The government’s heavy-handed response to the COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call for everyone, especially for young people. The oppressive policies mandating isolation, masking, surveillance and vaccine use made life hard for everybody.
For young Americans, it took away the chance to walk across a stage and receive a diploma to the cheers of their family and friends, go to a homecoming dance with a date, work and earn money for a day out with friends or for a first savings account, and experience so many simple moments usually taken for granted in adolescence and early adulthood. It prevented so many students from receiving the education they needed to succeed, and it pushed so many more into the depths of isolation, depression, and addiction. Those lost and difficult experiences—and the decisions that lead to them—are why young Americans should care about public health policies, especially the freedom to make informed and voluntary decisions about vaccination.
The question of whether people should be forced to get a vaccine they do not need or want, or that contradicts their beliefs, is a polarizing topic. This article is not intended to convince people to support or oppose vaccination. It is an argument for protecting medical freedom and preventing a repeat of the kind of medical tyranny that caused so much pain during the pandemic. What we choose to do about what happened depends on everyone—including young people—to stay informed about public health policy and to hold those who make it accountable because, at the end of the day, public health policy affects everyone, from the elderly, people with disabilities, children and their parents, to healthy young adults. Medical freedom depends on informed, responsible citizens taking responsibility for their health and the health of those they love by asking questions, doing the research, and challenging the official narratives.
During and after the pandemic, we saw millions of young, extremely low-risk, healthy people rush into getting vaccinated without carefully considering how vaccination would affect their health because they were told that doing so would protect their at-risk loved ones. Since then, many, many otherwise healthy young people have suffered adverse reactions, including injuries and deaths, to a vaccine that they did not need.
This is why asking questions and considering the risks associated with vaccination, is important for everyone. It is particularly important for young, healthy people at very low-risk of a bad outcome from a viral infection.
During the pandemic, the medical establishment said that asking questions like “Is this vaccine compatible with my health and what I need to do to stay healthy?,” “Does my medical status and history necessitate my receiving this vaccine?,” “What alternatives do I have to this vaccine?,” and “How will my life be affected if I experience one of the vaccine’s side effects?” made you a conspiracy theorist or a difficult patient. The media and those who profit from vaccine mandates accused people asking these questions of “killing grandma.” That’s not true. Asking these questions does not make someone a murderer, conspiracy theorist, or a difficult patient. It makes them an informed and free-thinking person who is taking responsibility for his or her own health and well-being, someone who wants to make an informed medical decision, not just willingly comply with what is acceptable to those promoting vaccine mandates.
A doctor repeatedly saying “follow the science” is not valid medical advice. You have a legitimate right to question a doctor who says that, especially when there are huge knowledge gaps in “the science” and it means putting oneself and one’s family at risk for a lifetime of negative side effects. This is why it is important for everyone —but particularly young, healthy Americans with a very low risk of dying from “vaccine-preventable” diseases—to ask their doctors about the scientific evidence supporting one-size-fits-all vaccine recommendations, such as how the health outcomes after vaccination were measured and the conclusions were reached; what the data revealed about the vaccine’s benefits and risks for different populations, and how common the side effects and adverse reactions were in the studies that were conducted before the vaccine was put on the market.
If the COVID pandemic taught us anything, it taught us that blindly following “the science”—or more precisely following “consensus science”—gives bad actors with an agenda the space they need to weaponize “the science” for improper and sometimes outright corrupt purposes. This is why asking questions is so important.
Protecting medical freedom requires the bravery to question anyone who is telling people that a particular medical decision determines whether they are decent, good, and responsible sons, daughters, grandchildren, friends, citizens, and coworkers.
In addition to asking thoughtful, straightforward questions, medical freedom also depends on understanding how public health policy and laws are made and holding those who make them accountable.
If a person is injured in a car accident because of a faulty airbag, any reasonable person would say that the company that sent that car out with a faulty airbag bears some responsibility for the injuries caused to the driver. It’s reasonable to expect accountability when products cause injuries by failing to work as advertised. The purpose of an airbag is to protect drivers and passengers in the event of an accident. When an airbag is marketed as effective in fulfilling that purpose, but fails to do so when push comes to shove, the consumer should be allowed to hold the manufacturer responsible for marketing a faulty product as effective.
Despite the fact that the product liability principle applies to nearly every other product sold for consumption, it doesn’t apply to vaccines. For decades, Congress, state lawmakers and the U.S. Supreme Court have given legal liability protection to vaccine manufacturers and vaccine administrators so that they are shielded from most forms of legal action brought by those injured by biological products labeled as vaccines. Most people do not know that, so that unjustifiable status quo has gone unchanged for decades.
Because people have historically not given enough attention to the public health policies and laws their elected officials implement and how those decisions personally affect them, vaccine manufacturers and medical trade organizations representing vaccine administrators have been able to profit from dishonest marketing and then use their political connections to shield themselves from accountability for the injuries vaccine products have caused. If more people paid attention, did the research and took action, perhaps the injustices so many vaccine injured individuals have endured could be prevented.
Vaccines, just like all other products sold by private corporations for profit, deserve serious scrutiny. But when public health officials fail to do their due diligence to ensure commercial products meet high standards for safety and are subject to civil liability for the harm done, that scrutiny has to come from those being targeted by mandates and one-sided marketing.
That is not to say that scrutiny and healthy caution means suspecting that every doctor or scientist is out to hurt their patients. Good people can sincerely believe they are working to help their fellow man while the institutions they work in are heavily influenced by greed, unjustifiable conflicts of interest, unfair policies, and corruption at the top.
Young, low-risk adults, who want to protect their own health and wellbeing, have to do the research when health care providers and public health officials fail to be honest and transparent about the risks associated with products they promote. Only then can individuals determine whether or not vaccine use recommendations are beneficial or personally too risky for them. Conducting independent research before a doctor’s appointment becomes a crucial step in exercising informed consent to medical risk taking and protecting medical freedom.
Arguably, the most important aspect of the responsibility young people have in protecting their right to make their own health care decisions is being willing to challenge official narratives.
Asking questions is often uncomfortable. Doing research on complex topics like vaccination can be cumbersome, sometimes boring, and often confusing. Being willing to say no when someone is pressuring you to do something you have concluded is not right for you is outright hard. But in resisting instead of thoughtlessly complying, you remind those in power—whether it be a member of Congress, a federal bureaucrat, a school administrator, or state legislator—that their authority is not limitless and that the people who are compelled to obey the laws they make have informed consent rights that will be defended.
The COVID pandemic and the government’s response to it took so many special occasions of life away from America’s youth. They deprived so many of a decent education, the chance to celebrate graduation, get married surrounded by family and friends, and say goodbye to dying loved one. They isolated struggling young people who needed connection, and scared and shamed otherwise healthy people into getting vaccines that compromised their health, and closed off life-changing opportunities that could not be regained. And while we will never know, it’s possible that much of that unnecessary hardship could’ve been prevented by the bravery to stand up to narratives crafted for ideological reasons rather than in order to truly protect the vulnerable and preserve public health.
The past cannot be changed. The future can, but preventing history from repeating itself will not happen automatically. Medical freedom and informed consent—therefore freedom itself—depends on taking personal responsibility, which is why it is so important that every American—especially the young people of America—whose lives were profoundly impacted by the pandemic and the government overreach that followed, do what is necessary, not what is comfortable, to ensure the mistakes of the past are not repeated in the future.
If young Americans want a meaningful say in decisions about our health and our future, we have to pay attention, ask questions, and challenge the narrative. The next time someone tells you to roll up your sleeve, stop and do the research, ask questions, and insist on your right to make an informed and voluntary decision. Your health depends on it.
Elijah Davidson, who is a member of Generation Z, is a Legislative Analyst and Advocacy Associate for the NVIC Advocacy Portal. He is a policy analyst and seasoned youth activist whose work sits at the intersection of policy research and on-the-ground grassroots advocacy. He has worked with nonprofits, legislators, and grassroots advocates on a broad range of political causes.
