CHARBONNEAU – I have no right to spread disease

THE CULT OF INDIVIDUALISM leads us to believe we can do anything we want. But when it comes to public health, the rights of individuals to spread disease are scondary.

If I am HIV-positive, for example, I am legally bound to disclose my status to sexual partners. Failure can result in criminal charges under assault or endangerment laws.

Globally, seven million people have died from COVID 19 since 2020. Each one of those deaths, except perhaps the very first, was a result of contagion: one person carried it to another.

No one intentionally meant to harm others but some wilfully refused to inoculate themselves and became disease carriers.

Antivaxxers imagine that their rights to refuse a vaccination supersede the health of others.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is a champion of antivaxxers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Smith stated that unvaccinated people were “the most discriminated against group that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime.”

It never occurred to Smith that people were dying because of the spread of COVID 19; ignorant of the reported 5,443 Albertans who have died of the pandemic since 2020.

Groups of Albertans have taken her antivax message to heart and now Alberta has the highest per capita measles infections in all North America.

There are many factors that contribute to the resistance of vaccinations. Some of the highest infection rates have been in Mennonite communities.

Mennonites in Alberta resist measles vaccinations, in part, because they are vulnerable to anti-vaccine misinformation. Smith plays into that susceptibility.

Some Mennonites feel that use of vaccines would be a betrayal of the healing powers of God: vaccination conflicts with their trust in God.

God’s name was invoked by Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo when he said that the state would eliminate all vaccine mandates,

“All of them. All of them,” said Ladapo, a Black man, during a news conference as the crowd stood and erupted in applause. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”

That’s a step beyond what Smith claims of the unvaccinated as “the most discriminated against group.”

I don’t know if being Black gives Ladapo some credence to the “slavery” claim but the thread between what his ancestors went through and vaccine mandates seems a little thin.

“You want to put whatever different vaccines in your body, God bless you. I hope you make an informed decision,” Ladapo said. “You don’t want to put whatever vaccines in your body, God bless you.”

“Who am I as a government or anyone else, who am I as a man standing here now, to tell you what you should put in your body?” Lapado asked, perhaps rhetorically. “Who am I to tell you what your child should put in [their] body? I don’t have that right.”

I can answer that. Governments have a duty to protect citizens, whether it’s safe foods, highways that reduce accidents, or public health.

B.C.’s Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Fraser Henry exemplifies the roll of a protector of public health should advocate.

Henry pushed back, at some risk to her own safety, at those who would place their own individual rights over the lives of everyone else.

David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.