Vaccines are genius: expose the body to an inactivated virus and your immune system learns how to defeat it, which builds up immunity. If a certain percentage of the population is vaccinated, that disease cannot spread efficiently and infection rates can plummet.

Vaccines should be celebrated and supported. You should learn about vaccines, come to realize they have tremendous benefit and want to receive them. People should be educated on their importance.

There is one thing vaccines should never be: mandatory. There is a very simple reason for this: every individual has an intrinsic human right to decide the course of their own health care.

No one but the individual gets the final call on what medical procedures are done to their body. This concept was infamously explored during the World War II Nuremberg trials in which doctors in concentration camps where performing forced medical procedures.

It is a human rights violation to perform medical procedures without the consent of the patient.

Looking at it from 30,000 feet, mandatory vaccination is the idea that individuals do not have the right to decide what medicines they consume; governments and corporations would get those rights and can decide to forcibly inject whatever substance they deem necessary directly into your bloodstream. What could go wrong?

What is the answer then if people aren’t getting the vaccines they should be getting? Education. High vaccination rates via mandatory vaccination is not something to celebrate.

That would be a giant step backwards in human rights and freedom. High vaccination rates via public education and willful consumption is something to celebrate. So get out there, do your research, educate yourself and others, and foster a desire to get safe and effective vaccines.