Essays: 01. On Vaccine Mandates and a Polarised World
How governments' actions drive polarisation in the society, exacerbating staff and good shortages, driving inflation higher, while not addressing the underlying causes
"Well, opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one" – Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry
In today's increasingly polarised and politicised world there are as many opinions as people. A big part of the population is not only hostile to opinions that don't match their own but also reluctant to listen to criticism. The fear of being branded a conspiracy theorist, anti-science or anything else makes me uncomfortable talking about vaccine mandates, however, not discussing these is akin to not discussing World War II and the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. This is not to say that vaccine mandates are equitable to fascism, but they carry a similar weight on how they influence the dynamics in our societies, economies and individual lives.
What started as emergency measures to deal with an unknown and dangerous virus that threatened our lives and our communities and pushed our healthcare systems to a breaking point, is quickly moving beyond that. A feeling of community arose in the early days of the pandemic as people came together to support the frontline healthcare workers and protect the most vulnerable members of the society. However, that initial feeling of community is giving way to a mentality of tribalism; mask or anti-mask, vaxx or anti-vaxx, COVID believers or COVID deniers.
This polarisation of the society is merely the consequence of much deeper systemic issues that have been compounding for decades. Eventually these issues will be resolved, and equilibrium will be restored with structures that express new balances of power. Until then I expect volatility in every aspect of our lives – from stock markets to public discourse. I'm very sceptical when anyone suggests we will go back to the same world as before the COVID-19 pandemic, as a lot of harmonies that kept some balance in our world have been broken. New habits have formed and new structures of power are emerging. Ignoring these, burying our heads in the sand, so to speak, leaves us unprepared and exposed to a world that is shaping in ways nobody can predict.
Before I continue any further I want to emphasise a significant distinction between SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 (I'll call this nature), vaccines which are the result of scientific progress and a tool to fight COVID-19 among other diseases (I'll call this science) and the vaccine mandates, a political decision and a tool to influence and persuade people in order to get vaccinated (this I'll call politics). The aim of this article is not to criticise the virus, the vaccines or the political justifications behind the vaccine mandates but to discuss the potential short term and long term knock on effects these political decisions could have.
If you haven't been living under a rock you've probably noticed that in the past couple of months more and more governments are enforcing vaccine mandates – making vaccination against COVID-19 a legal requirement – to parts of the population or the population as a whole. In the UK, the government is planning to fire care home and NHS personnel if they refuse to get vaccinated. ITV has the story1;
More than 70,000 unvaccinated NHS staff will need to get the jab or risk losing their job after the government announced Covid-19 jabs would be compulsory for NHS England workers.
The figure is a government estimate of how many staff in the health service will remain unvaccinated after the grace period ends on April 1 2022.
The UK government is expecting that from the 125,000 unvaccinated NHS workers, 22,000 (17.60%) will get vaccinated, 30,000 (24%) are exempt and 73,000 will be fired (58.40%). This adds on top of the existing NHS staff shortages of 100,000. Daily Mail reports2;
A white paper into the impact of the plan was published by the Department of Health tonight after Sajid Javid announced that all frontline NHS workers in England need to be double-jabbed against Covid by April 1 or they will be sacked. The document estimates that just 22,000 of the 125,000 currently unvaccinated staff – including medics, cleaners, porters and receptionists – will get their Covid jabs by that deadline. It also shows that ministers expect 73,000 not to come forward for the vaccines and by default lose their job. The remaining 30,000 are medically exempt.
Trade union GMB warned the 'bulldozing' policy will only worsen the 'crushing' staffing crisis. The health service already had around 100,000 vacancies before Covid struck, including a shortfall of 10,000 doctors and 35,000 nurses.
NHS leaders warn that patients are at risk as the NHS reaches "tipping point"3. What would happen if public health systems could no longer provide healthcare services because of staff shortages caused by vaccine mandates, on top of an increased backlog of patients which is the result of lockdowns? Independent reports4;
More than 5.8 million patients were waiting for routine surgery by the NHS in England by the end of September, new data has revealed.
This is the highest figure since August 2007 and comes as hospital leaders have warned the health service is at “breaking point”.
Firing healthcare workers that refuse to be vaccinated when there are simpler and less controversial solutions to deal with the problem (e.g. testing) at a time when the NHS is overloaded could lead to increased deaths that could have been avoided; deaths among the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. This is not happening just in the UK, other countries are employing similar measures, so it's a phenomenon we're witnessing globally to some extent.
A possible scenario is governments blaming dysfunctional public healthcare systems – ignoring their part of the blame in making them so in the first place – then advocating for privatisation as the cure of the problem. Judging by the history of privatisations of crucial national services, privatisations of healthcare systems will probably fail, leading to higher healthcare costs and exacerbating inequalities in the population. By fail here I mean fail to serve the broad population; these privatisations will be extremely profitable for a small minority. The US healthcare system is a good example of what's possible. A more extreme scenario would be for people to become outraged, hold their governments accountable and try to replace them. That's a more utopian scenario, one that I don't have much faith in.
Continuing on the subject of healthcare recently the government of Singapore has decided not to provide free medical healthcare to anyone requiring hospitalisation for COVID-19 and has not been vaccinated, as we read in the Daily Mail5;
Minister Ong Ye Kung said residents who are eligible for the vaccine but have refused to have it would from December 8 no longer receive free care if they are hospitalised for Covid-19.
I don't believe Singapore will be the last country where a government decides who gets free healthcare and who doesn't. Currently this only affects patients who need to be hospitalised for COVID-19 and have decided not to get the vaccine. This however, creates a precedent and an acceptance of such measures from the wide population. What stops a government from deciding later on that an obese person, over a specific BMI or a smoker, for example, is a strain on the healthcare system and therefore cannot get free healthcare?
Austria seems to follow a more hard-line approach, requiring all the population to be vaccinated, risking fines and even prison6;
Austria is to become the first European country to make vaccinations against Covid 19 mandatory.
(...)
Those refusing to be vaccinated are likely to face administrative fines, which can be converted into a prison sentence if the fine cannot be recovered.
Latvia, following in the steps of the state of Victoria in Australia7, is the first country that has decided not to allow democratically elected MPs to participate in the procedures of the parliament. Euronews reports8;
"From November 15, an MP will be entitled to participate in the work of the Saeima [Latvia's Parliament] only if he or she has presented an interoperable COVID-19 certificate confirming the fact of vaccination or illness," the statement from the parliament press office states.
Banning democratically elected MPs from participating in democratic processes sets another precedent, something that has the potential to be enforced to larger parts of the population, excluding them from the society. Euronews, "The Latvian ban on unvaccinated MPs should be a wake-up call | View" explains this much better than I can;
Making such a mandate conditional on their vaccination status undermines something fundamental to democracy: pluralism.
With the disenfranchisement of unvaccinated MPs, Latvia joins the top of the list of EU states backsliding on democracy.
What would happen if governments decided to exclude 10%, 20% and sometimes more than 30% of the society not only from the economy but also from participation in democracy? Economic recession is a real possibility since not as many people would be consuming goods and services. However they will still need to consume goods and services or risk death, which will probably create a parallel black market economy. In addition, excluding and marginalising a part of the population won't bode well for western democracies as desperate people will seek desperate means to express their views and beliefs. This could increase the extremism, radicalisation and polarisation we're already experiencing.
Fascism didn't come out of nowhere but was the result of years of dissatisfaction for governments' decisions and provided solutions to real problems, hence the acceptance it enjoyed in Europe. It's impossible to predict this with any certainty, but if history is any guide it's a real risk. The issues brought into our attention with Trump's victory in the 2016 elections and the rise of populism in Europe, have not only not gone away but have been further exacerbated. A less possible scenario is for parts of the society to come together, leave their differences and ideologies aside and attempt to create a society that respects and works for everyone.
Of course one might dismiss all these arguments and say that all the government measures are temporary and the world will go back to normal once we've dealt with COVID-19. To this I'm very sceptical as I have been witnessing the opposite in the past 18 months and can only reply with the following proverb that distils the wisdom of the Russian people;
"There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution." – Russian Proverb
Nothing in our world is without conflict. To return to the opening quote of this article, everyone has an opinion which inevitably leads to different forces pulling in different directions, trying to express different views and satisfy their agendas. Even within capitalism there's conflict; Trump represents a different version of capitalism than President Biden. Over the past few months we've seen bigger and bigger parts of the population expressing their dissatisfaction to their governments' decisions; protests, strikes and utilization of any possible legal means. In Italy port workers strike protesting against mandatory COVID health pass9;
According to BBC, about 2,000 workers gathered in protest at the entrance of the Trieste port, a maritime gateway for northern Italy, Germany, Austria, and central Europe.
In the Dutch city of Rotterdam activists have blocked the gates of a major port of the city's harbour, protesting against the government's COVID measures, as Russia Today reports10. Rotterdam is the largest seaport in Europe and the world's largest seaport outside of East Asia11. These already add to the supply chain disruptions that we've been witnessing recently and higher than expected inflation which only increases wealth inequality, adding fuel to the fire. On top of these, in-numerous protests all over the world against lockdowns and vaccine mandates have erupted12 13 14 with the epicentre currently in Europe15.
In the US we see states dissenting against the Federal Government, in particular Florida and republican governor Ron DeSantis, who is seen as a contender for the 2024 presidential nomination. The Guardian, "Florida lawmakers’ special session aims to thwart Covid vaccine mandates";
According to an agenda released by the governor’s office, a body of legislators dominated by Republicans will consider four bills to impose penalties on businesses and local governments that require workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
Ignoring the bias of the authors in the following article I want to separate the signal from the noise, which is that judges of a US federal court are blocking the mandate of President Biden's government. The Guardian, "Conservative judges block Biden’s vaccine requirement for businesses";
Judges appointed by Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan declined on Friday to lift a stay on the Biden administration’s Covid-19 vaccine requirement for businesses with 100 or more workers.
These all highlight the fact that decisions are being made and enforced by governments all over the world which affect everyone, vaccinated or not. Whether these decisions can be legally or ethically justified is not the main issue. What's important is that some parts of the society accept them, others do not and do nothing, while others are taking a stance against them. The resistance of the last group is what creates frictions and until either the governments can completely dominate over or eradicate that last group or that last group can express their views and beliefs in the political domain, these frictions will persist.
While these frictions persist (e.g.: protests, riots, strikes) and the underlying issues that gave rise to them (e.g.: marginalisation of parts of the society, wealth inequality) are not addressed, we will only see more supply chain disruptions and staff shortages that lead to higher inflation. However the underlying causes are impossible to be addressed, as our current fiscal and monetary policies exacerbate wealth inequality and extreme concentrations of wealth. One needs only to see the asymmetric increase of billionaires' wealth during the pandemic and the market values of transnational corporations, while small and medium enterprises along with their owners are forced to bankrupt one after the other.
We have moved to supply chains and markets that are less diverse and more centralised – and by centralised here I'm not referring to governments but to transnational corporations that have the power to influence governments. Central bank, government officials and media pundits insist that inflation, staff and good shortages and supply chain disruptions are transitory and soon they will pass. I feel the opposite to be true as our supply chains are more centralised and thus more fragile, while a big part of the labour force is not allowed to participate in the labour market, especially at a time when there are labour shortages.
The only way I can see all these resolving is by reaching some compromise between governments and their citizens, multinational corporations and their workers. However, because of the polarisation we're experiencing in all aspects of our lives and the reluctance of governments and corporations to step back – either by relaxing the vaccine mandates or increasing the wages (these still happen but not across the board and not in line with inflation) – I doubt we will see these compromises any time soon. I think experiencing extreme situations is more probable to compromise, however I hope this won't be the case. We can only hope for the best though, but we need to be prepared for the worst.
I would like to close this article with a brilliant quote by Kamran Abbasi in the BMJ editorial which I highly recommend anyone to read16;
"When good science is suppressed, people die."