Should vaccines be mandatory?

Mandates will keep the immunocompromised safe

Question: Should vaccines be mandatory?
Position1 of 2›: Yes, vaccines should be mandatory
Argument‹3 of 3: Mandates will keep the immunocompromised safe

Community immunity can be developed when vaccines are made mandatory. When enough people are vaccinated, the entire community is less likely to get the disease. This is important to help keep immunocompromised as safe as possible.

The argument

Vaccines should be made mandatory for those who can safely get vaccinated. There are those who are immunocompromised and can not safely be vaccinated. The government would have to absolve these individuals from vaccination; this increases the need for the rest of the public to be vaccinated. Those who have an impaired immune system must be protected. The way to do this is to ensure that the rest of the public is vaccinated so they don’t pass on contagious diseases that the immunocompromised are more susceptible to. Mandating vaccination helps to protect the health of vulnerable populations, children who are too young to be vaccinated, and the small proportion of people who don’t respond to particular vaccinations. Vaccine mandates are for the common good.

Premises

[P1]Some people are immunocompromised and cannot safely be vaccinated, so they must be exempted. [P2] These vulnerable people, along with children too young to vaccinate, can only be protected if the rest of the public is vaccinated and does not pass on disease. [P3] Mandatory vaccination for everyone who can safely receive it is therefore for the common good. [C] Therefore, because mandates will keep the immunocompromised safe, vaccines should be mandatory.

Counter-arguments

Vaccines should not be mandatory for anybody. The government should not have the authority to decide which groups of people have to be vaccinated and which groups do not. Vaccine mandates are unfair. If vulnerable and immunocompromised populations do not have to get vaccinated because vaccinations could harm them, the same should apply to those who are not vulnerable or immunocompromised. Vaccines are not 100% safe; there is always some risk. The government can not selectively choose which individuals get to retain their freedom of choice and which individuals do not.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The exemption the premise grants undercuts the principle it then applies: if a person may decline a vaccine because it carries risk for them, the argument needs to explain why a much smaller but real risk to others does not ground a similar claim — which is the counter's objection. [Rejecting P2] The protection claimed depends on the vaccine reducing transmission and not only illness, which varies by vaccine and by disease, so the premise asserts a benefit whose size it never establishes. [Rejecting P3] The common good is what is in dispute rather than a reason that settles it: the counter holds that bodily autonomy is itself part of the common good, so invoking the phrase restates the position instead of supporting it.