Proof of COVID vaccination should never be required for any purpose by either the government or any private entity.

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Description

If you don't know what the topic refers to, don't accept the debate.

Burdens are equal.

Round 1

05.12.2021 09:58AM

Pro

This debate is about COVID vaccines.

COVID vaccines are experimental gene-based vaccines with unknown effects & risks. They didn't undergo ordinary testing required of traditional vaccines, and their "emergency use authorization" is characterized by a lack of evidence, incomplete scientific knowledge, and severe safety concerns.

Nobody should be forced to get one of these vaccines without informed consent. And given the potential health risks, not only to individuals but to our collective balance with the virome, only the most vulnerable people should ever consider getting vaccinated in the first place.

1. Compulsory vaccination violates fundamental rights.

No right is more sacred than the right to decide what happens with our own body. This right to self-determination & bodily integrity gives rise to the principle of informed consent, and the logical corollary of that principle is the right not to consent (i.e. a right to refuse vaccination).

Compulsory vaccination violates these sacred rights. As an experimental technology, it also violates the basic ethical principles established after the Nuremberg trials against human medical experimentation. See Nuremberg Code.

2. Requiring proof of vaccination also violates fundamental rights.

Requiring proof of vaccination needlessly interferes with people's privacy about their immune status and/or vaccine hesitance. It also interferes with freedoms of expression & religion.

Many people voluntarily get vaccinated. If vaccination makes these people immune to COVID, that solves their concern. Nobody needs to know who is vaccinated, as this knowledge doesn't make anyone more immune. Vaccination alone protects from COVID.

3. COVID vaccines could have catastrophic consequences for human life.

COVID vaccines genetically modify our cells to make spike protein, which in turn causes our adaptive immunity to create antibodies. Just as Monsanto modifies corn to handle glyphosate, the vaccines modify humans to handle spike protein. And like Monsanto's GMOs, gene-based vaccines bypass ordinary evolutionary pathways (and our innate immune system), while manipulating large sets of interdependent factors at the same time, with unforeseeable consequences.

We don't fully understand how this impacts human health. In fact, we don't even know where mRNA goes in vaccine recipient's bodies, how long mRNA is translated, or how long spike protein remains in cells. Nor do we know whether these genetic changes might spread beyond control via horizontal transfer. But the emerging evidence paints a terrifying picture:

Lei 2021 shows that spike protein damages & attacks cells in our body. Vaccination causes the body to produce millions of spike proteins, directly harming the cells in our body.
Cassen 2021 finds a link between COVID vaccines and prion disease, as well as a link between spike protein and autoimmune disease. These diseases take years to develop, so we won't know how widespread the damage until it's too late.
Bossche 2021 argues that mass vaccination could weaken our global innate immunity and thus lead to "immune escape." As Boscche explains, the more we use vaccines to immunize people, the more we increase the likelihood of viral resistance to vaccines due to replication/transmission of viral variants. Thus, mass COVID vaccination could engineer an outcome similar to "antibiotic resistance," which is "one of the biggest public health challenges of our time." See CDC 2021.
Fohse 2021 proves that COVID vaccines weaken our innate immune system, not just in relation to SARS-CoV-2 but also in relation to other viral, fungal, and bacterial infection.
Yeadon 2021 suggests that vaccination-induced spike protein leads to a range of abnormalities in people who were previously healthy, including unusual blood clots and thromboembolic events in people younger than 50. This has already proven itself true in two of the vaccines -- the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines -- and there's emerging evidence that it's also true of Moderna & Pfizer vaccines. See Taquet 2021.
Liang 2021 demonstrates that virome interference has been directly & inversely associated with human disease, including development of paediatric type 1 diabetes, growth stunting in children, coeliac disease, and inflammatory bowel disease. To the extent COVID vaccines interfere with the virome, we might see these problems down-the-road, perhaps in the progeny of vaccinated individuals.

These findings explain, at least in part, why mass vaccination has led to an increase in overall mortality among the vaccinated, especially in people younger than 70. See e.g. IPC 2021 (analyzing data in Israel after mass vaccination campaign). And that's just what the evidence shows so far. We still have no clue how these vaccines will impact human health in the long-term.

Rather than pretend we fully understand the "science," we should recognize the limitations of current understandings. Nature is too complex, and many of the relevant variables are still unknown. The risk of unintended consequences, including catastrophic consequences like the extinction of human life, strongly recommends limiting vaccination to only the most vulnerable.

In fact, if you're under 70, your chance of dying from COVID is lower than your chance of dying from the flu. See Yeadon 2021; Ioannidis 2020; Mueller 2020; Levin 2020. So nobody under 70 should even consider getting vaccinated, as the health risks of vaccination clearly outweigh the health risks of COVID for younger people. Even older people should think twice about vaccination.

4. SARS-CoV-2 could benefit human health.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. SARS-CoV-2 functions like a genetic update, integrating into the genomes of COVID survivors. See Zhang 2021. The virus reveals vulnerabilities in our health, causing illness in unhealthy people or people living in an unhealthy environment. But as we integrate & adapt to this new genomic information, our bodies become more biodiverse, resilient, and resistant, effectively decreasing the likelihood of harmful biologic degradations in the future.

If our body adapts to SARS-CoV-2 at the innate immune system level, there's no need to make antibodies at all. But if you bypass our innate immunity through vaccination, you create antibodies without ever triggering innate immunity. This prevents integration & adaptation to the virus, interferes with the natural processes of the virome, and thus increases the risk of disease. See Liang 2021; Bush 2020.

Virome studies "emphasize the balance between beneficial and harmful roles of viral populations in humans.” In other words, SARS-CoV-2 is beneficial or harmful based on its role & relationship to the virome. In healthy people, or in people who survive COVID, this genomic integration improves human health.

We shouldn't take this option away from anyone by requiring COVID vaccination.

05.26.2021 09:13AM

Con

It's only in the US that Pro is saying 'fundamental rights' are violated. You can't assume all nations and cultures need to apply identical rights to their citizens when health and economy are at stake. Not all nations and their people believe so highly in freedom.

I am going to lay out a very simple case, see if Pro can attack it and then back it up in Round 2. It will include implicit rebuttals to Pro's Round 1 but I won't be giving references this Round, it saves you time as a reader and me effort as a debater so that my proof is streamlined.

There is no business that shouldn't have the right to do this, however there are businesses that are far more justified in doing so.

Businesses that deal face-to-face either between employees or employee-to-client/customer have the most justification to employ a policy that restricts service to the vaccinated. You could argue, as I'm sure Pro will, that they could simply have a 'vaccinated or wear a mask' policy but due to the plausibility of new variants, masks should be necessary for at least the next 2 years. Masks, in the end, are not everything and a business that does things like massage their clients, cut their hair, lapdance or essentially anything where bodily contact is inevitable, have an obligation to both their employees and to their shareholders, not just clients, to ensure that each employee is protected and thus reliable to keep producing income for them.

This isn't cynical, it's realistic about the reason a company should protect its employees, not just clientele. In the same way that you should have the right to evict a mentally ill client/customer from premises even though they can't help the lashing out, tantrum or whatever it is they do that disturbs others, you should have the right to not provide goods and services to clientele that have significantly increased odds of harboring a virus that can be mutating in their own body to a new variant and putting everyone at risk.

I don't think Pro realised this before creating this debate but new variants happen far more probabilistically when the original covid variant(s) that will be vaccinated against are able to survive and even thrive in the host's body for longer. Vaccines help the immune system rapidly eliminate the virus, giving it significantly less time to have the chance to mutate as there's thousandfold less replications happening.

What China did to the world by not warning and allowing their potentially, let alone known, infected to go abroad is essentially an act of biological warfare. Their only excuse was ignorance.

It is important to understand how serious this is internationally. If one nation is going to let some conspiracy theorists result in the reinfection of another nation due to whatever new variant they enabled to mutate in their bodies, at the very least the outbreak needs to be contained to their local town/city and at worst, their nation. So, with regards to international restrictions, it is very sensible to ban non-vaccinated from a nation especially if said nation is known to have many anti-vaxxers or if it's very capitalist many who can't afford the vaccine.

This is pragmatic and necessary. There is an alternative but that is not really against the resolution's idea, which is to have specific laws that require long quarantining and blood tests for the unvaccinated tourists/immigrants when they enter the country that they're obligated to pay for in a special facility (not this hotel room method, though one could become that facility). That is still in essence a form of restriction where they're disallowed to interact physically with the nation's populace by and large.

The problem with this policy is that it has one major flaw; these people are still unvaccinated no matter how long you quarantine them. If their blood test shows they didn't even naturally contract Covid at some point and don't have the antibodies, they will eventually need to get vaccinated anyway in more strict countries on the matter.

A 'right' to national defense surely supercedes a 'right' to infect a populace with whatever turned up in your body.

In fact, even if a nation doesn't get their populace vaccinated, they may be able to reduce it to almost 0 covid remaining if they have enough who are vaccinated and the virus eventually naturally dies off as it can't replicate fast enough to remain. They could be introducing covid (not some supervariant just normal covid as we know it) back into their population which will hurt their unvaccinated locals because the tourist/immigrant happened to have it.

Unless Pro is a conspiracy theorist who genuinely believes that the vaccine is harmful or that Sars really is 'good for us', the latter 2 points of Pro's case are unsubstantiated nitpicking.

This resolution/title says 'never be required' not 'shouldn't right this instant be required'. We will indeed know how harmful the vaccine is to the body quite soon, so the third point Pro raises is moot unless there's a deep conspiracy to mask the harms from the entire population of every country.

As for the 'Sars can help the body', maybe there's some health benefits to drinking or at least sniffing gasoline/petroleum. This doesn't mean I would ever advise someone to do it and why is that? The harms of doing so outweigh the good for any individual or group who willingly exposes themselves to that.

The same idea dismisses Pro's closing point.

Round 2

06.07.2021 02:39AM

Pro

As I explained in R1, COVID vaccines protect individuals against severe disease regardless of whether others are vaccinated. This fact dooms Con’s case, as voluntary vaccination solves Con’s concerns about COVID while upholding basic autonomy rights & ethical principles against human medical experimentation.

Yes, not every country upholds “fundamental rights.” But that doesn’t mean these countries shouldn’t do so. International laws & norms protect these rights, including the right to self-determination & bodily integrity. See Universal Declaration of Human Rights; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. These rights are justified in many ways, including by reference to natural law, to social contract theory (i.e. individuals give up certain freedoms in order to ensure the protection of certain rights), to discourse theory, or even to utilitarianism. Con never shows otherwise.

06.21.2021 02:39AM

Con

Forfeited

Round 3

07.05.2021 02:39AM

Pro

Forfeited

07.17.2021 05:06AM

Con

Nothing Pro raised defeated my case at all as it didn't explain why the corporation/company/private-organisation can't enforce a policy based on protecting its clients and employees.

It's that simple.

I won.

I don't even care. Vote Pro if you want. I'm not gonna bother using a source or pressing more effort.

07.31.2021 06:34PM

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@RationalMadman

@zedvictor4

@FourTrouble

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>Reported Vote: zedvictor4 // Mod action: Not Removed
>Voting Policy: info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy
>Points Awarded: 0 points.
>Reason for Decision: Neither debater actually addressed the issue in question...."Proof of COVID vaccination" and the requirement thereof.

>Reason for Mod Action:
As a general rule, votes that do not impact the debate are given greater leeway than votes that award points. Even a vote like this that lacks substantial analysis is not moderated so long as it's a tied vote. As this vote lacks any impact on the outcome of the debate, it stands as written.
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05.12.2021 07:28PM

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@FourTrouble

My perspective on mandatory vaccination is a bit distinct from this topic, though I do support it in some instances, albeit not to the extent that I would force people to take them. I would not mandate vaccination in this case.

I did read your argument, and I am interested in the topic.

05.12.2021 07:19PM

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@whiteflame

I actually have another couple debates going already. So I'm happy to wait.

Did you read my argument? Do you actually support mandatory vaccination, or just interested in the topic debate-wise?

05.12.2021 07:14PM

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@FourTrouble

Maybe after you finish this one? Unless you want to do them simultaneously.

05.12.2021 07:08PM

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@whiteflame

I wish I knew you were interested. Still could do it.

05.12.2021 12:47PM

Well, I really wish I’d been in time to take this one.

05.11.2021 05:45AM

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@FourTrouble

Correct