Forcibly Vaccinate the Unvaccinated
By
David Gottfried
Malthus used to say that famines, starvation and disease had their good points as they eliminated the surplus population. Of course, it is highly dubious that Covid will be as virulent as the great plagues of mankind’s exciting and bloodthirsty youth (smallpox, cholera, TB etc.), but sometimes, in my more malicious moments, I wish it would be. I am not so misanthropic as to crave mass death, but I do think that the unvaccinated ought to roll up their sleeves or just overdose on their oxycontin because their very existence is a threat to the rest of us.
First, I will explain why the unvaccinated threaten the vaccinated. Then, I will offer legal and political arguments to prove that the excuses, put forth by civil libertarians, and conservatives who for the first time in their lives have voiced civil libertarian arguments, should be cast aside as just so much rubbish.
1) Why the unvaccinated threaten the vaccinated:
Whenever the virus multiplies, it may mutate. Some of the mutations may make the virus deadlier and more contagious. Indeed, the current scourge, the Delta variant of Covid, did not exist at the outset of the pandemic. Instead, it came into being as a consequence of mutations.
The more virus there is, the greater the risk of mutations. The presence of millions of people who will not get vaccinated is a risk to us all. Those many millions of ignorant Trumpers, rednecks and certifiable fools harbor trillions of viruses which are multiplying every minute and with each incident of viral multiplication there is a risk of a mutation that will throw many more millions into the vortex of virulent disease and ventilators.
The delta variant is more deleterious to one’s health, and more contagious, than all preceding strains of the virus. As long as we passively accept the presence of millions of ass holes who will not get vaccinated, we risk the possibility that a new variant, infinitely more devastating than Delta, will emerge.
Although the present vaccines are effective against Delta, a large amount of medical evidence shows that many vaccinated people have been getting the Delta variant. They are almost always spared death or hospitalization, but many vaccinated people have gotten somewhat sick from the Delta variant.
The Delta variant is much worse that the variant which we found in England several months ago, and that English variant is much worse than the Covid virus that we found at the outset of the pandemic.
The next variant may very well overwhelm the defenses of the vaccinated and induce debilitation and death.
Remember: Every time you walk down the street and encounter a porky pig purporting to be person, and he is not wearing a mask, he is a threat to your health.
2) Why the fears of the unvaccinated are not worth our attention or concern:
A) If we can compel 19-year-olds to leave home and join the military, and risk death in the swamps of Indochina, or the deserts of North Africa or the spikey mountainous terrain of Monte Casino, we can make them roll up their goddamn sleeves and take a shot.
B) If we can force people to pay taxes, we can force them to take a shot. My adversary will posit this rejoinder: Something which may effect one’s health is much more momentous than paying a tax. However, the great majority of vaccine-resisters would take the shot for a sum of money far less than what they pay in taxes.
C) If we can make certain drugs, that people believe will save their lives, illegal, we can make people take a shot.
D) If we can quarantine people, we can force them to take a shot.
E) Arguably, no one has an absolute or unconditional right to enter a building or go to one’s place of business. If one’s presence may harm others, the state should be empowered to banish such people from such venues.
F) When the blubbering unvaccinated fools blab about the risks of covid, put duct tape on their ugly mugs.
Everything has a certain measure of risk. When one crosses the street, one may be hit by a car and drop dead. When one eats some chicken, one may get salmonella and drop dead. When one takes an aspirin, one may get a bleeding ulcer and drop dead. When one takes an antibiotic in the quinolone class, one may suffer a dislocated tendon and require surgery or never move the effected muscle again for the duration of one’s life.
Tort lawyers and people in the insurance industry know that the question isn’t simply whether or not an activity is associated with a risk. Rather, one must assess the severity of the adverse side effect and the possibility that one might suffer such an adverse development. Indeed, the Law has tried to reduce this to a mathematical formula to determine whether a defendant is negligent for operating a risky enterprise:
Judge Learned Hand (This isn’t a typo. His name really was Learned Hand.) said that if the adverse risk was so severe that it could be valued as a one-million-dollar risk, and if the possibility of suffering this adverse development was one percent, then the defendant must spend at least one percent of one million dollars on safety precautions to avoid a finding of negligence in a suit for damages.
But, of course, the common, vulgar people never heard of Learned Hand’s formula. Of course, one does not need to have ever heard of Hand’s formula to know what he was talking about. One only needs a brain with at least a dull-normal IQ of 90. But too many Americans are too disinclined to think to realize that all risks are relative.
They make judgments not because it is in accord with their reasoning; they don’t reason in the first place. They simply believe in that which they want to believe in. They believe in things because those things comport with their prejudices and biases. For example, I knew a self- described member of the Tea Party who insisted that various moderate Republicans were communists. I asked her why. She said she did not understand why they were communists but that her “group leader” in the tea party had said they were communists.
G) Give something back to the state (or at least the people suffering your presence)
I once had a friend who was fantastically sarcastic. He had quarreled with a momentously fat momma on the subway. The woman stoutly said that she paid just as much as he had paid to get on the subway. He tartly and savagely replied, “You spent a lot less per pound.”
An hour ago, I was at Target getting groceries. Going to Target always entails rubbing shoulders with hundreds of women, who weigh more than two hundred pounds, who stock up on frosted donuts, cake, chocolate, ice cream and other essentials of the life of the pampered paupers of America. (I can’t believe that I am writing this. I used to be a stalwart socialist. Ah, but the poor of today have not the merest measure of merit compared to the dirt poor and valiant fighters of the Vietcong, the partisans of World War Two, or my Jewish mother who starved in the great depression and got the highest score, in all of New York State, on the high school history regents’ exam.)
Whether they are black people shaking their enormously fat asses to hip hop “music,” or dumb, white, red neck southerners shaking their fat arms in sync with the hate belted-out by their favorite right-wing demagogues, the vaccine-resisters are uneducated and they do not deserve a voice.