Immense fear of the coronavirus, along with sweeping government-imposed shutdowns and stay-at-home orders, have crippled entire populations. Authorities now say the only way out is a vaccine for all along with 24/7 tracking and surveillance. Bill Gates, a tech billionaire who uses his wealth and status to influence policy, has gone on record saying that life will not return to normal until we can vaccinate the entire global population against COVID-19. Gates has also suggested that the coronavirus vaccine might become part of routine newborn immunizations. To that end, he is pushing for disease surveillance and a vaccine tracking system that might involve embedding vaccination records into our bodies through quantum dot technology.According to Gates, “normal” may never return to those who refuse vaccination, as the digital vaccination certificate he is pushing for might ultimately be required to participate in society. This includes such things as finding or maintaining employment, renewing a driver’s license, obtaining social services, or traveling domestically or abroad. Immunity certificates, microchipping, forced vaccination and the removal of children from their homes are just a few of the draconian measures being threatened in the wake of COVID-19.

In April, the Rockefeller Foundation released a white paper, “National COVID-19 Testing Action Plan — Strategic Steps to Reopen Our Workplaces and Our Communities,” which calls for testing and tracing all Americans using a national database connected to other health records. The plan sets aside privacy concerns while requiring your immune status to be validated before entering schools, office buildings, places of work, airports, concerts, sport venues and much more. It also suggests that weekly immunity testing should be required as a requisite for entering society.

Mandatory medicine is bad policy, as it removes the right of individuals to opt out of vaccination and other medical interventions should they determine that those interventions are not in their (or their child’s) best interest. Mandating liability-free products, including the impending coronavirus vaccine that will be developed and distributed at “warp speed,” is not only bad policy, it’s reckless. Congress acknowledges that vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe” in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. Moreover, a fast-tracked coronavirus vaccine without any long-term safety data renders the men, women and children who receive the vaccine as a part of a mass human experiment, with the only real safety trials coming via the post-marketing surveillance of adverse effects; this goes against medical ethical principles and further demonstrates the need for full informed consent prior to vaccination. That’s the only protocol that will enable people to decide whether they want to submit to an experimental vaccine with an unknown risk profile in order to avoid a virus with an estimated 99% or higher survival rate.

As we get closer to the potential rollout of one of the dozen-plus coronavirus vaccines in development, the big question is will the vaccine that has emphasized “speed over safety” be mandatory? Moreover, will opting out restrict how you can financially provide for your family, where your children can attend school, if you can renew your driver’s license, or if you’re allowed to cross state lines to visit family?

The United States is a country that was built on principles of freedom of choice and personal responsibility: freedom of economy, freedom of education, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to own property and freedom to vote, among other freedoms. There’s no freedom more important than the freedom to choose how you care for yourself and for your children in a manner that aligns with your personal beliefs. The ultimate authority to choose or reject any medical procedure, free from threats or compulsion, lies with the individual. Medical bullying and medical coercion have no place in a free country. The right to decline a medical intervention that can kill or injure you is a basic human right, and that right must be upheld.

As such, the government should not impose medical mandates to seek compliance. Medical mandates perpetuate the idea that individuals lack the moral or intellectual capacity to make sound decisions for themselves and their children, so the state needs to do it for them. Individuals are capable of making responsible health decisions, and those decisions must take a person’s whole health into account. The health of the individual cannot be forsaken in the name of containing a virus. After all, we can only have a healthy society when that society is made up of healthy individuals. Health is a personal right and responsibility. It is not something that we should look to the government to bestow on us or guarantee.

In addition to protecting public safety, elected officials have an obligation to uphold the civil liberties and constitutional rights of their constituents. One cannot be sacrificed or exchanged for the other. Sound public health policy is centered on (1) empowering individuals to take responsibility for their health (2) laying a foundation to make that possible through clean drinking water, clean air, a nutrient-dense food supply and health education programs and (3) ensuring that one person’s health is not sacrificed for others. No one should ever have to be collateral damage in a war against infectious disease.

We are committed to STANDING together to change history by supporting public policies that simultaneously promote individual health, public health and health freedom. Do your part to halt the rise of tyranny and stand for what is and always will be yours — governance over your body and your children.