The Czech Republic Scraps Mandatory Vaccination Requirements
Vaccine mandates were tearing apart society and there were large protests in opposition to them. This was one of the reasons cited by the Czech government to scrap them.
By Arjun Walia | The Pulse
The Czech Republic’s new government has dismissed the previous government’s mandatory vaccination plan. The plan required adults over the age of 60 to get vaccinated, as well as people in many professions such as healthcare workers, police officers, and fire-fighters.
The vaccine requirement from the previous government was set to be mandated in March. However, the announcement of these measures sparked large protests across the country. Only 62.9% of Czechs are considered fully vaccinated, this leaves nearly 4 million people in the country who are considered “unvaccinated.”
The new prime minister Petr Fiala said that the government did not did not see reasons for compulsory inoculation as the previous administration had planned, but also emphasized that they still encourage people to get vaccinated and that it remains, in his opinion, the best way to fight COVID. That being said, he did not want to “deepen fissures in society” because of mandatory vaccination measures.
COVID vaccines have brought about massive protests around the world. Less than half the world’s population has received at least two doses, and approximately 60% of the world’s population has received one dose. There are many factors that account for this, including people who desire vaccines but don’t have access to them, as well as those who don’t feel it’s necessary and safe to be vaccinated against COVID.
Senior editor of the British Medical Journal, doctor Peter Doshi has expressed that nearly half of the world’s population may be considered “anti-vaxx” by the recently changed definition of what that means. It now includes anybody who opposes vaccine mandates, including those who are “fully vaccinated.”
It’s not easy to implement measures that so many people disagree with, and this is exactly why the new Czech government is scraping vaccine mandate measures.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently announced the same for England. The reason for doing so, according to Johnson, is because “of the extraordinary booster campaign together with the way the public responded” to mandatory vaccinations, lockdowns and other ‘Plan B’ measures.
But is this the truth?
Unlike Fiala who is doing so to keep the peace, Johnson is further reiterating the idea that human compliance to authoritarian government measures is responsible for the restoration of freedom. Psychologically this is very dangerous, it simply reinforces the idea that compliance with measures that many have deemed unnecessary, unsuccessful and harmful is necessary to achieve freedom.
The truth is, Lockdowns have been catastrophic, likely killing more people than COVID. The health consequences of prolonged mask wearing have been ignored, not to mention the failure of the vaccine to prevent transmission. We also must look at the vaccine injuries that have been reported but not properly investigated
Fiala’s government has also shortened quarantine and isolation times, while launching mandatory testing of employees at companies starting this week.
Typically when governments seize more control, surveillance and power through a crisis, whether manufactured or real, they do not give those freedoms back to citizens when that ‘crisis’ disappears. Are you still not taking your shoes off at the airport because of 9/11? So no doubt measures that are lifted may once again be put in place in the future, we will see what happens.
Countries that have not implemented these restrictions have not fared any worse than countries who have when it comes to cases, deaths and hospitalizations. When it comes to vaccination rates, Japan has stated that no vaccination mandates will happen, and encourages citizens not to discriminate against the unvaccinated, but still has a very high vaccination rate.
Perhaps government power in such situations should only go as far as recommendations. Perhaps we should not give them the authority and power to impose such a halt on our most basic rights and freedoms.
This article (The Czech Republic Scraps Mandatory Vaccination Requirements) was originally published on The Pulse and is published under a Creative Commons license.