Conspiracy Theory or Common Sense?

The First Discourseman

I will probably take the vaccine, but it’s strange to me how few people have any qualms whatsoever with vaccines or vaccine passports. I’d thought I was being fairly sensible when, upon the rollout of the vaccine, I thought I’d better take my chances with COVID, but I’ve discovered that puts me in the same camp as conspiracy theorists who believe Bill Gates seeks to control us all with microchips. So here is my reasoning behind a certain vaccine scepticism:

• Far from being ignorant of the data, it’s the data that tells me I might just be fine if I catch COVID. For the young and healthy, without pre-existing conditions, the odds of COVID being lethal are infinitesimal, on a par with blood clots from the vaccine in fact. Moreover, up to two-thirds of people who catch COVID are asymptomatic; I may have had it without my knowing, or I may catch it without my knowing.
• The vaccine is new. I don’t think it’s anti-scientific to point out that vaccines relying on new technology, developed within the last year, are impossible to be guaranteed as safe. For the at-risk, it makes a lot of sense to take one’s chances with the vaccine, but for the under-30s and children the protection from COVID does not obviously outweigh the potential risks of the vaccine.
• Vaccine passports are not comparable to those issued for diseases like yellow fever. COVID’s mortality is simply not on a par with yellow fever, rabies and cholera, and it’s disingenuous to make the comparison.
• More significantly, advocates of vaccine passports are proposing their implementation go far wider than international travel. If concerts, nightclubs and cinemas start requiring vaccine certificates to enter, I should hope there at least a few concerned voices. It is not wacky to view vaccine passports as conducive to greater state surveillance, or part of a wider effort at state biosecurity. Mandated ID cards are definitionally illiberal. There is a perennial tension between freedom and security, but this last year has exposed just how little people care about freedom in the face of a perceived threat.
• Anything made compulsory by the government is probably suspect. From a point of pure principle, if vaccines were mandated (or implicitly mandated via passports), I’d find that worrying. At risk of sounding like a petulant child (‘Now you’ve told me to do it, I’m not going to do it’ kind of thing), when the government mandates something without scrutiny, consideration and extensive justification, that is good reason not to do it.
• But wait…a counterpoint: herd immunity? One reason I will take the vaccine is for the common good it might bring about: less risk of my passing on the disease, therefore closer to herd immunity, as the logic goes. Looking at the pronouncements of many scientists though, this theory is debatable, not least because no one knows what that herd immunity threshold is. Getting the vaccine might help the nation reach the goal, but it certainly can’t be used as a trump card argument for taking the vaccine. Since no one is quite sure how herd immunity, R rate, vaccine immunity, etc. works, not even SAGE (*gasp*), I don’t think we can aim for herd immunity with any certainty. It is not even obvious what this would achieve: new variants could still infect the population, for instance.

Therefore, whilst I will take the vaccine, I’d like to think one could refuse it without being labelled an antisocial lunatic.