Letter to my MP: Another call to oppose domestic vaccine passports

 Dear [NNN NNN] MP,

Thank you again for your replies, and for voting against mandatory vaccines for care home workers. As a matter of conscience, I was deeply upset and concerned that the bill went through.

To re-introduce myself, I am a [JOB], I live and work in [NNN] as a constituent of yours.

Domestic vaccine passports are immoral.

I am getting very worried about where this is going.

This is not an argument against vaccines. Vaccines are a wonder of science and I have personally advised for the uptake of the vaccine especially for my vulnerable family and friends.

i) Freedom of association,

ii) the right to property, and

iii) equality under the law

are Enlightenment born liberal principles that are in the bedrock of our civilization. To introduce domestic vaccine passes is to introduce a creeping tool of authoritarianism that would see these liberties evaporate in the heat of an over controlling state, all remaining liberties would follow.

Domestic vaccine passes engender:

i) the control of movement and association, as well as

ii) coercion over bodily autonomy (your property), and

iii) the inequality of the rule of law between the citizen and the powerful has commenced already as the speaker of the house indicated exemption for Parliament (source: Telegraph - is.gd/Y3EWfs). Who else will find their way to be exempt? The civil service? UEFA VIPs? Their powerful corporate friends? This is what is meant by 'a creeping tool'; if left in place, the protection and further powers it offers to the powerful would incentivise the expansion of its scope, diminishing all these liberties until they were no more.

Questions in the public conversation, eg over any time limit for this measure, said by some to be temporary (income tax was a temporary measure, passed in 1848), being brought in by stealth without debate or vote while parliament is away, and already in use by private enterprises, have ceased already. The creep has begun. Its already here and already could be here to stay.

Please I urge you again to oppose this and to urge all members of parliament to have the government understand the arguments so that this is reversed, abandoned and banned.

You have my permission to share this text with other MPs (including your party leader Sir Kier Starmer, shadow health minister Jonathan Ashworth and members of other political parties in parliament).

I previously wrote to you on these issues re domestic vaccine passes: they are unnecessary, a waste, discriminatory, invasive, not wanted, and immoral (see previous email).

If you continue reading, I'll discuss the immorality issue.

https://twitter.com/ProfKarolSikora/status/1402534397983825927?s=20

Professor Karol Sikora

Oncologist of 50 years, Chief Medical Officer of Rutherford Hospital, Ex-director WHO Cancer Programme

The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee has published a report which calls for the Government to scrap any plans to introduce domestic Covid-status certification:
"A Covid-status certification system would, by its very nature, be discriminatory... The Committee finds that there is no justification for engaging in what is likely to be a significant infringement of individual rights by introducing a Covid-status certification system and given the absence of convincing scientific case and the large number of uncertainties that remain, we recommend that the Government abandon the idea of using a Covid-status certification system domestically."
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5802/cmselect/cmpubadm/42/4202.htm

Combining the vaccination pass with the option of a test is not a mitigation:

Relevant information to the medical intervention is the only criteria that should affect judgment whether to give consent to a medical procedure, any other form of persuasion is unethical.

If you have to (figuratively or literally) 'stick a swab up your nose' every time you want to go out to something, the offer of the a procedure (the vaccine) that negates this otherwise mandated chore appears attractive, ie in the context of a mandated repeated self invasive task, the medical intervention offers an appearance of affording convenience.

This appearance of convenience is not information relevant to the medical procedure but instead a 'carrot' which is coercive and unethical.

Like many medical procedures, the vaccination is a physical intervention with some known and unknown measure of risk (including known risk of mortality). To bias the judgement of the balance of risk and benefit from the individual with coercive measures is thus unethical. 

If a service is prohibited to individuals unless they consent to a medical procedure, then that is coercion;

Now that admission to some venues is being prohibited without provision of a required vaccine/test status, consent for these physical interventions cannot now be regarded as given freely.

Coerced consent to a physical intervention with physical risks is in the zone of physical abuse.

We have now begun the acclimatisation to coerced consent for medical procedures and experiments.

We are embarking on a journey to learn 'the hard way' why consent to medical experiments must be given freely.

It is a centuries old liberal principle that every individual has a natural right to hold any view (independent of whether largely accepted as reasonable or not) regarding what to do with their own property (including their own body), provided it doesn't infringe the natural rights of others. It is an error to imagine that vaccinated and unvaccinated are two distinct groups of the types where one are disease spreaders and the other are of clean protected purity. The reality is that

- the vaccinated can be infected and transmit (source: CDC via Guarduan - is.gd/kL6c2a),

- the unvaccinated could already have robust immunity, eg from an infection recovery (source: Nature - is.gd/MEnX0N).

Your party leader is correct to have signalled opposition to domestic vaccine passes.

Others argue "vaccine passes are a powerful incentive"

Consent that is influenced by "a powerful incentive" is not consent that is freely given. It is unethical.

What is meant, precisely, by "a powerful incentive"?

It is the offer of exemption from a prohibition on the exercise of the right to the freedom of physical association. This is a liberty that a liberal democratic state protects. This is because it is a fundamental right of the individual in a free and liberal democratic country. To prohibit this liberty, with exemptions offered as "a powerful incentive" is tyrannical. Amongst essential natural functions, the freedom of association necessarily recognizes pluralistic sources of power and organisation outside the government (e.g. trade unions or company shareholders), and has been a primary target for repression by despotic societies. Additionally, the impact on mental health that limitations on freedom of association have had over that past year directly demonstrated the humanity of the right. (Almost half of young adults at clinical risk of mental health disorders in 'profound crisis', study shows Telegraph - is.gd/wI83HN).

As we go about our lives in civil society, conscious that day to day decisions ought to minimize risk of harm to ourselves and each other (from personal hygiene to using a zebra crossing),

i) we must make decisions to balance risk against risk mitigations and benefits,

ii) in these decisions, it is never the intention to harm ourselves or others.

Being as there is no such thing as zero risk in any task of normal daily business, it has thus been understood that it is for the individual to think for themself how much risk they wish to take on board in day to day activities: that is how we manage autonomous freedom in a society free of totalitarian control. Freedom of thought is the freedom for which our civilization has historically sacrificed the greatest of sacrifices to defend and preserve.

The vulnerable in the population and most adults have all but chosen to be double vaccinated and the as yet healthy unvaccinated are as likely to be as ok with this virus as they would be with influenza (sources: Elsevier Public Health - is.gd/GIxhRg, The BMJ - is.gd/pUF6EV). The risk to children is pretty much zero. Except for those very few vulnerable individuals that are responsible for their choice to not get vaccinated, we are all now at significantly less risk as we are with influenza. We never remotely considered domestic vaccine passports for influenza, they are not needed now. We are not in an extreme danger as a society that warrants extreme measures. I think we now have a mass obsessive anxiety epidemic largely fostered by unethical use of fear by the government on advise of its academics; "Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government.", "...decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear. The way we have used fear is dystopian... Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared." - SPI-B government scientists (source: Telegraph is.gd/tbDHJI).

Ethical, moral and liberal principles as fundamental as these must be held universally else they have no currency and we are on a road to hell.

Extreme measures like contravening the basic moral code of medical ethics with disregard for the consequences it engenders and the social forces it releases is frighteningly misguided and completely unwarranted. Acclimatisation to discrimination based on physical status and the erosion of freedom of association, the right to property and equality under the law must be opposed, reversed and banned. Please I urge strong opposition to domestic vaccine passes, understand and share the arguments. It is immoral and a threat to the principles that uphold our liberal democracy.

Kind regards,

 

[NNN NNN]

Constituent