Mandating Vaccines for COVID-19? No.

While I am not a fan of disclosing personal medical information on social media, tonight I will because I feel compelled to say something in response to our Minister of Health’s suggestions that mandatory COVID-19 vaccines should be on the table. So firstly… I am fully vaccinated, and I have also had the booster.

87.75% of Canadians over age 12 are fully vaccinated. According to Our World in Data, Canada ranks #6 in the world for vaccination against COVID-19. So well done!

Despite that good news, it was very disheartening, indeed shocking, to hear our Minister of Health suggest that mandatory COVID-19 vaccines should be on the table. Let’s start by noting some data from Health Canada’s database on vaccinations.

While it is a common term I will use in this post, referring to people as “unvaccinated” is not very helpful. It “others” people, and often implies that they are ill or diseased when that is not the case. Instead we should refer to these folks as people whose immune system has not been enhanced with vaccines to offer superior protection against COVID-19. Lest we forget, a year ago all of us were “unvaccinated”.

So who in Canada is unvaccinated? Here are a few details from Health Canada:

Provinces and territories: highest vaccination rate is Newfoundland and Labrador, and the lowest vaccination rate is Nunavut.

Sex: Females have a 3% higher vaccination rate than males.

Age: highest vaccinated age group is age > 80 at over 95% fully vaccinated, lowest is nearly 83% for ages 12-29 (young kids not counted).

But what is not listed are other important categories that could be morally relevant in assessing the pros and cons of mandating vaccines: such as race, education level, income, incarcerated or free, etc.

In my opinion, the vaccine passports already implemented in Ontario and elsewhere were deeply problematic- they were socially divisive and (mostly) ineffective (given the fact that we are where we are with lockdown again). And now that they didn’t achieve what the planners had hoped they are doubling down on this intimidation strategy, which I presume they simply hope will have popular support since it is not predicated upon empirical evidence and a proportionate weighting of the (long-term) pros and cons.

There is much more at stake with this issue than just getting out of this current pandemic. There is the kind of society that will be left standing post-pandemic. There is the potential distrust and damage we do to future vaccine compliance and public health more generally if we mandate people to take something that they are opposed to taking.

For me, taking the vaccine was a no brainer. I took it to protect the health of my community, my family and for my own health. But I am somewhat scientifically literate, am familiar with the cost/benefit reasoning that goes into public health decision-making, etc. I realize that not everyone sees this complex moral and empirical landscape in the same way as I do. And lastly, I am a male over age 50, so the risks to me are different than the risks to a 20 year old (especially a person that has already recovered from COVID-19).

The core moral conviction of the medical sciences, often (though inaccurately) attributed to the Hippocratic Oath, states “First do no harm”. Threatening fines and further isolation upon many of Canada’s most vulnerable populations is too hefty a price to pay for the speculative societal benefits its proponents are pandering. Let’s get out of this pandemic with a society and culture we can still be proud of. We have sacrificed too much already.

Cheers,

Colin