This is Measles; To Inoculate or Not is a Choice

The recent measles outbreak and the media coverage of the same has led me to conclude that we are a people adrift in ignorance and reliance on government. My take on the measles outbreak is one based on CDC statistics, philosophical viewpoint on one’s freedom of choice and big government. It has become apparent to me that those opposing mandatory vaccination for measles are widely portrayed as ignorant and even dangerous by some officials and much of the public alike. To the surprise of yours truly,  Centers for Disease Control records reveal a startling truth – while no one has died of measles in the U.S. in the last 12 years, 108 have died as a result of the adverse effects of the vaccine in that same time period. The CDC even reported that measles deaths were rare in the U.S. before the vaccine became widely used. In addition, CDC statistic show the adverse reactions to the measles vaccines are much more widespread than death.

So the next questions are: Does vaccination work? Does it really protect you against disease? The answers are yes, no, and maybe. It all depends on one’s point of reference. A better question to ask ourselves is, do we really want a progressive worldview or the coercive power of the federal government to be used to enforce a scientific orthodoxy upon those citizens who intellectually reject it?

At the end of the day, the issue here is one of sovereignty, and sovereignty is the freedom to choose. The argument that one must inoculate a subset of a community’s citizenry in a democratic nation for the benefit of the whole is not only scientifically questionable, it is an unethical edict or dictum. It is a claim that has been espoused by tyrants, despots, and authoritarians in times past.

If one thinks the government has the right to use compulsory means to vaccinate its citizenry what is to prevent that same government from exercising similar means to “purify” select groups or inhabitants, or exploit entelegenesis for the benefit of a nation’s elite, or forcibly implanting a tracking device on those they view as a threat (both perceived and real). All this they claim for the good of society. Now, if the government owns our bodies, then the presupposition of individual liberty guaranteed by the Constitution has been furtively abandoned, and there will be no limit to what the government can compel us to do or to what extent it chooses and what it can extract from us.  

Let us not forget, this is measles we are talking about not the Black Plague, not Ebola, not even a pandemic flesh eating Zombie/Walking Dead type virus.