The Ethics of Vaccine Mandates

    When the Covid-19 vaccine was approved for public usage in December of 2020, many people thought that the worst was behind us and that the American public would be functionally "normal" in a few months.  Here we are, a little over a year later, still with no end in sight.  Why was there such a slow move to vaccinate the American public? If the vaccine had been mandated early on, could the US have prevented further virus mutations, thereby preventing breakthrough infections and deaths? 

    We've read a lot about the slow-moving action of the federal government in Premonitions, and I think it's interesting to see this motif continue in the current stages of the pandemic.  In this presentation, we're going to examine vaccine mandates a little more broadly.  We'll discuss the Covid-19 vaccine science, the history of vaccine efforts in the US, and the overall benefits of vaccines.  We'll also examine vaccine mandates using Kant's categorical imperative, using each principle to decide if mandating a vaccine is the right thing for the government to do.  

    Please feel free to preview the presentation here and see below for a few discussion questions:

    Vaccines are such a cool part of science, and I'm really excited to discuss that with everyone.  Government involvement in science has been questionable in the past, but I hope together we can come to an ethical conclusion surrounding the moral obligation a government has to its people. 

    Here are the sources I used:

• https://www.sccm.org/Blog/June-2021/Ethical-Considerations-for-a-COVID-19-Vaccine-Mand

• https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-covid-19-vaccine 

• https://www.vcuhealth.org/news/covid-19/johnson-and-johnson-vaccine-how-is-it-different 

• https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/the-long-history-of-mrna-vaccines#:~:text=Messenger%20RNA%2C%20or%20mRNA%2C%20was,to%20be%20brought%20to%20market%3F 

• https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html 

• https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/effectiveness/why-measure-effectiveness/breakthrough-cases.html 

• https://www.immunize.org/laws/#polio 

• https://www.historyofvaccines.org/timeline#EVT_100810 

• https://www.edweek.org/leadership/schools-helped-defeat-polio-and-diphtheria-with-vaccine-efforts-can-they-do-it-with-covid/2021/10#:~:text=Perhaps%20the%20most%20famous%20instance,to%20a%20nationwide%20vaccination%20campaign.

• https://www.indianhills.edu/_myhills/courses/PHI105/documents/lu08_kantianism.pdf 

• https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/Documents/Diseases%20and%20Conditions/Polio%20.pdf

• https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/10/16/162670836/wiping-out-polio-how-the-u-s-snuffed-out-a-killer#:~:text=By%20the%201950s%2C%20polio%20had,and%20more%20than%203%2C000%20died.

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927017/