The Vaccine Passport Is a Slippery Slope
The Editorial Board
On April 2nd, Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed a policy that would assert unprecedented control over New York residents. This week, in order to enter certain events and populated locations, New Yorkers will be required to carry a vaccine passport. In other words, citizens will need proof of vaccination, or recent negative COVID test to participate in regular business activity. Nearly a year ago, COVID skeptics were scolded that the pandemic could never be exploited for political purposes. But as Florida and Texas reopen their doors without compromising their economies or public health while New York demands people present tickets to rejoin society, it’s difficult to claim that the virus is still apolitical.
While media attention has turned towards New York, many more states are expected to introduce some form of the vaccine passport. It is not clear what private information will be included in the passports, but the program is likely to become increasingly invasive. A system that can track individuals and determine what they are permitted to do and where they are permitted to go sets a dangerous precedent that is erosive to individual liberty, privacy, and autonomy. Not to mention, the vaccine passport is a government bullying tactic designed to peer-pressure the abstainers to acquiesce and receive the vaccine against their conscience.
The vaccine passport will be tricky to implement, as many Americans have not yet received the vaccine whether by choice or because of access issues. Beyond logistical problems, the passport ignores the many outstanding legitimate questions and concerns about the vaccine’s safety. For example, medical advisories have discouraged pregnant women from getting the Covid vaccine because of the unknowns surrounding fetus gestation. The vaccine is still considered to be “experimental,” so people have a right to hesitation. Some members of the black community have unique reasons for avoiding it, stemming from the U.S. government’s troubled history of disguising damaging medical experiments as healthcare i.e. Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
The vaccine passport may also have a discrimination problem, as the impoverished and certain races could be disenfranchised by it. Among vaccinated Americans, over 60% are white, 7% are Hispanic, 7% are black, and 4% are Asian, according to the CDC. While voter ID laws have been branded as racist relics of the Jim Crow era by Democratic officials, Fortune 500 C-suites, and the mainstream media, none are pointing out the racially prejudicial consequences of the vaccine passport. Given that minorities have received the immunization at the lowest rates, they will be the ones barred from society disproportionately. Withholding the right to participation in regular commerce until an individual is vaccinated will inevitably create a two-tier citizenry. This is already happening in Israel, where those who are not yet vaccinated are publicly shamed and face restrictions and scrutiny, no matter the reasoning behind their vaccination status.
The passport bears a striking resemblance to the early stages of the CCP’s Orwellian social credit score system. In China today, behavior is monitored at the micro level, and behavior that is not approved by the State is met with penalty. This system allows the CCP to closely track its citizens so that it can control them via positive and negative reinforcement. Discounts and access to employment opportunities are reserved for people with good social credit scores and for those who fall in line with the State’s priorities. Those who question the CCP or partake in hobbies the government deems unproductive face obstacles in their daily lives.
The CCP program ought to serve as a wake up call to Americans advocating for the vaccine passport. As previous Clinton advisor and current tech CEO Naomi Wolf explains, the basic vaccine passport model can easily be expanded into other domains of life, like our bank accounts, social media, and even our specific locations. Imagine posting a controversial meme and finding your bank account frozen as a result. While it might sound crazy now, one look at China’s current system reminds us that this reality is not too far fetched.
For now, it may seem as though the vaccine passport might be limited to sporting events or domestic and international travel, but there is no telling how its reach will expand in the future. What if one day we will need them to go to work, school, or the grocery store, potentially conditioning our access to essential resources?
In the next few years, today’s criterion, vaccination, may open the door to other criteria affecting freedom of speech, religion, and our other inalienable rights. Today, we have to accept an experimental vaccine in order to return to normalcy. Next year, we might have to renounce our liberties for the sake of State priorities.
As we know from experience, when we offer the federal government an inch, they take a mile, and there may be no return from this drastic invasion of privacy. For example, we are still paying for the invasion of privacy we hastily allowed after the terrorist attack on 9/11. The government capitalizes on hysteria, emergencies, and ‘crisis’ to intensify its grip on the American population.
Given the virus’s high survival rate, the vaccine passport ought to be recognized as the unconstitutional, baseless power grab it is. Let’s not pretend the vaccine passport is meant to reopen society, when several states like Florida and Texas have reopened completely while still seeing a resulting decline in Covid cases. It is, and has always been, about control. The vaccine passport is a slippery slope to authoritarianism. When our remaining individual freedoms are all but revoked, we will only have ourselves to blame.
