A copycat Trump Brigade is driving their trucks to Ottawa to demand their “right” not to be vaccinated. And they do have the right not to be vaccinated. Just like Mr. Holmes had the right to swing his fist almost wherever he wanted. But having made that decision, they are not entitled spread the disease to everyone else.
Please don’t let your support of truckers in general seep over onto this breakaway bunch. Like the rest of the antivax movement, they are a small, selfish group who are not supported by a large majority of their co-workers. The 90% of truckers who did their duty and got vaccinated don’t want these guys around, either.
Don’t look on these anti-vaxxers as truckers. Look on them as selfish people who put their own entitlement above the lives of others. This isn’t about freedom. It’s about entitlement.
A Higher Standard of Behaviour
And if you want to look at them as truckers, consider this. In many occupations, practitioners are held to a higher standard than the general public. Yes, it infringes on their personal freedom, but it is necessary. Teachers are held to be role models for children and are thus held to a higher standard in morals and behaviour, as they should be. For decades, the average citizen who was caught with a small amount of marijuana got a slap on the wrist. I would have lost my job.
Pilots have regulations about drinking. If bartenders have sex with customers on their own time, nobody blinks. If doctors do, they lose their right to practice.
Nurses and doctors who work in hospitals must be vaccinated. The ones that refuse must leave the job. That’s safe and that’s fair. It’s impossible to guess the effect, but we can trade off the extra work for those left working against the extra disease they spread because of their refusal to follow common medical practice.
Truckers are expected to have a more rigorous licensing hurdle before they take charge of huge rigs that travel at high speeds. Everybody agrees to that. But truckers also travel across the country. When we are trying to stop the spread of a disease, anyone who travels has to be more careful. That’s fair as well.
And these specific truckers must meet an even higher standard, not the lower one they are demanding. They regularly cross the border. If they don’t want to follow border rules, they should take another contract and don’t cross the border. I know that’s not easy, but at least they have that choice. Another set of truckers who are vaccinated can take that run. Contrary to what they would have you believe, this isn’t an either-or situation. The transport business is competitive and fluid. Trucking companies will switch their drivers around and keep right on trucking. Those that don’t have vaccinated drivers will lose contracts.
Shortages?
I won’t bore you with the statistics, but when you consider how few of Canada’s truckers cross the border, how many are vaccinated, and how many non-vaccinated are off the job due to the disease, this group is somewhere in the “1% of all truckers” range. Recent news reports can’t find any of the shortages the anti-vaxxers are predicting. Are we surprised?
It isn’t hard to conclude that, just like we see on the highway every day, a very small number of truckers are bringing the whole hard-working, rule-following, essential occupation into disrepute by their feeling that they have a bigger vehicle than everybody else and so they are entitled to more road, more rights, more of everything.
The Bottom Line: Rights
When you have a choice whether to participate in an activity or not, then refusing your participation is not infringing on your rights. That’s how the Charter reads. These social Neanderthals should not be viewed as freedom fighters, and they should not be viewed as normal truckers. They are the worst of the antivaxxers — those with a responsibility who refuse to be responsible — and they deserve to be treated accordingly. And if you want to get legal about it, an article in the Vancouver Sun lately stated that over the past decades, in cases of public emergency the courts have always sided with authorities imposing temporary regulations, and gone against those protesting about their rights.
Modern society cannot function on the principles these people espouse. Public good takes precedence over rampant, wild-west individualism. I hope these protesters are watching the court cases over the American January 6 uprising, where some of their ilk are discovering exactly how much freedom they are entitled to.