Don't get me wrong: I trust medicine a lot and it has literally saved my life, but doctors aren't primarily scientists.
It’s not like there have ever been consequences like “if I don’t do this I’ll lose my job” or “I can’t travel here”, or “I can attend this school, even online”, right?
That would all be public policy that would never fly by the law. Am I correctly reading your post?
All schools have rules of conduct, if you violate them your kid gets kicked out. Jobs also have rules of conduct, dress code, etc. And yes, not being vaccinated means you cannot have certain jobs.
The vaccine debate is really quite straight forward. On one side you have people arguing that vaccines might cause damage and they shouldn't be forced to take them. Of course, you are not forced to take them, but then those people argue that you shouldn't have consequences from it like losing your job or your kid getting kicked out of school.
On the other side, people argue that they shouldn't be forced to be exposed to someone who might cause them harm (by transmitting a preventable disease). This group also doesn't want negative consequences by having to hide from these people.
So the argument is similar from both groups, but the difference is that there is virtually no evidence of the harms the first group claims to want to avoid, while an abundance of factual evidence of the deaths of people and children caused by the lack of vaccines or by the spread of disease due to enough people not getting a vaccine.
Thus, as a society we choose to collectively put in a law siding with the second group. That's democracy.
edit: but I'll note that actuality in many cases people do get to send their unvaccinated kids to school and do end up killing other people's kids as a result. I wonder why we're talking about charging scientists with crimes and not people who do things we know with 100% certainty cause kids to die.
There is not only evidence of harm:
The Link Between J&J’s COVID Vaccine and Blood Clots: What You Need to Know https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/coronavirus-vaccine-blood-...
Scientists discover 'smoking gun' link between AstraZeneca vaccine and lethal blood clots https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/02/scientists-disco...
New Zealand links 26-year-old man's death to Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/new-zealand-links...
but also lack of efficacy in stopping the spread:
Coronavirus outbreak sidelines ship whose crew is fully immunized, Navy says https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2021/12/24/...
Covid cases hit records in South Korea and Singapore despite widespread vaccinations https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/world/covid-cases-hit-rec...
COVID Cases Are Surging in the Five Most Vaccinated States https://www.newsweek.com/covid-cases-are-surging-five-most-v...
So again, the big picture is extremely clear. Thankfully the right choices were made for society.
This is the sort of disinformation that creates and spreads anti-vaccination ideas. All it takes is for someone to get skeptical and look it up. They will feel betrayed by the so called "authorities" and will never trust them again. It's even worse when said "authorities" want to vaccinate people forcefully as a matter of public policy. People don't enjoy having their autonomy disrespected. Especially comical are the governments that censor people for posting "fake news" only to end up spreading vaccine disinformation, and when it's pointed out they double down on those claims and do everything they can to coerce people into getting them.
Since you admit they couldn't stop the spread, why should the vaccines be mandated?
> To stop people dying.
Then why should it be forced on an unwilling recipient? Any more than we'd force someone (on pain of losing their livelihood or worse) to give up unhealthy eating habits, unsafe activities, etc.?
Being allowed to enter another country is a privilege, not a right. This is something people who have passports that allow visa-free travel to almost anywhere often forget.
Thus if another country doesn't want you to unnecessarily become a burden on their healthcare system it is not unreasonable for them to demand you've gotten vaccinated. Even if there are risks associated with it, you will have to take those risks to earn the privilege.
Modern society is complex, and even simpler historical societies were dependent on cooperation before we got anywhere near the level of complexity and specialization we deal with today.
At the end of the day it’s a trust issue. Studies, be they medical, scientific, or observational, are one way to build trust. There are many others, but I’m not sure how well they scale with the size of a society compared to the systems we have in place today.
No, surgeons should make decisions informed by their own experience and, yes, recommendations from medical researchers. How we're doing it is how it should be, the fraud remains the problem here.
An obvious counter example is electroshock therapy or a lobotomy. Typically there's some due process there before a doctor just does something against patient wishes.
People don't like the vaccine debate for many, many reasons. Sadly a lot of the discussion is people talking past each other and refusing to acknowledge that the other side does have a point about assumptions that are damaging to their own position.
Depending on your definition. ER surgeons regularly force surgery on someone who is unconscious and thus we cannot ask if they want it or not. The law specifically says if someone cannot answer then the answer is automatically assumed to be they want it (at least in most places).