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Let’s talk about freedom

September 3, 2021   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

When Patricia and I came back to Canada, she was six years old, ready to go into grade one. The school board and the law stated definitively she could not attend school until I showed documents that she had had her MMR inoculations. In case you don’t know, that’s measles, mumps and rubella. Absolutely, no questions, let’s see those docs or the kid stays home. 

At that time, there was a lot of nonsense talked about those vaccinations causing autism and other ails. Such harmful rubbish people spread for no good reason and no one really knows why. MMR vaccinations do not cause autism and doctors mourned to see small children develop meningitis as a result of not receiving essential vaccinations.

After so many decades of keeping kids safe from those dangerous diseases, plus polio, the law was justified to protect other children from the potential harm from admitting a child whose parents had not taken the precaution of vaccinations.

I had them as a kid and so did most of you. Got the little round scar on my upper left arm near my shoulder.

During an interview earlier this week on CBC radio one, a nurse grieved deeply at the onslaught of yet another wave of Covid, brought about by the refusal of people to take the current vaccinations for Covid-19.

Said she, “When Covid first hit, we worked so hard and for such long hours, putting our own health at risk and we learned how to treat people and what to do. And we did it all because it was our jobs and we knew and accepted the risks.

“But, this time with the numbers of cases up again and we’re being asked to do that work all over again – for no reason! Because people refused to get their vaccinations.”

It was completely incomprehensible to her.

There is a lot of harmful nonsense being talked about vaccinations this time too, not about the danger of taking them but to the nature of our “freedom” not to take them. Who are the brutes that insist on shovelling this irrelevant thinking at us? These vaccinations are not experimental. When Astra Zeneca was deemed to have rare but undeniable side effects of blood clotting, it was taken off the list of vaccines in most countries.

The rest are safe, safer than the risk of catching Covid-19 and the Delta variant. What is freedom and where does it pale compared to the harm so-called freedom can do?

Every country, province and town have laws: we are not allowed to murder each other, steal, abuse, cheat, drive without our seat belts, exceed the speed limit, smoke in our vehicles with minors under 12; we’re not allowed to assault each other, expose ourselves in public. People are not allowed to smoke in buildings or on airplanes.

Nowadays, our “freedom of speech” is tightly curbed and we’re not legally allowed to make racist remarks to others, nor even infer sexual aggression nor impropriety. So, why are people not in the streets protesting all these impositions on our freedoms? Why? Because these are all harmful to others. If we murder a person and get away with it, well, we’re okay. If we insult and verbally abuse a person who is different from ourselves, that person is offended, even damaged emotionally but we’ll be okay – so what is the problem?

These curbs on our “freedoms” are all about the freedom of others. We are not allowed by law to attack others, drive dangerously or endanger others with our noxious habit of smoking because we are not allowed to willfully harm each other.

Likewise, we are being mandated to get vaccinated against Covid so we stand a better chance of not being sick with it and not infecting others in the work place, on airplanes, in public places, where social distancing is not possible.

Get it? This is no more an infringement on our “freedoms” than not being allowed to smoke in buildings. They have not made it illegal to smoke in your own home but most people don’t allow themselves without the need for a law to prohibit it.

That is the nut of it. Laws are made because we are too stupid or too violent and whatever are our many failings, to see for ourselves what we should and should not be allowed to do. Can you believe there had to be a law against smoking in a car with children, that any person would not be able to see that for themselves? There are hundreds of laws prohibiting the obvious but it seems we still need them.

It is quite unbelievable that rules about keeping us safe from Covid, saving our health workers from having to go through the agony of nursing us all over again are being protested, being called a blow to our freedoms.

Go and get your vaccines. Wear a mask; wash your hands and if you need to protest, stand up for the environment.

That is a much bigger issue.

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