The Latest Phase of Covid Overreach? Vaccinating Kids without Parental Consent.

How did we get here? And how do we step away from the cliff that is greater and more authoritarian government control?

From a recent article from NPR:

“The law directs physicians to submit a student's immunization record directly to the student's school if a parent has submitted paperwork objecting to vaccines because of their faith. Healthcare providers who administer vaccines must seek payment directly from insurers without notifying parents.”

How did we get to this point? Pay attention to the reasoning:

“Physicians and lawmakers emphasize that allowing children to seek vaccines without permission from parents can spare children from becoming sick with preventable illnesses and stop diseases from spreading.”

“ ‘The child has his or her own agency in their body and their health and their lives,’ said Cheh, who represents Ward 3.”

I know I’ve posted a lot about Covid-related issues over the past year and a half. Everything I have written or shared has been driven by a desire to help others make informed decisions, especially since much important information has been censored, dismissed, or attacked.

Allow me to be candid for a moment: I don’t particularly enjoy social media, and I never saw myself as someone who would post a lot. Like others, I have many responsibilities and wear multiple hats, and carving out time to dialogue honestly and tactfully about complex issues can take a lot of time. Most of all, I cherish time with my family, knowing that none of us is guaranteed another day of life and that my three precious daughters will be grown before I turn around. So why spend time composing lengthy posts and articles on such controversial issues?

As I reflect on the power and control that governments across the world have seized by various emergency declarations during these relatively short 18 months, I’m reminded why I feel compelled to write. So many liberties have been trampled and eroded in such a short time that many nations (and some U.S. states) bear more resemblance to oppressive authoritarian regimes than liberal democracies or representative governments. Consequently, I choose to write today because I fear what our nation and our world may look like in another 18 months if more people do not stand up to the authoritarian policies that have been imposed for the sake of “health” and “safety”—and in the name of the “common good.” I’m only one small voice, but I care DEEPLY about the truth and about the good of others, and I have seen, time and again, how literally countless people have been harmed throughout history in the name of the common good. I don’t want to see that happen again in the coming months and years if there’s any small role I can play to stop it. But back to the present article from NPR: How did we get to this point?

There are much deeper cultural issues at play here that cannot be discussed in this one post, but one thing that is becoming crystal clear is the debate over who has the right and the authority to make health decisions: individuals (and their parents), or governments, healthcare organizations, and employers. As I wrote about previously (post from July 12th), informed consent is absolutely central to medical ethics and for the true common good. Specifically, the Code of Medical Ethics makes clear that patients (or their parents or guardians) are the ones who have the right to make “well-considered decisions about care.” However, there seems to be a growing number of people (though still a minority) who do not believe that individuals should be able to make healthcare decisions for themselves and that such decisions should instead be made by public health officials or other government leaders. To judge this position as charitably as possible, what stands behind this desire to cede such decisions to the State or its agents is often a desire to protect others from harm. But such a well-intentioned desire to grant the State and various agencies the ability to impose lockdowns to “slow the spread,” or to mandate masks and even vaccines, is tragically misguided and can result in devastating and destructive consequences. Here’s what I mean:

Being able to make one’s own healthcare decisions is central to living in a free society. If you can be forced (or coerced) to accept medical treatments—especially experimental medical treatments—what can you NOT be forced to do? This is not simply a rhetorical question. If the government can force you to take an experimental vaccine, what is to prevent this same government from compelling other healthcare decisions for the sake of the “common good”? Some may call this alarmist, but consider the logical outworking of allowing the government to make such decisions:

Remember that in our nation, and in many other nations, abortion is considered “healthcare.” And remember further the oppressive policies of nations like Communist China that forced women to have abortions because of the government’s belief about what was best for Chinese society. If we are honest about the logic of these arguments and positions, we see that forced vaccinations and forced abortions are not different in kind but only in degree. Furthermore, if the government has authority over our bodies, even if such authority is used for the “common good” and because of a pressing “emergency,” what is to prevent such a government from seizing your property or from compelling you to do anything else for the sake of such common good and because of said emergency? To ask that question is to answer it.

So what do we do? How do we step away from the metaphorical cliff that is greater and more authoritarian government control?

The alternative to increasing government control over health and other decisions is a return to individual responsibility. Prior to the measures put in place beginning in March 2020, the vast majority of people in most Western societies understood that *individuals* in these nations have the liberty, privilege, and responsibility to take actions to protect themselves and their families from sickness and other threats. This is why, when the threat of covid was not fully understood, governments initially encouraged their citizens to stay home for two weeks in order to “flatten the curve.” But the ask of two weeks to flatten the curve quickly turned into months and months of mandates and other restrictions that subverted individual responsibility and replaced it with a paternalistic government response.

Even as someone who is inclined toward liberty and generally opposed to most government interventions, I could genuinely understand the desire to “do something” and the impulse of government officials to respond harshly in light of the horrifying initial projections. As I have previously stated, I believe we should judge government officials charitably, especially early on when so little was known about covid-19. But as the months passed by and hospitals were not overrun (remember: this was the initial and only justification for “two weeks to flatten the curve”), the justification for maintaining lockdowns and mandates quickly disappeared. This is especially true when evidence began to mount that masking and lockdowns did little if anything to “slow the spread” and in fact caused tremendous harm to countless individuals—especially children. Additional treatments and greater understanding of the disease should have put a final end to ongoing government mandates and should have returned society to the default position of “assumption of the risk,” whereby individuals are permitted to make their own decisions about what kind of risks they are willing to tolerate.

Even if some reading this post disagree with my arguments about these facts and the conclusions I have drawn, I would hope that a vaccine that has been widely available for several months (at least in the U.S. and other Western nations) would finally return society to its pre-covid balance of individual liberty over state control. If the vaccine is even half as effective as claimed, there is virtually zero chance of hospitals being overwhelmed by covid (and as I have shown previously, the 2018 flu season put more strain on many hospitals than covid ever did, and this was *before* the vaccine and other treatments became available). But instead of widespread availability being seen as the catalyst to allow individuals to once again make their own decisions based on their own risk tolerance, the goal posts have moved once more such that school districts and government agencies are subverting parental authority and coercing children to receive a vaccine against their parents’ wishes.

To all I have argued here, some will understandably counter that individuals cannot be allowed to make their own decisions, as they may make decisions that are driven by self-interest and not the best interests of others (or society as a whole). This seems to be the thinking of those who would covertly undermine the parents’ desires for their children when it comes to the covid vaccine. But such thinking assumes at least two premises that I believe are also tragically misguided:

First, this way of thinking assumes that the government and its agents are *not* driven by selfish or evil motives and that the State and its agents are only and always acting for the public good. History tells us this is not always (or even normally) the case and that those in positions of authority will often abuse their power to further their own interests, even if it means suffering or death for many of their own citizens. A biblical view of human nature also tells us that selfish and sinful individuals will not be magically sanctified simply by virtue of working for the government.

Second, shifting personal responsibility to the government not only assumes that the government is truly motivated by the best interests of all its citizens but also that the government is competent enough to judge what is really good and helpful to its citizens. Even if we assume the very best motives of public heath officials and other government leaders, the government can never anticipate the many harmful consequences of the public health measures it puts in place. Indeed, if government responses to covid-19 have proven anything, it’s that our societies are infinitely more complex than many realize and that myopically focusing on only one threat (e.g., the threat of illness and death from covid-19) can have catastrophic consequences. The fact that such consequences resulted from good motives and were therefore unintended does not change the incalculable (and often irrevocable) harm caused by government interventions.

This post is much longer than intended, but I will end with an appeal to history for why I’m so concerned about governments using the “emergency” of covid to seize and retain control over people’s lives, including their most personal decisions about whether or not to take an experimental vaccine. Lest we forget:

Granting governments more authority over the lives of individuals and suspending personal liberties enabled the Nazi regime to persecute and murder millions of people for the purported good of the German nation.

Millions and millions more people were brutally murdered in the name of the common good in the Soviet Union, China, and other Communist nations.

Countless human beings have been enslaved by innumerable nations throughout history—including our own—for what many of these governments held to be the common good.

I do not believe these comparisons are alarmist. Very few if any of these societies recognized at the time where increasing government authority and decreasing individual liberty would lead. We all tend to think that it can never happen here. But such sentiments deceive us.

I appeal to my friends to stand against the ongoing and increasing efforts of governments around the world to impose what can only be described as dystopian requirements on their citizens. I don’t believe that anyone desires to live in a dystopian society, but if we don’t recalibrate our thinking and demand a restoration of liberty and personal choice, we may find ourselves living in such societies that truly oppress their citizens, that diminish human flourishing, and that devalue and even destroy humans created in the image of God.