharing the risk and responsibility

When we are questioning the necessity of the vaccine, let’s consider an entrepreneur, who receives and accepts financial state support during the time, when he or she cannot operate the business. On the other hand, he or she is worried about the side effects the vaccine may have on him or her and refuses to get vaccinated.

Looking at the same situation from another individual’s point of view: if I, being the member of the same society, take the unquestionable risk of getting vaccinated in order to prevent further outbreaks and economy downtimes - should I want the same society pay out support to individuals, who don’t take the same risk as I do, or should I be happily financing further the common healthcare system so that the anti-vaccine members of the society can still be cured safely from the sickness caused by the virus?

How far you are ready to go to protect others?

I’ve recently heard medical doctor’s discussion on TV, saying that the vaccines constitute the biggest risk for those, whose immune system is already weakened by other sicknesses and therapies - the most obvious example is cancer patients being on chemo treatment. The consensus of this forum was that the ultimate solution for these patients is if everybody around them gets vaccinated, so that the sick ones would be protected by their environment.

Let me ask this question: if a close relative of yours (your spouse, your child) is in such condition of chemo treatment, or of any other sickness that has already weakened the body, would you voluntarily get vaccinated to protect them?

If your answer is yes, how far would you be willing to widen the circle of those, whom you would get vaccinated for? How far is the edge of this circle before you say, ‘now it’s me, who counts.’

If this limit were so far that it would include all the other healthy members of your society (let’s specify your society as your countrymen), the question of mandatory vaccination would become meaningless. Every healthy citizen would voluntarily take the defined risk in order to protect the weak ones and to assure a meaningful life for themselves and all others in the society.

Government’s responsibility to guarantee to safest vaccine

This idealistic picture is, unfortunately, greatly disturbed by the governing bodies of the individual societies. We see tendencies, where political decision-makers overrule professional, scientific bodies and decide to vaccinate with non-registered, non-authorized vaccines to push their political agenda.

When this happens, what should a responsible individual do? While I believe we individually serve the community by getting vaccinated, I ultimately expect the community, the decision-makers to provide me with the best and safest available options to do so.

It is senseless to take unnecessary risk with unknown vaccines. Elections to change government might be far away, but you still have the right to say no for unsafe vaccines. Wait for the certified ones.