Mandating private and government employees to be immunized against covid-19 and requiring the use of standardized electronic passes as proof of immunization across the nation is what liberty is made of, the editors of the Washington Post argued last week. 

State governors such as Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R), who are blocking or attempting to block “government agencies, local businesses or both from mandating vaccination,” are engaged in “efforts that fly in the face of the values of liberty that their proponents purport to defend,” the editors added. 

“The highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus has ushered in mask mandates in some places, but vaccination remains the key to containing the pandemic once and for all,” the editors wrote. But to ensure we can all trust those who claim to be vaccinated, they added, states should be “developing a smartphone-compatible certificate that’s easily downloadable and easily scannable.” 

With this standardized approach to the vaccine mandate, they argued, Americans who are reluctant to get the jab would be forced to think differently. “At the least, enabling vaccine requirements will help organizations keep their spaces safer. At best, they also could inspire some holdouts to get the shot at long last.”

But if “safety” is so important to these editors, shouldn’t we also consider the safety of medical treatments (i.e., vaccines) themselves? Moreover, shouldn’t we consider the ways that providers of vaccines can be held accountable when their vaccines do harm? 

That discussion, apparently, is not on the table. I have yet to see a proponent of covid-19 vaccine mandates that talks about the vaccine industry’s immunity before federal law and how the current vaccination campaign is just a continuation of that scheme.

Ronald Reagan’s Socialized Medicine 

The covid-19 vaccine isn’t the first inoculation program that is both financially backed by the government and immune from legal accountability in US history. 

Thanks to President Ronald Reagan’s National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986, vaccine makers are able to develop vaccines, many of which are produced using unethical methods such as using cells taken from aborted fetal tissue, deliberately mislead patients and health officials by making false efficacy claims, and go on doing so unabatedly even after countless victims come forward saying they have been injured—sometimes for life—by their products. 

Due to the 1986 law, these victims don’t get the chance to have their cases heard by a jury of their peers. Instead, their cases must necessarily be funneled through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which was created in 1988 after the NCVIA was signed into law.

The VICP is in place to shield manufacturers from liability related to their vaccine products, as explained by AMA Journal of Ethics.

The act establishes a special court program for vaccine injury claims that caps damages and allows for the injured party to be compensated without having to prove that the maker committed any wrongdoing. (emphasis added)

Since its inception, the VICP has paid out about $4.6 billion in settlements. But while the VICP is funded by an excise tax on each vaccine purchased, it is run by the US government. 

Considering that pharmaceuticals were threatening to give up on producing vaccines due to the expensive injury-related court battles prior to 1986 and that they remain unwilling to stand behind their products’ safety to this day, it is clear that given the opportunity to function in a market unprotected by the federal government, these manufacturers would likely have not managed to stay in business. It is in this context that the covid-19 vaccines exist. 

Because currently the covid vaccines do not have full Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorization, injury claims must be funneled through a different but similar program, the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), run by the Health and Human Services Department. But it is only a matter of time before the vaccine “courts” take over. 

With record-breaking numbers of adverse reactions reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and growing concerns regarding the covid vaccines’ effectiveness, paper pushers are promising more mandates will come once the FDA concedes the vaccine manufacturers full approval. Considering that all other vaccines currently in use regularly across the nation were given the same FDA approval and yet remain immune from legal accountability, why should we trust whatever the health czars have to say?