Personal Liberty, or Self-Centered Endangerment?
By: Arya Palla
The start of school this year was long-awaited. After a tumultuous year of online/in-person classes and restrictions placed on athletics, classrooms, dorms, going to town, and more, it is safe to say that the student body is ready to return back to relative normalcy that was once taken for granted two years ago. At the start of September 22, students will be allowed to take off masks, visit the town, and experience campus culture to the fullest. To make sure this happens safely, the school has administered a vaccine mandate upon all its students and faculty (barring those with medical or religious reasons), a simple requirement to ensure safety and prosperity for the school towards the future. Yet, there is a dangerous ideology that views these vaccines as a threat to personal liberty and puts doubt on the efficacy of the treatment. This ideology has permeated right-wing media and is present in our own Academy, but this way of thinking is immensely selfish, dangerous, and ultimately contradictory to Exeter’s own values of goodness and knowledge.
The efficacy of the vaccine has been challenged time and time again, not only for COVID-19 but for many other ailments like smallpox, polio, measles, etc. Just like all these previous illnesses, however, the vaccines towards them had insurmountable evidence in support of them and soon became mandatory for nearly all schools across the country. For COVID, the CDC has already established the overwhelming success of the new treatment, saying that the “Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 95% effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed infection with the virus that causes COVID-19 in people who received two doses and had no evidence of being previously infected.” The shot had also gone through rigorous testing through FDA protocols, achieving official FDA certification as well. With the proven reliability of the vaccine, the argument shifts to attacks on personal freedoms.
I see this argument as selfish and dangerous. Previous vaccines have always been challenged with the same argument and then later standardized for schools and workplaces, like the ones mentioned above. Beyond vaccines, common safety precautions such as seatbelts and hard hats issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) were even argued against. According to the LA Times, nearly “65% of Americans opposed mandatory belt laws,” with the auto industry only supporting the mandates so that airbags wouldn’t have to be mandated through legislative loopholes at the time.
Right now, refusing to take the vaccine not only puts the refuser at risk but those around them. By enforcing “self-autonomy,” you put others at serious risk. It is self-centered to argue for your own rights when you infringe on others’ right to live. It was and still is an inherently reactionary ideal spread by the right whose only goal is to put down political opposition while upholding their following, even though many prominent leaders on the right have already gotten the vaccine and done so for their families. It was never about efficacy or personal autonomy, it was about making their supporters feel justified in their decisions and further agitate a topic that shouldn’t even be political.
