Vaccination is not a "personal choice"

> Take, for example, the story of a 9-month old baby girl whose choice to avoid preventable childhood illnesses was taken away from her by someone who made the choice to skip out on a routine vaccine.

The "choice" was not taken away from her, because at that age she is unable to make choices on her own, whether for better or for worse.

> Until this point in her life, the infant had not had so much as a cough or sniffly nose.

Someone would argue that this point was proof that your choice not to vaccinate her was the right one.

I wear a facemask when around a lot of people or around any vulnerable people (hospital, clinic) to help protect both myself and other people. I may be contagious and not know it.

I wash my hands for the same reason.

I am fully vaccinated (I don't travel much anymore, but when I did I got those vaccines relevant to my destination) for the same reason.

I am increasingly okay with dying because I increasingly understand that I'm just one of many humans on the "bleeding edge of life", in it together; it's not all about me.

I deeply support community resistance via vaccination programs.

However there needs to be some ability to avoid vaccines for those that are psychologically scarred by the sheer idea of them.

A friend's wife went off the deep end about the vaccine - and it really harmed him, her, and her child. Not everybody is rational. I don't know the solution but I do know we need to find a solution. The needs of the physically susceptible (those we are most trying to protect by herd immunisation) need to be balanced by the needs of the psychologically susceptible (those we harm by herd immunisation).

When something is that important to someone that they will give up their career and livelihood: that's a strong indication that harm is occurring.

Disclaimer: volunteered for all my shots.

My unpopular opinion, as someone who worked in vaccine development and biotech manufacturing for a lengthy portion of my career, is that:

- vaccination should be a personal choice... no one has the right to compel anyone to get injected with anything. Full stop.

AND

- we need to raise the level of scientific and medical rigor applied to vaccine development, manufacturing, vaccine administration, and ongoing monitoring / pharmacovigilance so that people will feel comfortable taking vaccines.

The fact is that different quality and risk/benefit rules are applied to vaccines versus other injected drugs and this is not okay (read up on the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act passed on 1986, why it was passed, and how vaccines are tested for efficacy and safety versus other injected drugs).

Under normal circumstances, the COVID mRNA vaccines should have failed the clinical trial requirements for human safety. There were far too many adverse events in the clinical trials and many, many people were harmed by these mRNA vaccines (with quite a few deaths). The NIH & FDA largely swept this under the rug and refused to investigate or fund adequate investigation. Unfortunately, that entire episode has seriously harmed people's faith in the government and has negatively influenced people opinions on vaccine safety.

This is very disappointing because there are a lot of highly effective vaccines with excellent safety profiles when administered properly... vaccines almost everyone should receive. But the average citizen can't tell the difference and I don't blame them if they don't trust the government to protect them at the moment.

Looking at most governments in history, government mandated injections, especially when attached to your name/ID, seem like a terrible idea.