Personal Choice, the COVID-19 Vaccination, and Returning to “Normal”

With the COVID vaccine rolling out, more and more people are receiving the long awaited poke in the arm. In response, normal life is slowly creeping back. And the promise of pre-pandemic times seems within reach.

The new vaccine card is essentially your ticket back to normal life. Currently being dubbed  a “passport,” presenting it is supposed to make anything from international travel to entering some businesses and schools possible again without having to be retested, quarantined, or required to wear a mask. 

The vaccine cards display the brand of vaccine you received, as well as the dates and place of immunization. This allows for proof of vaccination to be easily accessible. 

“Being able to assess immunity to COVID is a critical part of trying to resume our daily lives.” said epidemiologist John Brownston, Ph.D. 

We all want to resume normal life. Assessing the immunization rate of communities is important to continue fighting COVID. But should places be demanding proof of vaccination via the flash of a card? 

Many are making the argument that this is nothing new, which has some merit. In fact, when many Americans travel to countries in Africa a variety of vaccinations are strongly encouraged like anthrax, yellow fever, and meningitis. And it should come as no surprise that doctors in America already keep records of vaccinations for individuals to present to schools, universities, and other places that require them. 

These cases are not exactly the same as COVID-19 though. Yellow fever is a disease that has been around for years with a vaccine that has been around for just as long. COVID-19 is still a new virus with a vaccine that is even newer. While the first rounds of vaccinations are seeming to be effective, it’s still unpredictable, and will remain so for quite some time, as to what the long term side effects might be. 

Requiring vaccine cards to be admitted back into normalcy might not seem catastrophic. But not everyone in the country is planning on getting the shot for a variety of reasons. There are many that might not feel comfortable receiving the vaccine right now. But the necessity of having a vaccine card may pressure those who aren’t ready yet.

If we’re told that everyone must get vaccinated is the only way back to normalcy, there doesn’t seem to be much wiggle room for those who are uneasy. They might feel that in order to go out into society again, they will need to go against their own preferences.

So do we ignore the feelings of those who don’t want the vaccine right away? 

We shouldn’t. There is nothing wrong with waiting. It’s perfectly normal to want to exercise caution, especially when it involves personal health. Not receiving the vaccine should not be a reason to deny a person entrance to a place of business or to travel. 

People are not prohibited from entering stores if they don’t have their yearly flu shot. The same principle should apply here as well. Health officials are telling us that the COVID-19 virus mutates and creates different strands and that we’ll need booster shots in the future. The flu does essentially the same thing each year, so why treat COVID-19 any differently?

Once the vaccine hit the streets the discussion of immunity was left in the dust. Even in all of the fear and uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, the human body has not changed. Those of us that are not in the high risk  population still have functioning immune systems that are better equipped to handle the virus than others. 

There have been over 30 million cases of COVID-19 in the United States since the pandemic started resulting in nearly 550,000 deaths. That means that over 29 million people have recovered from the virus and have developed some sort of immunity to it.

Don’t get me wrong, we still need to be careful. But the argument of, “vaccinate or continue to stay masked and six feet away forever just doesn’t make any sense”. 

People need to be able to live their lives without fearing that they are going to get sick and die. They also need to be free to make their own decisions regarding their health. Each individual is the best authority on what is best for themselves.

Mandating vaccines as a requirement to live a normal life again directly violates our very fundamental right of personal choice.