Coming Soon: The ‘Vaccine Passport’

First, this was news on conspiracy theorist sites. Nobody believed it. Then, it moved to alt-news sites that are typically not well respected. Now, it has moved to the NYT, so if you didn't believe it when the early warning came, you better believe it now.

I myself will probably get vaccinated, I'm no anti-vaxer, I've gotten all my flu shots for years, etc. However, I believe in bodily autonomy; and since we live in a world where decades of social energy has been spent on earning women the right to bodily autonomy for abortion, I would have thought that using the same argument - "I get to control what is put into my body" - would still hold some merit.

This is particularly important in light of the fact that we've been told repeatedly that these vaccines aren't really vaccines in the traditional sense: you can still get infected, you can still spread the virus, you just won't get killed by it. It's not the same as the other kinds of vaccines the article mentions, where you actually just will not get sick, and where you will not spread the virus.

However, check out the only real "objection" this article brings up:

> What are the objections to vaccine passports?

> In a world where more than a billion people aren’t able to prove their identity because they lack passports, birth certificates, driver’s licenses or national identification cards, digital documents that show vaccine status may heighten inequality and risk, leaving many people behind.

Typical. So typical. Focus on how some people might not be able to participate in this mandatory scheme to force people to (in many cases pay for and) accept something into their bodies or else be ostracized from society. Even though it won't actually prevent you from getting or spreading this disease, which probably won't kill you even if you did get it.

Call me paranoid if you want but this seems like an excuse to foist a digital ID system on as many people as possible under the pretext of public health.