Current vaccine policies may lead to biomedical policing, study warns
A study published Thursday in the British Medical Journal has concluded that current vaccine policies will lead to biomedical coercion if they are not changed.
The authors analyzed the consequences vaccination policies have had and will have on society, specifically in behavioral psychology, politics and law, socioeconomics, and the integrity of science and public health.
They found that vaccination policies such as vaccine passports have had little to no positive impact on society. Although vaccine mandates are effective in increasing vaccinations, those vaccinations “were largest in those under 30 years old (a very low-risk group) and in countries with below average uptake.”
The study also noted how stigmatizing the unvaccinated has only helped polarize society without benefit.
“Political leaders singled out the unvaccinated, blaming them for: the continuation of the pandemic; stress on hospital capacity; the emergence of new variants; driving transmission to vaccinated individuals; and the necessity of ongoing lockdowns, masks, school closures and other restrictive measures,” wrote the study’s authors.
Public policy officials then led the charge against the unvaccinated, encouraging discrimination and scapegoating among those who chose not to get the shots.
“Political rhetoric descended into moralising, scapegoating, and blaming using pejorative terms and actively promoting stigma and discrimination as tools to increase vaccination. This became socially acceptable among pro-vaccine groups, the media and the public at large, who viewed full vaccination as a moral obligation and part of the social contract.”
But the effect was the polarization of society, both psychologically and physically.
The study went on to address the possible snowball effect of vaccine passports, where instead of vaccination status, citizens may be required to show genetic testing or mental health records and face discrimination based on those results.
And it doesn’t help that some tech companies have profited from vaccine passports.
“Technology companies interested in biosurveillance using artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology have obtained large contracts to implement vaccine passports and now have a financial interest in maintaining and expanding them,” acknowledged the study.
Among the many other consequences wrought by vaccine mandates – such as the erosion of public trust – the researchers also discussed how young boys and men have been forced to vaccinate in order to attend school despite the “small but still significant risk of myocarditis that compounds with each dose.”
The study concluded that “current vaccine policies have failed on these fronts and are no longer fit for purpose” and issued a stark warning:
“If current policies are to continue, public health-associated bureaucracies and society will have to increase coercion to address current and future resistance and, in the process, come to leverage strategies more consistent with policing than public health.”
Furthermore, the scapegoating of the unvaccinated by public policy officials is likely to increase, not to increase vaccination rates but to make the vaccinated feel safer.
“We may also see political forces double down and use people who have chosen not to get vaccinated as a collective, psychological and political tool to scapegoat and reinforce a false notion of safety among vaccinated people as they yearn to resume social and economic life.”
“Policymakers should reflect on the necessity of enforcing what is essentially a new two-tier, segregated social system and how this will affect different social groups now and into the future—behaviourally, politically and socioeconomically—as well as the impact of such policies on the integrity of science and public health itself,” the authors urged.
