Do COVID Vaccination Mandates and Passports Make Sense?

Do COVID Vaccination Mandates and Passports Make Sense?
People lineup at a COVID-19 vaccination site in Montreal on Jan. 4, 2022. The Canadian Press/Ryan Remiorz
Updated:
Commentary

The latest data concerning the infection rates of the “jabbed versus the unjabbed” in Ontario make it increasing difficult to rationalize restricting people’s access to indoor facilities, even their workplaces and schools, based on vaccination status. This is because, as a tool to stop the spread of COVID-19, the injections have apparently failed.

A Dec. 21, 2021, report by the  Calgary-based Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, “Covid Vaccines Do Not Stop Covid Spread,” sums up the situation well:

“Any policy that segregates populations by means of mandatory vaccination policies requires at a minimum that those vaccines are effective in removing the risk of transmission. Unfortunately, and contrary to government-led narratives and media coverage in both Canada and the U.S., the evidence strongly suggests vaccinations do not stop the spread of Covid – not the original strains, and not the later Delta and Omicron variants. Indeed, when pressed by competent journalists, policy makers frequently concede that vaccines are intended only to reduce the severity of illness, not to prevent its spread.”

Let’s examine the publicly available data concerning Ontario to test the validity of the Justice Centre’s claim.

According to the Ontario government (as of Jan. 4, 2021), 88 percent of Ontarians over the age of 5 have had at least one dose of an anti-COVID-19 vaccine, and 82 percent are doubly “vaxxed” leaving 6 percent with one dose and 12 percent with no dose at all.

If the vaccine had no effect on the infection rate at all, then, other factors being equal, one would expect that each group would have approximately the same infection rate. So, for example, 12 percent of all cases in the province would be among the unvaxxed.

Again, according to the Ontario government, the vaccination status of the 11,351 Ontarians diagnosed with COVID during the 7 days up to Jan. 4 were:

The fully vaccinated totaled 9,040, or 79.6 percent of the total. The partially vaccinated totaled 445, or 3.9 percent of the total The unvaccinated totaled 1,647 or 14.5 percent of the total The unknown cases totaled 219, or 1.9 percent of the total.

So this means that, when comparing 12 percent (the fraction of Ontarians unjabbed) to 14.5 percent (the fraction of COVID cases that were in the unjabbed group), unvaxxed individuals are now not significantly more likely to get COVID than the fully vaxxed.

Looking at government of Ontario statistics which show the infection rates per 100,000 for the unjabbed, fully jabbed, and partially jabbed, there is even less support for the “vaccines reduce the spread of COVID-19” narrative. Indeed, the vaccinated are now getting the infection significantly more frequently on a per capita basis than are the unvaccinated. As of Jan. 4, the rates per 100,000 are now:

Unvaccinated 78.14 Partially vaccinated: 78.88 Fully vaccinated: 101.40

This data, coupled with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s recent finding that vaccinated people are “no less infectious” than unvaccinated people,” leads to the obvious conclusion that the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is correct: The “vaccine” has no beneficial effect on the transmission of COVID.

Public health officials generally claim that the vaxxed are likely to escape the more severe symptoms of the virus. If true, this may entice a person voluntarily to choose vaccination. It also means that a high fraction of the vaxxed may exhibit different behaviour than the unvaxxed. For example, an infected unvaxxed person would more likely feel sick than an infected vaxxed one. This suggests that infected unvaxxed people are more likely to be tested than infected vaxxed people, thereby boosting the published unvaxxed infected numbers. It also would increase the percentage of vaxxed people who actually have COVID but don’t know it. Vaxxed people, believing themselves safe, may also not be as careful in limiting contacts with others. In this scenario, the chances of contracting COVID are actually significantly higher among the vaxxed than the unvaxxed.

The logic of this will be uncomfortable for those who support the current official approaches to dealing with the pandemic. If the government’s primary goal is to slow the spread of the disease, then they should NOT want people to get vaccinated for COVID-19 at all. Certainly, the data from both levels of government indicate that vaccine mandates and passports make no sense whatsoever from a disease transmission point of view, which is the only reason for an institution to have mandates and passports.

It is time for Canadians to start asking why, in light of the recent findings detailed above, organizations are suspending and even firing employees, universities are expelling students, and airlines and railways are refusing passengers based on their vaccination status.

Rather than being stuck with politically correct but otherwise irrational narratives and policies, we need to break this debate wide open and focus on what the actual experience to date has indicated.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Robert Lyman
Robert Lyman
Author
Robert Lyman is a public policy expert who spent over 40 years as an economist, manager, and consultant working mainly for the Canadian federal government.
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