by Kennita Watson, Newsletter Chair

Opinion pieces represent the personal views of LP SCC leaders/activists and are not necessarily official positions of the county party.

There are some, including many libertarians, who decry vaccine mandates as violations of personal autonomy: "I have the right to decide what goes into my body." When speaking of a substance like cannabis, this is true. However, cannabis and its use are not contagious.

You have the right to do whatever you like, so long as by so doing you do not injure another. Remaining unvaccinated with a pathogen as contagious as COVID-19 (in any of its variants, but especially the Omicron variant) running rampant in the population does indeed run the risk of injuring another; indeed, many others. There are laws against drunken driving because operating a motor vehicle while impaired increases the risk of injuring others; similarly, there are vaccine mandates because interacting with others while unvaccinated increases the risk of infecting them with the potentially-deadly virus.

Vaccination is not so much a matter of personal autonomy as of public policy. Much as your right to swing your fist ends at my nose, where a vaccine mandate is imposed, your right to go unvaccinated ends with your contact with members of the public, including me, who have not consented to the increased risk of being around unvaccinated people. You can, of course, choose to self-quarantine and go unvaccinated.

The unethical, and presumably thus un-libertarian, choice would be to go unvaccinated among people who had not consented to be so exposed.

Follow the science. Be as safe as you can be; get vaccinated and boosted. Certainly don't not do it just because you don't like being told what to do.