It’s time to stop mandating foolishness

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Oct 21

RE: It’s time to mandate COVID shots for eligible students.  Hamilton Spectator editorial of 14 Oct 21.

The practice of medicine is for the good of the patient.  I know this concept of the individual is hard for progressives and Marxists to get their heads around, but it is essential to understanding why mass mandates are rarely good.

The editorial mentions the mandate to vaccinate young children for measles, mumps, chicken pox and rubella, but this make sense on an individual basis.  These are serious childhood sicknesses, the vaccines against them actually work for life, and the vaccines have proven to have side effects rarely.  This isn’t the case with the COVID vaccines.  COVID simply is not a serious illness for anyone under twenty, the vaccines are only 70 percent effective at best, and the risks of the COVID vaccines, though small, are not insignificant.  The AstraZenica one was pulled from Canada for its high risk profile, the J & J vaccine seems never to have been properly made, and the Moderna vaccine has produced a noteworthy number of adverse reactions.

Mass vaccination of under-twentys is going to produce more adverse reactions than it will “control the spread,” and there is no benefit to the individual, for whom COVID is not a high-risk sickness.  If the story is that the kids will spread it among themselves, and then one of them will bring it home to grandma, well, that’s on grandma.  She’s the one who should have been vaccinated based on risk.

Here is some data.  As of this date, Ontario has had a total of 593,000 cases of COVID-19 since January 15, 2020.  There have been a total of 9,807 deaths.  The under 20 demographic have accounted for a total of 89,423 cases and 6 deaths.  The 20-39 demographic have accounted for 125,456 cases and 99 deaths.  In contrast, the over 80 demographic have accounted for 25,978 cases and 5,912 deaths.  COVID-19 is overwhelmingly a problem for the very old, and becomes much less of a problem for those under 60.  For the young, COVID is not a problem at all.

Since COVID is not a problem at all for the young, the vaccine in them can only have drawbacks, and while they are few the numbers are not insignificant.  Consequently, on a risk-benefit analysis, vaccines should not be mandated for those under 60, certainly for those under 40, and absolutely not for those under 20.

I mentioned a 70 percent effectiveness of the vaccines.  As of this date in Ontario, 32 percent of those hospitalized with COVID, are either fully or partially vaccinated.  Of those in ICU, 19 percent are either fully or partially vaccinated.  Vaccination may help reduce the severity of the infection, comparing hospitalizations to ICU patients, but it is by no means bullet-proof protection against getting COVID at all.  Hence, even if students under the age of 20 were vaccinated, it still would not eliminate the potential for students to become infected and become carriers, even if the severity of the disease in them is small.  It could introduce a false sense of security.

We are now also aware of the limited life-span of the immunity provided by the vaccines.  A booster shot is not being administered after only eight months.

There are no easy answers, but the proclivity to simply order that this or that be done in haste – stumbling around in the dark trying hit-or-miss solutions – is bad, and needs to be stopped.  I know progressives love exercising government power, so someone may have to stop them.

In addition, public health officials have to stop being lazy.  Declaring an outbreak and closing a school because three cases have been detected is lazy, stupid, and wrong.  You can, with testing, figure out which classes were exposed, and test students individually for the disease.  The aim should be keeping schools open as much as possible, not the better comfort of the public health professionals.

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