Make no mistake about it; those who are injected with Covid vaccines are gambling with their lives. That’s not a judgemental statement—all of us do the same every day. I impose a higher probability of injury on myself when driving fast vs. driving slow. A man increases his possibility of having a heart attack at 43 if he drinks 12 pops a day, every day, rather than once a week. And I believe a family exposes themselves to greater danger by taking the Covid vaccine rather than refusing it. At the very least, the risk of the vaccine is unknowable. Certainly, we could chart a regression of risk for one or two months post-shot, but what about ten years into the future? The probabilities are incalculable because we cannot conduct years of trials in a matter of months.
Nonetheless, our premier and others leaders in our country are staunch that we must get the vaccine to prevent the disaster of our healthcare system being overwhelmed. But are they not neglecting the reality that perhaps one, five, or ten years into the future, these vaccines might reap unforeseen vengeance on the millions of people who got them? What of our healthcare’s buoyancy then? If 200 ICU cases nearly exhaust our hospitals, what will thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, do?
“Never mind that now” reassures Jason Kenney. And he’s so committed to his cause that two days ago, the Alberta government officially launched their newest initiative to get people Covid-immunized: a lottery.* Three, one million dollar prizes are up for grabs, but an Albertan can only enter the draw if they’ve had at least one vaccination (of course, no one gets a lottery ticket from the government for quitting smoking, eating healthy, or abstaining from heavy alcohol consumption). I think the ethical violations of this lottery are glaring, but in all honesty, who expects any government to act under an ethical code? Nevertheless, it’s essential to discover precisely why this experiment is so perverted and immoral.
In the first place, this lottery is a crass insult to the men and women with moral reservations about getting the vaccine. Why? At this point, those not yet immunized from Covid are in that position because 1. They’re simply waiting for availability, or 2. Their morals are restraining them, unwilling to allow the body to be subject to possible consequences of the shot. In the first case, a lottery won’t change the citizen’s appetite for the vaccine. They were going to get one with or without it. In the second place, however, the Alberta government is trespassing onto forbidden territory.
I cling to a specific and sacred set of morals, just as you do, because I think they’re lawful, good, and just. I believe that murdering a man is wrong and that resting on Sunday is right. But in fact, with regards to this morality, I’m relatively unconcerned with my outward actions (or if I am, I ought not to be). If the physical dictated the morality of a man, none would be so righteous as the pharisee now damned in Hades, or taking the life of a man in any circumstance, even while struggling for our freedom on D-Day, would be wicked. Instead, morality concerns the state of the heart. Abstaining from murder is right because it displays that my heart holds my neighbour as equal in value, and resting on Sunday is right because it demonstrates the heart’s worship and reverence of God. Thus, because morality concerns the heart of a man, it’s absolute. If my morals evolve according to my accomplishment of wealth or level of power, it’s no morality at all.
So what is Premier Kenney insinuating as he attempts to entice us to this vaccine using a lottery? Does he really believe that our beliefs are so fickle, our consciences so easily manipulated, that a lottery will transform our convictions we cherish and hold dear? Never mind that he believes that (he does), but the fact that he would have us betray ourselves, like a dog walking into a cage for a treat, testifies to his true sensibilities.
Tactically, the government releases one social media post after another, hyping this lottery and enticing Albertans to be vaccinated so that we can get back to normal. The vaccines, they say, are necessary to end lockdowns and restrictions…but will it really matter? The preliminary stages of panic are already planted in the province as rumours of the “Delta Variant” sweep across the country.
This variant is expected to be the dominant strain of Covid in Alberta by the end of June. The sentiment of Alberta’s doctors, or at least the doctors with the strategic ability to be interviewed and deemed newsworthy, is clear:**
"Dr. James Talbot…thinks reopening before the province hits 70 per cent of people fully immunized — not just with one dose, the current benchmark — is a mistake. 'What we're looking at is the potential for a fourth wave to complicate what happens in September with trying to get kids into school and people back to work,'"
“‘We are in exponential [growth] now,’ she [Gosia Gasperowicz] said. ‘It's the same story.’”
What’s the end of all this? Unless we continue our fight, there isn’t one. “If 70% of us are vaccinated, we won’t shut down!” says the Premier, but we have learned to believe nothing that he says. Without question, they’ll try and lock us down again. Unless we push forward with this resistance, I have no doubt that there will be gamma, rho, and sigma variants almost ad infinitum. The carousel will never quit, the virus will never die, and “for our safety” will perpetually mean “for our suffering.”
** For quotations see here
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