The sacred right to spread disease
The governor of Florida is a “my sacred right to do whatever I want regardless of the harm to others” jackass.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis on Friday announced an executive order banning “vaccine passports” in the state, which like the rest of the US continues to suffer under the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Suffer” as in die a horrible gasping death or have friends or family die such a death or be an intensive care nurse or doctor and watch patients die gasping. That kind of suffer. It’s absolute hell.
Companies around the world are working to develop such “passports”, secure records of vaccination against Covid-19 that might be used to help society and businesses return to full operation by managing entry to buildings or events. New York state has launched its own version.
The tin hat crowd is running around squawking about the secret police and our sacred liberties are gone and yadda yadda. Apparently they get to draw from the goods of society but can’t be expected to give anything back, even something so obviously reasonable as trying not to spread the virus.
But the Florida governor’s order claimed “requiring so-called Covid-19 vaccine passports for taking part in everyday life – such as attending a sporting event, patronizing a restaurant or going to a movie theater – would create two classes of citizens”.
That’s so fucking stupid. No it wouldn’t. It would temporarily create two categories of citizens, for pressing public health reasons. The end.
Vaccine passports have become the latest flashpoint in increasingly politicized battles over coronavirus policy. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a controversial far-right Georgia Republican, has said vaccine passports are Joe Biden’s “mark of the beast”, the Hill reported. She has also introduced a bill to ban such passports and fire Dr Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser.
But what justifies this? What’s the thinking? In what way is public health “political”? Even right-wingers don’t want to die gasping for breath in an ICU surrounded by exhausted traumatized nurses and doctors. What on earth is the point of making a political issue of precautionary measures? I’ll never understand it.
Shouldn’t that be Governor of Florida, not Georgia?
It certainly should; thank you, fixed.
It doesn’t matter how many of their constituents they kill.
It only matters that the survivors keep voting for them.
Their brains are infected with jesusitis.
I want to be the 666th person to get the vaccine in my neighborhood
I can’t comment on what identifies as thinking in the brain of Marjorie Taylor Greene, but I’d argue that there’s a political element to vaccine passports and a reason to be cautious, although I am in no way against COVID passports
The emphasis is there because every time I talk about this stuff, people think I’m against COVID passports whereas – to again be perfectly clear – I’m not.
The political issue is just that it’s possible – on the back of terrifying things like COVID – to create sweeping new laws that could be used in the future to discriminate and oppress. This is a real and significant danger; it paves the way for little freedoms being taken away one at a time in the name of security until life is significantly worse for everyone.
Remember that along with powers to refuse service to people without a COVID passport will come powers for police to enforce, courts to prosecute etc. I’m happy with these powers as they relate specifically to COVID and are time limited and have clear exit and renewal conditions. I’m not happy with wide-ranging laws that could be shoehorned to fit virtually any new situation. If that’s what a government is trying to do – perhaps even with the good intent of making such laws easier to pass when there’s another pandemic – then we need to be wary. There’s political capital to be had in being tough on X, after all.
There are also some issues about the way a passport scheme might work that can feed into political ambitions but describing these will make it look even more as though I’m against COVID passports which – once again for the record – I’m not.
And there I was under the impression that the holy and inviolable US Constitution prohibited Bills of Attainder! She might have to hand in her pocket constitution.
That might be a bit of a stretch, and I’m definitely not a lawyer but United States v. Lovett looks like a relevant precedent.
latsot, that may be the case, but I suspect Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t thinking that logically or rationally. She is just having a knee-jerk reaction. No one can tell me what to do! Freedom! Guns, god, and guts, but without masks or vaccines! I doubt very much she could argue the point so cogently as you do, and probably wouldn’t try, because it is more about Qanon and pissing off libs.
That being said, your argument is cogent, and that points out the need for constant vigilance.Vigilance to prevent bad laws or bad uses of good laws doesn’t require we get rid of all laws, just that we don’t let our attention wander just as the engineer is about to drive us off a cliff when we can prevent it.
Ok, but that’s true anyway, isn’t it? With or without terrifying things like COVID? It’s always possible to do that. I’m not sure what work “on the back of” is doing there. Thin end of the wedge sort of thing? Is that it? If so I think it’s still just yes but that can be said of anything.
I’m curious about it not so much because of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is simply wrong about everything and evil with it, but because of once-reasonable people foaming at the mouth about Fauci and masks and people who wear masks.
Ophelia,
We’ve seen plenty of rash moves by governments in the wake of things like 9/11. When people are scared, they’ll accept measures they wouldn’t otherwise. It’s also a lot easier to make draconian measures seem moderate, even essential, and it’s easier to shame MPs or equivalent into voting for them.
I see this in security work all the time. Everyone always makes bad decisions about security no matter what, but when there’s a threat they can be coaxed into abandoning just about any principle if they’re told it will help. We’re all terrible at evaluating risk, we’re all easily manipulated in these matters and the higher the stakes, the more likely we are to agree to something dangerous.
We just need to take care. Especially we here in the UK with Johnson and Patel running the show.