Mandatory vaccination is here
I fear that the singling out of those who do not take the vaccine will lay the groundwork for rolling in vaccine passports for all aspects of public life
For Bournbrook’s December Issue, I wrote an article titled ‘No to Mandatory Vaccination’, which, although nothing had been confirmed at the time of writing, described how the Government, through existing emergency legislation, had granted itself the power to introduce mandatory vaccination, as well as highlighting the implicit coercive measures with which mandatory vaccination would be enacted. In light of recent developments, the article has been republished online for the virtual masses to sink their teeth into.
Mandatory Vaccination is here. I did not make any concrete predictions in the December issue, maintaining a slither of hope that the Government would stop to catch its breath after nine months of upending centuries old civil liberties. Perhaps mandatory vaccination would have been the breaking point? Alas, it was not to be - for the same reason lockdown has continued past the ‘three weeks to flatten the curve’ phase last March: once the Rubicon has been crossed, there is no going back.
One key point I did not foresee, however, is the Government using lockdown as a weapon to coerce millions into marching down to the local G.P. and, with a soldier’s discipline, standing two feet apart come rain or shine. Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, recently mentioned that lockdowns must continue if a large number of people refuse the vaccine.
This attitude from the Government reveals two striking frames of mind. The first of which is the stubborn willingness to use intimidation. This demand from Vallance is a threat; ‘if you don’t do as we say, you will continue to be starved of your normal life’ is a tune more accustomed to the office buildings of the Chinese Communist Party, not the birthplace of the Magna Carta.
The second frame of mind is the overbearing maternalistic outlook the Government has had since lockdowns began, holding the nation close to its bosom. Prime Minister Johnson is currently concerned that the roughly two million people over seventy are still at risk from the virus, despite the success of the United Kingdom’s diligent and speedy vaccination campaign.
If this group wishes to receive the vaccination, they will have a jab in their arm in a matter of days; if they do not, then that is no business of the state. A free people must be allowed to put themselves at risk, otherwise that would not be liberty, but control.
However, the Government seeks this total control, in the form of lockdowns, for our own protection, allowing them to wipe clean their moral consciousness, and they will blot out any recognition of the adverse effects of their ill-thought-out policies from their isolated minds.
I fear that the singling out of those who do not take the vaccine will lay the groundwork for rolling in vaccine passports for all aspects of public life in a divide and conquer style tactic; those who have been vaccinated will accept turning against their fellow man for not taking the vaccine, rather than directing their anger against the Government for prolonging the lockdown.
Yet the Government may not need to introduce a compulsory vaccination directive if the private sector beats them to it. Barchester Healthcare, a care home provider, has recently pledged that all applicants must take the vaccine, with those already in employment facing, for lack of a better term, ‘corporate persuasion’.
As businesses move heaven and earth for their workplaces to be “COVID secure”, protecting themselves from state-sanctioned punishments, as well as future lawsuits if a customer contracts COVID on their property, the corporate world will demand its existing employees take the vaccine when it becomes available to the wider public.
This method of enforcement is near identical to how cancel culture operates.
Instead of state intervention, non-conformists risk losing their job, source of income, and entire livelihood, so there is an overwhelming incentive to follow the herd as the cost of exclusion is too great a burden to bear. In the ruins of the neoliberal revolution, free market fundamentalists substituted state power with corporate power, believing that liberty for the masses would be the norm.
Yet state power has made a dramatic comeback since the onset of the pandemic, accommodating its growth with the existing authority of the corporate world. Both power structures have made their intentions quite clear; this is the two-headed enforcer of mandatory vaccination.
