Well, here we are: President Biden has contradicted himself about vaccine mandates.
I know – it’s a shocker, but it happened.
The man who has held both sides of almost every issue imaginable has now decided to mandate vaccines for 100 million United States workers, through the newly-found emergency powers of the Department of Labor.
Now, I suppose I should be grateful that he is protecting us from that dastardly pandemic, which has caused so many people to resist tyranny, make their own informed decisions about their health, and find a deep distrust for “experts.”
For some reason, that is not my current state of mind.
To state things plainly, I am opposed to this mandate. It does not follow that because I am opposed to this mandate that I am against all vaccines: I am stating that I am specifically opposed to the mandate to receive a COVID vaccine. I am not opposed to someone having the choice to receive a vaccine for COVID.
I am also not interested in debating the efficacy of said vaccine. I am opposed to a federal government using authoritarian techniques to strong-arm me into getting vaccinated or losing my job. I am opposed to a President who is actively attempting to villainize normal Americans, simply because they made a reasonable choice not to be vaccinated.
Were this smallpox or the black plague, I might take a different view. The reality here is that we are not dealing with a disease with those kind of death rates.
One problem here is that we have government officials mandating a vaccine that they have previously declared dangerous, untested and brought forth for bad political purposes by Trump. Democrats frowned upon it last November. Then, they further cast doubt on the effectiveness of said vaccine by implying that the unvaccinated are a threat to the inoculated. Not only this, but the innumerable amount of lies and contradictions issued regarding masks, transmission of the virus and dangers of the virus have decimated any credibility previously held by our ruling elites.
If you cave to this unreasonable mandate, it won’t be the last one. See the mask mandate for evidence of this. It was 15 days to slow the spread. Then it was 100 days. Then it wasn’t about slowing the spread, just loving your neighbor and between the lines, eliminating the virus entirely.
The days come and go, and the mask doesn’t. In the same way, today it’s just one or two shots. Next you need boosters, or a new vaccine every season, or vaccine passports to travel interstate. By the way, you still might get COVID. Now do it, or else.
It will never end.
We need reasonable and individual resistance to this vaccine mandate, in the same way that we need resistance to the mask mandates. There are times that we should legislate medical issues and utilize emergency powers. This, however, is not that time.
President Biden makes promises to let you get your life back to normal. Ask yourself, which of his promises have come true?
Furthermore, do you need his permission?
Jeremy Wiggins writes a bi-weekly column for The Graham Star. He can be reached via email, jeremywiggins87@gmail.com.