Former Lt. Gov. Dan McKee has announced that, this week, as per new CDC guidelines, “fully-vaccinated Rhode Islanders will no longer need to wear masks or social distance in most indoor spaces.” Preferential relief from these unconstitutional restrictions, like the executive mandates which imposed such (and then went unchallenged by coequal branches of government from cowardice, sloth and connivance), has less to do with public health than public control.

While Facebook isn’t looking, let’s briskly touch upon some facts:

Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson et al. have received total immunity from liability for harm done by their newfangled vaccines, which don’t have full FDA approval and, containing mRNA rather than an inactive virus, are radically different from textbook vaccines.

So far, the documented side effects (for which the injured are bereft of genuine legal recourse) include blood clots, seizures, paralysis, blindness, strokes and death — and this with alternatives, like hydroxycholorquine, that are safe enough for elderly rheumatics, already available and better studied. Meanwhile, fully-vaccinated persons who survive one shot or two can still contract, spread and expire from covid-19.

As an inoculation against a disease with a survival rate above 94 percent across all age groups, this so-called “vaccine” has very little to recommend it then. Granted, under threat of losing their jobs or contact with loved ones, otherwise circumspect people took a full syringe of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Gene Therapy!” but their choice underscores that the vaccine’s primary advantage, like any initiation, is social status.

Indeed, for True Believers, whatever its consequences, the injection is a mark of faith in deliverance through the experts, a due paid to join the new order restored to all the familiar privileges of full citizenship. Never mind the overcrowded swarms of sick illegals getting pumped into the country: if snake oil can cure covid, so can amnesty.

As the nation lumbers closer towards socialized and therefore politicized medicine, it’s ever more important to defend bodily autonomy. In the future, bald-faced ultimatums such as Vice President Kamala Harris’s over Twitter, “[g]et vaccinated or wear a mask until you do,” may not be necessary to force substances inside the body politic, particularly if more “gun sense” laws compromise our national immune response to tyranny. A political cabal, like the Left, which promotes puberty blockers to tweenagers without parental consent or knowledge and rails against voter ID laws — but would require adults to carry “vaccine passports” to go about their daily lives — cannot be trusted even to administer cough drops.

The “my body, my choice” crowd is putting the squeeze on us holdouts to get the shot. It’s high time we show these Nurse Ratcheds where they can stick it.

Zachary Cooper
Bristol