Samuel, Teacher. Waikato, NZ.
As a family, we had a number of health issues that would be necessary to weigh up the risk for taking the novel mRNA vaccination. My wife was pregnant and has a clotting disorder, one of our daughters has a pacemaker, etc.. We found the data sheets on the medsafe website and saw that there was no data for those who were pregnant or who had clotting disorders. As a result we decided it was safer, on the balance of risk, not to get the vaccination. Both my wife and I have science backgrounds involving lab work and, for me, experimental physics.
Later, it became a government mandate for me to get the vaccination in order to keep my job as a teacher. Knowing the testing was incomplete at that stage we felt this was extremely peculiar and wondered what they were thinking. The lack of willingness for anyone in government to discuss these concerns made us increasingly concerned and more unwilling to take the vaccination. We felt sure that something so untested couldn't possibly be mandated. Surely this was just a colossal error? But it wasn't, and my employer gave me a termination letter along with a glowing reference. Two decades of teaching service down the drain and now the uncertainty of whether we could feed the family and pay the mortgage… Adding insult to injury, the data was already coming in from the rest of the world at this time that the vaccination was not even preventing transmission or people catching Covid, which was the reason given for mandating.
We feel the people in power in NZ did not listen to the evidence and failed to act responsively, e.g. to cancel the mandates when evidence was available. The government claiming to be the sole source of truth was deeply concerning. We feel heads must roll for the sake of our country to function properly going forward.
We need to be far more careful in violating human rights. Yes there are times when the risk to the masses is too great for individual rights to be held to, but this was not one such situation. I believe a concrete method of balancing risk is needed. It seems cold, but is is fairest and best when assigning a lifetime dollar value to a person and balancing that risk of loss with the economic cost of measures to be paid for by tax dollars. The culture of a country needs to be considered also, and too the cost to purchase the freedoms historically, e.g. lives lost during WW1 and WW2, in comparison with what will be lost if measures are implemented.
More power needs to be in the hands of local government and households to do what they think is right for them. Mandates from the government all the way away in Wellington make no sense when we know what our local communities need better. The distribution and decentralisation of power ensures rights are more secure.
