Tomáš Čorej/ November 27 2021/ (7 min. read) The Slovak Prime Minister, Eduard Heger had an interview on the national radio last week. The most interesting moment came when he said, out of nowhere, that his government might consider mandatory vaccination of some groups of the population, even though the government had refused this possibility many times before. This is unthinkable for any civilized country. It is not normal for a prime minister to open such a serious topic without first consulting it with his coalition partners. However, let us forget about form and focus on content for a moment. Mandatory vaccination is a rational idea that many developed western countries are coming up with. Does that mean we should introduce it too? I estimate that a large part of my bubble is convinced that we should. There is no doubt that compulsory vaccination works. However, I still consider it to be an extremely risky step, the benefits of which might not exceed the costs. In this text, I will explain why I am skeptical about the idea of compulsory vaccination. But let us start somewhere else. Maybe a little too fast There are different groups of people with different motivations for refusing the idea of compulsory vaccination. It is important to clarify my position and condemn the arguments that I find incorrect. One would expect that it no longer even needs to be written, but still: vaccines work. No refutation is needed. Vaccines work. It is an absolute scientific miracle that vaccines have been developed so quickly. Just remember the beginning of the pandemic, when some scientists suggested that it would be great if we started vaccinating in the summer of 2021. Others considered them crazy and assumed the beginning of 2022 was a realistic option. Paradoxically, however, the vaccine may have been developed too quickly. Vaccine development usually takes ten to fifteen years, now we have managed to do it in literally a few weeks (the first vaccine from Moderna was designed on January 13, 2020, and since then "only" clinical trials have taken place). I know what might be on the tip of many people’s tongues: they want to say that billions of dollars and all the effort of the scientific community have been invested in vaccine development. And they are right. However, their approach presupposes rationality that is much more rare than we thought a few months ago. Most people are not interested in facts. They make decisions based on instincts and emotions, which in this case are wrong. Our intuition tells us that it is not possible to develop such an effective vaccine in such a short time, but it is wrong: vaccines, even in the delta variant, protect against hospitalization by more than 96 percent. Although it is true that vaccinated patients also end up in hospitals, most of them are elderly people with other diseases, or people who had been vaccinated earlier and thus, their immunity has been weakened. The effective solution for this is the third dose. The argument against compulsory vaccination being “vaccines do not work", is therefore simply not correct. Advocates of compulsory vaccination have a short memory Another common reproach of opponents of compulsory vaccination is its "unconstitutionality". However, this is also nonsense and there is practically no respected lawyer in Slovakia who would be of that opinion. In short, the Slovak Constitutional Court ruled on compulsory vaccination as early as 2014 and confirmed that it was in line with our constitution. Just for the sake of interest: compulsory vaccination in Slovakia was vehemently enforced by Smer, the political party that is against compulsory vaccination today and calls it "fascism". Among other things, Smer enforced mandatory flu vaccination in social service homes. This proves that even the "legal" argument does not hold up in any case. Equally foolish is the argument that compulsory vaccination has no historical precedent. Of course it does. In Slovakia, it is mandatory to receive a vaccine for a number of diseases such as measles, whooping cough, and tetanus. Vaccination has helped eradicate many diseases and is one of the most amazing achievements of modern science. It is interesting to note that compulsory vaccination has already been introduced in Czechoslovakia, in 1919 against smallpox. Richard Sulík, the chairman of the Freedom and Solidarity Party, has a completely different argument against compulsory vaccination. He said in July that "we must allow people to make unreasonable and bad decisions if they want to”. This argument is undoubtedly provoking and certainly deserves more attention than the ones I have mentioned so far. Let me try to break it down in more detail: Is it really true that the state always allows you to make unreasonable and bad decisions? No. Then why, for example, do you have to wear a helmet on a bicycle? Or have a belt in a car? Liberal democracy should be about freedom of choice, but it cannot be absolute, because then, paradoxically, it becomes a threat to freedom as such. Take an example from the world of vaccines. You have the freedom not to be vaccinated, but what if you infect someone who could not be vaccinated for objective medical reasons and therefore end up in hospital? Or what if someone breaks their leg and cannot go to surgery because all the vacant places are filled with Covid patients? These are all legitimate reasons for compulsory vaccination and I understand why somebody would argue for them. Why should we, the vaccinated people, suffer for a group of people who have not done "their homework"? Why should our economy suffer because of a group of "unlawful passengers"? Is it not easier to simply force everyone to be vaccinated and return to normal life? In many places in the world, probably yes, but I am afraid that in Slovakia, it would be a terribly risky solution. They will avenge us in the election My main concern about compulsory vaccination is that it will further deepen the already tense social atmosphere. As Martin M. Šimečka indicated, there is a risk that the social costs spent on compulsory vaccination will outweigh the benefits of lives saved and money saved. The level of polarization of today’s society has never been experienced before. Our society has always been divided - from Mečiar, through Dzurinda, to Fico - but the current situation has grown into hostility of unprecedented proportions. If the government wanted to introduce compulsory vaccination, it should have acted quickly; but it did not have enough courage. A lot has changed over the months: insecure people listen to cynical opposition politicians (namely: Fico, Kotleba and Uhrík; don't forget ambiguous Pellegrini) every day telling them not to get vaccinated. It is a disgusting game that they are playing with the lives of their own voters, but it has been working. A recent survey found that 29 percent of people who are not vaccinated are still hesitant. As Šimečka said, we can lose them forever with the proposition of mandatory vaccination. They can easily become voters of extremist parties and avenge us in the next elections. Slovakia has long faced mistrust at the horizontal and especially vertical level. Government politicians have been promising for months that mandatory vaccination is a no-go zone, and now they want to introduce it? Looking at the current numbers of hospitalizations and deaths, it is understandable, but socially devastating. In our bubble, we refuse to admit that unvaccinated people may in fact be sensitive people who have a natural concern for their health; just like us. Unlike us, however, mainly due to a lack of critical thinking, they operate in an alternative reality in which vaccines are dangerous. Let's face it, the state should have done everything in its power to inform people about the safety of vaccines. However, this campaign never came. Believe it or not, there are still hundreds of thousands of people living in Slovakia, who either do not use the internet properly, or do not use it at all. A state that does not do its homework can hardly demand anything from its citizens. That is why compulsory vaccination in Austria is the right choice, while in Slovakia it first demands a proper discussion. My argument is not that vaccines do not work. On the contrary, they work fantastically. Mandatory vaccination is functional, constitutional and probably fair. However, my concern is that the unvaccinated people, whom we want to force to get vaccinated, will want to take revenge on us. And they can do so without any problem by choosing an authoritarian leader who will want to deprive us of our freedom completely.
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