To an extent. Presently, you won't be thrown in jail if you don't get it. But you can't go to NYU. You can't go to a wedding. You can't go to a concert, or a football game, you can't fly Qantas...
This is a meaningless statement. It pretty much makes the idea of "coercion" impossible.
"The mugger didn't force you give him your money. You could have chosen to say no. You being killed is just you not being free of the consequences of your choice".
Imposing consequences on people is coercing them to make the choice you want them to. None of the consequences mentioned are natural consequences, like getting sick from the disease, but additional consequences someone decided on.
IMO the position that someone should be free from all consequences is the meaningless idea.
Someone not taking the vaccine is imposing consequences on everyone else around them and society at large, raising the risk of immune-escape variants, raising transmission risk to people that can't take it for medical reasons, raising the risk even for vaccine-protected people by defeating herd immunity (J&J gives 72% protection, so you're running a fair risk if the rest of society isn't vaccinated.)
The consequences you complain of are pretty much just pricing in those externalities to the decision.
The thrust of my argument is that imposing negative consequences (irrespective of reason) is a form of coercion. There are many things that ought to be coerced, but it is ridiculous to assert in the face of imposed consequences that people aren't being coerced or forced into taking vaccines.
People might not want to state it that strongly and the coercion isn't as strong as what criminals or the government can impose, but it's still someone or someones using their power to enforce behavior on others.
And couching that in phrases like "pricing in those externalities" doesn't change this. In fact it makes it more blatant.
By your expansive definition of coercion, everyone else would be getting "coerced" into contact with many more unvaxxed potential carriers by things like going to get groceries, getting on flights, getting tickets etc...exactly the same limitations you're claiming are coercing people into getting vaccines.
So under your expansive definition - which IMO is not the right or correct one - sure, people are getting coerced into getting vaccines. And if they aren't coerced, it's coercion against the rest of the population.
That's why your definition isn't useful and isn't used, and "coercion" is generally used for a specific set of acts.
That's a strange desire because what does it matter? If you were worried, you would have gotten vaccinated, and unless you don't believe the vaccine works, you would be protected.
It's also something that is impossible to know because you don't have the right to inspect someone's medical records.
If a large pool of people refuse the vaccine, they will eventually breed variants that make the vaccine less effective. To wipe out Covid, we need enough people vaccinated so that the disease dies out (doesn't have to be everyone), because the virus can't find enough new people to infect.
And a small fraction of people who are vaccinated won't develop a proper immune response, so they are still vulnerable. Nevertheless, once enough people are vaccinated it will die out.
It's a big shift because we have never as a society catered to the most cowardly before. Personal responsibility used to mean if you cared about something it was on you, now its shifted to forcing it on other people. This is really antithetical to western values.
I'm still waiting for the M1 Abrams I ordered to show up on my door step - I can't comprehend why anyone would object to me commuting to work in a tank.
Freedom is a process of give and take - the only way to have perfect freedom is to deny freedom from everyone else (since you're declaring your choices more important than those around you). We (I assume you mean America - where I was born and raised but since emigrated from) have never had unlimited freedom - rights and privileges have always been limited by the interests of others from traffic laws to gun ownership and even to mere communication.
I will say that the US has tried quite hard to be on the side of individual freedom over societal freedom and health whenever possible (which has led to some side effects) - that certainly can't be argued. But the US is not an anarchist state and the presence of laws - even of encoded privileges - dictates the lack of full freedom.
There's another level to consider that is a bit more rare in discussions like this though. You don't have the personal value to be held responsible for your actions - if you happen to be the person who mutates a new strain of the virus over irresponsible actions then it sucks for the rest of us since you're judgement proof. When it comes to the trillions of dollars in lost economic productivity that you should be on the hook for we can't collect even a fraction of that.
"Never" is wrong. Unless you mean never until the seatbelt mandates of the 90's. Or MADD in the 80's. Or the 70's when OSHA reared its ugly head. Or the 50's with anti-litter laws and campaigns. Or prohibition in the 20's. Or never until the FDA was founded? A hundred years is a little late to complain about this "big shift."
Acting in the collective self-interest is not new at all, unless you completely ignore history.
