Biden Administration Steaming Ahead With COVID-19 Vaccine ‘Passports’
Such passports pose ethical challenges for liberty-embracing societies.
As the COVID-19 vaccine distribution continues across this country, Biden’s administration is steaming ahead with COVID-19 “passports.” These aim to reduce travel restrictions ahead of the summer travel season.
Along with private technology and travel companies, the Biden administration is working to develop credentials – referred to as passports, health certificates or travel passes – showing proof of vaccination as individuals and businesses emerge from lockdown, the Washington Post reported Sunday.
Airline and business groups had been lobbying the White House to take the lead in setting standards for health passes. They believe that would avoid a hodgepodge of regional credentials that could cause confusion among travelers and prevent any single health certificate from being widely accepted.
According to the Washington Post, the administration’s efforts are housed in offices of Health and Human Services, with the White House this month taking a “bigger role coordinating government agencies involved in the work, led by coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients.”
The policy reverses a position once touted by Biden.
The Biden administration previously said the federal government should not be involved in efforts to create a vaccine passport system to verify that people have been vaccinated.
The Post, citing five officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, reported the effort “has been driven largely by arms of the Department of Health and Human Services, including an office devoted to health information technology.”
White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients has led the White House’s role in coordinating the project, an official told the Post.
So, no identification is required to vote. However, the administration is forging a whole new system of identification that may impact Americans significantly.
…[T]here are legal and ethical questions about whether the passports could widen inequities that have already become a troubling hallmark of the pandemic.
Public health experts and bioethicists say digital credentialing could discriminate against disadvantaged populations. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, argues that using smartphone-based verification to access public places would create a two-tiered system that bars people who can’t work, shop or attend school because they don’t have a cell phone or access to testing.
Beyond the ethical considerations is the separate question of whether the fragile U.S. health tech infrastructure can withstand a barrage of new apps tapping vaccine data.
Data troves containing immunization records vary in quality from state to state and may not be able to handle a surge of real-time queries about vaccination status, said Deanne Kasim, executive director at Change Healthcare, which is part of a consortium including Microsoft and Salesforce working on standards and technology for passports. Her company argues for a “lighter lift” and teaming up with pharmacies, which have more robust record-keeping systems.
There also are privacy considerations. Requiring people to store test and vaccination results in digital format could expose them to the kind of data breaches that have proliferated during the pandemic. “We wanted data to reside on patients’ phone” as opposed to a database, where individuals can control the data, Kasim said.
Furthermore, there is always a way to manipulate the system.
I found some blank COVID passports.
Please feel free to share this with friends and family. pic.twitter.com/SDpxyLL0Pg
— Storm_Chaser (@StmCh_) March 28, 2021
These passports pose ethical challenges for liberty-embracing societies. However, it is becoming increasingly obvious the occupants currently in the White House struggle little with moral or ethical issues.
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Comments
The only people who will be permitted, even encouraged, to not have passports will be illegal immigrants. It’s their birthright.
Cop: Your papers please!
Citizen: I’m a free citizen of a free country! I shouldn’t have to prove to you that I’m allowed to go about my business!
Cop: You must be a white supremacist! You are under arrest for hate speech.
Citizen: But I was vaccinated. Look I have the card to prove it!
Cop: So what? In jail they would give you free vaccination anyway. Now come quietly or I must tase you.
Citizen: BANG!
Smart citizen: Cops and bureaucrats sleep somewhere. Why wait until they’re expecting it?
Citizen: “I lied! I’m an illegal immigrant!!”
Cop: “Well, be on your way, then!!”
>:-(
Wouldn’t this require legislation, to waive the HIPPA requirements?
schools require proof for other vaccinations.
But not with experimental vaccines.
Rest assured that the communists don’t care about HIPPA. Neither does Congress nor do the courts.
It’s HIPAA, and a person can disclose his or her own health information. Want to fly? Tell Delta you’ve been vaccinated. There’s no HIPAA violation.
(Do I agree with the passport idea? Not really. But my misgivings aren’t related to HIPAA.)
And ADA says you can’t refuse services on the basis of medical conditions, and can’t even ask about them. Any business requiring masks, passports, etc. should be sued on that basis.
All you need is a judge willing to rule according to the law rather than rule that the law doesn’t apply in “emergencies” and summarily dismiss your case. Any bets on your likelihood of finding such a judge?
The covid vaccine program is like being forced to play Russian roulette. The vaccines are not fully FDA approved with a proven history of safety and efficacy. In fact, a number of people about my age and in better shape/health than my wife and I have died. We’re being coerced to take “the jab” yet to receive it, a person must sign a release for the manufacturer and administrator so there is no recourse for the recipient or beneficiaries if after taking it I go the way of Marvin Hagler. Accordingly, we’ve opted out, relying instead on our faith in God (Psalm 91) to keep us safe and healthy.
The vaccine passports are a new concern; last fall having bought a 2nd home cross-country to be near my wife’s family 6 mos. a year. We’d hoped to travel by plane or train when our elderly cat is gone, but looks as if with travel restrictions based on a covid vaccine and passport for proof of indoctrination, we’ll be forced to drive it until that’s prohibited as well. And with Lord Buttigieg pitching taxation for miles driven?
My suspicions with the whole ‘defund the police’ thing – rendering them toothless to enforce traditional laws – while at the same time the gov’t weaponizes corporations who provide goods and services, as well as social media platforms, to enforce their health and speech / political policies – all seems aimed at putting us in perpetual lockdown (house-arrest).
I know you’re supposed to pray for your enemies, and I do, but I fear we’re close to hearing the words I’d hoped would never be uttered in the US: “open fire”.
Smacks of the old soviet block.
Thurber reports being endlessly amused by French stories of the American Far West, where things often go slightly wrong:
“There were, in my lost and lamented collection, a hundred other fine things, which I have forgotten, but there is one that will forever remain with me. It occurred in a book in which, as I remember it, Billy the Kid, alias Billy the Boy, was the central figure. At any rate, two strangers had turned up in a small Western town and their actions had aroused the suspicions of a group of respectable citizens, who forthwith called on the sheriff to complain about the newcomers. The sheriff listened gravely for a while, got up and buckled on his gun belt, and said: “Alors, je vais demander ses cartes d’identitè!’ There are few things, in any literature, that have given me a greater thrill than running across that line.”
The joke being that Americans having a European identity card was such a vast French misunderstanding of Americans that it was funny.
As an FYI– The vaccination doc we got for being in Mexico could be forged by an 8 year old in MS Paint. The airlines didn’t even look at it all that close.
Compliance with your overlords will do, even if it is token compliance.
That’s not meant to be a judgmental comment, the snark is all directed at the would-be overlords.
In seriousness, I think we all know why this is a terrible idea. With this precedent, many of your rights and freedoms can now be taken away under the guise of “public safety”. It’s a dictator’s wet dream.
I deft will be forging a document
The Biden* administration plans to use Big Tech to create and monitor a “domestic terrorism watchlist”:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2021/03/26/dhs-preparing-to-use-private-contractors-to-scour-public-data-and-social-media-to-compile-dissident-citizens-for-watch-list-and-no-fly-lists/
Remember, dear LI readers, that the greatest threat the nation faced was Trump’s Twitter account – or so the #NeverTrumpers assured us.
And where are the Republicans fighting for our rights?
Where are the American people standing up to this facist government
We are coward without a leader
“And where are the Republicans fighting for our rights?”
Putting the finishing touches on their latest production of Failure Theater. “We tried to stop them, but we were outnumbered. So send in you campaign contributions today while we search for the next hill that we will ultimately decide not to fight and die on.”
This isn’t about parties. This is about tyrannical government versus government by the people. Stop looking for “leaders”. YOU be a leader. Create a MAG and then recruit people of like mind as you. Train. By supplies. Take what time is left to get ready for what is coming.
“Buy supplies”. I hate autocorrect.
Some people are not good leadership material
But I’m a damn good second Lieutenant
When the revolution starts, it will be by lone individuals. Of course, I would join a mob descending upon Dictator Cuomo’s residence armed with pitchforks and torches (and a few snipers in the background). carrying a rope- or more than one. I live too many hours from Albany to organize one.
So let me get this straight. The Biden regime opposes any identity requirements for voting but supports requirements that you be able to prove vaccination status before being able to travel or gather in groups. Is that correct?
Precisely. Now, the question is whether or not you will comply.
Hey, you! Show me your Covid Passport!
Bang!
The end.
Who doesn’t think these Covid-1984 ‘passports’ wouldn’t eventually be used for things that have nothing to do with Covid?
And sooner than you might think. Less than 20 years out from 9/11 the powerful and extraconstitutional government erected anti-terrorism apparatus, created to protect American citizens from foreign terrorists, is being turned against potentially tens of millions of American citizens ‘suspected’ of being ‘domestic terrorists’ because they hold and express political opinions The Party — the Democrat party and its media and tech allies — deems ‘dangerous’.
Meanwhile, Roberts’ SCOTUS sits with hands covering eyes, ears, and mouth.
It looks like the end of Republic is imminent. If not already here.
“It looks like the end of Republic is imminent. If not already here.”
In my opinion the American Republic ended on January 6 when the Congress rubber-stamped the stolen presidential election and installed the figurehead Biden* (truly the closest equivalent we have in Soviet America to Georgy Malenkov). That election was as crooked and illegitimate as anything we have ever seen in the banana republics we used to sneer at. There was nothing subtle about the fraud, which was as secret as the noonday sun in the Sahara Desert. It could not have been more scripted if they had made a movie about it.
What we are seeing now is the violent birth pangs of the new dictatorship to come. The Communists have swept away free and fair elections, have rock-solid control of nearly all major corporations, financial institutions, schools, and media, and are the dominant force in the military and Federal law enforcement. But they do not (yet) have the absolute power they crave to launch the pogroms and gulags they have promised for decades since most state governments and part of the courts and local law enforcement are not under their direct control.
The descendants of the same bureaucrats that said, “Don’t worry, your social security number will only be used for social security administration purposes. Really, that’s all it will be used for.”
And look where that got us in the end.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) says he’ll be taking executive action against “vaccine passports” over privacy concerns:
“You want the fox to guard the hen house? I mean, give me a break.”
I will not comply.
I saw this over at Ace of Spades:
“How are all the people who can’t manage a picture ID to vote going to be able to manage a vaccine passport?”
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/393390.php
I don’t have to show anyone I’ve been vaccinated to travel in my own country. They’re losing their ever moving mind.
It wasn’t had to see that this would be the way the Leftists would go to force compliance
It wasn’t too long ago that the very idea that a vaccine passport for internal travel would be required was dismissed as right wing paranoia.
And in addition does anyone have the confidence you would be installing a government produced “App” on your cell phone that wouldn’t be tracking your every move and reporting back to the government mothership with information as to where you have been, what businesses you’ve entered and for how long, and who you were close to in that group of people you met for lunch today?
I’m sure this would be considered completely normal … in Nazi Germany.
Careful, Disney cancelled Gina Carano for speaking the truth. I was looking forward to seeing you in the new “Iron Man” spinoff.
This is another test by the “government” to learn how dumb the “public” can be made into robots who blindly follow the village idiots. The next step will be “detention” centers.