“Anti-Vaccine Sentiment – an Existential Disrupter of National and International Security” is the title of a paper by Drs. Deon Canyon and Sebastian Kevany for Security Nexus. This paper suggests that taking a harder line against “anti-vaxxers” while balancing personal rights of individuals may be a solution in flattening the COVID-19 curve.

Summary
Vaccines brought many benefits and advances to the global community, but their production, dissemination and use have never been exceptional for a variety of reasons. The existential threat to individuals, communities and even national security posed by SARS-CoV-2 and its expected continuation in our world make it imperative for policy-makers to take a harder line towards anti-vaxxers and vaccine doubters. The “new normal” presents governments with the challenge of balancing the need to protect a population against the rights of individuals, and the most likely outcome are that certain restrictions are left in place for the unvaccinated to protect society at large.

Drs. Canyon and Kevany are professors at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (DKI APCSS) in Honolulu, USA. The views expressed in this article are the author’s alone, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the DKI APCSS or the United States Government.

Security Nexus is a peer-reviewed, online journal published by the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies.