Almost as soon as COVID-19 entered the public conversation, talk of a vaccine began to dominate the conversation. Of course, a vaccine was considered to be a thing of the future — years in the making, perhaps. Fast forward a mere few months — which were spent with the American people being worn down by lockdowns, mandatory masks, social distancing, and an economy severely damaged by government overreach — and the promise of a vaccine has become the threat of what will happen to those who refuse it. This despite the fact that no fully tested vaccine even exists, and no one knows either how effective it might be or what side effects may come along with it.
The newest push for forced COVID-19 vaccination comes in the form of a USA Today op-ed piece published Thursday. Co-written by Dr. Michael Lederman, Maxwell J. Mehlman, and Dr. Stuart Youngner, the op-ed headline says that forcing vaccines is “not un-American, it’s patriotic.”
The authors are at the tip of the extremest spear where medical thinking is concerned.
Dr. Michael Lederman is a Professor of Medicine and an Infectious Disease Specialist who has publicly blamed President Trump for the pandemic. In a July 30 tweet, he wrote, “Ashamed and angry that the most robust scientific environment in the world was betrayed by an inept and fraudulent leadership and a fractured national health care infrastructure. I blame Trump for this pandemic Covid catastrophe.”
In January 2019, more than a year before the COVID-19 outbreak served as a pretext for massive government intrusion into both private lives and businesses, Lederman tweeted about how he thinks people who do not get vaccines should be dealt with. That tweet read:
Docs may chose to protect their patients by keeping antivaxers from their practices. immunization could be a prerequisite for health insurance. Unvaccinated transmitters of preventable infections could be sued by individuals and communities who acquire them.
Maxwell J. Mehlman is director of the Case Western Law Medicine Center and has deep ties to the liberal medical establishment and Big Pharma. Last year, he received a whopping $160,000 grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to perform analysis on genetic testing “to explore whether alternate governance approaches are needed to ensure non-traditional genetic experiments are conducted safely and ethically.” He is also the author of several books on genetic engineering, with such titles as “Transhumanist Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares: The Promise and Peril of Genetic Engineering,” “Wondergenes: Genetic Enhancement and the Future of Society,” “The Price of Perfection: Individualism and Society in the Era of Biomedical Enhancement,” and “Access to the Genome: The Challenge to Equality.” Let those titles sink in. Mehlman writes books about altering genes to enhance human beings and create both equality and a better society. In a saner era, the phrase “mad scientist” would likely have been used to describe someone who advocated such ideas.
But Mehlman is not alone there, either. The final contributor to the “Force People to Get a COVID-19 Vaccine” piece, Dr. Stuart J. Youngner, works with Mehlman at Case Western Reserve University and shares his colleague’s dark thinking where the concept of “bio-ethics” is concerned. The author of such books as The Definition of Death: Contemporary Controversies and End-Of-Life Decisions: A Psychological Perspective, he is a defender of the barbaric practice of “Regulated Euthanasia” as it is practiced in the Netherlands. And as for mad science: Youngner conducted experiments reanimating brain tissue in dead pigs.
These are the minds that seek to instruct Americans on the ethical issues of forcing people to be injected with a vaccine that is still being developed and may have God only knows what side effects. It’s almost as if everything that has come about as part of the pandemic was designed to force a vaccine advocated by men who specialize in altering human genes.
And while they may be experts in some fields (political hatred toward President Trump; altering human genes to create a newer, better humans; killing the elderly and sick; and creating FrankenPigs), they appear way out of their depth addressing the U.S. Constitution and the proper concept of liberty.
Their pro-mystery-vaccine screed begins:
To win the war against the novel coronavirus that has killed nearly 163,000 people in this country, the only answer is compulsory vaccination — for all of us.
And while the measures that will be necessary to defeat the coronavirus will seem draconian, even anti-American to some, we believe that there is no alternative. Simply put, getting vaccinated is going to be our patriotic duty.
They then go into a logical tailspin from which they never really emerge, writing:
The reason [it will be “our patriotic duty” to get the vaccine]: When an effective vaccine is available for COVID-19, it will only defeat the pandemic if it is widely used, creating “herd immunity.” It is important to note that during an epidemic, there is no threshold above which the protection conferred by herd immunity cannot be improved. Thus, the more people who are immunized, the lower the risk for all of us, including those who are not vaccinated.
Wait. “Herd immunity” has been discussed quite a bit lately. And the pro-vax, pro-mask, pro-stay-home side has dismissed it as a myth. Now, the three Wise Men of the Apocalypse want to trot it out to make their point that immunity only comes by forcing people to get some yet-unknown injection? But they seem to realize that freedom-loving Americans are not likely to buy their spin, so they double down. That doubling down also departs from both logic and reason. Claiming that “the more people who are immunized, the lower the risk for all of us, including those who are not vaccinated” simply misses the point: If the vaccine works, those who take it are protected, while those who choose not to get vaccinated take their own risks.
Appearing to anticipate that way of thinking, the three Mad Scientists level a threat, writing a list of things “America must do when a vaccine is ready.” That list would make vaccines “free and easily accessible” and would make them compulsory with no exemptions. As for those who would refuse the vaccine on religious grounds, the answer is simple: “Do not honor religious objections.” What about those who refuse based on the principles of liberty? Nope: “Do not allow objections for personal preference, which violate the social contract.”
The unethical expounders of biomedical ethics then ask the million-dollar question: “How can government and society ensure compliance with protective vaccines?” Their answer is exactly the way they describe it in that second paragraph of their manifesto — “draconian.” They write:
Vaccine refusers could lose tax credits or be denied nonessential government benefits. Health insurers could levy higher premiums for those who by refusing immunization place themselves and others at risk, as is the case for smokers. Private businesses could refuse to employ or serve unvaccinated individuals. Schools could refuse to allow unimmunized children to attend classes. Public and commercial transit companies — airlines, trains and buses — could exclude refusers. Public and private auditoriums could require evidence of immunization for entry.
This would, of course, require a “registry of immunization” complete with “names entered after immunization is completed” and “expiration date-stamped certification cards.” What could be more un-American than forcing a novel drug on people, threatening them with losing the ability to be employed, to buy, to sell, to live unless they comply? This writer is not making a one-to-one comparison, but this smacks of the Mark of the Beast. Of course, the true one-to-one comparison is that both seem to have been born in the same mind. And this one is delivered to us by men who think government force is good, life is cheap, and playing God in the laboratory is the right thing to do.
Image: Svetlana Orusova / iStock / Getty Images Plus
C. Mitchell Shaw is a freelance writer and public speaker who addresses a range of topics related to liberty and the U.S. Constitution. A strong privacy advocate, he was a privacy nerd before it was cool. He hosts and produces the popular Enemy of the [Surveillance] State podcast.
