Republicans go to war over vaccine passports
Several prominent Republicans are sounding the alarm over a Biden administration initiative to parter with private companies to develop a so-called vaccine passport, which would offer proof that a person had been inoculated against COVID-19.
While the idea behind the passports is that businesses like restaurants, sporting venues, airlines and retail outlets could use them to hasten a return to normal operation,the fear among some Republicans is that curtailing the ability of non-vaccinated persons to reenter everyday life represents a form of government tyranny.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who in recent months has become perhaps the most prominent GOP governor in the country, said Monday that he would sign an executive order prohibiting the use of vaccine passports in the state.
“We are not supporting doing any vaccine passports in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said at a news conference. “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 be able to participate in normal society.”
Like most U.S. states, Florida public schools and daycare centers require students to be vaccinated for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox and other diseases before being allowed to attend. While religious exemptions are permitted, the science behind vaccinating school kids before allowing them to congregate in classrooms is the same when it comes to businesses and COVID-19.
The state of Hawaii, which has required that COVID-19 tests be given to all travelers, is now considering using an app that would display a person's vaccination status without divulging other health information.
"They would be able to verify the health record, they would then encrypt it so people can’t steal someone’s health record. Although really, all it is is whether you got vaccinated or not and your name and the date it occurred," Josh Green, the state's Democratic lieutenant governor, told KHON2.
On Tuesday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky announced that studies have confirmed that those who are fully vaccinated pose little to no threat of spreading COVID-19.
“Our data from the CDC today suggest that vaccinated people do not carry the virus.” Walensky said.
Yet for several Republicans, what stands out about vaccine passports is that they could restrict what those who refuse be inoculated could do.
Marjorie Taylor Greene says that a vaccine passport is "Biden's Mark of the Beast" and that any company the requires one is engaging in "corporate communism." pic.twitter.com/XtTvqw83tU
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 30, 2021
Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said in a statement to Fox News, that getting vaccinated is personal decision and that attempts to limit freedoms to travel or frequent businesses
“Vaccine credentials would be a complete government overstep. Individuals in America have a personal responsibility for their health," Sessions told Fox News. "Implementing a 'vaccine passport' runs the risk of undermining public trust and substantially limiting normal day-to-day essential activities."
While being vaccinated drastically reduces the possibility of being infected by COVID-19, the risk doesn't disappear completely, though severe illness and death from the disease become next to non-existent. If not enough people get vaccinated, however,the U.S. population won't reach the herd immunity threshold that protects those who, for other health reasons, cannot be vaccinated for COVID-19. And with the virus continuing to circulate — new U.S. cases are up 20 percent over the last 14 days — the chance that it could mutate to a degree that renders current vaccines less effective is more likely
Yet those health concerns seem secondary for Republicans like Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, who, like Rep. Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has not shied away from dramatic analogies when asked about vaccine passports.
“Proposals like these smack of 1940s Nazi Germany. We must make every effort to keep America from becoming a ‘show your papers society,’” Cawthorn said. “The Constitution and our founding principles decry this type of totalitarianism.”
However, there are already statues at the federal level that require people to be vaccinated against various infectious diseases in some cases. Under current federal law, for example, "a foreign national who applies for an immigrant visa abroad, or who seeks to adjust status to a permanent resident while in the United States," must show proof of vaccination for mumps, measles, rubella, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, haemophilus influenza type B, and Hepatitis B.
In some ways, the concerns over vaccine passports mirror the reluctance by some Republicans to enforce social distancing restrictions or bristle at following mask mandates.
"What we've seen in this pandemic is that anything can be politicized, whether it's a mask or vaccine, whatever it might be," Lawrence Gostin, director of the O'Neil Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center told Business Insider. "But the truth is that vaccines are not only our best way out of this pandemic, they're our only way out of this pandemic — because it's clear that we can't change our behavior."
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