Hi everyone,
The BC Human Rights Commission office has been INUNDATED by PHONE calls against our government's announcement on Aug 23rd (re: vax passports to enter businesses). The Commission is asking that IF you have a complaint about this, please do so in writing via email or mail (don't have to use your real name) so they can get an idea just how many of us are angry about this.
BELOW is another TEMPLATE letter you can use/follow or customize it to your liking. Yes, it is long. EVERYONE, PLEASE LET'S ALL EMAIL THEM this week to let them know how we really feel about it and that we'd like to file a COMPLAINT. They also ask that we cc the Premier/Adrian Dix / Bonnie Henry.
AND SHARE THIS WITH OTHERS.
Here is the contact info: (send email to ALL of these addresses)
BC Human Rights Commissioner Contact
Email:
BCHumanRightsTribunal@gov.bc.ca
Email:
info@bchumanrights.cacc: John Horgan -
premier@gov.bc.ca
cc: Adrian Dix -
hlth.minister@gov.bc.ca
cc: Bonnie Henry -
bonnie.henry@gov.bc.ca
***
COPY & PASTE INTO EMAIL:
Dear Human Rights Commissioner,
I am writing to respectfully request your assistance in addressing a government policy that is threatening the human rights of British Columbians, and Canadians.
On August 23, the government announced their plans for vaccine passports that restrict unvaccinated individuals’ capacity to access a broad range of social, recreational and discretionary events and businesses throughout the province. This unconstitutional measure is being used as a means of coercing people into undertaking a medical intervention which goes against the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights on several levels. I will outline below how this violates human rights by identifying several principles that would be violated by the implementation of vaccine passports.
In the first principle, Human Dignity and Human Rights, article 3 paragraph 2 clearly states “The interest and welfare of the individual should have priority over the sole interest of science and society.”
This principle stipulates that the interests and welfare of the individual is the priority over society. Personal interests and welfare encompass one’s personal health, psychological, social, spiritual, and cultural factors. The Declaration states that it “Recognizing that health does not depend solely on scientific and technological research developments but also on psychosocial and cultural factors,” and that “also bearing in mind that a person’s identity includes biological, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual dimensions,” and as such signals that the interests and welfare of the individual should include more than simply their health interests but also their individual psychological, social, cultural, and spiritual interests.
There are many personal reasons to consider when individuals choose not to take a vaccine. The reasons may range from not wanting to be subject to adverse reactions, concern over interaction with current health conditions or medication, or allergic reactions, among others. Each of these reasons are valid due to the fact that long-term safety tests were not completed before the mandated vaccines were put into use. Furthermore, these reasons are valid even after long-term safety studies are completed based on individual health circumstances that contraindicate various medications. In addition to that, many individuals may choose for spiritual reasons that they cannot receive vaccines because of the ingredients used in the vaccines, for example some vaccines use aborted fetal cells which would violate certain individuals spiritual and psychological well-being. Conscience and religious freedoms are also protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which this policy violates in addition to the Declaration. When this is taken together with the additional principles and information outlined below then the vaccination passports and mandatory vaccinations are violating this order of priority of interests, and are not considering the individuals health and wellbeing.
Article 5 addresses Autonomy and individual responsibility, “The autonomy of a person to make decisions, while taking responsibility for those decisions and respecting the autonomy of others, is to be respected.” It is the individual that makes the decision and then they are responsible for the outcome of that decision. If one freely chooses to be vaccinated and potentially have an adverse reaction, or not be vaccinated and potentially contract COVID-19 or another virus, both autonomous decisions should be respected. Just as one choosing to be vaccinated should be respected, so should one choosing not to be vaccinated be respected. Some may argue because an illness is transmissible that individuals cannot respect the autonomy of others, however the CDC has now found that vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals are similarly contagious with the Delta variant. Therefore, an infected vaccinated person is just as likely to spread the illness as a non-vaccinated individual. Further, it is still unknown if asymptomatic carriers can spread the illness, and vaccinated people are more likely to be asymptomatic (at least for a period of time after their full vaccination, after which they are more likely to have symptoms) and more likely to feel they are safe from contracting and spreading the illness, therefore taking more risks. As a result both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals should be able to make autonomous decisions and respect the decisions of others.
Article 6 outlines that free consent must be given, coerced consent via threatening prejudicial actions or disadvantages is against the person’s human rights. “Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be expressed and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice.”
Restricting access to society, public goods, freedom of movement, and all the other aspects of a vaccine passport are a disadvantage and are prejudicial, being used to coerce individuals into making a particular health decision. In particular, there is a prejudice towards individuals who have religious reasons for choosing not to have vaccines as there are no conscience or religious exemptions. There is further a prejudice towards individuals that have health conditions or disabilities that may lead them to choose not to have a vaccine.
Additionally, access to adequate information is not being provided. Many licensing boards of medical professionals, under pressure from government and lobby groups, are restricting the information that trained medical professionals can give to individuals about vaccines, including the provision of informed consent for an individual that a vaccine would potentially present more risks than benefits. Many medical professionals have expressed their concerns about the adverse reactions and events that they are seeing and have either been censored or disciplined as a result. Some have even lost their jobs. Many medical professionals are speaking out about how their ability to properly treat individuals is being hampered by these restrictions on giving relevant and adequate information to enable individuals to provide truly informed and free consent.
Lastly, this clearly outlines that not providing consent or choosing to withdraw consent should not result in disadvantage or prejudice. Being barred from accessing certain aspects of society, services, transportation, freedom of movement and assembly based on one’s consent or lack of consent is a disadvantage. This could negatively affect one’s physical and psychological well-being, one’s access to a livelihood, one’s freedom of conscience and religion, one’s freedom of mobility, freedom to privacy and many aspects of one's rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Article 9 addresses the violation of privacy that would result from a vaccine passport system, where personal health information is made public but that was never the reason for which this health information was collected. “The privacy of the persons concerned and the confidentiality of their personal information should be respected. To the greatest extent possible, such information should not be used or disclosed for purposes other than those for which it was collected or consented to, consistent with international law, in particular international human rights law.”
Not only do vaccine passports disclose personal health information for a purpose it was not collected for, but they would also actively encourage the discrimination against people based on this information.
Article 18 addresses how there should be opportunities for public debate, dialogue and seeking all relevant opinions. As mentioned above, doctors and nurses are being silenced by their licensing boards because of political pressure. Relevant opinions, including those of vaccine researchers who express concerns about potential adverse outcomes are being censored, and these individuals are being threatened for speaking up about information that is highly-relevant for the public to understand.
Article 20 addresses risk assessment and management, stating that appropriate assessment and adequate management of risk related to medicine, life sciences and associated technologies should be promoted. The current vaccines have not had adequate risk management as they are not scheduled to complete long-term safety trials until 2023. To fully approve a pharmaceutical product prior to finishing safety studies goes against this article’s call to manage the risk to individuals. While approved for emergency use, individuals should be made fully aware of the risks of not having long-term safety studies in order to give free and fully informed consent. Unfortunately, most marketing material promoting the vaccine and information available on government websites is not outlining these risks in a clear and obvious way for individuals to be truly informed.
Lastly it notes that any limited application of the Declaration should be done by law and that that law still needs to be consistent with international human rights law, even in the cases of public health. A law that is being used for the protection of public health should show evidence that the violation of human rights at the very least accomplishes public health. Mandatory COVID Vaccines and Vaccine Passports do not have adequate evidence to support that they provide such a significant benefit to public health to justify the removal or infringement on human rights.
This is evidenced by the nation of Israel. Israel was one of the first nations to implement a Vaccine Passport system and one of the first nations to rapidly immunize its population. Even with high levels of immunization, and the concurrent restrictions placed on movement and access to services by individuals that are not vaccinated, in August of 2021 Israel faced one of the highest rates of new cases at 650 new infections per day per million people, with 59% of the COVID hospitalizations being fully vaccinated. Israeli officials are warning that booster shots are not the answer. This is a clear case study that illustrated the limited public health benefits from vaccine passports. It also illustrates that a highly or fully vaccinated society will still experience infection levels, that mandatory vaccines will not eradicate the illness. These limited benefits in the face of such significant human rights infringements do not provide a strong case to limit the principles set out in the declaration.
I respectfully request that the Human Rights Commission file a human rights complaint against the government of British Columbia for violating the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights, along with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with its Vaccine Passport policy.
Respectfully,
YOUR NAME
cc: John Horgan
cc: Adrian Dix
cc: Bonnie Henry
CITES:
“A CDC Document gives new details on just how dangerous the delta variant really is.” By joe neel, Rob Stein, Jane Greenhalgh. July 29 2021.
https://www.npr.org/.../a-cdc-internal-report-says-the... Quote from article above. “vaccinated and unvaccinated people had nearly the same amount of virus recovered from test samples, indicating that vaccinated people are just as contagious as unvaccinated people when it comes to the delta variant.”
“A Grim Warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts but does not defeat Delta” by Meredith Wadman, August 16, 2021.
https://www.sciencemag.org/.../grim-warning... Quote from article above: “Israel has among the world’s highest levels of vaccination for COVID19, with 78% of those 12 and older fully vaccinated, the vast majority with the Pfizer vaccine. Yet the country is now logging one of the world’s highest infection rates, with nearly 650 new cases daily per million people. More than half are in fully vaccinated people”
“ “I watch [Israeli data] very, very closely because it is some of the absolutely best data coming out anywhere in the world,” says David O’Connor, a viral sequencing expert at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Israel is the model,” agrees Eric Topol, a physician-scientist at Scripps Research.”
“As of 15 August, 514 Israelis were hospitalized with severe or critical COVID-19, a 31% increase from just 4 days earlier. Of the 514, 59% were fully vaccinated.”
“Yet boosters are unlikely to tame a Delta surge on their own, says Dvir Aran, a biomedical data scientist at Technion. In Israel, the current surge is so steep that “even if you get two-thirds of those 60-plus [boosted], it’s just gonna give us another week, maybe 2 weeks until our hospitals are flooded.””
“Aran’s message for the United States and other wealthier nations considering boosters is stark: “Do not think that the boosters are the solution.”
“Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.” UNESCO.
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000146180
