With employers  considering making a covid vaccination a requirement for employment, here’s five reasons why it’s a bad idea for the vast majority of employers.

  1. The individual’s body is sovereign. Consent to any medical intervention is voluntary. More than ninety nine percent of people recover from covid. Many people want to rely on their immune system rather than risk antibody dependent enhancement, or worse, from the vaccine. The employer has no right to encroach on this sovereignty. This choice. It’s controlling and creepy to require a needle be stuck in an arm as a condition of employment.
  2. It’s discriminatory. Some groups in society will not be able to have a vaccine for health reasons. Others won’t want a vaccine. Some people have a philosophical belief relating to genetically modified material or vivisection and won’t have a vaccine for that reason. The black community has a history of vaccine hesitancy based on big pharma abuse of that community. Tuskegee is a scar. How can it be proportionate to impose a vaccination requirement when both vaccinated and non-vaccinated people are capable of transmitting the infection? And when vaccination is not the only therapeutic available?
  3. The risk of dying or being hospitalised from covid is asymmetrical. The risk is greatest for those above working age and the median age for those dying is eighty two. Why mitigate a very small risk for working age people?
  4. There are risks associated with vaccination. If an employee has a vaccination which he or she would not have otherwise have had but for an employer’s requirement there may be liability if that employee then suffers as serious adverse event. With reported adverse events running at one in three hundred and thirty three who picks up the compensation tab for injury or death? Some insurers are not covering vaccine injuries. The vaccines are emergency use authorised but are not licensed. All vaccines currently on offer are still in clinical trial as at 12 April 2021. Will the employer need to indemnify this risk as well as the government?
  5. It’s a very bad look. A branding and reputational risk. There’s a good chance that the developed world’s approach to the pandemic will be viewed as a disaster, if not worse if legal claims make it to the ICC. Most western governments have used three tools: lockdown, masks, and vaccination. This is like playing golf with three clubs – doable but a full set of policy clubs will always achieve better results. The last time big business sided with big government and implemented government policy did not end well. Big pharma has a long history of skulduggery – from recruiting scientists who worked in concentration camps, to launching harmful product, cover ups, and bribery. There has been concern raised that in the gold rush to launch a vaccine, big pharma has cut corners. Will this time be different? Or will covid vaccines be the sequel to the Constant Gardner?