COVID Vaccine Mandatory and Human Rights: What The Data Say
On Dec 9, 2021 the Austrian Government laid a bill before parliament that would impose a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination requirement for all its residents. This move followed the Greek Prime Minister’s announcement to impose fines on residents aged 60 years and older who do not take up COVID-19 vaccination.
Many other nations are contemplating similar mandates or have adopted mandates in certain workplace settings, such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Indonesia, Italy, and the UK. Some people resist vaccine mandates on pragmatic grounds, for example, that such mandates could decrease health-care staffing levels or morale.
However, mandatory vaccination is also often opposed in principle. The UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Sajid Javid, for instance, told the BBC on Dec 10, 2021 that he thought mandatory vaccination is “unethical”. Many others presume mandatory vaccination violates human rights.
REPORTED CASES, DEATH AND VACCINATE
The figure 1 are based on data from Covid-19 Open Data. I set the date from Dec 14, 2020 because that was the first day when the vaccine was founded. Then I set the date to Aug 23, 2022 because that was the last cumulative date from the Covid-19 Open Data.
I sort the data descending from cases, so we can have a conclusion that the highest cases and recovered cases of Covid-19 is from Brazil.
There’s actually an outlier data from France so I decided to remove the data. Then I found that China’s and Taiwan’s death rate didn’t revealed on the data, so I decided to remove the data too.
Vaccinate Rate column exist from data persons fully vaccinated, multiplied by one hundred, and divided by all population. Same with vaccinate rate, death rate exist from all the death data, multiplied, then also divided by all population. When we divide all population, the vaccinate rate has a large percentage than death rate. Also, the death rate is assorted rather than vaccinate rate. But, we can still analyzed data from Figure 1 to a Figure 2 below.
IS MANDATORY VACCINATION SUCCESSFUL?
Figure 2 tells a lot, we can breakdown one by one. First, the highest vaccinate rate was from Malaysia. But, compare to the lowest death rate with a high vaccinate rate, Australia has ‘win the competition’. From The Conversation, Australia was one of the best country to handle Covid-19. Australia’s elimination strategy during the first two years of the COVID pandemic was one of the most effective in the world. Through a combination of early border closures, widespread testing and meticulous contact tracing, localised lockdowns and mask mandates, the number of reported cases was kept to around 28,000 in 2020.
Second, based on Australian Government Department of Health and Age Cared the vaccine is mandatory and they should report weekly on the status of COVID-19 vaccinations up to July 6, 2022. Effective from July 6, 2022, Australia’s mandatory vaccination policy only apply to workforces working with the most vulnerable to protect them from severe disease. But, for the last 2 years Australia was obligated the vaccination. So, the mandatory vaccination was successful.
Last, from the Figure 2 we can conclude when that the vaccinate rate is decrease then in the contrary the death rate is increase. That is means, the vaccination pressing the number death from Covid-19.
MANDATORY VACCINATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Mandatory vaccination is not breaking the human rights law. This because mandatory vaccination policy will comply the public objective, in this case, is controlling COVID-19 cases. This should be enough to justify the policy.
Other alternative policy is “vaccinate-or-test”. This policy does not mandate vaccination to the people. But, based on the data, this policy is not as effective as mandatory vaccination. Just doing the testing without vaccination will only detect COVID-19 infection and will not prevent the infection. Therefore, this alternative policy will not reducing the risk of COVID-19.
Conclusion
The debate whether the vaccination should be mandatory or not should be backed up by the data. Therefore, policy maker should assess the risk of not being vaccinated. By that, public objective to control COVID-19 cases will be achieved.
To promote the vaccination program, government should show the evidence of effectiveness of the vaccination. The data should be transparent to common people. This will comply the ethical issue behind the mandatory vaccination program. With given data and transparency, people should be motivated and voluntarily doing the vaccination.
Reference
1. Austrian Parliament COVID-19-Impfpflichtgesetz — COVID-19-IG (164/ME) https://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/VHG/XXVII/ME/ME_00164/index.shtml#
2. BBC Covid: Greece to fine over-60s who refuse Covid-19 vaccine.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59474808
3. Reuters Factbox: countries making COVID-19 vaccines mandatory. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/countries-making-covid-19-vaccines-mandatory-2021-08-16/
4. British Medical Association Legal, ethical and practical implications must be considered ahead of mandating vaccines.
5. Nuffield Council on Bioethics Mandatory vaccinations for health and social care workers: Nuffield Council on Bioethics urges government to gather more evidence and explore other options more thoroughly before introducing coercive measures.
6. BBC Radio 4 Best of Today Health Secretary: mandatory vaccines are ”unethical” https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0b8ymrr
7. Landler M. Vaccine mandates rekindle fierce debate over civil liberties. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/10/world/europe/vaccine-mandates-civil-liberties.html [Google Scholar]
