I have a few medical questions...not for experts, just for regular folks like you and me.

• Should you take antibiotics if you don't have a bacterial infection?
• Should you take phenobarbital if you don't have a seizure disorder such as epilepsy?
• Should you take nitroglycerin if you don't have some kind of heart trouble?
• Should you undergo chemotherapy if you don't have cancer?

Most likely, we all have the same gut reaction to all of these questions: "Probably not.  In fact, very probably not."

This isn't to say there aren't other uses for each of these medicinal miracles, but they all have primary purposes.

Sometimes they are good for other purposes, too.  Some of our greatest discoveries have been when a drug developed for one purpose surprisingly turned out to have another benefit as well (famous examples include Cortisone, Rogaine, and Viagra).

But still, in all these cases, we are taught to think first before taking them and, even then, to never overuse them, for fear of their switching from a help to a hindrance.  Overuse, after all, can cause a medication to attack other parts of the body besides the target or can cause a person to become immune to it so that it doesn't work the next time you need it.

This doesn't only go for prescription drugs, by the way.  Over-the-counter (OTC) medications can be risky as well.  Even common painkillers like acetaminophen and ibuprofen can pose severe risks from either too great a dosage at once or usage over too long a period.  There are even some vitamins and minerals that are beneficial to most people but dangerous to some.

On top of all this, when you go in for any new prescription, whether for a preventative measure like the annual seasonal flu vaccine or some medication for a current affliction, doctors and pharmacists ask you a battery of questions:

Are you pregnant or nursing?  Are you currently on any other medications?  Are you allergic to sulfa drugs, or to anything on this list of other ingredients?  Do you drink alcohol, or grapefruit juice, or consume some other food or beverage known to have an interaction with this particular prescription?

They aren't being nosy.  They aren't being obnoxious.  They're looking out for you.

Everyone used to know that any medication, even the best, most wonderful scientific breakthrough, is appropriate for certain conditions and is inappropriate for others.  So all decisions to put any artificial chemical into your body require a thoughtful analysis of your personal situation.

All of a sudden, however, the entire statist establishment — virtually the entire global political left — has decided that one set of "vaccines" (and its potentially unlimited follow-up series of boosters) should be mandatory, not even just to some, but to every person on the planet: young or old, healthy or unhealthy, fat or thin, sick or well.

This is unprecedented.

And all for an experimental therapy — so new, in fact, that it's difficult to tell whether the numerous reports of dangerous and even fatal side-effects are statistically significant or not, due to what can only be called an unprecedented cover-up not only by government but also both traditional and social media.

Not only is the product so new that it hasn't had time to go through the usual years of trials, but they virtually skipped over the period of offering it as voluntary and went straight to — successfully! — convincing countless schools, governments, employers, retailers, and even entertainment venues to make it mandatory, just six months after its introduction.

Even without debating such issues as the real danger (and source!) of the illness that it hopes to prevent...even without debating its cost, funding sources, and financial windfall beneficiaries...even without questioning whether any of these entities really have a moral or political right to force such a medication on another sovereign individual...it really should not require complex analysis or advanced degrees to recognize that it simply does not make sense — ever — to give the exact same drug to everyone on earth.  The very idea is completely idiotic.

It ought to be obvious that no one product is universally beneficial, universally safe, universally appropriate for every one of the eight billion people on this planet.

In light of this irrefutable fact, there is a corollary.  Precisely because this universal vaccine mandate is so obviously illogical, it should be equally obvious that we should seriously question the motives of anyone who would advocate such a nonsensical position on something so fundamental, so costly, and so potentially dangerous.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation professional.  A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party Chairman, he has been writing a regular column in Illinois Review since 2009.  His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his brand new political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II) are available on Amazon.

Photo credit: Michael Verch Pofressional Photographer, CC BY 2.0 license.