Five Reasons to Reframe the Vaccine Passport Issue
Wednesday April 14, 2021
1. Vaccine passports have existed in the U.S for decades.
Some of my libertarian heroes have recently stated during podcasts that vaccine passports create a caste system and that this is one reason they should be opposed. The term “caste system” accurately and brilliantly describes one of the consequences of vaccine passports. However, in the same discussions, they have characterized vaccine passports as a “new” threat to liberty. In fact, vaccine passports and their resulting caste systems have been in effect for millions of Americans for years. Unfortunately, most libertarians have overlooked this fact. Due to semantics, these passports have not been recognized for what they are.
For decades, American children have been required by state governments to “show their papers” in order to attend public school and, in some states, private school as well. Generally, the papers not only must prove that a child has been vaccinated, they also must prove that he or she has received each of the specific vaccines required by the state. Without periodically flashing this passport, children have generally not been permitted to attend school.
Exemptions exist and, in limited circumstances, have allowed attendance without the passport, but the exemptions have been rolled back, as discussed in section 2, below. (The erosion of the exemptions is also discussed in my April 26, 2020 article entitled “Central Planning of Your Immune System is Dangerous”.)
Some may view a vaccine passport requirement for school attendance to be significantly less egregious than the vaccine passports currently being proposed. If so, I would suggest that they ask a child forced to stop attending school with his or her friends due to “lack of papers” how significantly this impacted his or her life. For many children, their time interacting with friends is critical to their emotional health. We have seen evidence of this within the context of children “locked out of” their schools by COVID-19 lockdowns. Ironically, children denied school attendance due to lack of vaccination papers have received little support from the libertarian community, but those denied school attendance due to COVID-19 lockdowns have received significant support from it. There is a lack of evidence establishing that either group of children poses a danger to others.
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