The Star's War: Delusional editorial misses its target entirely
Commentary by Julien Beillard - 16 February 2022. Originally submitted to the Toronto Star on 23 December 2021.
Just before Christmas, the editorial board of the Toronto Star proposed that vaccination against COVID-19 should be mandatory. While they claim at one point merely to be “asking all participating members of our society” to get vaccinated, they make it clear that they will tolerate only one answer: “Refusing to get vaccinated (other than for religious or health reasons) is a willful, selfish, anti-social act that can no longer be condoned”. We are at war with a virus, and people must be made to fight for King and Country—or rather, to reduce stress on the health care system.
I wish to point out some errors in the Star’s reasoning.
Vaccines do appear to reduce the risk of death or serious illness, but these risks are already extremely low for most people. For a healthy unvaccinated person under the age of 60, the probability of either outcome is less than one percent. Many of those people now have natural immunity. For them, the probability is lower still. According to the Star’s editorial board, these individuals have an obligation to get vaccinated—and others have the right to force them to be vaccinated. After all, that very low probability would then be even lower!
This argument is frankly bizarre. As concerns hospitalization and death, being obese—vaccinated or not—is at least as great a risk factor as being unvaccinated. If vaccination should be mandatory simply because it reduces these risks, should dieting and regular exercise also be mandatory? Most of us recognize that this would be a grotesque violation of privacy, dignity and autonomy.
Many conditions treated in hospitals are due in part to lifestyle choices. People have concussions because they play hockey or go skiing. People have heart problems because they smoke or drink (or because they chose to get vaccinated against COVID-19). If unvaccinated people “intentionally burden the health care system”, so do all these others. If the unvaccinated are selfish and anti-social, so are all those whose choices played some causal role in their medical conditions.
Should we no longer condone any choice that increases the probability of an additional burden on the system? What percentage increase will be tolerated, and who gets to model the impact? Suppose that you’re doubly vaccinated, and now you’ve had your booster. You can still be infected. You can still transmit the virus. Maybe you should not be allowed to eat in a restaurant or visit your family for Christmas. After all, you could reduce the risk of a burden on the health care system by sitting alone in your apartment.
Perhaps it would make more sense to fix the system. The government has had almost two years to build ICU capacity, but it seems that almost nothing has been done. Instead of training nurses, we have fired those who decline vaccination. More importantly, we need to regain perspective. COVID-19 has an infection fatality rate slightly higher than the seasonal flu. A typical “case” involves only mild flu-like symptoms, or none. It is mainly the old and sick who are in real danger, and focused protection of these groups is possible. We are now dealing with the Omicron variant—one of thousands—which is by all accounts the mildest yet. There are just over 1,700 people hospitalized with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test in our province of almost fifteen million, and that number has dropped precipitously within the last two weeks after the peak of the Omicron wave.
It is unhealthy to compare this situation to a war, or to argue from that strained and hysterical analogy that people who are not vaccinated should be treated as enemy agents.
For almost two years we have lived in a psychotic culture, largely the creation of corporate mass media and governments. Only one thing has mattered: reducing risks associated with a single respiratory illness. As this recent editorial in the Star demonstrates, our new moralizing monomania has become a far more serious problem.
Give peace a chance.
Dr. Julien Beillard teaches philosophy at Ryerson University.