The pandemic forced a reckoning over medical consent

Years after Covid-era mandates reshaped public life, US voters overwhelmingly support the right to informed consent and medical choice.

In the years since the Covid pandemic, many people have been processing an experience that would have been difficult to imagine only a few years earlier.

Governments and health authorities exercised sweeping powers over personal medical decisions. Vaccine mandates have long existed in limited settings such as schools and certain healthcare workplaces.

But during the pandemic those mandates extended far beyond their traditional boundaries, reaching deeply into everyday social and economic life.

In many places, employers tied jobs to vaccination status, universities barred students from campuses and housing, and travel or access to public venues was made contingent on compliance.

Those who hesitated or declined often faced penalties. Some lost jobs, education, or professional standing. Doctors who questioned prevailing policies sometimes faced investigation, professional discipline, and in some cases lost their licences.

The experience left a lasting impression. People have not forgotten what happened, and it has changed how many now think about the limits of authority in medicine.

A new US poll

That shift in sentiment is reflected in new polling data from the United States.

The Health Freedom Defense Fund and the Brownstone Institute commissioned a national poll of 1,000 likely voters, asking about medical choice, vaccine policy and public health authority.

The results show strong agreement across the electorate about the importance of individual autonomy.

Respondents overwhelmingly supported core principles of medical consent:

• 91% said every individual has a right to informed consent for medical interventions
• 88% said adults have the right to refuse medical treatment
• 80% said adults should have the right to refuse vaccines

The poll was commissioned in response to concerns that many existing polls on vaccine mandates frame the issue in ways that encourage support for mandates, presenting them as necessary to protect public health or keep communities safe.

This new poll instead asked direct questions about autonomy, consent and individual rights. The responses were decisive.

Support for accountability in public health institutions was equally strong:

• 83% support legislation requiring public access to vaccine safety data
• 84% support holding pharmaceutical companies to the same liability standards as other industries

Numbers at this level suggest a clear shift in public expectations about transparency, responsibility and the limits of government authority in medical decisions.

Lessons beyond the United States

The shift is not confined to the United States. Governments across much of the world imposed policies that tied participation in everyday life to compliance with medical directives.

Australia provides a striking example.

Western Australia, under then-premier Mark McGowan, imposed some of the most stringent pandemic restrictions seen in Australia, including a hard border that lasted nearly 700 days and a phased vaccine mandate covering a majority of occupations.

For many residents, those policies became a defining political and social experience, raising lasting concerns about how easily individual rights could be overridden through the use of emergency powers.

One outcome of that experience is the recent publication of the book Secession by Western Australia, a 400-page manifesto arguing that Western Australia should leave the Australian federation.

The book was written by Julian Gillespie, Professor Gigi Foster, Michael Baker and Professor Ian Brighthope, who examine the political, legal and social tensions exposed during the pandemic.

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I was invited to write a foreword to the book’s chapters examining the medical and governance failures revealed during that period.

In my foreword, I wrote that the ethical foundations of medicine came under attack once emergency powers expanded and dissent was treated as disloyalty.

The authors argue that the pandemic exposed deeper structural weaknesses in governance, where authority became concentrated while accountability remained diffuse.

Their proposal for secession reflects a willingness to question whether existing systems have sufficient safeguards against the concentration of authority we witnessed during the pandemic.

Medical freedom now sits firmly within mainstream public debate.

The new US polling data confirm what many citizens already feel: decisions about their bodies cannot be separated from informed consent.

Governments and institutions hoping to rebuild trust will need to recognise that reality.

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