What Is The Point Of Vaccine Passports?
Any documentation that limits individual freedoms on the basis of biology risks becoming a platform for restricting human rights. It threatens, rather than protects, public health.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced The Excelsior Pass. It's an app, developed with I.B.M., and funded by the state, supposedly designed to support the recovery of industries most affected by the pandemic. New Yorkers will soon be able to pull up a code on their smartphone or present a printout proving they've been either recently tested negative or vaccinated against COVID-19. Soon, it will be accepted at dozens of event, arts, and entertainment venues statewide. Will the rest of the United States follow Cuomo's lead?
Like an airline boarding pass, people will prove their health status with a digital Q.R. code. New Yorkers will need to download the Excelsior Pass app, enter their name, date of birth, zip code and answer a series of personal questions to confirm their identity. The data will come from the state's vaccine registry and be linked to testing data from several pre-approved testing companies.
This new program is being heralded by the same guy who was against the idea of the C.D.C. asking for personal data for vaccinated people back in December of 2020. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was instructing states to sign so-called data use agreements. This would commit the states, for the first time, to share personal information of vaccinated people in existing registries with the federal government. Cuomo pushed back, warning that private data collection could dissuade undocumented people from participating in the vaccination program. He called it "another example of them trying to extort the State of New York to get information that they can use at the Department of Homeland Security and I.C.E. that they'll use to deport people."
Cuomo must have changed his mind on January 20th.
The use of immunity certifications to reopen civil society is puzzling and comes with a raft of serious legal, ethical and social problems. More essays will be written about this in the next few weeks, but I have a burning question: What's the point? The only thing that should matter is your own immune status. Once you are vaccinated, you are protected, right?
If someone isn't vaccinated next to you at the bar, the hairdresser, or the theater, it shouldn't matter because you are vaccinated. If you're sitting next to someone on an airplane, bus, subway, or restaurant, why do you care what their immune status is, as long as you know yours? Why are so many overly anxious about other people's immune status?
Numbers across the board are decreasing with COVID test results, hospitalizations, and deaths. Several states are already open, and more are planning to loosen restrictions soon. None of them have ever needed any vaccine passport. Moreover, despite the outrage with Texas reopening and rescinding their mask mandate three weeks ago, new coronavirus cases have declined. The New York Times daily tracker shows Texas daily coronavirus cases are down 28%. Domestic travel has been booming over the past few weeks. All of this is happening without any app.
So, what is the point of a vaccine passport again?
People in New York seem willing to do anything to 'get back to normal,' but declaring your medical information to strangers and private business has never been normal. Through certificates and checkpoints, the need for reassurance could end up promoting fear and anxiety that are not proportionate to the perils involved.
The idea of vaccine passports is riddled with potential problems.
Since any immunity certification strategy must include a system for identification and monitoring, paper documentation will be vulnerable to forgery. Electronic documentation presents a more severe risk to privacy. If QR codes are required on smartphones, the apps will eventually report more than COVID-19 information. They will track people's locations, travel history, who they've come into contact with, and other health information. Will they be linked to law enforcement? Furthermore, there's no guarantee that the apps will recede when COVID-19 does. QR-code tracking system elements are likely to remain in place long after the pandemic ends, whenever that may be.
With increased monitoring, marginalized groups will face more scrutiny. There will be higher risks of profiling and potential harm to racial, sexual, religious, or other groups. Let's not forget, during the pandemic, overly aggressive policing continued to target people from minority groups.
Labeling people based on their COVID-19 status would create a new measure to divide the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' — the immune-privileged and the immunodeprived. If we restricted work, concerts, museums, religious services, restaurants, political polling sites, and even health-care centers to COVID-19 survivors or the vaccinated, it would harm and disenfranchise a majority of the population.
Vaccine passports might expand to include other forms of personal health data. There might be a call to include mental-health records and genetic-test results. Be careful because the vaccine passport of today might become the all-encompassing biological passports of tomorrow.
Immunity passports could create perverse incentives and make new threats to public health. Suppose access to certain economic and social liberties is given only to people who have recovered from COVID-19, but certain people are justifiably vaccine-hesitant. In that case, immunity passports might incentivize healthy, non-immune individuals to wilfully seek out infection. This could put themselves and others at risk.
Suppose a vaccine passport is the only way to a paycheck, and specific individuals don't want to take a chance on the long-term effects of an unproven vaccine. In that case, economic hardship could amplify incentives to illegally or unethically obtain documents through bribery or forgery. People who will claim immunity could continue to spread the virus and create further health threats. Crises tend to foster nefarious trade.
While some people might use the analogy of a driver's license or other I.D. to enter certain places, like a bar, these vaccine passports will supposedly be used everywhere. Will that mean you will have to show your passport in every restaurant, clothing store, bar, theater, bank, deli, gas station, rest stop, shopping mall, museum, school, office, subway, commuter train, and tourist attraction? People are everywhere. There is no way anyone can be confident the person next to them has been vaccinated. Even if there is a mandate by an organization to vaccinate their staff and crew fully, or even a college demanding vaccination of their student body, there will be visitors. Will that mean everyone who steps on the campus must be vaccinated? Everyone who comes into a theater or small business must be vaccinated as well? What if they come from a state or country where they haven't all been vaccinated? Will they be turned away? How long can that be sustained? This might all fall apart because not all businesses will choose to participate and standards will be lax after a few months.
The push for these kinds of certifications must be part of some behavioral-science study. The people who invent these terrible ideas are intently focused on forcing their view of good health on the general public and dismissing ethical and social considerations.
Any discussion regarding personal responsibility, agency, and risk-taking has taken a backseat to fear and heavy-handed discussions about society-wide vaccine mandates and COVID certificates. This is all about coercion. It's a shame people are even considering allowing private businesses to discriminate against the unvaccinated and enabling the government to make it impossible for people to go about their everyday lives without immunization. Personal responsibility is not a conduit to danger.
We are so far down the rabbit hole, we have forgotten we fell in.
Vaccine programs worldwide were supposed to be the happy ending to the horrible story of COVID-19, but it only seems to be getting worse. There will be pushback. There was, and still is, a lot of resistance to wearing masks during the pandemic. Those same people and many more will reject the idea of showing a certificate to get into a ballgame or nightclub. It's not necessarily because people are against vaccines, but because the new narrative is being written in the language of coercive control and emotional manipulation. A happy ending doesn't involve blackmail.
Thought-Provoking Articles:
Minnesota theater cancels 'Cinderella' production due to '98 percent white' cast - A Minnesota theater has canceled an upcoming performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s "Cinderella" over concerns regarding the cast's lack of diversity.
“Revealed: Government plan for Covid ‘pub passport’ app on phones that will show proof of jab, negative test or immunity” – The Daily Mail reports on plans for a Covid app with which people can prove they have either had the vaccine, a recent negative test or antibodies from having had COVID-19 before.
“What is the point of vaccine passports?” – Laura Dodsworth asks a good question in Spiked. Is it another behavioral-psychology ‘nudge’?
Tina Turner documentary is a 'farewell' to fans - The two-part film, which premieres this weekend, charts her rise to fame, as well as her abusive marriage to Ike Turner and her resurrection as a rock icon in the 1980s.
“Rutgers becomes first university to mandate ONLY vaccinated students will be allowed back this fall” – The Daily Mail reports the start of a ‘No Jab, No College’ rule in the US
“Herd Immunity Is Near, Despite Fauci’s Denial” – Dr. Fauci is saying that the US will need a 70 – 85% vaccination rate to achieve herd immunity from COVID-19, but, as Martin Makery points out in the Wall Street Journal, he is ignoring those who have been infected and recovered from the disease
“Bill Gates predicts that the world won’t return to normal until the end of 2022” – The Daily Mail reports that, in an interview with a Polish newspaper, Bill Gates has claimed the world will not return to normal until the end of 2022.
Something Interesting:
I'm reading a book of his called "Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority."
The book explores the reasons why our country, from its origins, deliberately rationalized slavery by spreading the big lie that black people were inferior. It also goes into depth as to the reasons why African-Americans have suffered from serious self-esteem issues. He examines why this phenomenon has continued to persist so long past emancipation and the elimination of the Jim Crow system of segregation.
A GREAT book, written by a pioneer in the field of advertising.
Watch a video of him talking about his career HERE:
“Black People Are Not Dark-Skinned White People” -Tom Burrell
Clayton Craddock is an independent thinker, father of two beautiful children in New York City. He is the drummer of the hit broadway musical Ain't Too Proud. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University's School of Business and is a 28 year veteran of the fast-paced New York City music scene. He has played drums in several hit broadway and off-broadway musicals, including "Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical, and Lady Day At Emerson's Bar and Grill. Also, Clayton has worked on: Footloose, Motown, The Color Purple, Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Spongebob Squarepants, The Musical, Evita, Cats, and Avenue Q.
I'm not sure your entire reaction is warranted, but two points, at least, are hugely important. "Why are so many overly anxious about other people's immune status?" If I can be confident in the efficacy of my vaccination (and I've had it), why should I worry so about anyone else? I doubt they intend to create doubt about the vaccination, but that is precisely what follows.
"Vaccine passports might expand to include other forms of personal health data." Scary. The ways this information might be used (and sold) in the future are many and the creation of such a database needs much more discussion if it is every to be considered.
Income tax filing requirements, and the universal unquestioning capitulation to them, have shown for decades that Americans have no working concept of personal freedom. By and large, most Americans will 'comply' with whatever invasive idiocy they are ordered to, merely as the path of least resistance toward a life of permanent debt and continual accountability to a regime in exchange for lifestyle amenities most could never truly afford but would not be seen in public doing without. It has always been only a matter of time before those in power discovered the full magnitude of this acquiescent tendency in their subject peoples, and moved to take the fullest advantage of it in favor of the official caste and the preservation and expansion of its unearned powers.
In other words, America, you asked for this. You have been down on your knees every April 15th for longer than living memory by now, begging, pleading, for a regime to strip you of whatever minuscule and trivial vestiges of genuine liberty you may still possess, and for no more reason than because this is what you have been hypnotized all your lives to believe is necessary for the upholding of public order, or something.
This maneuver has nothing whatsoever to do with any danger of contagion, and like all the other opportunistic moves by the official sector nominally having to do with this 'covid' scare, this is just one more power grab and nothing but. From where I sit, anyone who has already shown a willingness to submit official paperwork explaining how they earn their daily bread and what they do with it has already dealt away any meaningful liberty long since, so what difference would having to show this 'vaccine passport' make by now? The time to resist such officious invasions of personal sovereignty has long since passed, and the opportunity to uphold it squandered, ever since the first time any of you obediently sent in one of those contemptible 'tax forms.'
You get what you pay for, it turns out. I am proud of the fact that I for one stopped paying out-of-pocket and under coercion for this farce of 'government' long ago, but continue to be sad and disappointed that more of my fellow Americans never caught on to what this 'income tax' scam was always really about (hint: it never had anything to do with collecting 'revenue...')