There is an angry debate going on about whether COVID-19 vaccinations 
should be mandatory. The justification for anything mandated by government should be based only on national security or a real national emergency. In the event of a disease, vaccinations, lock downs, stay home orders, and other intrusions by government into our lives should only be implemented if there is a real danger to the public. The black plague and the smallpox plague were two such pandemics. Smallpox is about 30% lethal. The plague is 70% to 90% fatal if left untreated and 30% fatal with treatment. If the world faced another pandemic of those proportions then extraordinary efforts, including government mandated vaccinations, lock downs, etc. would be justified!
MERS-COVID (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, also a coronavirus) is 35% fatal (65% recovery rate) but it is not very contagious. Only 858 deaths worldwide resulted from the 2012 infection. Most were in Saudi Arabia. MERS is a zoonotic coronavirus that infects dromedaries (one hump camels, for those in Rio Linda).
SARS-COVID (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, also a coronavirus) has a fatality rate of 9.7% (90.3 recovery) but is not highly contagious. The 2003 outbreak resulted in 774 deaths worldwide. SARS is a zoonotic coronavirus that infects bats and Asian Civets.
The difference with COVID-19 is that it is highly contagious. When it first appeared it was feared to have a fatality rate similar to SARS or maybe even MERS. If COVID-19 had been highly fatal there would be death similar to the black plague deaths of the 14th century. That plague killed 40% of Europe! No one knew just how well the Chinese lab at Wuhan had engineered the virus as a killing device.
So, conclusions based on facts.....There was great justification to pull out all the stops on COVID-19. However, after it became apparent that the fatality rate was only .5% (99.5% recovery rate) the panic should have been throttled back. If COVID-19 had been as fatal as MERS or even SARS and as contagious as it actually is then mandatory vaccination would have been well justified. We do not need and certainly do not want hundreds of millions or even a billion or more dead worldwide.
The problem is that COVID-19 became a political bludgeon instead of a disease. So, mandatory vaccines are not a crime, if mankind is facing a highly contagious disease with a high mortality rate. It becomes criminal when the politicians use it to control the people when such management is not truly justified.
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