Removed by mod
Vaccine passports? Yea or nay?
Removed by modYou must log in or register to comment.
I think it doesn't matter.
All of the things that will be pointed to as a negative outcome are already being inflicted upon you as part of the day-to-day runnings of a capitalist surveillance state; whether you see and feel the effects of that or not. I think it should be more generally understood that the state/society at large perceives its atomized components through the "lens" of things like these vaccine passports.
Like, getting a job is practically locked behind being vaccinated already, it is just laundered through the school system and medical records. Up until this point you've needed to be vaccinated against certain diseases to even be enrolled in most American schools, meaning without a few shots you couldn't get your GED, which is a basic requirement for most occupations.
Seems like it matters if it is a further intensification of the capitalist surveillance state. It is a continuation down the same path we've been on for a while though, yr right.
Part of it too, is that agreement with this feels like a blank check, you know? As far as I can tell it's not going to be like other shots where you get them as a baby and then a couple more before high school. Biden admin is talking boosters every five months. For how long? Handing over a substantial amount of freedom to these psychos for the foreseeable future seems obviously fucked up. Also, getting a lot of war on terror vibes from this, ie "be very afraid, give us more power, and trust us"
Of course lol why tf wouldn't you want this? It's a global pandemic stop being so precious.
(This of course assumes your country/area has made the vaccine free and easily accessible to all.)
My region will be introducing them this month. Once the plan was introduced the rate of first jabs went up immediately.
In an ideal world, absolutely yes. Everyone who medically can get vaccinated should be forced to do so, IMO.
In current-day reality, there would be a number of flaws with any such system, but on balance I still say yes because I think the benefits of herd immunity outweigh the pain of glitches and stuff, and even the (very slight) intensification of the surveillance state (Google alone already does a ton more creepy spy shit than any vaccine passport could). There are apparently government-implemented ones, too, so it ought to be free, which alleviates the biggest potential concern (eg shutting poor people out).
But in the end, it just won't happen because we're governed by cowards who care more about whether the fucking talking heads on TV and in the NYT and WaPo think well of them than they do about making good policy. And so a lot more people are going to die, and this pandemic won't be over for years yet.
"very slight" is a big assumption. And like I said, the blank check aspect of how this could by used (by the absolute worst people/entities on the planet) is worrisome, to say the least. I'm pretty sure google and other tech giants would play a substantial role in a project like this, btw. All the data has got to be analyzed and stored somewhere, right?
Maybe I'm just too paranoid, but the way that libs and lefties are fully embracing an expansion of the surveillance state, makes me think that some serious propoganda magic has been carried out to great effect.
What exactly would the concern be? Like, such a system would know only two things about each user that go beyond the stuff you punch into any online shopping form: vaccination status, and locations at which vaccination status was verified. What are you worried about that isn't already being done? By default Google tracks your phone (if Android, or if Google maps is installed on the device) and can show you a map of your movements during a given period of time, which is a lot more specific than a vaccine passport could ever be. Your mobile provider can and presumably does do the same thing. I'm not really seeing how this isn't just a negligible expansion of the security state, tbh.
Plus, I think it could be done in a way that preserved users' privacy effectively (fancy cryptography can do some pretty cool things). It won't be in the real world, but neither will it actually be widely used, so it's a moot point IMO.
Restricted travel is a big one, restricted access to govt programs/assistance. A required medical passport to exist in society has a lot of dystopian possibilities considering who would be running this. To assume that this would be used to "only know two things" seems very trusting of the corporate/tech/capitalist ruling class which has proven itself totally untrustworthy in matters of surveillance, privacy etc. Can definitely imagine the medical passport system being used for pretty crazy/dark purposes in the future. But again, everyone else on the left seems cool with it, so maybe I'm just a paranoid Luddite who lives in the woods (I am).
But hopefully yr right and it won't happen
There are no restrictions for people who get vaccinated or have a legitimate medical reason not to do so. So honestly I don't see what the problem is.
Is it that hard to imagine a not too distant future where the vaccine is not widely or cheaply available?
This is already true in a lot of the world
Obviously my argument is premised on the availability of the vaccine for free. I see no reason to assume this would stop being true in the US in the foreseeable future, though, and if the US population (and other developed nations') reached herd immunity, it would be much more likely that vaccine availability globally would be prioritized.
I don't, though? I believe that the US government will act to uphold capitalism, which requires trying to follow expert advice on public health. Do I think developed countries are going to actually do a good job of getting the vaccine to the rest of the world? Of course not. But the vaccine apartheid right now is in large part due to the fact that we haven't achieved herd immunity in developed nations yet. Getting past that hurdle will at least allow developed nations to do some half-assed shitty efforts towards global vaccination, mostly for the PR points they don't want to lose to Cuba, China, and Russia (the former two of which are where I pin my own hopes for eventual global vaccination, by the way). So I'm OK with vaccine passports as a means to get there, for the sake of marginalized people everywhere.
