Try to convince, never coerce in a democracy

Aug 12, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – There are different degrees of certainty in science. Some laws are certain beyond present dispute, e.g., the laws of chemistry and physics that are confirmed by daily experience. A match of a certain quality lights when struck on the box, and every action has an equal and opposite reaction. We often do not have to await perfection before applying the science. When a car is engineered, all the uncertainties must add up to a certain tolerance that requires accepted levels of maintenance. As technology improves, we get better cars.
The law of gravity is so certain that we should legislate proper harness for workers on high-rise buildings. However, some laws have not attained such a status of certainty, and the current vaccines belong to this category. Therefore no one should be forced to accept a bodily intake on the say-so of any authority or have other public rights withdrawn because of a belief by some sections of society, even if a majority. Those who have a belief in a certainly imperfect and uncertain vaccine, which is allowed only for emergency use in countries that researched, developed, manufactured and sell them, ought not to impose their belief in the degree of certainty on others who do not. Try to convince, never coerce in a democracy. Every person we think ignorant ought to be respected for his rights.
If necessary, let those who do not want the vaccine be served by those who also do not want the vaccine. We do have smoking and non-smoking places, do we not?
The most certain science we have is mathematics. Scientists and engineers use it to assess the degrees of uncertainty in any scientific and technological undertaking. Why don’t I see these uncertainties published with the exhortations to take the vaccines? But even though mathematics is the best we have, here is what a master practitioner had to say about it. “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” ― Albert Einstein.

Yours truly,
Alfred Bhulai

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