Working Thesis Essay
Mandatory Vaccination
Social Justice has been my passion since elementary school. I have always found interested in reading about social justice and following emerging issues. In the thesis writing exercise, I found an opportunity to explore mandatory vaccination and determine how it affects vaccination levels, infectious diseases, as well as public safety.
I arrived at this topic through a brainstorming exercise. I was required to develop a thesis statement using the various brainstorming methods taught in class. I settled on the clustering and freewriting methods. At this juncture, I needed to have a tentative topic in my mind. I thought of a social science topic and reflected on the ongoing trend with COVID-19 vaccination. People have been opposed to mandatory vaccination against the virus (Lobinska et al. 193). Through the two brainstorming methods, I considered ideas such as the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, infectious disease control, and protection of public health. I formulated my working thesis using these ideas and developed them in the draft paper.
I chose this social justice topic for several reasons. First, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a global emergency, requiring people to be immune to slow the transmission of the virus and prevent a similar public health emergency as observed in March 2021. However, people have hesitated to take the vaccine, claiming safety concerns due to its rapid development and lack of sufficient data to approve the vaccine (Wu et al. 173). This was followed by state governments adopting a mandatory vaccination policy that has been challenged in courts and within moral docket. Many people argue that they should have the chance to choose whether to take the vaccine. This was consistent with the resistance to wearing face masks that had prevailed before the vaccine was released.
My initial library search was to identify the history of vaccines and how people responded to vaccination. I learned that people have always found a reason to resist vaccination basin their arguments of religious beliefs and distrust in public institutions. Moreover, I learned that governments had to adopt mandatory vaccination to protect the public in the past, and this is especially upheld to date for children. During infancy, children must undergo an immunization schedule to protect themselves and the public from infectious diseases in the future. During the library search, I discovered a rising trend in a community of people who do not want to be vaccinated, called anti-vaxxers.
I learned that mandatory vaccination has many benefits when drafting the thesis essay. It ensures that sufficient levels of people immune to an infectious agent in the community are attained to create herd immunity. However, I also acknowledged that this comes with a severe violation of freedom of choice. I hope to further explore this area in social justice to determine how well mandatory vaccination influences people’s attitudes to vaccination and if the violation of freedom of choice opens for a subsequent violation of people’s rights and liberties. This exercise will also allow me to understand if any minimums must be achieved before endorsed mandatory vaccination.
Works Cited
Lobinska, Gabriela et al. “Evolution of Resistance to COVID-19 Vaccination with Dynamic Social Distancing”. Nature Human Behavior, vol 6, no. 2, 2022, pp. 193-206, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01281-8. Accessed 9 June 2022.
Wu, Qianhui et al. “Evaluation of the Safety Profile Of COVID-19 Vaccines: A Rapid Review”. BMC Medicine, vol 19, no. 1, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-021-02059-5. Accessed 9 June 2022.