DEATH LOTTERIES ARE IMMORAL
In USA, school children used to read The Lottery (1948) by Shirley Jackson. Villagers gather for a lottery once a year. In the first round, a family name is selected. In the second round, one member of that family is selected as the overall winner. The winner is then stoned to death by all others. The lesson is that we should not blindly follow tradition or popular paradigms without moral consideration of our conduct.
In Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), someone must be thrown into the volcano in order to appease the gods and save the island inhabitants from destruction. In The Hunger Games (2008), for the good of society, each district sends a pair of citizens, selected by lottery, to gladiatorial games in which only one survives. Even Commander Spock said, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”
In actual history, Canaanites and Carthaginians brutally placed young children or babies into fire to appease Ba’al or Kronos. The Babylonians, Aztecs, Mayans, and Inca also engaged in human sacrifice atrocities … for the good of society.
In these fiction and non-fiction depictions, participants in the lotteries assigned public interest a higher value than they do individual liberties, the ultimate liberty being one’s right to live and to exist. Simply put, participants knowingly and in-fact took the life of someone’s child for the mere purport of safety from a god’s wrath or simply as tradition. All participants, regardless of belief in the god or the objective, fail the results of a moral calculus. Death lotteries are intrinsically immoral.
THE MORAL CALCULUS
In considering the moral equation, one must realize that the taking of a life cannot be undone. Murder breaches natural law and Abrahamic, Buddhist, and Hindu divine law.
Self-Defense Argument - Killing is not murder if it is done in self-defense. Some argue that killing another in a lottery for the purport of saving many is self-defense. This is incorrect. It is not self-defense. Participants have no reasonable belief that the lottery winner is trying to kill anyone. Lottery participants choose to kill the lottery winner based, for example, on a belief that a god may kill them all if the winner is not sacrificed. Self-defense requires an imminent threat from the one killed, not a purport of threat from a traditional belief such as a god’s wrath. The self-defense argument fails.
Necessity Argument - Given there is only enough fresh water in a life raft for 100 person-days, there are 25 people in the raft, and you estimate that it will take 5 days to be rescued. What will you do? Will you draw straws in a lottery to see which 5 people are to die? If the 5 lottery winners refuse to take their own lives for religious reasons, will you murder them? You will have to murder 5 on the first day, else you will have to murder 6 on the second day for there to be enough water for the many to make it through the fifth day. On each day, will you recalculate the moral justification to determine how many you will have to murder for the many to survive? Killing a few or one in a lottery of necessity for the sake of many is still murder. Such conduct is based on ultimate selfishness of being. There is no virtue in such a calculus. The necessity argument fails.
Duress Argument - In a simpler scenario, someone holds a gun to your head and tells you to kill one of ten people standing in front of you else you will be killed. Duress may be a legal self-defense for some crimes, but it is neither a legal nor a moral defense for murder. You cannot be certain of the actor’s intent to kill you, but you are certain of your own intent to kill another in the mere hope of saving your own life. If you murder, you have traded your morality for a purport of safety. And your most selfish act of murder can never be taken back. The duress argument fails.
Unwilling Participant Argument - Consider that a participant does not believe that the taking of a life will appease a god or deliver a bountiful harvest. The participant chooses to remain silent and participates in the lottery nonetheless. Perhaps he is afraid of speaking out or simply does not contemplate the moral implication of participation. Such a participant is knowingly or purposely complicit in the moral atrocity of murder by lottery. He knows someone will die and has participated in the act. This is the immoral act of murder without excuse or justification.
Ancient ritual death lotteries are now called atrocities, not because we know they had no effect in sating a vengeful god, but rather because the moral calculus results in the conclusion that participation in a death lottery is the immoral act of murder.
C19 VACCINE IS A DEATH LOTTERY
You may not know a single person stung in the past five years by a venomous hymenoptera (bees, hornets, wasps, and fire ants). Stings are rare and the venom contains toxic proteins safe for most, but deadly only to a few. In USA, approximately 62 people die each year from stings. If stings were mandated, 18,000 people would die from stings. Clearly, a mandate of bee stings would be murder of 18,000 people and, thus, immoral.
The COVID-19 (C19) vaccine is a new technology never before used in humans en masse. It has not been rigorously tested over several years as all other vaccines have been. In fact, the C19 vaccine did not meet the definition of “vaccine” until the definition was changed in 2020 as a marketing ploy to garner acceptance from consumers already mentally tuned to the common word.
Regardless of the definition, what does the C19 vaccine do? The C19 vaccine delivers a substance that transfects cells to make them produce a spike protein (spike). The spike itself is a toxin similar to staphylococcus enterotoxin-B (SEB) and cobra venom. People will react to the toxin like people react to stings. Most will be fine, but some will have a reaction to a level of permanent debilitation or even death.
The exact percentage of people who will have serious adverse reactions or die from the C19 vaccine will not be known until all the data is tallied. The trials did not use a random sample of people of all the types that exist in society. Thus, the mass vaccination is acting in place of a robust set of trials that would otherwise have occurred.
In the moral calculus, percentages do not matter. Many have died from the C19 vaccine and many more will die from the C19 vaccine. That is all that needs to be known. Thus, the C19 vaccine mandates are, by definition, a death lottery.
C19 VACCINE MANDATES ARE, THEREFORE, IMMORAL
There is a moral excuse to participation in a death lottery such as the C19 vaccine mandates.
Mistake or Ignorance of Fact - If one is ignorant of the fact that a lottery results in the deaths of others, then it cannot be murder. In such a case, there is no knowledge constituting any type of guilty mind.
Many do not in-fact know that some people die from the C19 vaccine. Until they learn this fact, these people cannot be immoral in promoting the C19 vaccine.
This does not, however, include people with knowledge that some die from C19 vaccines in “rare” adverse outcomes. Belief that deaths resulting from the C19 vaccine are “rare” is not ignorance of fact. If you know it is “rare”, then you know that death does in-fact occur. The meaning of “rare” in context of percentages does not matter. The odds of the lottery may be high or low, but it is a death lottery nonetheless; and participation in the lottery is willful participation in murder.
Consider a town having a C19 vaccine clinic for school children. The school committee, school superintendent, teachers, administration, other staff, parents, local board of health, school nurses, local pediatricians, and the vaccine clinicians promote the vaccine for children. Some use coercion by telling the parents and children that the children must wear masks until 80% of the student body is vaccinated. Others may smile and tell children how important it is for them to get vaccinated, so they can keep their parents and grandparents safe. In this town, those who know deaths occur, whether rare or not, are morally guilty of participating in a death lottery, thus, murder.
Children trust adults to have performed the moral calculus. A 7-year-old girl who has an adverse reaction and dies from a C19 vaccine has been murdered. The pharma industry certainly knew that some children die from the vaccine. The politicians knew or should have known that some children die from the vaccine. The vaccine clinicians, school nurse, superintendent, and board of health certainly should have known that some children die from the vaccine. They all are complicit in the murder of a 7-year-old child.
If some claim ignorance of fact, then they are not morally innocent if they do not come forward and demand investigation of the role of the vaccine in the child’s death. At the point of the child’s death, they know that it causes death. And if more children die after the 7-year-old girl because no investigation was demanded, then those who knew of her death are morally responsible for the subsequent murders of other children, even those ten miles away or thousands of miles away.
Notice that efficacy is not important in this moral calculus. This is not an argument of whether the C19 vaccine prevents spread, prevents infection, or reduces symptoms and death from C19, which we now know from a year of data are all false assertions anyway. This is not even an argument over the hundreds of thousands of debilitations and deaths from the C19 vaccine. The risk benefit analysis is simply not part of the moral calculus. If people are dying all over the place and a vaccine promises more benefit than risk, choice is still a winning strategy. In fact, mandates foster distrust and result in lower rates of vaccination.
The syllogism is simple. Death lotteries are immoral. The C19 vaccination campaign is a death lottery. Therefore, mandatory C19 vaccination is immoral. There should be no coercion of any kind for people to vaccinate, else those coercing others are morally guilty of participation in murder, wherever and whenever that death occurs.
I appreciate the logical way you expressed this sentiment that I have been struggling with for months now. As a state employee of one of the most jabbed states in the US, I am disgusted in state leadership and even fellow employees who are acting as propagandists to push these deadly jabs. We were all asked to add a blurb to our email signatures promoting the toxic juice for everyone 5 and up and it turns my stomach to see it at the bottom of most emails I receive every day. I have long thought that everyone complying with this ask is complicit in crimes against humanity but you said it better: they are morally guilty of participation in murder.
Excellent essay and perfectly stated.