And of course another important difference: I’m not obligating anyone to get vaccinated, only not to infect me. You are supposedly demanding that I not get vaccinated so that indirectly nothing will happen to you. So even if you were right that there is an asymmetry in relation to the other person, it’s not really an asymmetry.

What is mainly relevant to the argument is what ideology drives the group. If power corrupts it, then for this purpose it would be defined as a different group, because there is no continuity of worldview or ideological affiliation over time. If, for example, I were arguing this regarding the American libertarian Rand Paul, who has been in politics for years and consistently expresses the same views, it would be a bit hard to argue that we have no idea what he would do if he were in power. And in any case that’s beside the point. The question is what the public that expects him to implement certain positions would demand that he do.

As for the second point, to the extent that some process is deterministic, the fact that it requires more steps is less morally relevant. Deliberately pulling a gun’s trigger is no less an act of murder just because several processes have to occur between the trigger pull and the bullet entering a person’s body and killing him.

For our purposes, the claims made by the Belgian scientist are not that the process *might* indirectly lead to the formation of harmful mutations on apocalyptic scales, but that it is more or less necessarily so. Every 10 hours a new mutation arises, but without a mass vaccination campaign nature would have no mechanism pressing to prefer more lethal and more contagious mutations over the other mutations—which are the majority. That is, according to the theory, the vaccinated create a deterministic, or nearly deterministic, risk that is deadlier by an order of magnitude than what we have known until now (because this forces immune escape, as explained in this and other videos and in his written warnings sent around the world).

From this it follows that, compared to the risk a vaccinated person poses to an unvaccinated person, there is nothing more remote here. Maybe the opposite: the period in which an unvaccinated person is infectious is usually when he shows symptoms and therefore avoids the presence of others, whereas the vaccinated person is usually asymptomatic or has mild symptoms and therefore hardly knows he is a source of infection to others, in addition to the fact that vaccinated people are going to spread worse mutations than unvaccinated people.

As for the third point, preventing freedom of movement is a direct forceful action against the exercise of the right to freedom of movement. The harm is immediate and real and above all certain. By contrast, according to official government data regarding the degree of vaccine effectiveness, an unvaccinated person exercising his freedom of movement does not endanger you in any serious way—at least no more than a flu patient endangers you, as noted by Prof. Udi Qimron (head of the Department of Microbiology and Clinical Immunology at Tel Aviv University):

“95% vaccine efficacy reduces the risk from coronavirus twentyfold—to a risk lower than flu.

Whoever supports continuing any restrictions is in effect denying the efficacy of vaccines.

You can’t have it both ways.”

It therefore seems that the problem remains: unvaccinated people who hold the theory that vaccinated people endanger the public do not see themselves as having the right to deny vaccinated people rights over their own bodies because of this, unlike vaccinated people, who hold the opposite theory, but do not restrain themselves when it comes to limiting the unvaccinated.

Regarding the point, “I’m not obligating anyone to get vaccinated, only not to infect me. You are supposedly demanding that I not get vaccinated so that indirectly nothing will happen to you.”

Not necessarily. To make it parallel, an unvaccinated person who holds the theory that vaccinated people endanger him does not need to obligate others not to get vaccinated, but only that if someone gets vaccinated, he should not be able to infect the unvaccinated person, and this by means of various apartheid mechanisms between the groups. Of course, in both cases this involves indirect coercion to vaccinate / not vaccinate, as described in the question.

In practice, unvaccinated people usually do not even entertain this as a serious social or moral possibility.

[Butting in a bit.
There’s a demand here based on symmetry, and I don’t see any place for it. Suppose someone holds the principle that it is forbidden to imprison people under any circumstances, and then he wanders the streets stealing money from people. Should I refrain from imprisoning him because according to his principles he would not imprison me if I were doing things that in his opinion are bad? Obviously not. The house of cards of his learned doctrine interests me as much as my old socks.
The symmetry idea, if anything, could work in the opposite direction, to permit me things otherwise forbidden—if someone holds the position that he is allowed to beat me if, say, I drink alcohol at home, then maybe I too will hold that I am allowed to beat him if, say, he hangs up laundry (I don’t think there is any principled justification for this, but conditioning morality on symmetry is a respectable opinion. And one can also hold such a position in practice without principled justification. Let him kindly give up beating me, and then I’ll give up beating him). But that symmetry should work to forbid me things that I think are permitted and desirable—that is something the ear cannot hear.]

In the State of Israel there is no symmetry, there is law.
And the law says that the government is allowed to do anything.
And whoever doesn’t listen should go get a hearing test.

And who was it that started turning up their nose like that?

With God’s help, 9 Nisan 5781

If the experts were to decide that the vaccines are unsafe—then they would indeed prohibit them, just as in fact happened with the AstraZeneca vaccines, where in some countries they ordered their use halted due to safety concerns. The vaccines used in Israel received FDA emergency authorization, but it is certainly possible that the medical establishment will become convinced that they are problematic and prevent their use, and then they will also be forbidden even to those who want them.

The asymmetry is actually in favor of those worried about the vaccine, since even the governments that support them do not force anyone to get vaccinated, but merely deny them the leniencies regarding gatherings. After all, they themselves, assuming the vaccine is unsafe, should continue taking the precautionary measures they took before the vaccines existed.

Regards, Yaron Fish”l Ordner

Tolginus,

The claim is that *you* think this is wrong. The proof is: if the unvaccinated were in power, you would agree with them that one must not coerce the prevention of vaccination for those who want it. Moral principles are not whimsical or random. If there is such a principle, it does not appear ad hoc only when it benefits you, but as a rule: one may not force a medical viewpoint onto another person’s body against his will (this can also be seen as an expression of “what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow”), including direct or indirect coercion of vaccines.

Yaron,

The problem you describe arises because, following the U.S., countries including Israel began to take responsibility upon themselves for vaccine injuries while the vaccine companies are completely exempt from any liability to compensate the injured. In a normal situation, a vaccine like the latest AstraZeneca one either would never have reached the market, or there would have been an immediate recall after the first reports of injury, because otherwise the vaccine company would have risked huge losses.

But as a matter of principle, an expert—and certainly not an “expert on behalf of the state” as a party to the deal with Pfizer—has no right to decide for you what medical treatment to receive or not receive.

Regarding AstraZeneca, which keeps coming up again and again here, as far as I understood this was stupid and baseless hysteria. There were people who got blood clots following the vaccine; their percentage in the population is lower than their percentage in the general population irrespective of the vaccine. Just hysteria, and now quite a few countries have indeed gone back to using it. I heard that this is also what the doctors of that well-known terrorist organization that works together with Bill Gates determined: the World Health Organization.

Copenhagen,

I decide according to the content and not according to sterilized formalistic symmetry: what I think is justified is okay, and what I think is unjustified is not okay. Preventing vaccination is, in my opinion, not okay, and therefore I demand also of unvaccinated people in power that they not enforce prevention of vaccination. Restrictions on the unvaccinated are, in my opinion, okay, and therefore I demand that they be enforced. I have no business with a general principle of “is it permitted to coerce or not,” only with specific principles of “is such-and-such allowed to be coerced.” In my opinion the unvaccinated are mistaken, and therefore in my opinion they may not enforce prevention of vaccines, period.
Do I think that according to their method it would be okay from their perspective to coerce? That’s a question that does not occupy me and is irrelevant. Let them concentrate very hard and think what is right according to their method. In my opinion there are permitted and forbidden things, and so-and-so’s mistaken method is his problem, not mine. It’s like asking, if someone is driving rightward, what is the right thing for him to do in order to go left. The answer is: make a U-turn and go left. As long as he is driving rightward, whatever he does is no good.
As usual, it is convenient to take an example. We Jews prevent Palestinians from Gaza from coming to live in Herzliya. If there is some general position that “it is permissible to prevent other peoples from coming to live in a place under our control,” then would you also accept that if the Palestinians were in power, it would be fine for them to prevent Jews from coming to live in Herzliya? I, for one, do not accept that. In my opinion it is fine for Jews to live in Herzliya and Palestinians to live in Gaza; preventing Palestinians from living in Herzliya is good, and preventing Jews from living in Herzliya is bad. Therefore even if the power were in Palestinian hands, I would demand of them that they allow Jews to live in Herzliya and make sure to clear the Palestinians out of there and make the situation exactly as it is today.

By the way, I have a Geiger counter in my pocket that monitors the level of deontology and warns about abnormalities. To my sorrow, when it meets you my counter bursts into a deafening and unceasing beeping. To the counter’s credit, by the way, it’s a fellow after my own heart, and for it even an epsilon is a noteworthy deviation. More than once I run into topics in the Talmud that destroy the device from overload, and then I have to go get a new one and keep it carefully away from such disaster zones.

Tolginus,

The “sterilized formalistic symmetry” is nothing other than “what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” As a rational creature you cannot evade responsibility regarding what that formalism—which you are certainly capable of grasping with your reason—demands of you. What is “justified in your opinion” cannot come at the expense of what is justified in itself. A double standard is never really justified.

I do not see how the example about Palestinians living in Herzliya is relevant. The owners of a place bear the rights of control over land they own (and the Jewish people are the lawful owners of their historical land). As before, “what is hateful to you” obligates the Palestinian to refrain from seizing land that is not his, just as he would demand that you obey the natural law obligating you to refrain from illegitimately invading his house—if he were in fact the true owner of the property.

What is hateful to me and what I do not do to my fellow is “prevent vaccines,” not “coerce something.” And indeed, just as I demand of myself not to prevent vaccines, so too I demand of vaccine opponents not to prevent vaccines. One standard for one world.
Therefore the Palestinians are exactly to the point. With the Palestinians, you—oops, careful not to notice—judge what is correct on the merits and not only what the sides think. That is, you say: the Jews are right, and therefore they may prevent Palestinians; and the Palestinians are not right, and therefore they would not be allowed to prevent Jews (even if power were in their hands). In the same way I say the vaccine supporters are right, and therefore they may enforce restrictions; and the vaccine opponents are not right, and therefore they would not be allowed to prevent vaccines (even if power were in their hands).

As usual, one can always play with the level of generality in the categorical imperative, and it is always unnecessary hair-splitting, because what matters is the concrete content and not the empty formula. A fairly tired and shopworn issue. [Besides, in my opinion the entire categorical imperative, and Hillel the Elder’s saying as well, are not worth the finger they were sucked from, and personally I see no point in dealing with them. To be sure, I completely agree that morality is something that can be called “isotropic” with respect to different people, but that has nothing to do with the imperative.]

Just to remind you, the uniform standard we were discussing is: not forcing a medical viewpoint onto another person’s body against his will. You are not willing to accept this. That is admittedly not surprising in the totalitarian atmosphere that descended upon us following forced house arrests (“lockdowns”), closure of businesses, the skies, and electronic shackles. But a public atmosphere is not a justification for supporting wrongful acts. The statement “just as I demand of myself not to prevent vaccines, so too I demand of vaccine opponents not to prevent vaccines” is nothing but an evasion of the issue itself. The unvaccinated person, too, could say, “just as I demand of myself not to get vaccinated, so I demand of the person who wants to get vaccinated not to get vaccinated,” and behold, we have a “uniform standard”…

In our issue too, as with the Palestinian issue, the discussion was about what is correct on the merits. Is the other person the exclusive owner of his body (especially with respect to forcing treatments arising from a contrary medical outlook)? And similarly the question: is the Jewish people the owner of its historical land? In both, the answer is yes. There is nothing special about saying that those who oppose Jewish ownership of their historical homeland, like the supporters of extortion against those who refuse to take part in the medical treatment offered them, are wrong.

It would be enough for a few Jew-haters to take over a shipment of Pfizer vaccines and replace the vaccine with something older, and 6 million Jews in the State of Israel would be led to slaughter by a syringe prick.

No one knows what substance was injected into him; everything is based on stories and legends.

The argument on the merits about what is right is one thing, and the argument from symmetry is another. If in your opinion it is right not to restrict the unvaccinated, then I’m not arguing with that (here). I’m arguing with the claim that even someone who thinks it is right to restrict the unvaccinated should reconsider because in the opposite situation they would not restrict him.

Pointing to asymmetry is an auxiliary aid to seeing the issue, not the ultimate basis for grounding the claim of injustice. Like: do not silence others when they express a position that may involve risk to the public (such as expressing support for a party that would release terrorists if it reaches a deal), since you would not want—and would not think there would be justification for—restricting your freedom of speech when your disputants are in power.

The use of symmetry is intended only to expose the ethical principle being violated, and to sharpen the fact that you too know that a vague theoretical risk (to the public in general, as opposed to a direct concrete risk to a specific individual) does not justify forcing medical treatment, and not even merely preventing access to substances (for purposes of medical treatment).

With God’s help, 10 Nisan 5781

If the majority of doctors hold that the vaccine is effective and life-saving—then the required conclusion is that someone who does not vaccinate may endanger others. Therefore even if regarding himself he is entitled to rely on the minority of doctors who oppose the vaccine, his moral duty is to keep his distance so as not to endanger others, and to follow all the same distancing measures that were practiced before the vaccines. The state compels him to fulfill his moral duty.

If the majority of doctors held that the vaccine is dangerous, there might be room to say that a person who believes in the vaccine may inject himself at his own responsibility. But regarding a professional whose profession is supervised by the state, there is room to forbid him from giving the vaccine to others, so as not to endanger them. After all, the state is responsible for supervising medical professionals and institutions so that they do not offer the public unworthy treatments.

Regards, Yaron Fish”l Ordner

If you ask, all doctors will agree—and all other rational human beings will agree with them—that not driving a car saves from traffic accidents both the driving passenger from himself and also the pedestrians or other passengers from the driver.

Therefore, according to the approach that “the individual endangers others,” every person’s moral duty is not to drive a car.

And whoever drives a car violates “you shall greatly guard your lives” and is close to bloodshed. And his backside is permitted, and whoever wishes to beat him may come and beat him.

And not only that, but every vaccinated person who leaves his house while unvaccinated people are still walking the streets places himself in danger and destroys himself knowingly, and has no share in the World to Come.

And the sages of Israel were accustomed to throw their contaminated and unvaccinated children into rivers, lakes, and seas, while exalted people would eliminate them and pass their children through fire beforehand. To cleanse the Jewish people of contamination and let every man hide in his house for fear in the streets.

And the great leaders of the Jewish people, wise, righteous, holy, and pure, came forth and instructed that the substance developed by the sages of Germany, within which supernal wisdom was encoded (genetic code in the vernacular), copied from the coronavirus created by our righteous Chinese brothers in their study hall in Wuhan, must be poured, inserted, infused, and injected into our youths and our elders, our sons and our daughters. For the festival of bats is ours.

To “Does the Individual Endanger Others?”,

I have to say there are several flaws in the argument you built to justify the extortion. I’ll touch on a few of them: first, truth is not learned from what is accepted or agreed upon by the majority, but from the quality of the evidence and arguments. Usually a learned minority, attacked from all sides and still standing by its view, is more expert in the relevant material than a majority whose members tend to rely on one another, and “you shall not follow a multitude to do evil.”

Regarding “life-saving”: the claim of the Belgian scientist brought in the video is this: vaccinate everyone—and you will cause a mutation more contagious and more lethal than the previous one, and you will remain without natural herd immunity. The vaccine will bring it about that specific non-neutralizing antibodies will take over the situation and worsen the problem, apparently in a catastrophic way—and you will get, instead of Covid, a virus resembling SARS. The wave that comes afterward will dramatically raise the mortality rate, in the course of which younger people too, who were not supposed to be harmed, will be harmed. This is the danger in such a systematic and sweeping disruption—never before attempted—of the balance in the natural course of a pandemic. You have no refutation of his claims—and I know of no one who has offered one. He invited experts in positions of authority to a public debate on the matter—so far, as far as I know, without response. I am not claiming that he is right, only that we do not know that he is wrong.

Second, if your argument were good, it ought to work against people infected with influenza, since the estimated Covid risk emerging from government publications for vaccinated people is lower than the risk from exposure to ordinary seasonal flu (see the quote from Prof. Udi Qimron above). But it does not work against flu. Which means—it probably does not work here either.

You say that if the view of the authorities and the prevailing medical indoctrination had been like that of the scientist in the video, according to which vaccination increases risks and should be stopped immediately, you would agree that they would not have the right to forcibly prevent (or by extortion under threat, as said) someone who thinks vaccination is beneficial for him from injecting the substance into his body. That means you agreed to the principle that one may not force a medical viewpoint onto another person’s body without his consent. How can this be reconciled with violating that principle regarding the unvaccinated?

As a matter of principle, one cannot remove a person who performs a normal human act such as praying in a synagogue or going to a concert from his presumption of being harmless. A person walking in the street does not need to prove that he is not endangering his surroundings as a potential robber, terrorist, or rapist; on the contrary—the others bear a very strong burden of proof. I have not seen such proof offered regarding the unvaccinated.

Regarding your remark about the state, the state has no automatic right to decide for a doctor what medical treatment to give, or which one to prevent him from giving. A doctor is first of all obligated to his patient and to the physician’s oath. He may not obey a ruler if the latter contradicts that primary obligation.

By the way,