The Daily Beast
Ron DeSantis could not have been more dangerously wrong about vaccine passports
Joe Raedle / Getty To put the pandemic behind us, America desperately needs at least 75 percent of the adults to be vaccinated. But since millions of Americans say they do not want to be stabbed, we must encourage them to do so. “Vaccination passports” are an indispensable tool to do so, without seeing the personal health information of an individual, and it is unfortunately an indispensable tool to do so. rights, denial of truth, scientifically denying religious and nationalist basis – especially the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who even banned private companies from using vaccine passports in the state. I have been writing about the ethics of health regulations for 25 years, and it is clear that the conservative alleged objections to vaccine passports are peculiar at best. There are legitimate issues regarding privacy and security, but they are being addressed. And unlike the conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene’s blindingly stupid protest against ‘fascism, or communism, whatever you want to call it’, portable vaccine evidence is an ethical, American way of defeating the virus. Instead of government mandates, vaccine passports encourage people to make the right choices and harness the energy of the free market to solve a collective problem that we cannot address individually. I got mine from New York State yesterday: a simple QR code called ‘Excelsior Pass’. Fox News Pundit derails segment to talk about ‘conspiracy theorist’ Tucker Carlson Because I got both my shots, I’m personally immune to serious illness. But my daughter does not. And because of their personal risk for vaccine side effects, people may never do it. And none of us will do that if the virus mutates in a dangerous way. So, as is now fairly well known, we need to collectively achieve ‘herd immunity’, where so much of the population is immune that the virus can go nowhere. This is why DeSantis is completely wrong in obtaining a vaccine. a ‘personal decision’. A personal decision, in the sense that he uses the term, is only one person touching. But it is a decision that affects everyone, because until we hit the immunity of the herd, we are still trapped in the pandemic. Wearing a seat belt can be a personal decision, although it is of course required by law. But to signal before I turn left is not because it affects everyone around me. Getting a vaccine is, in addition to its personal benefits, part of a joint effort to defeat this virus. More importantly, the longer it takes to achieve herd immunity, the more likely the virus will mutate. It is quite possible that a new mutation is resistant to the vaccines, but thank God, existing variants are not. When that happens, we are back to the first point: back to closure, back to our friends and family, not back to economic devastation and death. Vaccination affects everyone. If there are a large number of harmless people running around, the virus can mutate and we will all suffer from it. The refusal of a vaccine is not ‘alive and let live’. It is ‘live and let die’. And we run the real danger that it will happen. According to a Pew Research study, 45 percent of white evangelists say they will not get the vaccine because of a toxic mix of bad faith, bad politics, bad (pseudo-) science, and bad media. That is 18 million people. Just the number, plus children who do not usually get sick but who can contract the virus, is enough to threaten herd immunity and give the vaccine months to mutate. It’s a ticking time bomb. So, what do we do? The simplest option would be to require every American to get a vaccine, whether they want one or not. But fortunately, this is not the society in which we live. Although vaccination affects everyone, it still happens to your body, and you have the right to decide what happens to it – although it is strange that conservatives do not respect the law. when it comes to women who do not want to carry babies after term. Our constitutional and ethical values make this option unacceptable. What we need then are ways to encourage people to make the right decision. We do it all the time. The government gives tax exemptions for charitable donations, home ownership, growing sugar, selling GameStop shares, you name it. Insurance companies pay people to stay healthy. And of course, every business in America offers incentives of some kind, from my coffee shop’s caffeine addiction card to Delta SkyMiles. Vaccination gates are just another incentive. We have a public interest in getting everyone vaccinated, and in order to promote the public benefit, vaccine passports offer valuable incentives: this is your ticket to football matches, shopping malls and Toby Keith concerts. This allows you to get on planes and (hopefully) trains. This is literally your ‘ticket to drive’. This is the key to normalcy. There are other benefits as well. When I am in a space that is completely inoculated, I can feel safe knowing that I am not endangering anyone else. (Data from Israel suggest that vaccines can not infect those who have been vaccinated, but we do not know yet.) And I know that I will pick up the virus very, very, very unlikely and, although I myself do not get sick , potentially to be passed on to my non-vaccinated daughter. All of this has been tested in Israel, leading the world in vaccinations per capita, and which has already implemented a successful “green pass” program, and reopened large parts The green passes of Israel have a system of positive reinforcement and created community norms that promote vaccination. All your friends do it, so do you; it is part of the way the human mind works. This is especially true in the vaccination context, where many people are not faux-libertarian, anti-wax crusaders, but simply reluctant. When they see that their friends and communities have all been slapped, the hesitation diminishes. Vaccination gates are not the harbinger of a dystopian superstate, nor are the conspiracy theorists of ‘great reset’ talking about it. It is a very American compromise between individual freedom and collective responsibility to defeat a global pandemic. And since these are incentives rather than mandates, they are also conservative. What is non-American is DeSantis which prohibits businesses from claiming it. Weren’t Republicans supposed to be the party of free enterprise? Why would DeSantis not allow businesses to make this decision for themselves based on what they think their customers want? There are now legitimate concerns regarding vaccine passports, mostly around privacy and security. We live in a state of surveillance, with private companies sharing our personal data without us knowing it, and bad actors wanting to use it. It’s important to make sure that state – owned and private vaccine passports take my privacy more seriously than Facebook does. Fortunately, these problems have been taken seriously and are being addressed. In addition to HIPAA’s limitations on protected health information, a Biden administration task force, which includes industry leaders, is developing a set of standards for state-owned and private vaccination programs. (The administration is not developing its own passport, citing concerns about the federal government collecting the information.) It would also be appropriate for vaccine passports to be issued to those who are physically unable to do so due to health conditions. ‘ to get a vaccine. It does involve some risk, but the number of people with such conditions is small enough to make it insignificant. Of course, none of this reasoning matters. Maybe DeSantis, Greene and others like them are just throwing red meat at their angry and drooling base, and even they do not know what they believe, but we owe it to ourselves to do better. Stimulating people to get vaccinated is the American way, it’s the right thing to do, and it’s an important part of ending this misery before next winter arrives. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now! Daily membership of the beast: Beast Inside goes deeper into the stories that matter to you. Learn more.