The fact that movement within your country might be subject to similar embargos during a massive public health crisis should come as no surprise. As globalization progresses, these requirements have only become more stringent-particularly around disease. Travel outside the country, for example, is a privilege defined by basic requirements: a passport and/or visa, as well as, in some cases, numerous vaccinations. While remaining unvaccinated is a personal choice, it’s a path of perpetual reckless endangerment to family, friends and fellow citizens: while none of your rights are infringed upon, you ignore the rights of others to reasonable comfort and safety. People clearly have a legal right to bodily autonomy, but nobody has a legal right to put other people’s health and well-being in jeopardy. Of course, you can bet your retirement that many of those protesting on the premise of “our bodies, our choice” (which, BTW, no one is arguing) are the same folks who stalk women outside abortion clinics brandishing signs that parse: “how dare you choose what to do with your body if it goes against my personal religious morals.” (To many conservatives, wearing a mask might be a personal choice but women’s healthcare should be controlled by the government-as we saw with the Texas ban on abortions last week.)
Writing in the Toronto Star on how the conservative approach to vaccines will only prolong the pandemic, Supriya Dwivedi noted how Canadians were treated to “a sickening display” of “selfish and scientifically illiterate” anti-vax protestors physically blocking hospitals and accosting patients and healthcare workers. Which brings us to the unruly, Trumpian mobs that, with help from a complicit mainstream media, have made themselves the story of this election. At least on everything but the issue of support (sidenote: shame on all the ungrateful, hypocritical recipients of CERB/CEWS who happily gobble up society’s largesse but refuse to do their part). Oddly, the usual fringe conservative factions have been joined during the pandemic by a noticeable scatter of science-ignorant, conspiracy-spouting, freedumb-fighting nutjobs of uncertain political affinity. Though this provides food for thought during an election, it’s not the only point of this column. Indeed, each of the crises listed above have been significantly (and sadly for the rest of us) exacerbated by the actions (or inactions) of conservatives. It’s likewise no secret that the current pandemic has precipitated similar conservative effrontery at every turn-anti-support, anti-lockdown, anti-science, anti-mask, anti-vax and now, anti-immunization record/certificate/passport. That these groups all represent identifiable conservative voting blocs is no secret. With climate change deniers and their laughable claims of how scientists (tens of thousands, apparently) conspired to invent this issue (to what inexplicable end, none offers) with habitat-loss driving a biodiversity and extinction crisis it’s the fishing-/logging-/cattle-/oil-feeds-my-family crowd who claim their rapacious means as valid excuse to continue humanity’s suicide mission and with issues of equality or global development all manner of anti-immigrant, white-supremacist, first-world entitlement rise to the fore. The belief that your personal freedom outweighs others’ personal safety.Įver get the feeling we’re living in an experiment designed to showcase the worst of humanity? One in which the addition of each new existential crisis reveals a hidden layer of lunatic idiocy? Me, too.
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