The European Court of Human Rights has sided with the Czech Republic’s compulsory vaccination law after it was challenged by a number of parents who argued that the state requirements violated their right to privacy.
The case had been brought forward by the families after their children were denied entry to preschool because they were not fully vaccinated against “poliomyelitis, hepatitis B, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, whooping cough and pneumococcal infections,” EuroNews reported.
The BBC noted that under Czech law, parents are legally obligated to vaccinate their children unless they have a medical exemption. They add that “the jabs cannot be forcibly given and unvaccinated children cannot be excluded on this basis once they reach primary school age.”
On Thursday, 16 out of the 17 ECHR judges determined that mandatory vaccines could be considered “necessary” to democracy and that the state was well within its bounds to require vaccination.
“The measures could be regarded as being necessary in a democratic society,” the court wrote, according to EuroNews, and that the government had not “exceeded their wide margin of appreciation in this area.”
“The objective had to be to protect every child against serious diseases. In the great majority of cases, this was achieved by children receiving the full schedule of vaccinations during their early years. Those to whom such treatment could not be administered were indirectly protected against contagious diseases as long as the requisite level of vaccination coverage was maintained in their community; in other words, their protection came from herd immunity,” they said.
Now, this ruling involved compulsory childhood vaccinations, but of course, the implications for the novel coronavirus vaccine are certainly being considered.
Nicolas Hervieu, a legal expert in ECHR cases, warned that the ruling “reinforces the possibility of compulsory vaccination” against the COVID-19 virus, as cited by EuroNews.
Across the pond, the already adamant debate surrounding vaccines has reached fever pitch as very real discussions on things like “vaccine passports” are being discussed and civil libertarians of a variety of ideological persuasions are growing concerned.
Whether pro- or anti-vaccine, an assumption that many often make is that the discussion on whether or not vaccines should be required and to what degree is based on the efficacy of vaccines rather than the government’s right to make such a requirement of its citizens.
The European panel based their ruling on the assumption that the Czech government had an interest in protecting public health and that compulsory vaccination could be necessary to prevent the spread of deadly childhood diseases some of which, like measles, has seen an increase of cases in recent years in Europe.
Thus, the ECHR ruled, the Czech government could indeed impose such requirements on a child’s vaccine schedule.
One can easily concede that vaccines could be 110 percent effective against preventing almost every discomfort of childhood, it is another argument entirely to assert the efficacy of vaccines translates into the right of the state to require citizens to receive the full vaccine schedule as dictated by the — and here’s where it gets really hairy — “experts.”
What have we learned about the “experts” over the last year that might give one pause when deferring to their judgment on what one must be required to do in order to stop the spread of potentially deadly diseases?
For one, let’s consider the notorious Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Health, considered by some to be the patron saint of “Stopping the Spread” and others, a flip-flopping fool of a man who has failed to display any degree of expertise or consistency from day one.
Who remembers when he insisted “people should not be walking around wearing masks” in March of 2020? Oh, how poorly this has aged over a year later as masks have become completely commonplace and millions of Americans won’t even deign to leave the house without their face submissively swathed.
What’s more, now he has said that we’ll be wearing masks well into 2022 — which is a really long time to do something that back when the virus was just starting to make its way into the general U.S. population was supposedly ineffective to prevent the spread of the virus.
Regardless, just as the efficacy of a vaccine doesn’t give the government the right to mandate it, even if Dr. Fauci was 110 percent correct and consistent, it doesn’t give him the right to require we follow his advice or the state to the right defer to his or anyone else’s expertise over the preservation of our sacred rights.
I assure you that millions of Americans, as every one of us has a right to do, prefer dangerous freedom to peaceful slavery. But we really, really need to figure out where we’re going to draw that line right here and now or we might blink and find it has long since been crossed.
After all, the “experts” who have been inspiring the state’s encroachment into dangerous freedom are men like Dr. Fauci.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
