After almost 19 years working for the same company, my husband, Peter, turned in his badge and left his gun-secured building for the last time. (I say gun-secured because a guard with a real gun sits at the reception desk and answers the phones.)

My husband began working for this company in 2003, during the Bush administration. He is leaving under the Biden administration. What, dare you ask, does the president of the United States have to do with my husband turning in his badge? Quite simply, Pete does not want to get the COVID vaccine, and because of that, the leader of the free world deemed he and people like him should be fired from their jobs, or at least that was the edict on September 9, 2021.

A month later, Pete’s company sent an email to all US based employees stating their compliance with the vaccine mandate: “We do all this because, together, we work on missions that matter. Our unifying core values – Do What’s Right, Respect Others, Perform with Excellence – will continue to ground our every action. This includes demonstrating full compliance with all U.S. government directives enforceable by law.” There was no option for weekly testing.

Personally, I find the mandate flying in the face of “doing what’s right” and “respecting others.” The part about it being “enforceable by law” is also questionable, as twenty-two states in the union have submitted a challenge to the mandate in court. That is almost half of the country.

Pete’s company goes further, however: “We have thoroughly evaluated the Executive Order and our government contracts and have not identified any U.S. site or employee, including represented employees and those who telework, to be exempt from its vaccine requirement.” Wow. There are over 100,000 people who work for this company in the US. If there is such a thing as an exemption, how would the company know that it wouldn’t apply to any of their 100,000 employees?

Obviously the billions of dollars in contracts this company has with the federal government are important to them. I don’t blame them for complying. I do, however, blame the person in charge.

What’s wrong with the mandate?

The government has a right to protect its people. I want it to protect its people. I believe the government has a right to mandate masks and social distancing, but the government’s rights stop when it pierces my skin and enters my body. The government has no place dictating medical decisions. They can advise, but any medical decision is the right of each individual. Mandating an injection when a person doesn’t want it is a form of dictatorship.

“While I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good,” Mr. Biden said in a statement.

That is not your call, Mr. Biden. We can quarantine, work from home, wear masks, social distance, but forcing an injection is not your place, Mr. President. As the great William Shakespeare said, “Each man’s duty is to the king, but each man’s soul is his own.” We acquiesce to be governed, but you cannot take what is ours alone.

“Each man’s duty is to the king, but each man’s soul is his own.”

William Shakespeare

Public Health is Different from Personal Health

Public health is very different from personal health decisions. Public health prioritizes what is good for the public as a whole. Personal health prioritizes what is best for the individual and those closest to them. Public health acknowledges and will sacrifice a minority if the majority benefits. A personal approach will not.

Several years ago, I wrote about the dangers of mandatory vaccinations for children. If your child happened to have a seizure after receiving their booster shots and didn’t fully recover or recover at all, would you take that risk with a second child? Public health would say yes- vaccinations benefit the whole group, even if there are side effects for some. Private individuals might very well say no, it is not worth the risk to their child and family well-being.

What the president of the so-called free world did is insert a public health policy into the bloodstream of each individual without any regard for that individual. And there are differences among individuals that Biden’s public health approach completely disregards. For example, does the person have COVID antibodies from a previous infection? Is the person a serious risk of infecting or being infected in their workplace if they work 100% remotely? Does the injection compromise their personal beliefs about the vaccine? Does it violate their religious belief or spiritual relationship with God? It doesn’t matter if this sounds silly to you. It is their human right. Unless you want to call them stupid. Then they may very well call you stupid when they disagree with you.

And there is the rub- people on one side think they are smarter than the other side, and they are arrogant enough to force their beliefs down their opponents throats. I think about the Pilgrims and how they left the Anglican Church to come to America. Those religious differences were big then, but hardly matter to most people today. These days, separating Christian denominations is like splitting hairs, but in Russia, Ireland, and England, people spilled blood over it. And so, I fear, with the politics in our country, including the vaccine mandate. This does not unify America. It very much separates us even more. What seems trivial to one person matters a lot to another. Don’t underestimate it.

Forced Injections are a Form of Dictatorship

To avoid the game, or to go against the grain of the ruling party is punishable by a loss of a person’s economic livelihood. This is what happened to our family. Pete did not want the injection. The decision was made worse because he is the sole breadwinner. This was a terrible position to put someone in. It made me angry that our president would punish people in this way- destroy hard working Americans financially, push them and their children into poverty- as if this would somehow help with the COVID situation.

That’s right- push someone out of their house and into poverty. That is really going to help the COVID situation. But if you are wearing public policy spectacles, what’s the misery of a few when the majority complies?

I find it hard to comprehend how firing people, not laying off, not furloughing, firing people, will help with the COVID pandemic. The sound and experience of it is so… violent.

The person that I hold the most responsible for this is, of course, the person that issued the mandate- Joseph R. Biden himself. Today, there are more questions about the vaccine’s effectiveness, but even if there weren’t, even if the serum promised to make your entire life better, guaranteed that you would live to a hundred years old and never had another care in the world, it is still the person’s individual choice.

Even if the serum promised to make your entire life better, guaranteed that you would live to a hundred years old and never had another care in the world, it is still an individual’s choice.

When we lose freedom over what goes into our bodies, we lose everything. This should unify those that got the jab and those that didn’t. Instead, those that got the jab want to take away the freedom to make that choice for others. What if the next time, you don’t agree with the jab? What if you feel what we feel, and you don’t have any options? As the famous saying goes, “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me…..”

The vaccine mandate is not about political ideology. It is about bodily autonomy.

Interestingly, the same people that support outlawing abortion are for bodily autonomy when it comes to vaccines, while the more liberal pro-choice groups tend to ditch support for bodily autonomy when it comes to COVID.

Interestingly, the same people that support outlawing abortion are for bodily autonomy when it comes to vaccines, while the more liberal pro-lifers tend to ditch support for body autonomy when it comes to COVID

Fortunately, this story ends well for us. Pete found another job within two weeks with no vaccine mandate and a 20% pay increase. How many more, however, didn’t have another option and grit their teeth during the mandatory injection? How many frontline workers in meat processing plants, airline industry, and health care, to name a few, couldn’t walk away because they didn’t have another option?

The mandate is a steamroller, and only the privileged and the lucky can get out of its way.