In April 1952, the director general of the Ministry of Health, Dr. Haim Sheba, warned the public against the spread of the intestinal typhoid epidemic, announcing that "anyone who refuses to receive vaccines ... will be charged with an offense under section 19 of the Public Health Ordinance 1940, and will be legally punished." .
The concept of "public health" then characterized all Western democracies, and with us originated in Britain.
Today no one talks about the "health of the people", but only about the health of individuals who are supposedly standing on their own, and are not dependent on each other.
The pendulum is moving radically in the opposite direction, and democratic regimes have weakened themselves to know in recent decades. The privatized and crumbling society, created by the neo-liberal turn of the early 1970s in the democratic world, has spawned the consciousness of individuals who see oppression in all responsibility to the general public and to others. Opponents of the vaccines are driven by personal anxieties, simple fear of the syringe, jealous environmental beliefs, skeptical of all human actions "evil by nature" or anarchism of any origin, religious, leftist, right-wing, "spiritual" or New Age. But most of them have an extremely privatized consciousness. Many do not understand what is wanted of them when they are asked to show solidarity with their "herd". Their "holy self" sees this demand as an illegitimate invasion from outside.
This Nietzschean position is based on a fundamental denial of the fact that we are not self-sufficient beings, and that we have a vital interest in living and cultivating society.
Denial is not primarily an outgrowth of one perception or another.
A deeper source: it is a blatant revelation of the fact that social solidarity is crumbling, and too many people live in society out of a sense of individuality or unity that is threatened by everything that is not me.
Surprisingly, such a mindset characterizes both left-wingers, who could be expected to "socialize", and right-wingers, as devoted to nationalism and social conservatism.
This is what proves that forgetting sociality is not the result of a particular perception, but rather it develops in a society that is fundamentally privatized in which we all live, without refuge, and we are all affected by it, whatever our view may be.
Privatized consciousness has become "obvious" to many - progressives and conservatives, socialists and capitalists, religious, ultra-Orthodox and secular.
There is no doubt that in dealing with the new outbreak of the plague it is better to run advocacy, solicitation and education (provided the Minister of Education understands its role).
An overly opposite approach to vaccine opponents may now achieve the opposite goal, as our society has undergone a crumbling re-education for decades.
Tilting the pendulum to a more sane balance between individuals and the rule will take time, and meanwhile flexible and sober conduct is required.
But even now, flexibility does not mean reluctance to enforce vaccine opponents.
The public must not be abandoned to their whims.
If we had a government and police worthy of oil, the government would now set rules, such that they could be enforced in the state of mind of a significant portion of the public, and for their enforcement could rely on efficient and dedicated police.
It requires, therefore, a fundamental and lasting change, but its beginning now, in consciousness.
In understanding the mutual guarantee that must be at the core of our society.
And if we go back to that understanding, we can check on our failed government and police, and replace them.
But the danger is not only in alienation from mutual guarantee. There is also a seemingly opposite danger in the face of a crisis like the corona plague in today’s crumbling democracies. On the one hand, there has been an increase in anarchism of all kinds that sees oppression in every political authority, and on the other hand, we see an increase in tyrannical programs of globalist circles, such as the Davos Forum, or of warning of controversial environmental crisis. An epidemic, or any other global crisis, is an opportunity for them to establish a global, necessarily dictatorial, regime. Therefore anarchism and tyranny are not opposing dangers in the present situation, but complementary dangers. Both stem from the privatization of consciousness. It must be fought against, and on two fronts: against anarchism and against globalism.