To Vax Or Not To Vax...
Whether or not to undergo a medical procedure should be a deeply personal decision. Each and every one of us should weigh up the benefits and the potential risks of our decision. After all, we're the ones who will have to live with the consequences. This freedom to make informed consent or informed refusal is enshrined in our 1990 Bill of Rights. It isn't the Government's to give, nor take away.
Part 2: Civil and Political Rights - Life and security of the person
Right to refuse to undergo medical treatment - Everyone has the right to refuse to undergo any medical treatment.
The cavalier argument put forward as to why we can impinge upon a protected freedom, coercing someone into a medical procedure, is that we should all "play our part" to "stop the spread". Being one of Jacinda Ardern's team of 5 million, or so goes the propaganda.
In a previous post I've addressed the inconvenient fact that the jab neither stops you from getting the virus, nor from spreading it. At best it gives an individual approximately 6 - 7 months protection from severe illness, if you are young and healthy already. Less protection if not so young and healthy.
As for protecting our hospital system from a surge of severe cases. There are other means of ensuring our hospital system doesn't get overloaded. It's called adequate primary care with an anti-viral and monoclonal antibodies. Our Government, however, is sticking fast to their jab or nothing approach.
If the virus gets away on them, despite lockdowns and high vaccination levels, as has happened in Auckland, an overloaded health system is what we may well get. And if the Government does not change course on this policy, what do you think is going to happen in around 6 months time as all those double-jabbed cease being protected?
One ethically repugnant statement I've had on wanting to exercise my right to choose my medical care is that if I were to need hospital care (presumably as a result of being denied early ambulatory medical care) then I should not get hospital care. Huh. Since obesity (due to lifestyle choices) is one of the biggest predictors of severe Covid illness, presumably our largest citizens should also be denied medical treatment at hospital? What about the smokers? Need we go on?
Anyone who has seen the heart breaking video of 23 year old Casey Hodgkinson will know that the jab isn't risk free. She's not the only one who has had this particular adverse reaction, but is the worst in New Zealand so far. Adverse reactions go from mild (a slightly sore arm) to severe, and that includes death.
There is a legal case underway to try and get some redress for Casey against the Government, but even if successful, it's no recompense for a young life stolen. As a healthy 23 year old, there is a high probability that Casey would have had a mild case of Covid and built enduring natural immunity.
Flippant appeals to how many millions of doses have been administered doesn't take away the fact that if it does go wrong and you end up with neurological damage, for example, then that can be a life sentence and must be factored in to individual decision-making on healthcare.
It's like playing medical Russian Roulette. You can only hope you don't end up getting the same bullet young Casey got. That you don't end up as mere collateral damage in Ardern's futile elimination war against a virus that is well on it's way to becoming endemic.
Rights and freedoms contained in this Bill of Rights may be subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Despite Section 5 above in our Bill of Rights seeming to place limits on our rights, I would argue that deliberating denying access to medications widely used in other countries, to force vaccine compliance, is neither reasonable nor demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. Notwithstanding mounting evidence the vaccine neither stops infection or transmission, and is at best a temporary protection.
Freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights - the right to make informed consent or informed refusal, based on your particular health risk profile, must be protected.