Vaccine Passports Raise Some Very Serious Concerns ⋆ Politicrossing
Connect with us

News

Vaccine Passports Raise Some Very Serious Concerns

Biden wants to permit businesses, local governments, etc. to condition some of the freedoms that Americans enjoy on whether or not they choose to vaccinate.

Published

on

Americans are free to debate the effectiveness of the newly released Covid vaccines. They are also free to decide whether or not to get vaccinated. As Americans, they have the freedom to make these choices for themselves and for their young children. The decision that they make relative to the Covid vaccine should not dictate/govern the level of freedom that they enjoy as Americans. This would run afoul of the very notion of freedom that Americans so deeply cherish. Notwithstanding, President Joe Biden recently proposed the use of vaccine passports, which could tear a gaping hole into the freedoms that Americans enjoy and lead Americans down a dangerously steep and slippery slope to the abyss.

As reported by US News:

“The Biden administration and private companies are working to develop a standard for a ‘vaccine passport’ that could be used as the country tries to reopen in the coming months.”

The passports are expected to be free and available through applications for smartphones, which could display a scannable code similar to an airline boarding pass, the Post reported. Americans without smartphone access should be able to print out the passports, developers have said.

In other words, Biden wants to permit businesses, local governments, etc. to condition some of the freedoms that Americans enjoy on whether or not they choose to vaccinate. If they are unable to provide proof of vaccination, they will be unable to participate/engage in certain types of events/activities. There are many potential problems with Biden’s proposal.

Trending on PolitiCrossing.com: The Pickle DeSantis Finds Himself In

For starters, while some Americans will undoubtedly and voluntarily choose not to vaccinate, others might not be permitted/allowed to do so due to some underlying medical condition, age restriction, etc. Are such individuals barred from engaging in various activities because they are unable to provide proof of vaccination? Do they simply give up their personal freedoms?

What about the potential privacy (i.e. personal and medical) concerns associated with such passports? Are we, as Americans, expected to waive our privacy rights and to share our personal and medical information with “strangers” in order to exercise and enjoy our freedoms? Who would be in charge of this information? What measures would be in place to ensure that such information is not stolen or improperly disclosed? This could create dangerous precedent whereby our personal freedoms and privacy rights are slowly but systematically eroded.

Another concern with this policy is the fact that it could impact people or groups of people differently. For example, some people in smaller cities and towns might not have the opportunity to vaccinate due to the unavailability of vaccines in their area(s). Others might not have access to smart phones. In other words, the “vaccine passport” might not apply equally to all people and could discriminate among different groups of people. As reported by Townhall:

According to the ACLU, an exclusively digital passport system is a “nonstarter because it would increase inequality.” Those who are poor, disabled, homeless or seniors would be greatly impacted. Those demographics are the least likely to have smartphones, which would be necessary for digital passports. Digital passports would create a burden on those demographics.

As reported by Business Insider,”In the US alone, the vaccine rollout has been disproportionate among minorities and poorer populations, who have received fewer doses of the COVID-19 vaccine despite often being at greater risk for contracting the disease.” The requirement for such passports could also encourage fraud and result in a black market for people seeking “fake” vaccine passports.

With few exceptions, a vaccine passport would, in essence, make the Covid vaccination mandatory. While Americans are encouraged to get vaccinated, compelling them to do so in order to enjoy certain freedoms will likely lead to legal challenges.

According to Seema Mohapatra, Associate Professor of Law and Dean’s Fellow, IUPUI, while there is some precedent for passports and/or vaccination cards, “immunity passports” could run afoul of certain laws, such as the ADA.

Additionally, unlike vaccinations for highly contagious and lethal diseases like Smallpox (which the Supreme Court addressed in the case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts in 1905), Covid is not nearly as lethal and has a very high survival rate. In Jacobson, for example, the Supreme Court did not necessarily impose a vaccine mandate, but ruled that a person could be fined and punished if he/she refused to do get vaccinated. In an article in Reason, constitutional law professor Josh Blackman states:

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court observed, “[i]f a person should deem it important that vaccination should not be performed in his case, and the authorities should think otherwise, it is not in their power to vaccinate him by force, and the worst that could happen to him under the statute would be the payment of the penalty of $5.”

Later, in 1927, the Supreme Court decided the case of Buck v. Bell. There, Carrie Buck, who was deemed a “feeble minded woman,” was institutionalized. This “condition” had been present in her family for three generations. Shortly after Buck had a baby, Virginia passed a law allowing for the sexual sterilization of inmates of institutions to promote the “health of the patient and the welfare of society.” In light of this law, Buck was forcibly sterilized by the government. In upholding the government’s conduct, and citing Jacobson, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. stated:

The judgment finds the facts that have been recited, and that Carrie Buck “is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health, and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization,”

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

These cases emphasize another potential and critical problem with the vaccine passport and the idea of mandatory vaccinations, which is the possibility of government overreach. Such overreach could result in a dangerous and slippery slope whereby our personal rights and liberties are systemically eliminated. Realizing such dangers, various lawmakers are fighting back by way of executive action banning such passports. As reported by The Hill, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, recently stated, “It’s completely unacceptable for either the government or the private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply participate in normal society.”

Americans will have to wait and see how this ultimately plays out.

Mr. Hakim is a political writer and commentator and an attorney.  His articles have been published in The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, American Greatness, The Algemeiner, The Western Journal, American Thinker and other online publications. 

https://thoughtfullyconservative.wordpress.com

We'd love to hear your thoughts about this article. Please take a minute to share them in the comment section by clicking here. Or carry the conversation over on your favorite social network by clicking one of the share buttons below.



 
 
 

Join the conversation!

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.



News

The Pickle DeSantis Finds Himself In

Ron DeSantis was in a real pickle…

Published

on

Tired of working for someone else? Become your own boss. CLICK HERE!

Build a home-based business in the travel industry! Click HERE!

Got a long commute? Want to save money on gas? Click here!

Ron DeSantis was in a real pickle… Should he or shouldn’t he run for President. Now that he has decided to run for President, he finds himself in a REAL pickle. PolitiCrossing Founder Chris Widener explains in this short video analysis:

Continue Reading

News

Mainstream Media: Intentionally and Diabolically Unfair and Unbalanced

All pretense that the mainstream media strives for objectivity is gone

Published

on

by Jay DeLancey and Jeff Davidson

The grandest mistake the American populace committed in the last half-century was assuming that our media was even somewhat fair and balanced. Likewise proceeding in the last two decades as if the Internet giants had no dog in the political arena proved to be a mistake of historical proportions.

Today because so many people, still, are conditioned as such, the mere fact that say, a CNN, has a website prompts some people to believe that the network have something of value to offer. Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, whose focus is classics and military history, says that the New York Times is “a shell of what it used to be.”

Trending on PolitiCrossing.com: The Pickle DeSantis Finds Himself In

Nothing Objective to Offer

The paper always leaned to the left, since it’s founding, but it did an intermittently semi-decent job in reporting the facts. The Times sent their reporters out to the streets to do hard-core reporting. The mission was to gather relevant data, identify sources, talk to people, find eye witnesses, speak to bonafide experts, attain corroboration, and then when they were sure of what they had written, submit the story or feature.

Their articles probably never represented a 50-50 balance – perhaps 55-45 or 60-40 in favor of the left. Today, no rational media observer would contend that the balance is 70-30, or even 80-20. Study after study reveals, say, in the case of covering Donald Trump, that 92% of all features are negative, and that is not to say the remaining 8% are positive. Mostly, they’re neutral.

If you are a Trump or DeSantis supporter, or a Republican running for Senate or the House of Representatives, for governor in your state, or for any other position of prominence, you simply cannot expect a fair shake from the press, nationally, and in most cases locally. Indeed, you’re likely to be demonized, endlessly, over issues for which Democrats receive a free pass.

Compromised to the Breaking Point

The New York Times and The Washington Post of old, as biased as they might’ve been, at least offered some semblance of up-to-date information, with facts and figures when they had them, and timely reporting as situations unfolded. Hansen remarked that today the people who run these newspapers are trading on the decades of hard work and the reputations built up over more than 100 years.

Those who put in the seed work are dead and gone and thus, obviously, have no say about what’s going on today. The Times and the Post, in less than a generation, are destroying their own reputations. The people who currently run these ‘news’ organizations are dragging them down at warp speed and don’t even recognize the damage that they are doing.

By 2030, what is now a shell of an organization will be less so, and it wouldn’t be too wild to predict that the Times could totally morph into something else. The Post is not far behind in devising its own demise.

The Pretense is Gone

Each of the countless newspapers that feed off of these two publishing giants suffer as well. All such pretense that the mainstream media strives for objectivity is gone. The good news, if you could call it that, is everyone on the right is now vitally all aware that this has happened.

Those who strive for integrity in elections, those who are on the right, and those who are routinely demonized by the left, understand what’s occurring to the nth degree. It’s not fair, but to know what you face is a benefit of sorts.

 

– – – – –

 

Continue Reading

 

Our Newsletter

Become a Politicrossing insider: Sign up for our free email newsletter, and we'll make sure to keep you in the loop.

Sites We Like

Jesus, Master of Influence

Chris Widener, speaker and best selling author of The Art of Influence, teaches that Jesus is the master of influence. In sixteen sessions you will learn from one of the most influential communicators how the life and teachings of Jesus Christ is the best model for how to become an effective influence that can change people’s thoughts, beliefs and actions.

LEARN MORE

Our Newsletter

Become a PolitiCrossing insider: Sign up for our free email newsletter, and we'll make sure to keep you in the loop.

Trending