Gordon Robinson | The essence of moral suasion

New Jamaican Bar Association President Alexander Williams has hit the ground running.

I’ve known Alexander for many years. He’s a high-quality lawyer, but also an intelligent, level-headed, principled, committed and civic-minded Jamaican. So his comments on mandatory vaccines against COVID-19 were unsurprising.

Gleaner quoted him as saying, “There’s no law or ruling that says that dismissing a worker for being unvaccinated constitutes discrimination or would not be justifiable in the contest of a global pandemic.”

This is fact. But I go further (reading between the lines, so does he). I firmly believe mandatory vaccination, in the current once-in-a-century danger to public health, IS demonstrably justifiable in any free and democratic society.

THIRD WAVE EFFECTS

To support mandatory vaccination, Government will be able to lead incontrovertible evidence of the recent third wave’s devastating effects:

• Over 1,000 COVID confirmed and suspected cases flooded and overwhelmed public hospitals’ capacity;

• A chronic shortage of critical health care supplies, including oxygen, which caused several deaths over the August 27-30 weekend;

• The massive number of seriously ill persons who had surgeries postponed or who were sent home due to the exponential increase in COVID-positive patients;

• The statistical fact that 99 per cent or more of those seriously ill, or who died in hospital, were unvaccinated.

But the most crucial evidence could come from epidemiological experts, who should gladly testify vaccination alone isn’t enough. The national imperative is to vaccinate QUICKLY before the enemy can use unvaccinated hosts as petrie dishes to breed and nurture more transmissible, deadlier variants than Delta that may be more vaccine- resistant than any lunatic, fringe anti-vaxxer.

If THAT evidence doesn’t demonstrate the justification for imposing vaccine mandates, then, in my forensic opinion, my mother was a man!

In response to reported remarks made by a Labour Ministry official, described in the Observer as saying Jamaica has no law supporting mandatory vaccination of workers against COVID-19, Gleaner quoted Alexander Williams:

“The question isn’t simply whether there are laws that support mandatory vaccination, but whether there’s a law that prohibits it. Presently, there’s no law that expressly prohibits mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 by an employer, nor has there been a ruling to that effect by a court…”

RESPONSIBILITY

The simple fact is, employers have a primary duty to every employee to provide a safe workplace. Each employee owes fellow employees a duty of care to avoid endangerment. Government owes every citizen a duty to ensure a functioning public health system that serves the needs of ALL patients, not just those who attend illegal parties; rum bars; and ‘Nightmare Weekends’.

In a fantasyland named Apocrypha, political problem-solver Oma D’unn (retired politician who, despite his PhD in logic, was, like a moon, bright only in the dark) would’ve advised Health Minister Criss Tufftimes to buy a brown bag. If Criss didn’t understand, Oma would unveil his preferred tool (parable) and tell him about the Nun and the construction workers.

“An old nun living in a convent, next to a construction site, noticed the workers’ coarse language and thought she could correct their ways by spending time with them. She decided to take her lunch; sit with them; and apply some moral suasion. So she put her sandwich in a brown bag then walked to where the men were eating.

Sporting a big smile, she asked the group, ‘Any of you men know Jesus Christ?’

They shook their heads and looked at each other very confused. Then one of the workers looked up into the steelworks and yelled, ‘Anybody up there know Jesus Christ?’ One steelworker shouted back down, ‘Why?’

The worker yelled back, ‘Because his mum’s here with his lunch.’”

If Criss was still too slow to catch the rake, Oma would remind him you can’t reason with ignorance. Sometimes you just have to tell people what to do. Or, if that fails, where to go!

Peace and Love!

Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.