With the approval and coming release of vaccines for COVID-19, there are questions on what the proper libertarian stance should be on this vaccine and vaccines in general. There is also a question of whether libertarians (or anyone else) should get the vaccine.
From a libertarian standpoint, it should obviously be voluntary on whether to get the vaccine or any other vaccine. It is a personal decision. Whether or not it is a good idea is a different matter.
There are a few self-identified libertarians out there who will argue that the state can compel vaccination because walking around unvaccinated can be seen as aggression. This is a major stretch at the very least, but I believe it is flat out wrong.
If you are walking around without a vaccine, then this is not aggressive behavior. If you are sick and contagious and walking around trying to infect others, then this would be considered aggressive behavior. It is a little more questionable if you are sick but not purposely trying to infect anyone.
Even here though, a good libertarian stance would argue for strong property rights. If most property is owned privately (i.e., not by the government), then it really becomes a question of the property owners’ policies and voluntary associations.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that every storeowner has to have an explicit policy for everything. We do rely on social norms. When you walk into a store, you don’t need a specific invitation. The “open” sign is understood. You also, hopefully, don’t cut in front of someone in line at the register.
If you walk into a store and sneeze on people on purpose, there may not be a specific policy against this. But you will be infringing on others, and the store manager will likely throw you out.
The hard thing we are facing now with vaccines is that there is a threat of having your life made difficult if you are unvaccinated. For instance, Ticketmaster has already suggested requiring vaccination to attend a concert or other event, or to get a negative COVID test right before the event.
It is not hard to imagine that the airlines might require something similar. It is not hard to imagine many major corporations following suit, especially when corporate executives are quick these days to do the politically correct thing and to stay on the good side of the establishment.
As a libertarian, I don’t legally object to a company requiring vaccination in order to do business there. I will personally object and complain, but I don’t want the government to force a company to not require vaccination. Of course, if the government got involved, we know which side it would come down on.
The big problem is that the government is influencing these businesses to take these types of actions. It is not all that different from mask policies.
Even worse, the government is heavily involved in many of these industries. Again, we need to return to private property rights. If the government didn’t own and control so many things, then this would not be as much of a problem.
The government is heavily involved in medical care in almost every way. So it is no surprise that hospitals and other medical facilities are likely to require or highly encourage vaccination. The same goes with airlines. In the realm of schooling, most schools are government-run and government-funded.
Even in industries where the government has less control, the threat still looms. Every legal business is licensed by the state. If you are a hardware store owner, are you going to announce that vaccinations are unnecessary? Are you going to say to your employees that you don’t recommend getting a vaccine? You will be lucky if you can just ignore the vaccination issue. Again, threats loom. This is more true now than ever after we have seen that governors and mayors can just deem your business as “non-essential” and shut it down without even going to the legislature.
So the root of the problem isn’t vaccination. The root of the problem is a lack of respect for property rights. It is a problem of government at all levels being able to interfere with businesses.
Vaccine Safety and Efficacy
Now there is the question of whether it is wise to get vaccinated. There is certainly a lot of skepticism, which is good. I only wish there had been that much skepticism about the hyping of the dangers of the virus from the beginning. I wish there had been more skepticism about the wisdom of locking down society.
It’s interesting that there are no clean political lines when it comes to getting a vaccine. The vaccines are coming out on Trump’s watch, but they were announced after the election. So some Trump supporters favor the vaccine because Trump is touting it and because they are coming out while he is still president. But much of the left also favors the vaccine because they are being approved after the election, which seemingly takes a lot of the political element out of it.
Libertarians tend to be the most consistent in not wanting to get the vaccine, but I have definitely seen exceptions here as well.
With regard to Trump, I think he has just been bad on this issue. With the overall issue of the coronavirus, Trump has been better than Biden just because Biden has been so horrible. At least Trump admits that there are tradeoffs and that we can’t lock down society for a long period of time. As he has said a few times, we can’t let the cure be worse than the disease. Of course, from my perspective, the cure became worse than the disease on the first day of lockdowns back in March.
When Trump was elected in 2016, there was talk of him setting up some kind of vaccine safety committee to be headed by Robert Kennedy Jr. This would have been a hand grenade thrown right at the FDA, the CDC, and the entire pharmaceutical industry. This is why it never happened.
I suspect the hysteria over COVID-19 was greater than it would have been had Trump not been president. He got suckered. He went along with Fauci and all of the establishment medical hacks. He originally bought into the idea of lockdowns. In this sense, he deserved to lose the 2020 election, even if fraudulently.
At this point, I’m not sure how much worse things could get under Biden in terms of the COVID hysteria. He can implement a 100-day mask mandate (or request), but maybe that will just make the Trump people a little more defiant. Right now, almost everyone wears a mask because they are obedient citizens. At the very least, they feel societal pressure to conform.
Trump continues to push hard for the vaccines. It certainly makes no sense based on what he was saying in 2016. Unfortunately, many Trump loyalists are going to listen to him on this one and take the vaccine.
My personal recommendation is to skip it. It may be hard for some people, especially if their job depends on it. If this is the case, then my best recommendation is to stall for as long as possible. At least give it a little time to see if there are major side effects being experienced by a significant percentage of people. But don’t rely on the corporate media for this reporting.
Just the fact that the establishment and its media are promoting these vaccines so hard gives me reason to stay away from the vaccines. They lie about weapons of mass destruction. They lie about climate change. They lie about Russian interference in the election. If they’ll lie about all of this, why wouldn’t they lie about the safety and efficacy of a vaccine?
Also, I just don’t believe the narrative about COVID-19. Even if you believe the death count, which you shouldn’t, it means that really old people and really unhealthy people mostly die from (or with) it.
If you are relatively young and healthy, then there is no reason to be vaccinated. Your risk of bad side effects from the vaccine is likely much higher than your risk from the actual virus.
If you are elderly or if you are in poor health, then you probably shouldn’t be injecting vaccines into you that will likely just serve to further weaken your immune system.
These are just my opinions. If you disagree, you are free to take the shots. Of course, I wish that others had respected my rights and the rights of others to live our lives as we saw fit this year. If you thought you were at high risk for the virus, then nobody was telling you that you had to leave your house. But for those of us willing to take the risk (supposedly), we should have been allowed to voluntarily associate with others.
The other major problem with these vaccines is that they all come about with government funding. The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars already, which means that the taxpayers have paid for them. Again, we get back to a lack of property rights, although a few billion dollars is nothing these days.
However, the government funding and approval create even more moral hazard. It takes away market competition. It gives a false sense of security when the FDA approves a vaccine and declares it to be within its safety guidelines. And these vaccines coming out now were obviously rushed, and there was far less stringent testing than normal.
It would not surprise me if the coming vaccines just cause a new wave of illness. Maybe the illnesses will be blamed on the coronavirus. Maybe they will be ignored.
One thing I do know is that it would have to get pretty bad for any establishment news sources to report on it. You will have to rely on alternative media, which you should probably do anyway.
My best hope is that the vaccines don’t really do much of anything but they are used as an excuse to say that the coronavirus “pandemic” is now under control and we can start opening up the economy.
Actually, my best hope is that everyone wakes up and realizes they have been swindled since March 2020. But I’m trying to be realistic here.