The Moral Duty to be vaccinated
January 18, 2022 · By Fr. Shay Cullen
The Moral Duty to be vaccinated
Preda Opinion
The rules and regulations when just and right for the common good are there to protect people from coming to harm or getting injured, hurt or sick. Traffic laws are needed, seat belt laws are needed to protect people from injury and hurting themselves, traffic rules are needed to prevent accidents and rules limiting free expression are there to stop people shouting “fire” in a movie house where there is no fire to prevent panic, chaos and death.
Civic and human rights are not totally absolute, other than the rights to life and well-being, the right not to be harmed by others, individuals or the state.
However rules are needed to restrict harmful actions of omission by individuals to protect the vulnerable from getting infected by corona by the unvaccinated. One does not have a right to remain un-vaccinated when they could harm others by infecting them and perhaps causing their deaths, because of individual preference. However one can remain unvaccinated if they totally isolate themselves from every other person and do not come into contact with them.
To remain unvaccinated and expose oneself to the infection and likely infect another person and perhaps cause the death of another because one has a selfish demand to exercise a personal right not to be vaccinated, that is immoral, that individual is irresponsible and takes a serious risk of being infected and endangers all those around them.
We all have a moral duty to protect ourselves, our family, our friends and the public from getting infected, sick and suffering. To protect ourselves and others is a duty. We can and must sacrifice our personal rights or beliefs for the sake of helping others. To choose not to be vaccinated is a selfish demand to have the freedom to infect others, endangering another is wrong. Therefore the government has the duty to protect the health of the vulnerable especially children and the public by making it mandatory to be vaccinated.
It can be a matter contested in law if one refuses to be vaccinated, gets infected and infects another they should be sued for causing harm to another. There are laws prohibiting HIV positive people from knowingly infecting others. Why not the same for those who choose to be unvaccinated and they infect others knowingly with corona?
Fr. Shay Cullen
