To Mandate or Not to Mandate? Choice is the Question.

 The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly added to the divisiveness in the US as well as in other parts of the world. Not just the virus but the vaccines have added fuel to the fire.

As mentioned in other posts, I am not anti-vax. 

Isn't it interesting how much money vaccine manufacturers are making where as only a few years ago vaccine manufacturing (supposedly) did not make a company much of a profit, if any.

Now a coronavirus has transformed the vaccine manufacturing into a billion-dollar industry. But that money isn't (directly) from consumers. The money is tax money (from citizens) given to vaccine manufacturers directly from the government.

Doesn't that raise red flags?

And without any long term, double-blind, control group based studies I am hesitant to believe the hype of the COVID-19 vaccines. Especially when their effectiveness seems to drop much quicker than natural immunity (obtained by someone actually getting ill with the virus), and especially when vaccine manufacturers want to give more boosters (which means more money for them).

And then there are all the mandates that too many people want.

For the most part I am opposed to any mandate. 

More specifically I am opposed to any mandate that cannot be undone. 

Getting a vaccine cannot be undone and therefore should never be a mandate.

It's becoming unnerving how many people want to force others to do something they think is right. Increasing numbers of people want to force vaccinations. And I heard that 29% of Democrats (I heard this while walking by someone who had a talk radio show on) support taking children away from parents who are unvaccinated and won't have their children vaccinated.

Really?

Mask mandates may be a different thing as wearing a mask can certainly be undone. But over the last few weeks anyone who pays the slightly attention to news should have heard repeated reports or read articles about how ineffective face coverings and the masks most people wear are. Only N95 (or the Chinese made KN-95) masks or better have any real effectiveness, especially where the omicron variant is concerned.

Here's the thing. The virus particles in omicron are no smaller than the other COVID variants. It's just a more contagious variant. So the reality is all the cloth masks, and most other masks worn, were no more effective at preventing infection from the original or delta variant than they are with omicron. 

But there are still those who want to mandate mask use.

The ultimate mandate pushed was by Lucifer. He wanted to force every to do what was needed to get through their mortal existence successfully and return to God.

He was so successful at pushing his mandate that he convinced a third of the hosts of heaven to support him. While some may have followed him because they lusted after the power they might have over forcing others to do things, my guess is many followed after Lucifer because they were afraid. They feared to make bad choices. They feared the bad choices of others. They wanted to make sure everyone was safe and did what was right.

So, why did God not choose that plan? We don't know all the reasons, but we do know that Satan's plan would have taken away the agency of man. This agency is sometimes called free agency, although that is a misnomer as it's not free, but it is the freedom given to all people to choose.

Learning how to choose wisely, to choose to follow after what is right, true, and good, and then showing the faith to follow that choice is paramount in our mortal experience.

In our lives even though someone else does something we don't agree with, or doesn't do something we believe they should, we don't have the right to force them towards our will. We can teach, encourage, support, educate, convince, and persuade others but mandates are not the answer.

It's actually crazy how many rules, laws, and regulations are made based on trying to get others to comply with what is believed to be right. Similarly mandates are issued to force others to comply.

I believe anyone who issues or supports a mandate becomes responsible (at least to some degree) for the results of the mandate. This means if you support a mandate, which at the time may seem good and reasonable but after a few years its discovered to cause serious issues, then you are at least partially responsible for the issues caused.

On the other hand, if you teach others the benefits and convince and encourage them to make the choice, then others become fully responsible for their choice. But the persuasion cannot come by threat, coercion, fear or anything that would make the other person feel like they don't really have a choice.

So, if you support a vaccine mandate that ends up causing health problems in someone else, you are partially responsible for those issues because you wanted to force vaccines on others.

But if you can lead them to choose to have the vaccine--without pressure, coercion, fear, etc.--after learning about all the benefits, as well as potential issues, then that person's choice to be vaccinated becomes their responsibility.

This goes for anything in life.

We need to teach and show what is good, true, and right to convince and persuade others to follow that path. If someone does not make the choice, then their action is not really their own and it can become difficult to "own it" because it really wasn't their choice.

When it comes to the Gospel, it is much more effective to teach others to "come unto" the Savior and show them how than to push them to him. When one makes the choice to follow the Lord they own that decision and they are more likely to do what they should.

The freedom of choice is what is most important.

And, yes, bad choices can and will affect others. That is the downside. But we have to remember, and it's hard to do so, that final judgment doesn't happen in this life, and that isn't the purpose of mortal existence. Some comfort should be taken with the knowledge that some of the judgment  we will receive is based on how our choices affect, either for good or bad, the ability of others to have a freedom of choice and to act on that choice.