"we obey traffic laws, don't we?"

Pro-vaccination folks will often trot out some form of the "we obey other laws, don't we?" argument when talking about why a vaccine mandate is okay. The idea seems to be that we allow our personal freedoms to be circumscribed as a way to preserve civil society, so why not apply that thinking to vaccinations?

There are deep problems with this argument. First, most laws go through a rigorous vetting process (which might even include protests by the citizenry) before they actually become laws. They are not simply pronouncements made from on high by a government intent on oppressing its people. I'm not a legal expert, but I don't think a vaccine mandate is a law. Is it? Have we completely done away with legislative processes? Is no one disturbed by such governmental high-handedness? Are we all really that passive? Second, the nature of most laws tends to be consistent with Kant's categorical imperative: act in such a way that the reasoning behind your action can be universalized. This is why stealing is generally wrong: if everybody adopted a me-first attitude and stole other people's property, society would collapse. By contrast, if you universalize altruism, society only benefits.* I fail to see how Kant is applicable here because we're still in the process of understanding the virus, and we regular citizens are having a hard time getting trustworthy data about the situation. What rationale, given all that doubt, can justify suddenly dictating that everyone must get jabbed while also complaining that "our patience [with the unvaccinated] is wearing thin"? Third, in a previous blog post, I wrote:

I've heard the counterargument that we follow all sorts of regulations all the time and never dispute them, so why dispute a vaccine mandate? "Do you treat seat-belt laws the same way?" A seat-belt law is usually backed by actual statistics, and it's reasonable. What's happening with COVID is simply not reasonable, and it's not based on the actual statistics. This is not the same thing at all as seat-belt laws and other, similar laws. So I side firmly with the "open the whole country back up and let herd immunity take care of the rest" crowd. Sure, COVID is highly transmissible, and I think that allowing us all to get infected is probably the best way to get rid of the virus. Herd immunity. You can't clamp down fearfully on the economy forever; that, too, will kill millions of folks, especially in poorer countries.

There's another wrinkle: "we obey other laws, don't we?" begs the question of whether people do, in fact, obey the laws that are on the books. And the answer, of course, is that people don't, so if someone tries to use the "we obey other laws, don't we?" argument on you, just answer, "No, actually, we don't." Here in South Korea, rule of law seems applicable only in courts. Not to say that this is a lawless country, but people here are very selective about which laws or regulations they'll obey. The degree of compliance even varies according to certain factors like sex: women are much more likely to be masked up when on the bike paths, I've noticed, while most mask-policy violators tend to be men. And to be fair, Americans are selective about which laws to obey and disobey. We pick and choose just as Koreans do. And we often violate laws without meaning to: I once heard a police officer lecture a crowd about how people go through their days in unknowing violation of multiple laws. (Tao Te Ching 57: the more laws there are, the more criminals there will be. With enough laws on the books, everyone's a criminal.) The argument that we obey other laws, so why not the vaccination mandate, assumes absolute obedience to the law in general, which simply isn't the case anywhere.

From where I stand, no matter how you look at it, getting vaccinated ought to be a choice. (Saying that, as Eddie Izzard puts it, the choice is between "cake or death" is, in practical reality, no choice at all. Mask up or be arrested or fined? Yeah, that's a choice!) And here's some advice for the vaccine scolds: once you're vaccinated, shut up about the people who've chosen not to get jabbed. Be happy: you already magically believe the vaccine confers some sort of protection (which hundreds of anecdotes refute), so what other people do is none of your damn business unless, like most lefties, you hold in your head the two contradictory thoughts of "the vaccine is effective against the virus" and "I'm vaccinated but in danger because of the unvaccinated."

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*I can sense that you contrarians will want to drag out your counterarguments. Take it up with Kant. As for me, I'm still a 90s man: talk to the hand.