Don’t like vax passports? Compulsory vaccination for ‘common good’ goes back 100 years
Re: “Why liberals (like me) should fear vax passports,” (TNT guest opinion, 4/11).
I’m grateful for TNT’s opinion section. It well demonstrates just how far we have to go to educate the public, even the highly educated among us, on matters of public health.
The issue of vaccine passports is hotly debated. Proponents suggest it is an effective means to encourage vaccine compliance, thereby reducing the burden of a highly infectious disease that has killed millions. Opponents claim it violates their personal rights.
At its core, the issue is about whether personal liberties are absolute. Thankfully, it is an issue that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon over a century ago.
When Henning Jacobson refused the smallpox vaccine amid an outbreak over a century ago, he was fined $5 (the equivalent of $150 today). He contested the fine, claiming compulsory vaccination was an “unreasonable, arbitrary and oppressive invasion of his personal liberty.” When the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court (Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 1905), a 7-2 vote upheld the fine.
Justice John Marshall Harlan, in support of the decision, stated “the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good.”
The Court held that “in every well-ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.”
So as the Supreme Court ruled, our personal liberties are absolute —right up until our personal decisions begin to impact others.
And when we forego vaccines that are well-demonstrated to limit our potential to become a contagious vector of disease that can sicken others, that impact becomes apparent.
Good public health, especially on matters of highly transmissible infectious diseases, demands that individuals make decisions that are not only considerate of themselves, but those around them.
While the decision of whether or not to be vaccinated has been and remains a personal one, that decision clearly impacts society at large. The government is therefore well within legal precedence to impose personal restrictions that mitigate that impact on others.
Whether it be attendance of public schools, facemask mandates or DUI laws, it is clear that personal decisions that impact others are subject to public and government scrutiny, and legal consequences.
We can debate whether a pandemic that has sickened over 135 million people and killed nearly 3 million worldwide is “a great danger”, or whether vaccine passports are an effective vaccine compliance tool. We can also debate the safety of rigorously tested vaccines built upon long-existing scientific techniques.
But the legal precedent of the government imposing restrictions on those who choose to forego safe and effective public health measures was set long ago and thankfully reaffirmed countless times since, including as recently as 2020.
The “common good” is still a thing, despite our collective unwillingness to consider it.
Jonathan Monti is retired Army officer and emergency medicine physician assistant who currently works as a military medicine research scientist and technical writer for the Geneva Foundation. He and his family have lived in North Tacoma for seven years.