John Minto has got it almost completely right — in a Daily Blog post.
No, BFD readers: no need to nip outside to see if the sun has turned as black as sackcloth. Nor have I been moving up from red wine to spirits before lunchtime (again). I can assure you that all my f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s are intact.
No, indeed. Credit where it’s due, John Minto has all-but-nailed the kerfuffle over mandatory vaccinations.
Myself and my partner discussed vaccination for Covid and we decided we would get vaccinated – not for ourselves but for the “common good”. Vaccination doesn’t stop a person getting covid and neither does it stop a person spreading covid but it does relieve the symptoms of covid. This means it will reduce pressure on the health system for those that need it – those for whom covid has more serious effects.
Bing… bing… bing! Minto, amazingly, eschews the intolerant smugness of vaxhole-ism or the gibbering silliness of anti-vax, and sticks to the plain facts. Some of us might quibble that the covid vaccine is more a personal good than a common one, but, potayto, potahto.
Minto loses it a little here, too, but I’ll give him some leeway:
For example had most people been vaccinated in the UK, the US and northern Italy their hospitals would not have been overwhelmed. Far fewer people would have needed hospital care and far fewer people would have died.
Hospitals in the US and UK were never “overwhelmed” by covid. The NHS had a record number of empty beds. The US furloughed staff. Italy is “overwhelmed” every winter: hospitals are often over 200% of capacity. The whole “overwhelmed hospitals” narrative is a myth, concocted by hysterical media and politicians covering up their chronic, catastrophic mismanagement.
But, I digress. In the next paragraphs, Minto nails it, 100%
However, I am strongly opposed to the government making vaccination mandatory for workers in any setting. This is wrong headed and frankly stupid. The assumption that those who are vaccinated are somehow “safe” while those unvaccinated are somehow “unsafe” is unhelpful, unscientific and is being quite calculatedly being enforced by social bullying […]
The same applies to hairdressers, cafes and gyms or our airports and ports for that matter.
The government has a responsibility to promote vaccination as the best way at present to protect our health system from overload and therefore save lives but it has no justification to demand anyone be sacked for refusing to be vaccinated. That’s not choice – it’s frenzied harassment by the state.
The Daily Blog
This is the crux of the matter. It’s not whether vaccination is good for us — it is; nor whether the vaccines are safe — as much as anything is, the evidence seems clear that they are.
What is really at stake here is freedom, human rights, and a nasty, social bullying campaign that has dire potential to get out of hand in a very bad way.
I suspect there’s very little else I’d agree with John Minto about, but — credit where it’s due.
And here’s hoping more voices on the left remember their basic, humanitarian principles, instead of cheer-leading a draconian, bullying state.
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