(Minghui.org) With the recent outbreaks of coronavirus cases in various regions in China, many employers have begun to impose vaccine mandates on their employees. Those who are unvaccinated or not yet fully vaccinated risk losing their jobs.

For example, Sanfu Department Store, headquartered in Fujian Province, has required all employees to be vaccinated before they can report to work. If someone insists on not getting the shots, they can only stay home and be treated as using their personal leave. There have been many incidents like this and it’s expected that more and more employers and places would start to require vaccination in China.

Actually, vaccine mandates by employers and/or governments have also been taking place outside of China. With the pandemic still ravaging across the world, many people face the questions of whether they should take the vaccines, which vaccines to take, and whether the vaccines are truly effective or have any side effects. With many unanswered questions, many feel concerned, worried, or helpless. 

From the traditional point of view, it doesn’t make sense to me to impose vaccine mandates on an entire nation or the entire mankind. It is necessary and proper to maintain personal as well as public health, but every individual has their own unique situations and requires customized treatment or solution. It’s simply not a “one size fits all” situation.

From the perspective of a cultivator, we know that the diseases people suffer are a reflection of the karma each person carries and the karma each person has is different.

When looking from the perspective of western medicine, people have different genetic makeups. Furthermore, the vaccines have been out only for a very short time, and it remains to be studied whether massive vaccination is truly effective in curbing the spread of the pandemic.

Having grown up in a communist country and knowing all too well how hard communist regimes have been trying to control the entire human race, it feels to me that the strict vaccine mandates by employers, communities, local governments, or federal (or central) governments across different countries are the kind of control that socialists and communists have been dreaming to exert on people.

If an individual chooses to vaccinate out of free will, it is a personal choice made by the individual seeking protection and it is understandable. No matter what, everyone will bear the consequence of their own choice; but for those who force others to do something, can they bear the consequences for everyone? 

When it comes to the vaccines, the safety of the Chinese vaccines are definitely of serious concern, given the lack of transparency in their research and development and manufacturing processes. Even for vaccines developed and approved for emergency use only by western prestigious pharmaceutical companies, given such a short development time frame and lack of sufficient clinical trials, no one can guarantee their long-term safety or effectiveness either. 

In order to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccines, we would probably still need to follow the conventional route of developing and approving any new drug. For instance, in the U.S., it is usually a long process for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve a new medicine, which has to go through years of extensive testing and evaluation. And this process shouldn’t be influenced by any political or commercial interests.

Even with such strict regulatory oversight in the U.S., there have been drugs that were found to have severe side effects after being put into use for ten, twenty, or thirty years, and the side effects on users have long been irreversible.

In terms of whether to get the shots or not, at least we still have choices in most western countries, where people can still apply for religious exemption to avoid being forced to do things against their moral or religious beliefs.

In the United States, for example, some orthodox Jews have chosen not to get the vaccines. The same is true for some other faith groups, including the Amish, who believe in and still insist on driving horse-drawn carriages and living in a traditional way.

In China, where generations of people have been indoctrinated by the Chinese Communist Party to the point where they no longer know what God-given human rights are, it’s hard to say how they will respond to the vaccine mandates and what the consequences will be. 

As far as the vaccine mandates are concerned, whether in China or in other countries, practitioners who are truly cultivating their xinxing and fulfilling their responsibilities will not be affected by the side effects of the vaccines--if they are forced to get the shots. But if one only cultivates on and off, it might be a different story, as cultivation is most serious. 

The above are my current observations and reflections that I would like to share with fellow practitioners. We should all take the Fa as our teacher.